Page 36 of Protector (Alpha Ties)
THIRTY-SIX
JACOB
“Jacob—”
He places his fingers on her lips, silencing her, then jerks his head toward the bedroom door. Her eyes go wide.
The feel of her panic rushing through their bond only hones his focus. The last time someone broke into her home, she was alone. She’s not this time, and whoever this is? They’re going to regret targeting his mate.
Moving fast and smooth, he slips out of bed, crosses the floor, and is out the door.
He senses them immediately. Two males. One beta, one alpha. The scent of metal and the faintest trace of gunpowder suggest they’re armed. They move quietly from their entry point by one of the windows—so quietly, he knows they’re professional.
It won’t help them.
He’s through the hallway and into the living room faster than any human would notice before it’s much too late, his foot connecting with the beta’s stomach the same second he realizes he knows the man.
Then the alpha’s hand closes around his bicep, his vise-like grip betraying more than human strength. “We’re not here to hurt you, brother. Nor the girl.”
Crouched on the floor, Officer Welsh harks violently, sick spewing over the lacquered wood floors as he clutches his gut—neutralized for the time being.
Jacob turns to the alpha, eyes narrowing. “You have three seconds to explain why you’re here. If I don’t like what I hear, you die.”
The alpha sighs. “The guy with the plan’s currently busy puking his guts out, so we’ll need a little more time than that. If you and me start going at it again, no one wins.”
“Again?” He stares at the stranger—at his dark skin, inhuman muscle tone, and hard eyes. Jacob has no recollection of seeing him before, but as he learned earlier today, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t. If he has forgotten conspiring to commit treason, there’s no telling what else’s been erased.
“Ah, yeah, Welsh said the witch had wiped your memory of our encounter.”
Jacob’s snarl is immediate.
The stranger huffs a breath and flicks his eyes down to Jacob’s still-wet dick for a long second. “My apologies. I forgot mated men lose their ability to see reason. Let me introduce myself—I’m AX1, the first survivor of your lovely wife’s Frankenstein experiment.”
The first time Jacob saw the other AX soldiers, the only emotion he felt was relief. Relief he wasn’t alone.
The singular thing shooting through his brain as he stares at the first among them is General Thompson’s story of their supposed first encounter—how AX1 had come to the lab to kill Addie.
His hand is around the other man’s throat in the blink of an eye, and he uses his momentum to throw him to the floor and bear down on top of him, his knee heavy on his sternum to keep him down. Using his weight, Jacob presses his hand to the other man’s windpipe.
“Shit!” AX1 wheezes, aiming a punch to Jacob’s elbow to get him off.
Jacob only bares his teeth, the pain doing nothing to temper the violence throbbing through his blood at the thought that this man has tried to kill his mate. His wounded, abused little monster, whose tears as she told him what’d been done to her when she was barely more than a child will forever haunt his mind. Growling, he digs his knee harder into the soldier’s sternum.
“Winthworth,” Welsh gasps between dry heaves. “We’re not gonna hurt her. We need your help—both of you.”
Jacob keeps his eyes on the alpha, but growls, “Explain.”
“We have to overthrow the traitors.” Welsh groans and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “I’ve got contact with a few key personnel who managed to hide before the assholes could get to them, but so long as they control the AX class, nothing can stop them from destroying what’s left of our democracy.”
“Why come to us?”
The sound of his mate’s voice jerks his attention to the bedroom doorway. She’s dressed, though her clothes are rumpled and her feet are bare.
“The last time you did, my father and his accomplices overthrew the government the very next day. You must have assumed we went straight to him after our meeting.” She cocks her head as she looks at the agent, and there’s no hint of the broken, scared little female he had in his arms only moments ago. She’s set her cool facade firmly back in place. “Turns out Jacob was a traitor too, before he landed in my lab.”
Welsh shakes his head, breathing deeply, but this time he manages not to heave. “He wasn’t. He was working for me.”
Adelaide’s eyebrows lift high on her forehead. “Jacob was an NSA agent?”
Jacob turns to stare at the agent too, and frowns when he nods.
“One of our best. I sent him deep undercover, to make sure no one could trace his allegiance. No check-ins until he had something concrete. He was shot before he could give us what we needed, but that only heightened my suspicions. No one was ever caught for that assassination attempt on the vice president. I spent three years trying to get someone as deep in as Jacob got, with no luck.”
“I was your agent, and you left me to rot for three years?” The anger at that revelation takes him by surprise, but… he’d thought there was no one out there who gave two shits about him. He’d thought he was alone. For three, miserable years.
Welsh grimaces. “We thought you were dead. There was a body, matching DNA—no one outside General Thompson’s oversight knew about project Fireshield until a few weeks ago. That he’s managed to keep it secret from the entirety of the intelligence community speaks volumes of the kind of man we’re dealing with.”
“Which brings us back to why you’re here,” Adelaide says, arms folded over her chest as she rests a shoulder against the wall. “I’m his daughter. And even if Jacob was your agent, he has no recollection of this.”
“Part desperation, part the fact that you were nowhere to be found near the action—until this morning, and then you drove straight here, not to your father’s secured estate.” Welsh presses a hand to his stomach and sits back on his heels with a low groan. “God, I think you liquified my intestines.”
Jacob narrows his eyes at him. “You snuck into my mate’s home. Carrying a gun. Be thankful you’re still breathing.”
“And you?” Adelaide says, her focus turning to AX1. “You were free. Why come back and risk recapture, if not for the chance to finish off what you came for the last time I saw you?”
“Even if that was my plan, I lost my chance the second this guy mated you,” AX1 wheezes. “We were evenly matched before, but now he’s got the drive to protect a bonded female, he’s got the edge. Hence why I’m on the floor. I’m here for the others.”
“The others?” Jacob frowns down at him.
“The other AX soldiers. They didn’t sign up for this shit. I was always gonna come back for you—I was biding my time until I could slip in, delete all the data so they don’t do this shit to anyone else, then get you out of there. Or the others, at least. I knew there was no saving your sorry ass, the way you were acting about the lady doc last time we met. Now that they’re operating in the open, I can get to them.”
There is truth in the man’s gaze, but also…
“You wouldn’t have been able to eradicate the knowledge needed to create more of us. Not so long as Adelaide lives,” he says, his voice soft. Deadly.
AX1 doesn’t respond.
“Jacob. Let him up.” The command is quiet, but he still snaps his head to Adelaide, incredulity raising his eyebrows.
She sucks in a deep breath, glaze flicking from his to Agent Welsh. “It doesn’t matter if he wants to kill me. You won’t let him. And we need his help to stop my father and his accomplices.”