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I had already voiced my concerns that if we had sent spies, there was every chance that the government had done the same. Orion and the Alphas seemed a little too confident that they had gone undetected all this time, but I was in no position to argue with them. At least, not yet.
But I wasn’t sure I trusted Orion’s Betas. “On second thought,” I started, but his sigh cut me off.
“Text me who you want as your guard,” he told me, his voice a little sharp, though I know he understood. “I’ll make it happen.”
Texting was a chore when it was broadcast to the world—or to Misha—but he sensed my hesitance and carefully climbed off my lap. “I’m going to change,” he said, grazing my cheek with his fingers. “Want me to grab anything for you?”
I let out a small sigh of relief and shook my head. “I’m fine in this.”
When he was out of the room, I laid my head back and began a mental roll-call of the Wolves Orion had told me were in the compound. Most of them were names I had heard in passing, or seen on rosters, but only a few had been Wolves I had fought alongside. And even fewer were Wolves I trusted with the life of my mate. But there were enough.
I queued up a text, then held the phone close to my mouth, in no mood to hunt and peck letters with my finger. “Briggs, Sanderson, Mitchell. And I want them armed.” I had the text read back, then sent, and I let the phone fall beside me as I tilted my head and listened to the melody of Misha’s heartbeat.
It was slow and steady, at total ease because he had taken far more comfort from Danyal’s words than I had. And I wondered how—when it was his life on the line, when it was the potential for a death so agonizing I wouldn’t wish it on the creatures I hated most in the world.
And it was a mark of why I could love him. Why I would. Why I most likely did already.
I didn’t bother climbing to my feet when he came back in the room, not even when I felt the phone vibrate next to me. Instead, I opened my arms to him and let him settle back where he had been before.
His clothes felt the same, but they smelled cleaner, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked it. Clean just made me want to mess him up and dirty him all over again, although we hardly had time. It wouldn’t take long for Orion to put the team together, and I knew it was close to dusk.
“You should probably eat something before we go,” Misha said, laying his face close to the crook of my neck.
I hummed, just holding him. “Orion will pack something. He knows the first shift after an injury will take a lot out of me.”
“Is that why you’re worried?” he asked.
I shrugged, tugging at his soft hair a little and grinning when I felt his cock plump against my hip. “Orion seems to think we’re impenetrable, and I think that’s a dangerous stance to take when our tech is lacking and our communication with the other resistance compounds is minimal at best. He thinks it all formed without the government taking notice, and the population here is small, but we’d have been better off hiding in plain sight.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to hide,” he reminded me—and that was true. Even without being blinded, I always stood out. And my name had been on the lips of so many. From what I could tell, I was one of only a couple high-profile Wolves to go missing, and all of them made sense.
Because all of us wouldn’t have stood by while people quietly disappeared off the streets.
Our government was greedy and reckless, but it wasn’t foolish enough to believe that resentment wouldn’t grow. Even those who originally thought that sacrificing a few for the sake of the rest was worth it, it wouldn’t last when someone they cared about became the next victim.
And from the reports Orion had read to me on my first day, the labs were getting greedy. The last report found a dozen Wolves missing from the capital. Twelve out of nearly five hundred thousand was next to nothing, but it was enough that it made the news.
If they were that brash now, it wouldn’t be long before the first conflict arose.
“I think something has to give,” I told him eventually. “After the moon, I’m going to send operatives out to try and find us land. There are hundreds of cities that were abandoned after chemical bombs were dropped, and it wouldn’t be ideal, but there are many that could be reinforced. If we mean to establish ourselves as a force against the government, we can’t do it from tunnels.”
Misha said nothing, but I felt a quake of fear coming from him, so I held him a little tighter.
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” I vowed, and he surprised me with a scoff.
“Kor.” His face pulled out of my neck, and his lips pressed to the end of my chin. “You’re a fucking idiot.” He went quiet a moment, and I wished for that second that I could read his face. “I’m not scared for myself. I don’t want you to die, and I hate the idea that this could end badly for all of us.”
I had no words of comfort for him. I rushed into every battle knowing it could be my last. When I woke up on the gurney in the lab that first time the drugs wore off and saw what was about to happen to me, I was certain that was going to be my end. And it wasn’t a miracle that saved me every time—it wasn’t luck. It was careful strategy and trust I placed in others—sometimes total strangers.
Luckily, the buzz from Orion’s call saved me from having to answer him then, and with his hand in mine, we made our way to the front doors.
Chapter Seventeen
KOR
The three Wolves I called to serve as guard had once been under my command. Biggs had risen in the ranks faster than anyone else, and when Orion had been given his own command, Biggs had filled in almost flawlessly.
We had a fragile bond, which broke once our company was dissolved and the war was over, but I still felt something between us when I climbed into the car next to Misha. My mate felt nervous enough that his hand was trembling, so I reached for him as I offered Biggs a smile.
