Chapter 26 - Ado

I wake alone in my room, but I can smell Keira somewhere nearby, as if her presence has permeated the whole house. If I could wake every morning surrounded by her aura like that, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

By the time I emerged from my room to eat, she’d already brewed a pot of coffee in the kitchen. She’s sitting near the window with one leg drawn up on the chair against her chest, hair soft and loose over her shoulders for once, a thick, wavy cloud of honey.

She slides a mug across the table to me.

“This is it,” she greets. “Just over twelve hours until the plan moves into action.”

“And we stay alive,” I agree, sipping from my coffee.

Keira nods soberly. “We stay alive.”

I considered asking her whether she was in my room last night. Maybe she’d take it the wrong way. Hell, if I were here, I certainly would.

Not today, I decide. Today, we hold the mission together. Today, we aren’t blood-bonded mates. We’re teammates.

***

At seven in the evening that night, the first signs of trouble in our airtight plan arise.

“The hideout on Attlefolk has been sacked,” Bigby says grimly into his earpiece, his voice crackling out into the kitchen. Keira freezes, standing over the sink.

“It’s empty?” I ask.

“Worse than empty. They tore the place apart. They’re clearly done with using it, which tells us they probably know we logged the site.”

Keira swears quietly under her breath. She sits beside me at the receiver, hands cupped around a mug of tea. Her favorite.

“You two need to get out of there,” she instructs urgently. “They probably left traps.”

“Yeah,” Bigby grunts, “We’re headed back to the boat.” I hear movement in the background, the crunching of footsteps, and the rustling of foliage.

“Once you and Aris are back on dry land, report back,” Keira confirms.

I cross the room to the window to look out over to the other side of the lake. If I squint, I can just barely make out the moving shapes of Aris and Bigby’s figures moving in the darkness, emerging from the treeline on the other side toward their boat, which has been pulled up onto the flats.

“I see them,” I tell Keira.

“Say cheese—Ado can see you,” Keira instructs wryly.

Both figures wave their arms, standing among the reeds. The figure I think is Bigby looks significantly more enthusiastic.

After days of cryptic, shorthand texting, I’m relieved to see them in person.

This does mean that the next seven steps of the mission have been screwed up, though.

As Aris and Bigby motor back across the water to the Rosecreek Bottoms, ready to meet back up with the others, Keira and I reshuffle the whole plan.

The B-Team will now include Aris and Bigby as well as Percy, Rafael, and Byron—all five will have to make the drop on the Border Ridge together, and they’ll need to move in earlier, close to midnight, in order to catch a perimeter guard shift-change.

They will have lost the advantage of surprise and stealth. But with Olivia back at the pack center hacking the security cameras in the building, Keira and I on overview here, and Maisie and Veronica stationed a few miles out from Border Ridge for medical assistance, they’ll hopefully be able to hold their own until charges are laid and they can take the advantage.

We can’t postpone to another night. If the people behind this suspect a raid, as they almost certainly do now, any more hours or days lost are exponentially catastrophic for our chances.

This has to happen tonight.

It reaches ten, then eleven. Keira and I drink mugs and mugs of coffee to stay alert, watching the boys speed out of Rosecreek to the mountain, the tiny red tracking dots of their vehicles blinking in and out on the screen. Occasionally, one or two of them check in. Keira relays to them what she can see on the internal cameras.

“No movement since you last asked,” she keeps saying.

Each time they ask, the question is voiced with more frustration than the last. At one point, Rafael almost snaps at her, and then seems to think better of it.

“Still no movement,” she repeats when asked again, her voice slightly unsteady this time as she relays the information to Percy over the comms. It’s the fifth time the B-Team has asked in the last hour.

“We’re close now,” Percy’s voice crackles back through the speaker. “Keep us updated.”

Keira nods even though he can’t see her. I catch her glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. She turns off the receiver as if to speak to me, then pauses and gives up.

The pack is almost at the foot of the mountain now. And we haven’t helped a bit.

The clock reads 11:55 when something flickers on one of the camera feeds. A blur of motion—quick, almost too quick to notice.

I lean forward, squinting at the screen. A bird flits past one of the windows in the grainy stream, just a shadow against the night sky. It happens so fast, it’s easy to dismiss.

But something about it feels off. My instincts start screaming at me.

“Keira,” I say, my voice low. “Wind the feedback by sixty seconds.”

She frowns, confused, but does as I ask. The screen flickers back, and there it is again. The bird. The same exact motion. The same exact shadow.

My heart drops. “It’s a loop.”

Keira’s eyes widen, realization dawning on her face. “Shit.”

“They’ve gotten into our system,” I mutter, slamming my fist against the table and standing. “The cameras aren’t showing us what’s really happening. We’ve been blind this whole time.”

