AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thunder rolled acrossthe sky as they left the others. Nobody had been happy about it, but there had been little choice. Niko had taken Saint into his arms and carried him while Etan hefted Hannah and carried her over one shoulder, leaving him with a free hand to carry one of the weapons that had been dropped by a now-dead intruder.
Niko’s destination had been a narrow fissure, not deep enough to be called a cavern, but with enough depth and width to give shelter from the storm. It had been used by pack members caught out in bad weather more than once, although usually only one or two at a time.
Once the wounded were safe from the storm and had solid rock and earth at their backs, Niko and Zee focused on their target.
The rain started to come down in a steady drizzle not long after they left the others.
Niko swore, but Zee was unperturbed.
She easily found the tracks left by the humans, coming across the first body in under five minutes.
The first corpse, one of the men Niko had taken out when he realized the enemy wanted them surrounded, lay propped with his back against a stunted tree that was giving way to decay and time.
He’d clearly been left as a message, since Zee knew Niko wouldn’t have wasted any time positioning him in such a fashion—or hunting down the head he’d ripped off and likely tossed in another direction. The headless form, head now propped in his lap, did nothing if not attract the eye.
She swallowed her gorge at the displayed violence and kept moving forward, aware of Niko in the trees above her, watching, searching, worrying.
He hated not being at her side. She could feel the pulse of those negative emotions through their nascent bond, wanted to reassure him. She had to keep her focus on the mission before her though. If she let emotion interfere, fatal mistakes were that much easier to make.
Her pace was steady, every sense on alert for signs of the humans she knew waited for her.
She still had trouble discerning their scent, but she could feel them, the earth giving up secrets as Zee sped along the ground.
From there, the path was paved with corpses, an inner tug on her senses guiding her along like it had hooked deep into her psyche.
The first actual scent she caught was unwelcome, a frisson of panic skittering down her spine before she yanked her instincts under ruthless control.
Smoke.
She lifted her face to the canopy of trees, trying to isolate where it was coming from.
Anger stirred when she isolated the source of the smoke.
Overhead, she heard the faintest hesitation as Niko made his way via the trees in a way only a cat—or a Therian feline —could. “Niko?” she murmured.
“Yeah,” came his response, as quiet as her own had been. “I’ll send word.”
That sort of danger couldn’t be ignored. Although they’d agreed Analise may well be right in thinking Brandon could have sabotaged their comms, ignoring a fire in a forested terrain wasn’t an option.
The rain was a double-edged sword now. It might hinder her ability to track, but at the same time, it could help prevent the fire from spreading. The scent of smoke grew thicker as the rain started to pound down around them. Soon, smoke was a heavy cloud in the air.
The scent of blood and death was overwhelming now, acrid smoke burning her sensitive nasal passages and eyes. The wind and rain picked up, subduing the fire, but making that noxious smoke so much worse.
They were close to the cabin—she could tell by the cloying stink of death coating the back of her tongue and throat. With her claws, she ripped a strip of cloth from her borrowed shirt, tying it around the lower half of her face in a makeshift mask.
The humans had been watching, using their own tech for surveillance, and they surrounded her when she slowed down to tie the cotton around her lower face.
They were quiet. So quiet. Well-trained and she couldn’t help but think the trouble these men could cause.
But ... they weren’t quiet enough.
Under her mask, she smiled.
Humans had no idea how loud they were and without understanding that—and how sensitive a Therian’s ears were, it was hard to compensate.
Head cocked, she listened. To her left, she heard a few telltale, but quiet signs.
