10. Mia

Chapter ten

Mia

I watched them leave, unsure of what to do next. Outrunning them wasn’t possible as long as the implant was active; that was obvious. So I’d play along. I’d pretend that I believed them and was beginning to trust them. Then, when they disabled the implant, I could take off again without them being able to follow me. Of course, unless I planned to move, they’d find me eventually.

Still, it gave me the opportunity to hide if I wanted to. However, they know a lot more than I do about Dr. Parote. Aiden worked for him, so maybe I’ll stick around a little longer to see if I could learn anything.

I spotted them as soon as I stepped outside because all four had scrambled from the car. They were grinning like idiots as I approached, happy to see I was willing to go with them. I bit my lip to hold my smile back. These men tried to kidnap you twice and succeeded once, Mia, I reminded myself.

“Thank you for taking a chance with us,” Roman said as I approached.

“This better work,” I told him. “If I find out you’re lying to me or you can’t disable the implant like you’ve promised, I’ll kill you.”

Rome chuckled. “Oh, I don’t doubt it, sweetheart,” he replied, placing his hand on the small part of my back to guide me to the backseat. The warmth of his hand on my back felt good, but I ignored it. I wasn’t quite ready to accept what I suspected was true: they were my mates.

I slid into the middle of the backseat, and Hollis and Theo got in on either side of me. Hollis was so big that I found myself sandwiched between them, but not uncomfortably. Hollis radiated heat by the bucket loads; seeing how he was a bull shifter, that didn’t surprise me.

Theo, being a vampire, ran relatively cool. So together, it created a perfectly degreed pocket for a little kitty.

To keep myself from snuggling in, I leaned forward slightly to look at Aiden, who was driving. “Why were you working for Dr. Parote if what he is doing is so bad?”

“I was undercover,” Aiden replied, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “Why?”

“We’ve all lost loved ones that got involved with Dr. Parote,” Hollis explained. “Lost how?” I asked, leaning back again.

“We don’t know,” Theo replied. “We hope they’re still alive and just caught up in his web, but we haven’t had any contact with them to know for sure.”

“We’re trying to stop him and find out what happened to them,” Rome said. “You might be the only one who can help us.”

“I’m not sure how. I know less about him than you do,” I replied apologetically. “I’m sorry about the people you’ve lost.”

We continued the drive back to their house, and as we passed Stan’s car dealership, I saw police cars and an ambulance outside. Looks like Stan’s body has been found.

“Can we swing by my motel so that I can get my things?” I asked.

“Sure,” Aiden replied. I didn’t miss that he didn’t need to ask where my motel was.

Theo let me out when we pulled outside my motel room, and Rome followed me to my

door.

“You know I’m not going to run off, right?” I asked.

“Better to be safe than sorry, little mate,” he replied. “You’ve proven to be a little slippery.” “You should see me when I’m wet,” I quipped as I slid the key into the lock. I froze. Why

the fuck did I just say that? Of all the possible responses, that’s what I went with?”

Rome chuckled, the sound deep and promising, as he pressed against my back and reached around me to help me turn the key. “Oh, I plan to.”

I pushed the door open to put distance between us, but this time, I was smart and kept my mouth shut before I dug myself an even deeper hole.

Rome stretched out on the bed with his arms folded behind his head, watching me pack up my things with deceptively lazy eyes. When I gathered my charger from the nightstand where it was plugged in, he wrapped his arm around my waist and dragged me onto bed with him.

Rome rolled to his side so that he hovered over me as my heart pounded in my chest. I met his golden eyes, and he smiled sadly after a minute.

“One day soon, I’ll see the knowledge of our bond in your eyes,” he murmured. “I know you don’t fully trust us yet, Sweetheart, but you will.” He leaned down and nuzzled my neck, inhaling deeply as his fingers dug into my hip, and then released me with a soft kiss on my shoulder. “Alright, stop lying down on the job and finish packing so we can get out of here.”

My mouth fell open at his audacity to blame me for the interruption, and after a beat, a shit-eating grin spread across his face as he winked at me. “Asshole,” I muttered playfully as I got up and finished packing my things. When we left the hotel room, he walked me back to the car and ran to the office with my key to check me out.

The house they were renting wasn’t much. It was lightly furnished, and by far, the most impressive thing in it was Hollis’ computers. I looked at the screens, all of which had something about me on them. I zeroed in on the one monitoring my location.

“How do you have all of this?” I asked.

“I hacked into Dr. Parote’s system,” Hollis said proudly. “So this is all from him?”

“It is,” Rome replied.

It felt icky. I didn’t realize how intrusive the implant would be, and I know for a fact it wasn’t mentioned on the paperwork I signed. I read that consent form twice. “Get this thing out of me,” I ordered.

“I don’t know how to remove it completely,” Theo replied. “But I do have a way to disable

it.”

“Then let’s do that,” I replied.

“The only thing is, it’s going to hurt,” he warned.

“Why? What are you going to do?” Theo didn’t answer me, but I saw he had something in his hand when I turned toward him. It took a second to recognize the stun gun. As much as I wanted the implant deactivated, I was not keen on being electrocuted. “You know what, it’s fine. Let the implant stay,” I said, turning to run away.

Aiden stepped in front of me and wrapped his arms around me to hold me in place. I would have struggled if it did any good. His arms were like steel bands. “Theo, do it,” he said.

“You’ll get shocked too if you don’t let her go,” Theo warned him. Aiden’s gray eyes locked with mine. “Just do it. I can handle it.”

Theo pressed the stun gun to the back of my neck, over where the implant was, and I screamed when he squeezed the trigger, and volts of electricity were pumped into my body. Aiden’s eyes never left mine. His face turned red, and he clenched his jaw tightly, but he never made a sound as he endured this pain with me. For me.

I knew the moment the implant was successfully disabled because, suddenly, new feelings slammed into me as I stared into the eyes of my mate.