For a moment, he thought the Xeus didn’t understand him, but then Jules heard the rustle of clothes and exhaled in relief.
Then he went back to worrying. What were they going to do now?
Jules was snapped out of his thoughts when a hand gripped his arm and none-too-gently pulled him toward the door.
“What are you doing?” Jules said, looking at the alpha. He was dressed, thank fuck, but the strange, disturbing effect he had on Jules’s body was still there. Fuck, he smelled amazing. Like everything good in the world. Jules could barely stop himself from shoving his face into the Xeus’s neck and breathing.
No. He needed to get a grip. He needed to get his brain to focus on their course of action, not to keep fixating on his base, primitive wants.
The glowing green eyes flicked to him for a moment, the alpha’s nostrils flaring.
Jules blushed and cleared his throat. “There are guards outside,” he whispered urgently. “We can’t just go out and—”
The Xeus leaned down and sucked hard on his neck—on his mark.
Jules gasped, his brain relocating to his lower body again. It took an embarrassing amount of time to remember that it was neither the time nor the place—nor the right alpha.
“Stop that,” he said weakly, even though his body was clinging to the Xeus’s. “We need to find a solution—how to get you out of here.” Something in his chest gave a jolt of unease at the thought of the alpha escaping. Leaving.
Don’t be ridiculous, Jules told himself, annoyed. Of course the Xeus would leave. He had to. That was the point of this. He had to leave or Jules’s uncle would dispose of him after he outlived his usefulness. His life was in danger. Jules shouldn’t be letting some… some pheromones affect his judgment. This was serious.
“Stay here,” the Xeus said hoarsely.
Jules blinked at him for a moment, confused.
Before the words fully registered, the alpha pushed the door open. Then there was a hard thud, then another.
Jules’s eyes widened. He ran out of the door and stared at the two bodies on the floor. “Did you kill them?” he whispered, looking at the Xeus, who was searching the guards’ pockets.
“No,” the alpha said in his gravelly voice.
Jules exhaled in relief. Glancing down the corridor anxiously, he said, “There’s an aircar parked at the western gates of the estate. It doesn’t have a lot of fuel, but I can drop you off far enough from here that you should be safe.”
He looked back at the Xeus, expecting to see confusion on his face, but there was none. Either he still had rudimentary knowledge of aircars or he wasn’t listening to Jules’s words at all. Jules frowned. It was so difficult to gauge the extent of the alpha’s capability for thinking rationally. It was obvious that the Xeus was far from being rational, but how bad was it? Did he understand him perfectly and was just unable to speak much, or was it worse?
Judging by the fact that the Xeus had just taken money from the guards’ pockets, clearly he understood some basic concepts of survival in the modern world.
Taking the guards’ phones away too, the Xeus dropped both guards into the basement and locked the door.
Jules nodded approvingly. It would win them some time before the alarms were raised.
Then, the alpha turned and put a hand on Jules’s shoulder. “Walk,” he said shortly, his touch heavy and distinctly proprietary.
Jules did as he was told, though he felt a little miffed. He had expected that he’d be the one leading the rescue and showing the way—as opposed to being manhandled and bossed around. It also didn’t help that he felt self-conscious and flustered because of everything that had happened in the basement. Ugh, he hated his stupid biology, hated how much this alpha’s presence was affecting him. Hated it. Utterly despised it. Why couldn’t he have been born a beta? He looked like one anyway.
They somehow managed to leave the basement without encountering anyone. Not for the first time, Jules felt grateful that his mother had been against installing modern surveillance systems in the Blake ancestral home. Suppressing the wave of sudden longing—Gods, he still missed her so much—Jules led the Xeus to the aircar that Liam had parked outside the western gates. He unlocked it and told the alpha, “Get in the passenger seat.”
To his relief, the Xeus did as he was told.
Jules got into the pilot’s seat and tried to remember how to fly it. Liam was so much better at it than he was. Strictly speaking, aircars were still forbidden on Eila. They were considered too fast for Eila’s air traffic. Helicopters were widely in use by most of the population, but helicopters were too noisy and slow for Jules’s purposes. This aircar was his mother’s pride and joy. She’d had it imported from some Inner Core planet five years ago and offered to teach her kids to pilot it. Eric hadn’t been interested, but Liam and Jules had been all too happy to learn. Well, Liam had; Jules had… tried.