Page 123 of Shadowblood Souls: The Complete Series

The woman treads after him and steps out into the night. But she’s only made it a few steps into the lawn before she whirls around and screams out a warning in that language I don’t know.

Fucking hell. My claws spring from my fingers again, but I have more vital things to do than get revenge on her for her betrayal.

Heavy footsteps pound toward us—some from the hall and others up from a basement staircase I hadn’t even noticed. Someone else is yelling now.

There’s an oof and a bang from the hall. Jacob dashes into the kitchen after me.

Two men charge in from the other direction at the same moment, guns in their hands. I swing around, but I’m not close enough to strike either of them in time.

One smacks into the wall with a heave of Jacob’s invisible power. He throws himself at me, tackling me to the ground just as the second gun fires.

We roll across the floor behind a storage cart. Nerves jangling, I squirm out from under Jacob just in time to see the gunman barging toward our momentary shelter.

He aims his pistol at Jake, who hasn’t quite righted himself yet, and this time I am close enough.

I launch myself at our attacker, my knee slamming into his elbow to send his shot wide, my claws snatching at his throat. With a hiss of breath, I tear the entire front of his neck right off of his body.

At another thud, my head jerks up. A woman who ran into the room, clutching a rifle, is just slumping to the ground, her head seeping blood against the wall from where Jacob cracked it open.

My gaze drops to the man who’s just collapsed in front of me.

Slicked-back gray hair. A craggy face with harsh full lips above the gouged-out throat.

My heart leaps.

“It’s him,” I murmur to Jacob. “We got him. The main boss.”

Jacob is staring at me as if he hasn’t quite heard me. A shudder runs through his body.

His head jerks around, but no other footsteps reach our ears. That isn’t enough of a guarantee that we’re done, though.

I open my mouth and let a tiny shriek reverberate out of me, even softer than the ones I’ve practiced. Just enough to quiver through the walls, seeking out a target to latch on to.

In the middle of my adrenaline high, I don’t know if I could have reined it in as well as I did in the controlled environment back on the island. Maybe I’d have ended up tearing into any body it touched.

But I don’t have to find out. It flows through the whole house and catches nothing.

I gulp in a relieved breath. “That’s it. We got them all.”

“Then let’s get the fuck out of here,” Jacob rasps.

I couldn’t agree more.

We race out the back door, scanning the night for assailants drawn by the sounds of the fight. The yard is empty.

The staff fled for safety after all—after the woman screwed us over.

I grit my teeth and run for the surrounding wall. Jacob is right behind me.

He offers me a boost up and I lean over to grab his arm, helping each other in turn. Then we sprint for the van we parked half a mile away in the cover of a short stretch of forest.

The metal band around my ankle shifts with my movements. Clancy will know that we left and that we made it through the attack okay. Dominic will be safe where he’s waiting in his own van to find out if he’ll need to rush to anyone’s rescue.

Safe for now, anyway. I can only hope that the team of younger shadowbloods doesn’t need to deal with too many late arrivals.

We leap into the van without breaking stride, Jacob having disengaged the locks from a distance. He starts the engine while I strap myself into the passenger seat.

As we tear off down the road to put even more distance between us and the site of our assignment, a message pops up on the touchscreen mounted on the dashboard between us.

Targets eliminated?

I tap in a hasty answer. Several including the big one.

Good work. Get to the rendezvous spot and wait there. Expect the others in approximately 2 hours.

At the command, I can’t help looking down at my ankle. Jacob studied his tracking band on the way out here and indicated to me that he couldn’t feel any simple way of removing it.

The knowledge passes through my mind that we could make a run for it. We don’t have much, but we’ve gotten by with hardly anything before, and we’d have a two-hour head start.

But even if we can bash the anklets off before Clancy’s people find us, even if we could navigate this country without a clue where the plane brought us… we’d be leaving the others behind.

I don’t even need to voice the question to know Jacob would reject that idea just as vehemently as my heart is recoiling from it. I’m not even sure we aren’t better off in our new circumstances, at least in some ways.

I paid attention during the trip leaving the island, though. I know where the runway the private jet took off from lies relative to the mountain facility, and that there’s a harbor in sight within a few miles of it on the island’s coast.

We’ve learned useful things for ourselves on this mission as well as taking out villains who deserved it. If we decide it’s time to leave, hope isn’t lost, not by a long shot.

Jacob pulls into the open field a short distance from the currently vacant airfield. The second he’s turned the engine off, he twists toward me.

His gaze skims over my body. “Are you okay? None of them got to you?”

I adjust my position, cringing inwardly at the feel of the still-damp patches of blood on my shirt. “None of this is mine, as far as I know. We should get out of the bloody clothes, though.”

Clancy didn’t leave us much in the large space at the back of the van, but we do each have a change of clothes—and a bag where we’re supposed to stuff the evidence of our mission for burning. I push into the back and tug at my long-sleeved tee.

Jacob follows me. I expect him to change his own clothes, but when I toss my bloody shirt into the bag and move to reach for the new one, he touches my arm to stop me.

The next sweep of his gaze over my nearly naked torso lights a flicker of heat under my skin despite the cool air. I open my mouth to say something about personal space and privacy, but the turmoil in his eyes when they rise to meet mine stops the sardonic remark in my throat.

“You’re really all right?” he says, like he can’t quite believe it.

He wasn’t checking me out just now. He was confirming I don’t have any wounds.

A little of my self-consciousness fades. I hold out my arms so he can see the sides of my torso clearly, everything that isn’t covered by my sports bra or the slim chain of my necklace.

“Yeah. Not a scratch. Up until the end, they had no idea what hit them.”

Another shudder like the one I saw in the kitchen ripples through Jake’s frame. “The asshole with the fucking gun—he almost shot you. I almost didn’t get there fast enough.”

Oh. That’s why he’s so keyed up.

I touch his jaw in an attempt at reassurance. “You did. You were my armor, like you promised. And then I got to be yours. That’s how it should be, right?”

Jacob lets out a strangled sound and lowers his head so his forehead brushes mine. “Yeah. Yeah. I just never want to see anyone get that close?—”

His voice tightens. “I want to tear his head right off his fucking shoulders and dance on it.”

“I think he’s dead enough already,” I say with a hint of dryness. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t seem like he’s detached from reality the way he has a few times in the past when we’d gotten through a shitload of trouble. Tonight’s incident doesn’t really compare.

But he’s obviously not jumping for joy either.

Jacob sets his hands on my waist, skin to skin, with a bloom of warmth. He swallows audibly. “Nothing you need to knock me out of, Wildcat. But I wish I could keep you out of anything this dangerous completely. What good is fucking armor when there’s so many of them?”

His voice drops, getting hoarse. “I love you so much, Riva. If I could make sure no one ever fired another bullet at you to begin with, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.”

A lump rises in my throat. “I know,” I say through it, and I do. I believe him with every fiber of my being.

So nothing could feel more natural than finishing my answer by tugging his lips to meet mine.