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“Masks!” I scream over the bullets.
Not waiting to see if the team follows instructions, I let loose.
The enemies stand far out of my normal range, but the hall’s so tight, my scent can do distance. I push for staying power—a lingering knock-out cloud instead of a one-off whip.
Retching replaces the gunfire.
When I peek out, Dara’s busy air-snatching the enemies’ guns, her team whipping out zip ties and taking down the bad guys one-by-one.
Too easy.
I activate drama mode, messing my hair and drooping against the wall like I just came in last place in an all-day ruck. When I ooze into the cell room, drooping with fake exhaustion, Bridget gives a curt nod.
That’s all the thanks I’ll get for saving her team’s unappreciative asses.
Muffled sobs cut through the echo of bullets, still ringing in my ears.
“I won’t hurt you,” Elyse says in a baby voice. Her tropical scent can’t erase the cage room’s mildew. All she does is mask it with toasted coconut and pineapple persuasion. “You can trust me.”
Elyse crouches by a white-gowned girl in a wire cage so tiny, it pins her on her knees. The door is ripped off its hinges, but Elyse’s words are nothing but wind to the trembling girl with white knuckles and a dirt-streaked cheek.
She’s too terrified to crawl free.
Meanwhile, Elyse has the cell block smelling like a piña colada bar at prison camp.
On any other mission, I’d play dead and try not to get caught smirking while the A-Team fails.
I should stick out my thumb and squat firmly in place, but the girls’ haunted faces have me opening my stupid mouth. “Let me talk to them.”
“Twenty-Six,” Bridget barks, alpha-sharp. “Assist with clean-up.”
The girl she’s trying to charm flinches.
Bridget’s mate-magic pheromones don’t work for shit before puberty.
I keep my scent locked down, but I refuse to yield. “You need me here.”
Bridget’s narrow shoulders push back, puffing out her bulletproof vest as she warms up for some verbal hit that I’d usually just shut up and take.
Not today.
“You’re scaring them.” Besides. Between me and my so-called mother?
I have way more experience raising kids.
Something like common sense circulates behind her brown eyes—maybe she finally remembers there are more important things than cutting me down.
“Elyse, with me,” she says stiffly.
Shooting venom through a dry cough, Elyse follows the commander, both of them masking up to enter the lingering pheromone cloud.
They leave me alone with zero sense of victory in a room of caged girls.
I wish I didn’t know what they’re going through.
Just hope they only have to live this once.
Controlling my scent at zero, I crouch next to the girl Elyse couldn’t sweet-talk. Her dark hair falls out of its ponytail, and her eyes scrunch while she clings to the rusted wire cage.
