Page 50 of Fae Devoted (Fae Touched #3)

A few paces ahead of them, Jeremiah came to a sudden stop and lifted his nose. The scent trail they followed through the maze of underground tunnels was at its strongest thirty feet ahead.

“Go.” Tucker didn’t lower his voice to sub audible; his heightened senses confirmed the hall was deserted. His brother shifted and took off at a lope.

Tucker set Jo down with care and waited for her legs to quit shaking before letting go. His gaze roamed her gaunt face, then lowered to her bony shoulders and wafer-thin waistline. Less than two days ago, her yellow t-shirt and jeans hugged her body. Now they hung like a sack on a too skinny frame.

In an effort to expunge the stream of iron poisoning invading her system, her Ferwyn metabolism had worked overtime, expending enormous amounts of energy in a short period. The cuffs must have been on her the entire captivity to account for the rapid weight loss.

Tucker’s larynx vibrated with the emergence of a growl, gums stinging.

“I’m fine,” she said, leaning heavily against the tunnel wall.

Lie. Jo wasn’t fine, but there was nothing he could do to fix it until they were away from this fucking place.

Tucker stifled the rumble building in his throat and retrieved his Glock.

He flipped the weapon around and offered it butt first. No one could approach this area undetected by his wolf, but he refused to leave Jo without protection in this state.

Her delicate jaw hardened with determination as she clenched her teeth and grasped the gun’s grip with swollen hands. Damn, he loved this female.

Although weakened, Jo would never be weak.

Tucker wanted to say the words aloud, but it wasn’t the time, and it definitely wasn’t the place. So he pushed his devotion through their bond instead.

Jo’s hazel eyes widened, then fluttered closed. She tilted her head back as though savoring decadent chocolate melting on her tongue. There was a tremulous smile on her face when her gaze returned to his again. “Go with Jeremiah. I’ll wait here.”

He kissed her forehead, converted into his wolf, and trotted to the high concentration of aromatic vanilla and the strange hint of woodsmoke that coalesced through the open doorway.

He tilted his ears forward and inhaled his brother’s frustration and a child’s strawberry shampoo.

His brother disappeared into the bedroom’s attached bath as he padded inside.

Tucker crossed the bright pink carpeting to the unmade bed covered in blankets as colorful as the rug. Charlie’s and the Untouched woman’s scents, which Jo identified as Hannah’s, were steeped in acute anxiety. Fresh aftershave and gun oil added to the acrid taint in the air.

Human soldiers.

Huffing to clear the pungent odor from his nostrils, Tucker shifted again as Jeremiah came out of the bathroom in human form. “Anything?”

“The Director was here.” Jeremiah strode to the bed, the fuchsia comforter and matching sheets partially on the floor as if ripped away from the child while she slept.

“How do you know?”

“I can smell Daimhín on him.” His brother’s chest heaved, and his fingers tore through his hair, the strands bleached lighter by the sun and longer than Tucker’s. “He has the child.”

“They won’t get far.”

Jeremiah dragged a hand to his nape. “Whenever I’m close to the Fae’s magic…the mark burns like fire.”

Jo told them the Director bore the Sídhe’s brand. Did his brother’s presence in the facility tip him off? Is that why he’d known to grab Charlie and run?

“You don’t understand.” Jeremiah scoured at the brand as if it could be wiped away if he only rubbed at it hard enough. “Charlie is more important to the coming war than you can imagine.”

“Then explain it to me. Why do you feel responsible for the witchling?” Why make a sacred blood vow to protect a child he didn’t know?

“It’s my fault she’s here.”

“You can’t blame yourself for what the Fae—”

“My fault her mother is dead,” he whispered, voice agonized.

“Jeremiah…” Tucker took a cautious step toward the bed as blood dripped down his twin’s neck and seeped into the collar of his shirt. Jeremiah’s claws were out. “Brother, stop it.”

“It burns.”

Tucker shot forward and seized his brother’s wrist, forcing the claw sinking deep into muscle and skin to stall halfway in.

He knew the torment and despair in his brother’s eyes wasn’t due to the physical pain of the brand.

But the extreme emotional trauma of fighting the Fae’s influence for decades and not winning every battle that was ripping him apart.

No shifter—no wolf—could have two masters and stay sane.

“I said, stop .” This time he drenched the order in compulsion. Jeremiah may have been his Alpha in the past, but only by choice. Tucker’s dominance was on the same level as his sibling’s.

Jeremiah quit pushing, but his curved nail remained buried in the center of the vile symbol, poised to slash.

