Page 97 of Their Mate

“Aye,” I said, a grin sliding across my face. “Then let’s go and earn our bloody keep.”

CHAPTER 33

Sera

The serum hadn’t burned out of me just yet. It still pulsed low and hot, coiling through my veins until even my heartbeat felt wrong, but exhaustion had finally dragged me under, and when I blinked awake, it was to the dim glow of fluorescents humming overhead and the ache of steel biting into my wrists and ankles. Again. Shit.

I wasn’t alone in the room. My men were there too—Logan, Edward, Declan, Aidan—each one chained up just like me, each one watching me with eyes gone dark and feral from my scent. It was a cruel mercy that the bonds were strong enough to hold them, because if they weren’t… I didn’t know what would have happened.

I didn’t know if the five of us would have survived it.

Voices drifted in through the door. Muffled at first. Then louder as they moved closer.

I recognized the voice. It was Dane. The base commander.

Elias was with him, my friend and mentor, the man who had taught me to fight when I was too young and angry to even hold a blade straight.

I froze, straining to listen.

“You think the pheromones were just going to draw her wolves?” Dane’s voice was smooth, clinical. “You underestimate the scope of this, Elias. You underestimatehim.”

Elias’s reply came back clipped, laced with old grief. “You said it would bait them into the open. Her pack. That’s all. What more is there?”

“That was the plan,” Dane agreed. “But pheromones like this… They carry quite far, you know. The Elder Lycan has to have been sniffing for her since Dublin. He’ll come. And when he does, he’ll bring every wretch he’s turned in the past few years. They’ll follow him like hounds to blood.”

My stomach dropped.

“You can’t control that,” Elias snapped. “You’ll drown the island in them.”

“That’s the beauty,” Dane said, almost laughing. “We don’tneedcontrol. Let the lycans come, let them tear through the wolves and theirmatefirst. Then we clean up the stragglers with British steel. Problem solved. No more wolves. No more lycans. No more Sera Moore.”

My blood ran cold.

Elias didn’t answer right away. Then, softly: “She was one of us, Dane. Once.”

“And now she’s one of theirs,” Dane said coldly. “The girl made her choice.”

I swallowed hard, bile stinging my throat. Elias wasn’t stopping this. He wasn’t even going to try.

A loudspeaker somewhere above us blared to life. A soldier’s voice crackled overhead, edged with nerves:“Commander, scouts report multiple contacts in the water—dozens. No, sir—hundreds. More than we expected.”

Shouting followed, orders rattled off, then I heard boots hammering down corridors.

Dane’s voice was infuriatingly calm. “Good. Let them come. Prep the charges. We’ll draw them to the cliffs and let the lycans drown themselves when they go up against our guns.”

I bit my lip hard enough to taste copper.

Around me, my men struggled against their restraints, chains rattling. The heat surging through my body was unbearable, my own scent curling around us, pulling at them even while the whole world went to shit.

Fucking hell.

CHAPTER 34

Jamie

The climb up the cliff face was cruel work, with all the loose shale under our boots, the wind whipping salt into our eyes, and the crash of the Irish Sea pounding below like it wanted to drag us all under. By the time we reached the top of the ridge, my hands were cut raw, and my mood was no better.

The mystery lass—hood up now, dark hair roped back and tucked in against the wind—led us with the kind of confidence that made me grind my teeth. She hadn’t offered me a name yet, and I hadn’t pressed, but it gnawed at me. Who was she to stalk across an island like she owned it, dragging four of her own wolves plus me alongbehindher?