Page 41 of Guarded By The Alpha

Drake moved.

Roan was already pulling back and on his feet before the second sound arrived—the safe house's sensors tripping four seconds later. Not a probe. Not a scout.

Several of them.

Coming straight in.

The Council's Cleaner had stopped being patient and brought force instead, and the safe house that was supposed to be invisible had been found.

Chapter 13

Instinct and Oath

ROAN

The sensors tripped four seconds before Gideon's voice confirmed what the wolf already knew.

"Several of them. Coming in from the north. Drake at the front—four others with him."

I was already moving. Had been moving since the first wrongness registered in my bones, since the wards hummed with something that wasn't wind or wildlife or the ordinary settling of a safe house at night. The cold hit my face as I cleared the east corridor, and behind me I could hear the rest of the team coming up—chairs scraping, blades checked, the controlled urgency of people who'd done this before.

Four men plus Drake. The Council didn't spend that much on one job unless the order came from high enough to give Drake real authority instead of just instructions. This wasn't bring her back anymore. They'd decided Nova was worth five of their best, and they'd sent them to make sure of her.

The wolf came up with a violence that nearly broke my stride. I shoved it down—not away, but into something I could aim.

Eleven seconds between Gideon's word and the first of them. I used every one.

"Jace—south." My voice came out flat, nothing like the roar building in my chest. "They'll split to pull us apart. You take whoever tries the flank."

Jace was already gone, a shadow peeling off toward the tree line with the silence of a wolf who'd been hunting since before half our team was born.

"Maddox—inside. Elena and Tara don't leave that room until I say."

"Copy." Maddox carried the particular calm of a man who understood that holding a doorway was its own kind of violence. He'd be a wall. Nothing was getting through him.

"Gideon—east room. I need to know what's happening as it happens."

"Already there." Because of course he was. Always three steps ahead, always exactly where the knowing needed him.

I took the north myself.

I took it because Drake would come from the north—the angle with the best line on the doors, the worst exposure to Jace's sweep. I knew it the way six years in the field and two days of reading Drake had taught me to know things. The wolf had been tracking him since the warehouse: the trail he left in the footage, the weight of him at the edge of every place we'd held. Patient. Methodical. A man who'd been making witnesses disappear for decades.

He'd made one mistake. He thought he was the one hunting.

The cold bit at my face as I cleared the north line and set myself in the shadow of the ward Gideon had anchored the day before. The strange tang of it stung my sinuses—but it hid my scent from anyone coming out of the trees.

I went still. Waiting.

My eyes were already gold at the edges. I didn't bother pulling them back.

It opened at the four-minute mark with the particular violence of men who'd expected surprise and learned too late they'd lost it.

Drake's people split on the way in—two north, two arcing south. The south went badly for them in the specific way everything involving Jace goes badly. Through the comm I heard the short sounds of it—impact, a cut-off snarl, quiet—and then Jace, flat: "South's clear."

I didn't have time to answer. The two from the north were already through the trees, moving with the smoothness of wolves who'd worked together for years. Council men. Good at this. Ruthless in the way of people who'd stopped asking about their orders a long time ago.

The first came in fast, testing me. I let him close, because close was where I wanted him—where their numbers meant nothing and the ground I'd chosen meant everything.