Page 56 of Wolf Revealed

“I’m just going to say it out loud,” his boss said, his expression somewhere between stunned and exasperated. “You’re telling us that you’ve had the flash drive the entire time? For a decade.”

“Trust me, I feel dumb enough on my own without you pointing out how stupid I am,” Mike muttered.

Gage grunted. “We’re about a minute out from the mansion. I know you want to check on Lark and Kal, but you need to get to your truck and find that flash drive. The rest of us will hook up with Hale and make sure Lark, Kal, and the rest of her family are safe.”

Mike didn’t like that plan, but he knew Gage was right. He needed that flash drive, if for no other reason than to show it to Roman and get the man to focus on that instead of his family.

They were about half a mile from the house when they started picking up chatter from the radio they were using at the mansion. Mike strained to hear Lark’s voice buried somewhere in the chaos, but it was impossible to discern anything over the shouts and gunfire, even for his werewolf ears. Knowing it’d be worthless to add his voice to the cacophony already filling the airwaves, he reached for his phone, praying he didn’t cause a distraction at the worst possible time.

“I’m thirty seconds out,” he texted. “Where are you?”

Mike stared at his phone, waiting for Lark to reply. Then he waited some more. He was about to howl in frustration when those three little dancing bubbles finally appeared on the screen.

“In the woods,” she replied. “Near the gazebo. Hurry!”

Mike looked up to tell his pack mates what she’d said, only to see that they’d arrived at the mansion. The gate was closed, and armed men in tactical gear were guarding it.

“I’m ramming the gate. Hold on,” Gage said as he floored it. “The moment we’re inside, you go after that flash drive and your family. We’ll cover you.”

Before Mike could say anything one way or the other, bullets slammed into the front of their vehicle, shattering the windshield before the men shooting at them dived out of the way as the SUV smashed through the wrought-iron gate. Mike immediately jumped out, as did his pack mates, all of them firing back at the group of Roman’s supernaturals charging toward them.

“Mike, go!” Gage shouted. “We got this!”

Lifting his M4 carbine, Mike burned through half a magazine before turning with a growl to race down the driveway. Rounds tore up the ground around him, but at the speed he was running, it was impossible for anyone to get a shot at him.

The sound of gunfire reached him from several locations around the property, including from the woods beyond the gazebo where Lark and Kal were hiding.

Mike ran faster, his inner wolf snarling.

* * * * *

Leaving Jasper and Everett behind tore at Lark’s soul, and she couldn’t shake the thought that it had been a mistake. But with Kal in danger, she had an overwhelming need of a mother to protect her child.

So, she and Kal had run.

Unfortunately, they barely made it a few hundred feet before they ran into two more big supernaturals with an alarming number of jagged teeth and snarls that made her think they were hungry for blood.

Heart in her throat, Lark shoved Kal behind her, then pointed her gun at the pair. She had ten bullets; she had to make them count. But the two supernaturals were coming at them so fast it was hard to get a shot lined up, and she ended up letting them get way too close before finally pulling the trigger.

She might have been more surprised than they were when she put two bullets into the first guy, and he tumbled to the ground. The other guy slowed long enough for her to put two bullets in him, stopping him, too. At least temporarily.

That was good enough for Lark. Grabbing Kal’s hand, she took off running again.

“Do you think any other bad guys saw us come this way?” Kal whispered as he crouched behind a fallen tree beside her a few minutes later.

She put an arm around his trembling shoulders as they did everything possible to make themselves invisible in the tangle of dying branches and piles of rotting pine needles.

Kal was terrified.

Honestly, so was she.

“I think we’re okay,” she said softly, lifting her head to peek over the top of the tree trunk.

Even though she didn’t see anything that worried her, she sniffed the air anyway. That turned out to be a waste of time. There were too many scents—werewolves and Roman’s supernaturals alike—swirling on the breeze moving through the trees. It was impossible to tell how many people were out there, much less whether any were moving this way.

“What are we going to do?” Kal asked, looking around fearfully as the sounds of gunfire continued to fill the air. “Do we stay here or try and get to the house again?”

Lark didn’t answer right away. Mostly because she was praying those supernaturals didn’t possess some unique way to track her and Kal. Because she only had six more bullets. After that, shifting into her wolf form would be the only way to protect her son. But if she were in wolf form, she couldn’t talk to Kal and tell him what to do. She hoped it didn’t come to that.