Page 132 of The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate
Adrenaline. I tell myself that’s what it is.
“North door is open,” she breathes. “Stay close. Single file behind me through the corridor. Once we’re past the stairwell, I’ll lead.”
Violet’s hand brushes my elbow. “Together,” she murmurs.
I nod once. The ten Silvercrest soldiers line up at our backs in their black fatigues, in a tight column, eyes already on the cleared ground between us and the wire. Their leader, ashifter named Kessler, gives Lydia a small chin-lift. She raises one finger. We move, all of us in human form so we can communicate.
The slope drops away under our boots. We descend low and fast, threading between the pines. The north entrance yawns open from the inside, a black slit in pale concrete. We pour through it one after the other, Kessler last, his hand pulling the steel door shut behind him with a heavy click.
The concrete walls of the cold corridor swallow the sound of the battle whole. The light is bad, yellow strips humming overhead, and the floor is a stained gray that has held a lot of things I don’t want to think about. Somewhere underneath the smell of damp and old metal, something else lifts the hair on the back of my neck before my brain has caught up to it.
Lydia takes point.
She moves with the tight, sure stride of a woman who already seems to know where the turns are. My pulse stutters once at the back of my throat, and I push the thought down. Lydia briefed the layout this morning from the squadron’s sketches. Of course she knows. This is what she does.
We hit a stairwell. Lydia proceeds down the steps without slowing. We follow.
Underground level. The bad lighting gets worse, pools of it interrupted by long stretches of darkness. We pass a cell block. My wolf is awake at the back of my chest now, ears up, hackles lifting. The mark at my collarbone is humming against the strap of my vest. Between my ribs, the bond with Lucas is open: hot, alert, his fury a steady current under my own pulse from the north side of this building, where the fight rages on.
He’s alive. Still in it. Still pushing.
Good. Good.
“Quiet,” Lydia murmurs ahead of us.
I notice it just as she says it. There is no one down here.
The front of the compound has emptied into the perimeter fight. That part of the briefing was clean; that part fits. But this stretch of corridor, so deep into the building, two levels under what should be a guarded holding facility, should not be silent. It should at least have a watch. A man at a junction. A radio crackling in a guard room.
There is nothing.
Violet’s hand finds the small of my back through my vest. “Sienna,” she whispers, low.
“I know.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“I know.”
There’s a corner ahead of us. Lydia’s good hand lifts, and we all come to a stop. She crouches at the edge of the wall, angles her head, one finger at her lips, then waves at us to follow her.
I take a step. My wolf throws herself sideways inside me hard enough that I rock on my heels.
It’s a warning. My foot stops mid-stride, my weight pulling back, and I open my mouth to say “wait,” but it’s too late. Lydia is moving.
The corridor ahead of her opens into a wider junction. We round the corner into the mouth of it, and the air hits me before I notice anything else. It’s wrong. Heavy. The lights flicker overhead. Then, I see them.
Operatives line the walls, twelve of them at least, eyes already gold, claws already half out from the tips of their fingers. The bay of each of them goes up at the same moment.
“Back!” Kessler bellows.
The corridor explodes.
The first wave hits us from three sides at once, men faster than any wolf I have ever seen move. The column of soldiers behind me goes down in a sound I will hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life—claws ripping through fatigues, throatstorn open before our men even have a chance to extend their own claws. Violet’s hand grabs the back of my vest and yanks me sideways into an alcove. We hit the concrete shoulders first, hard. Magic crackles at her fingertips. Blue, fierce, untrained.
The fight is violent. I can hear the howls as Violet pins me against the wall. Sounds of flesh tearing, the smell of blood thick in the air. Our soldiers are no match for these shifters. They never were.
The corridor suddenly goes quiet. Violet and I force ourselves to look.
