Page 32

Aubrey

March in Iceland brings approximately twelve hours of darkness.

The four of us are bundled in thick clothing, supplied by Willow, from insulated pants to coats and thermal masks. Our boots have spikes on the soles that feel strange on the solid floor of the SUV, and Colt took his off to drive.

The white four-wheel drive vehicle, its heavily shadowed interior lit only by the moon, is outfitted with chains on the large, solid tires and a sharp, angular plow on the front grill. The back compartment is filled with organized supplies, including full gas cans, more chains, the box of gadgets Caius had given Rai, and guns. Lots and lots of guns.

The four of us—our pack—spent hours before we left ironing out our attack plan, and planning for as many divergences as we could imagine.

These motherfuckers trained us to be the perfect soldiers since adolescence, but their inflated egos never let them see us for the threats we are. I would bet that never in a million years did they think we would break free of their control and fight back, thinking their collars infallible.

I mean, what reason would they have to believe it would happen? We’ve been living under their control for centuries without an uprising.

I don’t know how many Cursed are left in the world after so many years of slaughter and denial of procreation, but I do know we are going to fight to free every last one of them.

Colt drives fast but steadily along the icy roads for over two hours until he says, “Hang onto your butts,” over his shoulder, and cuts the wheel. We plough through a high snow bank and into a wooded area off-road.

Rai is in the front passenger seat, fiddling with some tech, attaching wires with his bare fingers. He slips something on over his gloves and wiggles his fingers a few times, nodding to himself.

Miranda is beside me in the first row of back seats, her coat and gloves on the seat beside her. My Omega isn’t as affected by the cold as the rest of us, and seems more comfortable without the constraints.

She looks at her bare hands, clenches and unclenches her fingers, and a pale blue glow surrounds her palms. Her eyes narrow, her brow draws together, and tiny shards of ice spring up from her skin. A frown plays on her lips, and she closes her hands. When she opens them again, the ice and the glow are gone.

Her head tilts.

“Testing your power?” Calling it that and not a curse is becoming less difficult pretty quickly, just as using the term “pack” has been.

She turns to me with a small smile. “I’m a bit scared of what we’re about to do, but part of me is also kind of excited. To let go, you know?”

I do know. So do Rai and Colt.

Since we’d all bonded our Omega, there have been changes inside us. Not just our powers, but it’s like an emotional connection has started forming.

I can feel them.

“Me, too, brother.” Colt chimes in, still driving along the treeline. “I have to try and read your minds now. Can you believe that shit?” he laughs, and it’s happy. “But I feel you guys, here,” he places a hand on his chest briefly. “Like, your emotions.”

“I do as well,” Rai says.

“Yeah, me, too.” Miranda turns to me in the dim moonlight, and I see the question in her eyes.

“What is it?”

“You love me.”

I let out a huff of laughter. “I’ve told you I do.”

“Yeah, but…” her fist rests on her sternum. “It’s different to feel it, knowing that it’s your feelings, after—well, you know.”

I frown in spite of myself. “I was a fool, Miranda.” I look to the other Alphas. “Colt, Rai. I apologize to all of you.” I sigh and look back at Miranda. “I thought that I was saving us all by denying our connection. I didn’t want us to get hurt.”

“I know,” she says. “I always knew, but that assembly…” her head shakes, and she looks down into her lap. “They murdered that pack as an example to all of us, the same day they were going to take you away.” She looks at me again. “I both understood why you did what you did and knew that we had to get out of there at any cost.”

I take her hand in mine, the skin cool to the touch. “When they made me demonstrate my power to the buyers, I shouted your name.”

She startles, eyes large.

“Nearly blew down the place.” I grin at her, and she lets out a laugh dangerously close to a giggle. That sound makes the beast in my chest purr with delight. It had been dormant since our mating, satiated, I guess.

“This is our stop.” Colt slows to a halt and cuts the engine in a spot where the trees form a canopy. In the distance, floodlights and area lights illuminate what looks like a prison. Tall walls with barbed wire along the top, guard towers at every corner hovering over everything. The gate in the wall is solid metal, riveted, and definitely thick. The wall itself isn’t much different.

Spotlights swoop around the interior and exterior grounds, and it puts me on edge. Is this how it always is, or are they expecting trouble?

“Either way, we have to move,” Colt whispers aloud, reading my mind.

