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His killers must have realized they had no chance of catching Carson and Amelia. No matter what happened, Mason knew they would be safe. They would survive and they would have each other. More importantly, those who might have been trying to kill Carson or Amelia would have failed. Colby would keep them safe, and if not the lynx-shifter then Deke or Hayden. In any event, regardless of what happened to Mason, his brother and his mate would be safe, and perhaps the information he and Carson had gathered would help the Resistance defeat the Shadow League and their puppet master.
* * *
Northern Lights Genome Project
Reykjavik, Iceland
Mason came back into the world, surprised to be there. He was in a cold, sterile room devoid of color or life. What it did have was light—way too bright for his eyes to remain open. The pain was unbearable; it seized his body and squeezed until it made him want to vomit.
A needle pierced his arm and something warm rushed through it, easing the pain and the nausea and forcing his body to succumb to the darkness.
He would never be sure how long he drifted in and out of consciousness. The trip from where he had planned to make his last stand over and through the frozen landscape had been painful. When they’d abruptly changed direction and headed back down the hill, the pain had been excruciating. He faintly heard what sounded like a large helicopter heading towards him—the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh all too familiar. Many times, that had been the sweetest of sounds. This time, however, was different. This time there was no rescue or salvation at the other end. This time, he feared, there was only torture and agony.
The rush of air being moved by the chopper rotors as it landed made the snow whirl all around them. When they released his bindings, he had waited until he heard them move away before rolling off the sled and trying to get to his feet.
“Shit!” snarled one of his captors.
Mason knew escape was not an option, but death here was better than what waited for him wherever they were taking him. His greatest fear was that he would wake up in Reykjavik. Even as a non-scientist, he knew that place was an abomination. Any doubts he had about working with the Resistance had been quickly dispelled on his first mission, which had been to simply confirm that there were hidden and highly secured labs where experiments were being conducted that were crimes against both humanity and shifters.
Two of the men grabbed him and dragged him back to the chopper.
“Damn it! Be careful with him. They need him alive,” snarled someone within the chopper.
There came the feel of cold metal, the spine of a knife, cutting his clothing away and allowing the frigid air to hit him with an agonizing blast before numbing his.
“This guy’s a mess. I don’t know if I could save him if I had him in an operating theatre, but in a chopper in rough air?”
“If he dies, we’ll toss you out when we dispose of the body. Got it?” was the only response.
“Got it,” said the man, poking and prodding him.
Between the pain and the cold, Mason mercifully passed out. He was only vaguely aware when the chopper landed with a thud and he was offloaded onto a gurney that rolled along with all of the grace of a grocery shopping cart with one bad wheel. Through the swollen slits of his eyes, he could see a land covered in snow and ice, but it seemed warmer than the area on the Alaska Peninsula from which he’d been taken.
“That should help with the pain,” said a calm voice. “They thought you would sleep until they could put you under anesthesia. I’m glad I thought to check. Everything will be okay, Carson.”
Once more a soothing warmth rushed through his veins, bringing with it peace and an absence of pain. That cycle repeated over and over again. He would begin to regain consciousness, and someone would come in and inject him and he would fade out once more.
Now, as he began his journey back to the light, pain began to overtake him. He could hear someone approaching, and he swore he wouldn’t beg for relief, but the pain seemed more intense than usual. He could hear the familiar sound of someone injecting something into his IV and he waited for the cessation of pain, but this time oblivion didn’t come.
As the pain faded, he became aware of her presence. His fated mate was near, in person rather than merely in his dreams. Mason opened his eyes again, focusing on the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. They were set in a beautiful face with a pair of incredibly sexy lips. Lips he could well imagine being wrapped around his cock. As the sedation kicked in, he chided himself for two things. One, she thought he was his baby brother, and two, what kind of sick fuck who was dying looked at an angel of mercy and wondered how she’d look naked and giving him a blow job?
Given that whatever was going to happen would most likely not be pleasant, perhaps thinking about the beautiful woman with the silky hair, killer curves, full lips and eyes he could happily get lost in forever was not the worst idea he’d ever have.
There was another pinprick in his hip. “That’s an anti-nausea drug to counteract some of the vertigo. It should help.”
He reached for a tendril of her blonde hair and brought it to his nose so he could inhale her scent. She smelled like heaven. He might have thought he was in heaven had it not been for the amount of pain he was still in.
CHAPTER 6
EMERY
It had been a week since Kam had stood her up. There had been no note, no text, no email, nothing. Nothing to explain why Kam had sought her out to meet at the Harbor Light and then failed to show. Emery had seen her briefly in the hall, but when she’d tried to talk to her, Kam had been distracted and brushed her off.
But if the rumors about Carson were true—and Emery couldn’t believe they were—Kam had every right to be distracted. Security was on high alert, and everyone seemed tense. The rumor was that Carson had hacked into the company’s mainframe and drilled down into files for which he didn’t have the security clearance. It was also believed that he had downloaded proprietary research and files and absconded with them.
Security had been tightened. Nothing went in or out without being scanned and examined by Terry and the rest of the security team. People whispered that it was one of the worst cases of corporate espionage and betrayal they’d ever heard of and the only one at NLGP. Workstations, laptops, and bags were routinely searched. Those who lived in company-supplied housing found there was a clause in their lease giving the company a right to search their quarters—without notice.
The atmosphere was rife with tension. It was as if they were all on tenterhooks just waiting for something to snap. The other teams shied away from having anything to do with Emery’s team. At first, the team had banded together, but as each of them had been escorted from the lab to be questioned by security, HR, and then executive management, they’d succumbed to the air of suspicion and begun to keep to themselves. It hadn’t helped that they’d all been admonished to keep anything they knew, or they were asked, to themselves.
