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He then opened the door to the next room, before gesturing me through, which was weird. “Is this a date?” I joked.
He looked bemused, but answered with a completely straight face. “No. If it was a date, I would have brought flowers.”
“Good,” I said, “because you’re not my type.”
“Noted,” he answered. “Is Ava your type?” His voice hitched slightly on her name, betraying his emotions.
I stilled as I realized we were in the hidden lab area of the building and there was no-one else about. Even though he didn’t generally intimidate me, he was an alpha, and her true mate. From what I’d heard, true mates could be incredibly territorial.Shit.
I chewed my lip as I looked over at him. I figured lying to this dangerous alpha wouldn’t fly, but telling him the truth could end up with me in a bloodied mess on the floor.
“I consider Ava and Cary to be friends. I want to make sure they’re both okay.” It was a non-answer, and we both knew it.
“Good to know, but you didn’t answer my question.” He towered over me, even as he stood two paces away, hands in his pockets with a coiled danger wrapped tight around him. All traces of his smile were gone, and his eyes were those of a predator. I knew instinctively, running would do me no good right now.
“Yes,” I answered, and held my breath as I awaited my fate.
That hint of a smile appeared again, and his body relaxed slightly. I felt like I’d passed some kind of test.
“This should help with the wall.” He threw me a switchblade, and I tried not to fumble it as I caught it. I flicked it open. The blade was thick, but looked wickedly sharp.
“This will work better than throwing a chair at the wall, but it will probably dull the blade,” I said.
He shrugged. “I have more.”
I bet he did. He probably had a dozen on him right now. I knocked on the wall until I found a space between the studs, then stabbed the knife into the wall, at a high point to avoid the cables running along the base. As soon as I had a hole cut, River took over and ripped the sheeting off by hand, making quick work of it.
“Where were you half an hour ago?” I grumbled.
“Running the fence line, checking for weaknesses.” I looked him over and he hadn’t even broken a sweat. I didn’t doubt him, though. He was in peak physical health, his body fat index had to be in the single digits. He was all long, lean muscle. I was a little envious. My appearance, and my physicality, weren’t things I’d ever thought about. I kept fit helping around the farm, and it had always been enough. Now, facing down a raging alpha and the incursion at the farm had me rethinking things. I knew there were a lot of ways I could improve. Not for vanity. Now that I had someone I wanted to protect, I wanted the skills to do it.
I shook my head. That was a problem I couldn’t do anything about right now, but I could help with the one in front of me. My mind shifted back to working on this puzzle again. “The fences are electric, but they’ve been out since the Crash. So I assume they’re not connected to the same power source as everything inside.”
River grunted at me as he effortlessly ripped off more sheeting. “Yeah, there’s a power box next to the guardhouse that was connected to the main grid.”
I guess it made sense to have the fence and the house on a separate power supply, in case of attack. We worked together and busted the rest of the wall, then followed the cords through two more rooms. Luckily we were in the secret labs, not in the main part of the Palace, so we managed it without anyone overhearing us. In the last room, we came across another secret door.
“Shit,” River muttered. “This whole place is riddled with secret rooms. I need to get Ava to show me the tunnels she mentioned last night, make sure they’re the same ones we’ve already found.”
He pulled a compact, yet powerful, flashlight out of his pocket and waved it around inside the doorway.
“It’s a stairwell,” he called out. “I’m going down. Stay here and keep watch.”
“Sure.” I tried to sound confident, but I was groaning inside. I flicked the knife opening again, but I knew it was more likely to be used against me if it came to a fight. I had no idea what to do with it.Why hadn’t I joined in on the cadet training program Dave ran at the farm?
Only a few seconds later, a light flicked on at the bottom of the stairs and River called out for me to come down. The walls were bare stone, and the air smelled stale. The temperature dropped slightly as soon as I started down the stairs, and the room below was chilly. We were deep underground now. He eyed the knife I still had held in front of me, and that tiny smile hovered again. I snapped it closed.
We were in a long room, with a giant metal container in the middle of it. It appeared to be sealed, with some kind of control panel in the middle. The cables from the room above were leading down into it, as well as cables coming in from different directions.
“Do you know what this is? I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ryder asked.
“No.” I hadn’t seen anything like it before, either. I walked around the entire container looking at every cable. “These cables are all drawing power, though. None are channeling it in. So unless there are underground cables, this is the source of the power.”
“Can you see any way to open it?” He asked, as he circled it too.
I looked at the control panel, but nothing appeared to be labeled. I had a natural affinity for working with computers, and Max had been teaching me what he knew, but this was way beyond my expertise.
“No, and I don’t want to risk setting off any alarms or accidentally shutting it down. That middle panel is showing output, and it seems to be consistent.”