We meet at the back of the SUV and start gearing up. Miranda didn’t take her coat from inside the car, and while I worry for her, I trust her to know her limits.

We all layer bulletproof vests beneath our coats, Miranda over her thermal shirt. Colt and I equip ourselves with assault rifles under our arms and on our backs, shoving magazines of ammunition into cinching loops at our thighs, then we all take sidearms. Miranda and Rai only arm themselves with 9mm handguns and clips.

The four of us have done our best to plan for this siege, and all we can do now is move forward, trusting each other to do their part.

When we’re all geared up, I look to each of my packmates in the virtual darkness and nod at them before saying, “Let’s go.”

Against every protective fiber of my being, Miranda takes the lead. She’d practiced again and again at the bunker, not in her element, and succeeded. Now, it’s with an awe-inspiring level of ease that she turns her body sideways and extends both arms, the one in front forming a giant shield of ice with a crackling sound, the curved formation growing out from her palm.

We gather close together and push forward, the shield serving to obscure us from view as much as possible, her other hand hovering and mending the icy snow our shoes disturb to cover our tracks. But the sound is louder than I imagined, and I wince the closer we get to the facility.

We have to rush them, I think hard at Colt, and nearly miss my footing when Rai’s voice responds in my head.

“ We should. They haven’t detected us yet. I’m tapped into the security system.”

“ Good work, Rai,” Colt says, steady and calm.

“ Have you linked our minds, Colt?” This from Miranda.

“ Just a little something I’m still working on. Glad it's helping now.”

I take a breath and mentally steel myself for what’s to come. We all know the plan, I remind them.

There’s this strange sensation of nodding inside my head that makes my brain itch. I shake my head and power through. On three, we rush the gate.

One.

Two.

Three!

Miranda’s shield disappears, and I run through my pack straight for the gate, screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs, adding the power of my bark to the sonic boom that smashes through the gates, sending the giant metal doors spinning through the air where they crash into the building ahead of us.

The gunfire starts just as the alarms wail.

“ Incoming friendlies!” Colt shouts in our minds.

Three soldiers surround us, facing outward. One shouts, “Hold fire!” as Colt says in our heads, “ Don’t shoot!”

A glistening dome of rainbow colors surrounds us, bullets ricocheting off of it like an impervious shell.

Not only are these soldiers a part of the rebellion, but they are Cursed. Yet, I don’t scent them as Alphas.

How were they able to pose as Betas?

“This way,” the shielding soldier tells us and we follow him to the side door where Rai gets to work immediately, attacking the electronic defenses and lock with his power. When the door swings open, the alarm stops wailing, and Shield Guy shouts, “Go!”

As his shell falls away, one of the other soldiers steps up, arms wide at his sides, then quickly swoops them in like he’s hugging himself. A giant arc of golden light flies from his arms, taking out guard tower after guard tower like a boomerang-shaped heat-seeking missile.

The force of the explosions leaves me little doubt that any guards in those towers are dead.

The third soldier takes point, leading us through a bright white hallway with another door at the end, the electronic lock on the wall beside it has a biometric panel with the outline of a hand on it.

“I’ve got this,” the lead soldier says before placing his hand on the panel. The door opens inward and he resumes his lead, readying the rifle on his back just as a handful of guards rush toward us from around a corner, their boots stomping and screeching on the shiny floor.

The soldier opens fire, sweeping his gun from side to side across the width of the hall, making the soldiers drop, red streaking the floor and walls. He strategically hit them below their vests to bring them down, but when one points his gun at us from the ground, his breath coming in loud wheezes, the soldier fires a single round through his forehead. His body collapses.

“Keep moving,” the rebellion soldier tells us, and we turn down the corner from which the enemy soldiers had come.

The walls are glass, laboratories on either side, people in lab coats and hazmat suits with heavy gloves inside, red lights flashing on the ceilings.

“We’ll come back to these later,” the Boomerang Guy tells us as he jogs up beside me. He’s older, with salt-and-pepper hair, clean-shaven, and has a seriously angular jaw. His dark eyes are as hard as his expression. “We go to Vera first, then split up for your target.”

Miranda’s dad.

