Page 26 of Marked For A Bite (Rebellious Mates #2)

TWENTY-TWO

LOGAN

L ogan descended first into the maintenance tunnel through the access point carved into the hillside behind the medical facility. The damp concrete walls pressed in around his heavily armed frame as he moved forward in a tactical crouch, every sense heightened for potential threats.

He counted mentally to thirty, then heard the soft whisper of Zoe dropping into the tunnel behind him. Her breathing was controlled despite what he knew had to be racing adrenaline. Good girl. She's remembering her training.

The tunnel stretched ahead exactly as Kieran had described—narrow, damp, and forcing them into single file formation. Logan's photographic memory overlaid the facility blueprints onto his mental map as they progressed through the oppressive darkness.

Five minutes to the heavy metal door, he calculated, adjusting his father's hunting knife where it rested across his lower back. The familiar weight of twin Glocks in his shoulder holsters provided additional reassurance.

Behind him, he could hear the rest of the Alpha team descending at precisely timed intervals—Lena's light footsteps, then the heavier treads of their five pack member backup. Each movement was controlled and professional.

This is going too smoothly, Logan's tactical mind warned as they approached the final corner before their target destination. Granite Ridge isn't known for sloppy security.

He raised his hand, signaling the team to halt. Zoe pressed closer behind him, her warm presence settling his wolf despite the dangerous circumstances. Logan turned and caught her eyes in the dim light, then pointed at himself and held up two fingers—he would handle the guards alone.

Her jaw tightened with obvious reluctance to let him take the risk, but she nodded understanding.

Logan rounded the corner with lethal silence, immediately spotting the two massive Granite Ridge guards stationed at the heavy metal door exactly where intelligence had predicted.

Both shifters were armed with military-grade weapons, but their relaxed postures suggested routine guard duty that met little resistance.

Arrogant bastards.

Logan moved like death incarnate through the shadows.

His father's hunting knife slid from its sheath with practiced silence as he approached the first guard from behind.

The blade found the precise spot between vertebrae that caused instant paralysis before death—a technique drilled into him during his most brutal enforcer training.

The second guard barely had time to register his partner's collapse before Logan's knife found his throat. Both bodies lay crumpled on the ground within seconds of Logan's attack.

Still too easy, Logan's instincts screamed as he signaled the all-clear to his team.

He dropped to his knees beside the heavy metal door, running his hands across the concrete floor in search of the hidden access point his tactical analysis had predicted. His fingers found nothing but solid stone.

What the hell? I'm never wrong about these assessments.

"Logan." Zoe's whisper was barely audible as she approached the wall to his left. Her keen eyes—sharper than his own, he was beginning to realize—had spotted something he'd missed entirely.

She pressed her palm against what looked like an innocuous scuff mark on the concrete wall. Suddenly, ancient mechanisms groaned to life and the floor beside the metal door impossibly split open to reveal a ladder descending into absolute darkness.

Brilliant, Logan thought, pride for his mate warming his chest despite the danger. She sees things I miss. And I usually never miss anything. How is that even possible?

He caught her eyes and held up one finger, then pointed down—he would descend first, followed by ten-second intervals for the rest of the team.

Logan swung onto the ladder and began his descent into what felt like the bowels of hell itself. The temperature dropped dramatically with each rung, and the air grew thick with scents that made his wolf snarl with instinctive revulsion.

Fear. Old fear that's soaked into these stones for decades.

But underneath that, something darker. Something twisted and unnatural that spoke of experiments and suffering that went far beyond simple imprisonment.

The ladder seemed to descend forever before Logan's boots finally touched solid ground.

Ancient stone walls surrounded him, weeping with moisture that had accumulated over centuries.

The darkness was absolute except for the faint glow emanating from emergency lighting strips that had been installed much more recently.

This place is ancient. Way older than the medical facility above.

Logan waited until he heard Zoe's soft landing behind him, then moved deeper into the stone corridors with his hunting knife drawn. The passages seemed to stretch endlessly in multiple directions, creating a maze of blind spots that made his tactical mind scream warnings.

Too many variables. Too many places for ambush.