“Retract it.” Tucker swallowed hard, his throat as tight as the grip on his brother’s wrist, preventing him from cutting deeper and possibly severing his cervical spine. “Now.”

Jeremiah sheathed his claw and blood streamed from the open wound, the puncture slow to close. Wounds caused by a wolf’s claws, even self-inflicted, were slow to heal.

“I cannot live like this anymore.” He hung his head, his hair falling to cover his eyes and the scar on his cheek. “I don’t want to.”

“Don’t let the pureblood win.” Tucker cupped his brother’s bloodstained nape, his palm pressing into Daimhín’s brand.

“Do not touch it,” Jeremiah hissed, trying to shake off his hand.

“This mark doesn’t define you.” Tucker held on, his heart a lead weight in his chest.

“I lost my pack,” he said, breathing hard but no longer struggling. “Who am I if not an Alpha?”

Tucker pushed their foreheads together like when they were pups sitting cross-legged in the treehouse their sire built in the backyard.

They whispered every secret, every dream for the future to each other in that old clubhouse.

Vows were made. Vows to lead the Grayson Pack like their father and uncle before them, claim truemates, and raise their pups together.

Promises Tucker broke when he left Jeremiah to his fate.

To the Fae. “I’m sorry, brother. I should have stayed. I should have—”

“No, you needed to go.” Jeremiah closed the loop, completing the old ritual.

His grip a vise on Tucker’s nape, his forehead heavy.

“I’m afraid I would have killed you if Daimhín ordered it and lost the tiny piece of my soul I’ve managed to retain over the years.

But I’m tired of fighting. My wolf is broken. Once Charlie is free—”

“She’ll need you to keep her safe,” Tucker interrupted, his fingers digging into the embedded brand. “Until Daimhín is dead, Charlie will be in danger.”

“The king—”

“Can’t feel the burn. No one but you will know when the pureblood is closing in on the witchling.

Only you can identify his magic and the people controlled by it.

” Tucker was desperate to appeal to his Alpha instincts and give his brother a purpose—a reason to stay in his human skin.

He didn’t want to lose Jeremiah to his wolf when he’d just found him.

There were still promises left to keep. “Use the burn, Jeremiah. Use it to find Charlie now and protect her in the future.”

Give me time to persuade you to stay in my life. To want to live again.

“Yes,” Jeremiah lifted his forehead from Tucker’s, some of the bleakness leaving his eyes. “She’s my responsibility.”

“She is.”

“I made a vow.”

“And Alphas keep their vows.” Tucker squeezed and let go, stepping back. “I’ll get Jo. We’ll be right behind you.”

“I’ll see you topside, brother.” The cocky grin returned, his scar creasing with the lift of his lips. He walked backward toward the open door, gaze on Tucker. Then Jeremiah shifted and was gone, his wolf hot on the witchling’s trail.

Inhaling one last time, Tucker cemented the Director’s scent in his brain, and hurried to Jo.

He found her exactly where he left her, lovely face ashen and swollen index finger laying on the gun’s slide. Prepared to curl around the trigger and fire.

“Charlie?” Jo relaxed her arms, though her posture remained stiff.

“The Director knows we’re here,” he said, lifting her into his arms again. “He has her.”

“And Hannah?” She licked her lips and bit her cheek, the inside of her mouth probably as raw as her wrists.

He nodded. “Jeremiah’s gone after them.”

Tucker carried Jo around another set of sharp bends which led them to the elevators Samuel, Alexander, and Anand used to enter the compound’s tunnels.

The sliding doors were jammed by an unconscious soldier covered in Jeremiah’s scent.

Charlie’s and the Director’s trail led inside the narrow shaft, but his brother must have found another way to get above ground and left the human behind for Tucker and Jo.

Shoving the man deeper into the elevator with his foot, Tucker held the door open with his shoulders and set Jo down inside. His determined mate swayed but stayed upright as he hauled the soldier and his thumbprint to the coded panel, then tossed him into the hallway before the doors closed.

His claws were out when they reopened one level up. Ready to do whatever it took to ensure Jo’s safety. No one was hurting his she-wolf ever again.

The building was empty. Underfoot illumination formed dual pathways to the separate exits, and the low wattage bulbs hanging from wooden beams provided the only lighting.

The noxious odor of bleach overrode every other scent, the atmosphere damp and humid.

A centrifugal pump turned on, and Jo sucked in an audible breath, the sound a mixture of a gasp and a wheeze.

The hum of the motor drew their eyes to the massive circular tank in the middle of the room.