I nod at him, and he moves to point ahead of the shooter, leading us around a few more corners, just as we expected from the blueprints. When we reach a solid metal door, Boomerang Guy pounds on it twice, pauses, then raps on it four times, fast. The door slides open to reveal a woman, tall and slender, with straight black hair, dark almond-shaped eyes behind red-framed glasses, and smooth skin, not a lick of makeup. The patch on her coat says “Song.”

“Here I thought you’d forgotten about me,” her voice is droll as she peers at the three rebellion soldiers with narrowed eyes before stepping out of the room, allowing me to see inside to a small but tidy office. “We don’t have much time,” she says on a frustrated sigh and begins to move through the hall. “I received word just an hour ago that there’s going to be a surprise inspection. Prepare yourselves.”

“What does that mean?” Colt asks as we stop at a door the doctor punches a code into.

“If we don’t hurry, we’ll have more GBE soldiers on our asses.” The door opens, and she turns to look at us. “And a member of the Council.”

“Shit,” Colt says as we pass through the door. “I bet it’s that asshole Ivanov from the assembly.”

“One point for Blondie,” Dr. Song calls sarcastically before stopping at a split in the hall. She turns to the rebellion soldiers, who nod at her, the shooter and Boomerang Guy taking off down one side. “This way,” she tells the rest of us, leading us the other way.

Shield Guy takes point and extends his arm, palm forward, that glistening shield taking up the entire corridor’s width and height. When pounding boots echo from behind me, I know they’re not friendly.

Turning, I do something I’d practiced with my pack back in the bunker, a suggestion of Colt’s. A soft, childish sound effect, “ pew-pew,” comes from my mouth, my lips forming an O at the end of each one, aimed right at the chests of each incoming soldier. They fly backward, their limbs flailing in front of them, weapons dropped to the ground.

“Nice!” Colt shouts, probably more proud of himself for the idea than of me for implementing it.

“Hurry,” Dr. Song urges, and we hustle down the hall to another security door. “The cells are below,” she tells us. “I’ll let you in. Wait for the collars to disengage before opening the cell doors.”

As the door opens, she rushes off in another direction, Shield Guy leading us down a steep flight of metal stairs.

The basement level is even brighter than the ground floor, almost blinding. Everything is white aside from electronic lights along the walls, some medical instruments, and the gray examination tables inside glass containment cells. The first few we pass are empty and clean, but when we come across an occupied cell, the female inside screeches, grips her head and ducks into the far corner, body rocking back and forth.

Colt winces, his head shakes, likely trying to rid himself of her intrusive thoughts. Perhaps the memories of what was done to her.

Not all the others are the same, but some are. The rest watch us, questioning and silent. Some angry. I frown, no longer sure of the wisdom behind freeing all of these Cursed. I can’t imagine the mental effects of years of torture and experimentation. They may have arrived sane, but what about now?

“Most are okay,” Colt says aloud before stopping in the walkway. He raises his voice. “We’re getting you all out of here,” he tells them, his expression so determined. “When your collars disengage, we’ll unlock your cells.”

A young male Omega walks slowly to the glass, his wary pale lavender eyes roving over Colt, his light blond hair long and scraggly about his face. “You’re one of us,” he says, his Irish lilt pronounced. He looks at Shield Guy, and his brow twitches. “Cheeky cunt. This was your plan all along?”

Shield Guy gives him a noncommittal shrug, keeping his gaze trained behind us.

Mira approaches the glass, puts her hand on the clear barrier between them. Her voice is fierce when she tells the Omega, “We’re bringing this entire facility down. No one who hurt any of you lives past tonight.”

The Omega’s head tilts, his hand tentatively pressing against the glass at Mira’s palm, and a slow, deadly smile spreads across his unhinged face. “Oh, yes. I like that. I like you.”

My eyes narrow at him, and his head turns to me. “Not to worry, Alpha. I mean what I say and no more.”

Odd guy, but the look in his eyes compels me to believe him. His expression is crazed, but his eyes are somehow sane and steady. Either he’s perfected an act, or something deeper is going on with this one.

“Name’s Zephyr.” He gives a little bow like a showman. “I’m at your disposal. If we get out of here.”

“We will.” I know it.

“Your target is down this way,” Shield Guy says, gesturing further down the pathway.

“We’ll be right back,” Mira says before hustling down the cells until a male voice, hoarse and watery, cries, “Mira!”

She stops short, her hands slamming into the glass barrier. “Dad!”