"Stay close," he breathed against Zoe's ear as the rest of their team descended. The warmth of her body against his back was the only comfort in this place that reeked of decades of suffering.

They moved through the labyrinthine tunnels for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes.

Logan's enhanced hearing picked up strange sounds echoing from deeper within—mechanical humming, occasional moans that might have been human or shifter, and something that sounded disturbingly like medical equipment.

What the hell is this place?

Finally, they reached a heavy wooden door that looked completely out of place among the ancient stone. To Logan's surprise and suspicion, it stood slightly ajar.

No lock. No guards. After everything we've navigated through, they just leave the final barrier open?

Logan pressed his ear to the gap, listening intently. The sounds of machinery were louder here, accompanied by the unmistakable beeping of medical monitors and what sounded like multiple heartbeats—some human, some definitely not.

This is either a trap or they're so arrogant they never believed anyone would make it this far.

He slowly pushed the door open, and what greeted him nearly made his knees buckle despite a decade of witnessing the horrors his enforcer duties had demanded.

Row upon row of holding cells stretched into the darkness, each containing a figure in various states of consciousness. Some were clearly wolf shifters, others appeared to be hybrids like Zoe, and most disturbingly, several were obviously full humans.

Jesus Christ. This isn't a prison—it's some sick experimentation lab.

Medical equipment hummed throughout the space, connected to IVs and monitoring devices attached to the prisoners. The antiseptic smell couldn't quite mask the underlying scents of fear, pain, and something chemical that made Logan's enhanced senses recoil.

"What is this place?" Zoe's whispered horror echoed his own thoughts as she appeared beside him.

Logan's tactical brain was already calculating how many prisoners they were looking at, escape routes, and the horrible reality that their extraction mission had just become something infinitely more complex.

We came here to rescue one man. Now we're looking at dozens who need saving.

Logan suddenly felt Zoe's surge of protective fury slam through their mate bond. Her heart rate spiked dangerously as she saw the rows of suffering prisoners, and his mind screamed warnings about her emotional state.

She's about to do something impulsive.

He reached for her arm, but she was already moving—sprinting down the rows of cells with desperate urgency that made his blood freeze. The sound of her footsteps echoed off the stone walls like gunshots.

"Zoe, stop," he hissed under his breath, but she was beyond hearing rational commands.

Logan cursed silently and gave chase, his combat boots hitting the ancient stone floor with controlled precision. Every instinct had warned him that this place felt like a trap waiting to spring, and that their easy descent had been orchestrated to funnel them exactly here.

Too quiet. No alarms yet, but that doesn't mean there aren't motion sensors or pressure plates we haven't triggered.

"He's here!" Zoe's broken voice stopped him cold as she pressed her face against the bars of a cell midway down the corridor.

Logan's enhanced vision immediately identified the broken figure slumped against the back wall.

The man from Zoe's photograph was barely recognizable—decades of imprisonment had carved deep lines into his face, and whatever experiments they'd conducted had left him gaunt and hollow-eyed.

Medical tubing snaked from various points on his body to machines that beeped with mechanical indifference.

My god. Twenty-five years of this hell.

But even weakened, the man's wolf shifter instincts remained sharp. His head lifted and turned to them, confusion flickering across his features before sudden recognition blazed in his blue eyes.

"Zoe?" The voice was barely more than a rasp, damaged by years of disuse or worse. "My baby girl?"

Tears streamed down Zoe's face as she gripped the cell bars. "Dad, it's me. We're getting you out of here."

How does he know her name? Logan processed the impossibility even as his heart clenched at the raw emotion radiating from his mate. Unless... mate bond telepathy. Her mother must have told him through their connection.

"Alert!" Lena's urgent whisper cut through the moment like a blade. "I sense resistance approaching. We need to move now."

She rushed to the cell door, her violet eyes glowing as she examined the locking mechanism. "Heavy protective wards. That's why security seemed so light down here. Magic is their primary defense."

"How long?" Logan demanded, positioning himself between the approaching footsteps he could now hear and the women working on the cell.

"Give me sixty seconds," Lena said, her hands already weaving complex patterns in the air.