Keira barely has time to respond before the first gunshot shatters the night.

The sound is deafening, reverberating through the walls of the safe house. A window shatters, and glass explodes across the room.

My body moves on instinct, pulling her down to the floor and wedging my body in front of hers, already trying to assert where the shots are coming from.

North—the woods. They probably have us surrounded.

“Stay low!” I shout, my hand already reaching for the gun strapped to my side.

Keira is right beside me, her own weapon drawn, eyes wide but focused.

More shots follow, rapid and precise. They tear into the walls and furniture around us. My ears start to ring. Whoever they are, they’re not amateurs and are not afraid of anyone calling the authorities.

They know exactly where we are, and they’re not holding back.

We crawl across the floor, keeping our heads down as we scramble for our nearest cover—the heavy oak table that once held our set-up, now flipped on its side, its contents scattered across the tiled floor.

“Two shooters,” Keira shouts to me as another shot rings out and wood chunks hurtle through the air, pieces of what was once a chair leg. “North and north-northwest.”

I glance at her, seeing the fear in her eyes, but also the determination. She’s not the same girl who stood on that auction stage, trembling and lost, her fate at the mercy of men who would sooner have killed her than set her free.

“We’ll make them regret it,” I promise her, gripping my gun tighter.

And then they’re on us.

The first merc bursts through the front door, a hulking figure clad in black tactical gear. Human, I think—a gun for hire.

I don’t hesitate. I fire two shots, center mass, and he goes down before he can even raise his weapon. But more follow, flooding into the room like a tide of violence.

Keira moves with deadly precision, her shots finding their marks as she takes down two more mercs in quick succession. I’m right there beside her, our movements in sync as we fight our way through the onslaught.

The air is thick with gunfire, the acrid smell of smoke and blood filling my lungs. I don’t know how many of them there are—ten, twenty, more? It doesn’t matter. We’re outnumbered, but we’re not outmatched.

A merc lunges at me from the side, a knife flashing in his hand. I sidestep at the last second, driving my elbow into his throat and slamming him to the ground. He gasps for air, but I don’t give him a chance to recover. My boot connects with his jaw, and he goes limp.

Keira is a whirlwind of motion, taking advantage of the tactical benefit of her cover. She stays crouched between the fridge and the side of the couch, taking clean shots over the top of the makeshift barricade. She takes down another merc with a precise shot to the head, then spins her gun around to cover me as I engage two more.

We move like a well-oiled machine, covering each other’s blind spots and never exposing the other.

But it’s not enough. There are too many of them, and they keep coming. I spot dark vehicles lined up outside the property.

“We need to move!” I shout over the gunfire. “We can’t stay here!”

Keira nods, her eyes scanning the room for an escape route. “Back door,” she says, and I follow her lead as we fight our way toward it.

Just as we reach the door, another dark shape crashes through the window, tackling me to the ground.

The impact knocks the wind out of me. Time slows, and I’m disoriented. I see stars. But then I hear Keira’s desperate voice cutting through the haze.

“Ado!”

I force myself to focus, grappling with the merc as he tries to pin me down. His hands are around my throat, squeezing tight, but I manage to bring my knee up into his stomach, loosening his grip just enough to reach for my gun.

A single shot rings out, and the merc slumps over, crushing me. I shove him off, gasping for air as I scramble to my feet.

Keira is there, pulling me up, her grip strong and steady.

“Come on,” she urges, and we make a break for the back door, pushing through the chaos and into the night.

Out front, through a sheet of rain, the van sits parked in the driveway, untouched and not blocked in well enough to stop us. It’s the mercs’ one mistake, and it might be the only chance we have.

I see Keira’s eyes flash as she realizes the same thing.

“Go!” she yells, her voice barely audible over the storm.

We sprint and throw ourselves into the van, slamming the doors behind us as I scramble into the driver’s seat. My hands are slick with rain and sweat, but I jam the key into the ignition with trembling fingers.

The engine roars to life, and without a second thought, I slam my foot on the gas.

The tires skid in the mud before catching traction, I swing a tight U-turn around one of the dark cars, and then we’re off, gunning it for the main road as fast as the van can take us.

Beside me, Keira pulls her burner phone from her pocket, her hands shaking as she dials. I glance over for a second, seeing her eyes wide with fear and determination. The phone rings once, twice, and then—

“Olivia, it’s Keira,” she gasps into the phone, her voice urgent. “We were attacked. We’re on the move, heading toward the main road—”

She stops suddenly, her face going pale as she listens to whatever Olivia is saying on the other end of the line. Her eyes go wide with shock, her grip tightening on the phone.

“Shit,” she breathes. “Shit. Ado, drive.”