“You bitch,” Apex spat. “Let him go. He’s no threat to you!”
“The Executioner and I had few secrets.” The female talked over the prisoner’s protests as Lucan stepped in front of Apex to hold him back. “And what ones we did have were on my side only. So he told me about your little attachment, your—loyalty, let’s call it—to this aristocrat. I had questioned how deep this abiding regard went, but then I realized, it is in your species’ nature. You are a pack wolf without a clan, and the reflex to create that which is intrinsic to your DNA forges ties wherever they are found. You pick up people like trash at the side of the road, and it fills the wheel wells of your car. But you can’t help it, and I am not going to resist using your defect to my benefit.”
Lucan narrowed his eyes. “Be careful there, female. You know what else they say about wolves?”
“What.”
He looked at her exposed throat. “We bite.”
“Oh, that’s original.” She smiled coldly. “I didn’t see that coming. Now get the fuck out of my way.”
When he didn’t move, she took her gun out.
“Shoot me,” he said. “I don’t give a fuck.”
And he meant it. There was no future for him and the female he’d bonded with. No real future, anyway. So what did he care?
“Will you stop trying to be my target? It makes you look desperate.” She swung the muzzle around and pointed it at Kane’s chest. “He is who I’m going to shoot—”
“Kill him and you have no leverage over me.”
“No, I’ll just find your girlfriend. I followed her weeks before you did. Even if she leaves here, I know where she lives, what car she drives, where she goes at night. I will give her to you in pieces. Now get the fuck out of my way.”
Apex growled and tried to lunge for the female, but Lucan wheeled around and locked the other prisoner in a bar hold. As their eyes met, there was a struggle, but the other male stilled.
Not now, Lucan mouthed.
“Thank you,” the head of the guards patronized. “And yes, I’ll bet she’s left after all these delay tactics of yours. Like I don’t know what you’re doing with this posturing?”
There were a series of beeps and Lucan glanced over his shoulder. The female was entering the code, and as the lock released, she smiled back at him.
And stepped inside.
Lucan nodded for Mayhem to come over and keep holding Apex in place—because goddamn it, Lucan was going into those quarters and checking to make sure Rio was gone. Except as the guy stepped up to assume the corralling job, there was a mistake in the transfer of duties.
A slip of the hands was enough for Apex to break free and go raging bull toward the guards who were holding Kane up off the floor.
As a fight broke out, Lucan had to let his two comrades handle themselves. He lunged forward and caught the door just before it shut, slipping into the private quarters.
The head of the guards was over by the rifles, her long, blunt-tipped fingers traveling down one of them as if she were caressing the blooms of a vase full of red roses.
“I have coveted these guns.” She glanced over at him, seemingly unsurprised he’d followed her. “They can take out a dangling cherry from its stem at two hundred yards.”
Lucan looked around without trying to be obvious. “Do me a favor.”
She arched a dark brow. “Excuse me?”
“Let Apex have Kane. Things are getting ugly out there, and if you’re all about taking control—which appears to be true—you’re going to want those guards without a lot of broken bones, right?”
The female came over. Stared at him. “I thought you wanted to be king of the mountain.”
“No, I want to end this place.”
“So you and I are at odds, even though you’re willing to give me power.”
“Did I say I would give you anything?”
“You don’t have a choice.”
With that, she walked back to the door. Entering the code, she opened the thing—and recoiled.
The fresh scent of blood and the gurgling sounds of death said it all.
“Hey!” she called out. “Enough. Stop it.”
The female palmed her gun and discharged a series of bullets into the air—with all the calmness of someone putting in a lunch order at a drive-through.
In the aftermath, there was nothing but silence and the smell of gun smoke.
She looked back at Lucan. “You’re going to Caldwell now and completing your job. And you know, if your girlfriend plays by my rules, I might let her live, if it’s beneficial for me.”
“Fuck you.”
“Her life is in your hands, wolf.”
Bide your time, he told himself. The female was right, he and Mayhem and Apex were not enough to hold control. Not right now. But with the right plan?
He needed time to think.
Grinding his molars, he muttered, “Yeah. Fine.”
“Bring Kane in here,” the female ordered out into the hall. “There’s a bed—okay, fine, let him do it, for fuck’s sake. He wants to play gurney, I don’t give a shit.”
There was a pause. Then she opened the door wider and held it in place with her strong body.
Apex didn’t look at her as he passed by with Kane in his arms. Good thing. The light in his eyes was capable of blowing a mortal right out of their boots.
And hey, at least Rio was nowhere to be found.
As Apex laid Kane out gently and sat on the bed beside him, two guards with shiners like they’d been hit with a set of two-by-fours took up res against the far walls.
Lucan shook his head as he tried to see whether Kane was still alive. “You better hope you didn’t kill him.”
The female shrugged as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Whether he lives or dies doesn’t matter to me. ‘Adapt and overcome,’ that’s my motto.”
“So you’re a parasite.”
“No, I’m a predator.” She paused by the command table. “Well, well, well . . . look at this.”
The female picked up some papers and went through them. Then she drew them to her nose and sniffed.