"Have I?" She shook her head. "I'm not so sure. I'm not sure of anything anymore."
"Then let me take care of you," he said, his voice gentle, but she was hardly convinced. "I'm going to get my coat, and I'm going to take you home so you can get some rest. I think you need it, Alex." He pressed his lips together and gave her a vague nod. "I'll be right back, okay?" As he walked out of the room, Alex stood there, overwhelmed with uncertainty. Everything in her life had tilted beneath her. She didn't know whom she could trust now. Not Kade.
And apparently not Zach, either.
She didn't think it would be wise to trust him at all now.
Flames and debris shot high into the darkness as the mining company exploded behind him. Kade threw a glance backward, feeling the push of the expanding heat against his face, heat that turned the snowstorm that swirled around him and the other warriors into a brief, warm spittle of rain. The warmth didn't last. Frigid cold roared back in, all of it settling in Kade's chest.
"Alex," he whispered.
He had to reach her.
Brock shot him a concerned look. "What's going on?"
Kade rubbed at the icy hurt under his breastbone. "I'm not sure. It's Alex, and whatever I'm feeling, it's not good."
Even though he could tell from his blood bond to her that she wasn't in mortal danger, every instinct within him screamed for him to go to her. But he had a duty to the Order, and a duty to the warriors he still might have failed by losing sight of the ball on this mission. Dragos's Alaskan outpost was destroyed, a few more of his assets eliminated, but the Ancient was still at large. The warriors' mission here would not be complete until that deadly otherworlder was located and contained.
"Shit," Kade hissed.
This was not good. He couldn't go another second without talking to Alex at the very least. He had to reassure himself that she was all right. And part of him just needed to hear her voice.
"Call her," Brock said. When Kade hesitated, wondering why the ice in his chest was crawling up to his throat to taste like dread, Brock gave him a stern look. "Call your female." Kade took out his cell phone and walked until he was several yards from the other warriors. He dialed Alex's number. It rang three times before she answered.
"Alex?" he said into the silence on the other end. At his back, the crackle of flames and the soft hail of falling shrapnel seemed deafening when she was so quiet. "Alex ... are you there? Can you hear me?">"He won't know." Hunter's deep voice cut through the din of the alarms outside and the tension mounting inside the Ancient's containment chamber. "Dragos tells us nothing. As his Hunters, we serve. That is all."
Tegan snarled, looking like he wanted to snap the assassin's collar then and there. Keeping one hand on the blade that pressed against the UV collar, he put his other hand on the assassin's brow and pushed the big head backward. "Motherfucker. He knows something."
The assassin's mouth curved with private amusement.
"Start talking, you lab-spawned piece of shit, or you go up in smoke right here and now." The assassin's gaze was glacial. "We are all about to go up in smoke," he hissed through his teeth and fangs.
Kade glanced at the control panel on the opposite wall, only just that second realizing that there was a digital timer counting down on a five-minute clock. On top of the gnawing cold that was still chewing away at his chest, now a sick sense of deja-vu gripped him as he watched what had to be the mine's selfdestruct mechanism ticking off seconds. "Shit. He's already dropped the switch. This whole place is gonna blow."
Tegan growled, low and deadly, as he withdrew the knife from under the assassin's chin and left him standing in the Ancient's holding cell. Kade and the others stepped back as he strode over to the control panel and punched the button that operated the ultraviolet light bars. The vertical beams of light went live, circling the Gen One assassin inside and imprisoning him more securely than any amount of metal could.
"Let's get out of here," Tegan said, stalking out the door. The rest of the warriors fell in behind him, Kade and Brock at the rear.
Brock paused to give the captive assassin a broad smile. "Don't go anywhere now, you hear?" Ordinarily, Kade would have gotten a good chuckle out of his partner's grim humor, but it was damned hard to appreciate anything when his heart was hammering like he'd just run a hundred miles and his veins were lighting up with the same odd chill that had made a home in his chest. He ran with the rest of the group, out of the mine's building and into the main yard of the site, which looked like a war zone. The alarm sirens howled the loudest outside, screaming into the night. The snow was coming down at a furious pace now, blanketing the field of dead Minions and dropping visibility to next to nil.
"We need to adios these bodies, make sure there's nothing left to identify once this place blows," Tegan said. "Come on, let's drag them inside one of the outbuildings and send them off with the rest of that C-4."
"On it," Brock said.
Kade joined the rest of the warriors as they worked to clear the yard before the self-destruct clock wound down to zero. It was getting hard for him to breathe now, his blood throbbing with alarm sirens of its own, awareness seeping through the wash of adrenaline and battle focus that had swamped his senses for much of the combat at the mine.
As he and his brethren dragged the last of the Minion dead into place, and the first rumblings of the coming explosion began to shake the ground, the cause of his internal distress hit him broadside. Alex.
Holy hell.
Something had happened. She was upset, shaken. Something had terrified her ... horrified her. And he felt her trauma like his own now, because he had taken her blood into his body, and it was that blood bond that had been clamoring in his own veins.
Her name was a plea--a prayer--as the ground beneath him gave a mighty shudder, and the mining company blew sky high behind him.
Chapter Twenty-five
Okay, Alex. Now, hold on here. Slow down, all right?" Zach Tucker carefully closed the door of the shed in back of his house and looked at Alex in stunned disbelief. She couldn't really blame him. No one in their right mind would believe what she'd just told him--not unless they'd seen it with their own eyes.