They came to a door at the end of the corridor. It led to a warehouse, with a lot of construction equipment and multiple doors out. Thankfully, it was empty. They scanned it for hidden Apex agents or traps, but saw none.

Just as they reached the middle of the warehouse, one of the doors slid open, revealing a bunch of Apex agents with tranquilizer rifles. Destiny, Ethan, and the rest dove for the nearest cover, which was a forklift and a bunch of crates. The hiss and clatter of tranquilizer darts filled the air.

Destiny scanned their surroundings. There was one door they could get to without going into the line of fire, but it was all the way across the warehouse. They’d have to run for it before the Apex agents figured out what they were doing and cut them off. She gestured to catch everyone’s attention, then pointed to it and mouthed, Ready, set—

The door slid open. A cacophony of roars, hisses, and shrieks arose as a multitude of monsters were revealed. Destiny caught sight of a huge wormlike thing with a gaping mouth lined with fangs, a mangy rat the size of a Buick, and things she couldn’t even begin to identify: creatures with stings, chitin, and tentacles dripping slime. And then the whole pack of them came charging and slithering and leaping across the floor toward them.

Ethan and Destiny fired their tranquilizer rifles at the creatures. But while both of them hit their targets, the monsters just kept coming. It seemed like they, like Pete’s cave bear, were either armored or immune.

Ethan’s security guard uniform exploded off him as he became a tiger. With a snarl of protective fury, he leaped in front of Destiny and stood guarding her.

Merlin tossed his rifle to Roland, who caught it one-handed, then became a full-sized raptor.

Roland joined Ransom in returning fire at the Apex agents, while Ethan’s tiger and Merlin’s raptor faced the monsters.

Fight, growled Destiny’s tiger, on fire with anticipation of the battle. Fight for your mate!

Destiny had no argument there, but she was gripped more by fear than by eagerness. Trapped between monsters attacking them and agents shooting at them, they were both outgunned and outnumbered. Even Pete’s cave bear would be hard-pressed to fight the immense lumbering thing at the rear of the pack, a monster like some hideous cross between a giant scorpion and a cobra.

Destiny became a tiger. To her keen tiger’s senses, the monsters seemed even more unnatural than they had to her as a human. They were deeply, profoundly wrong—soulless things that should not exist—and they horrified her tiger as well as enraging her.

But Destiny didn’t let herself get swept away by her tiger’s perceptions. She turned to Ethan and they nuzzled each other. She could feel the bond between them, alive and humming with love. Even if this whole adventure ended in their deaths together in this cold underground place, it would be worth it for those few days when they’d finally broken down the barriers between them an

d loved each other with their whole hearts. And Ethan didn’t have to speak for her to know he was thinking the same thing.

Side by side, they braced for their last stand.

Chapter 15

Ethan

Ethan’s mind knew that they were probably all going to die, but he still had hope in his heart. He couldn’t despair as long as he had his mate by his side.

Before the monsters could reach them, the constant hiss and clink of darts stopped, replaced by the solid thuds of bodies hitting the ground. He whipped his head around and saw, to his astonishment, that all the Apex agents lay sprawled on the ground. They seemed to have been shot with darts from behind, as there was no blood and he could see a dart or two sticking up from their backs. But no one stood behind them.

Ethan almost jumped out of his skin when Shane Garrity, the panther shifter bodyguard from Destiny’s team, seemed to materialize beside them. “Hey, Destiny. Did you get bored with us and find yourself a new team?”

Destiny let out a snort, then butted Shane’s leg with her head, as if to say, Stop talking and start fighting.

“Who are you?” Roland demanded.

“Friends!” The unfamiliar male voice echoed along the walls of the corridor. “Hold your fire, it’s Protection, Inc.!”

The first to run in was a man Ethan didn’t recognize, tall and lithe, with brilliant copper-colored hair. The redhead took one look at the incoming monsters, became a snow leopard, and leaped into the fray.

A gray wolf plunged through the door, snarling, and joined battle. A moment later, it was followed by a leopard. Ethan knew who they had to be based on the shift forms of the other bodyguards on Destiny’s team. The wolf was the ex-gangster Nick Mackenzie, and the leopard was Ellie’s best friend, Catalina Mendez.

Ethan’s heart lifted as he too joined the fight. Destiny was at his side, protecting his back just as he protected hers. They fought alongside the snow leopard, the wolf, the panther that Shane became, and Merlin’s raptor. Both Ransom and Pete were laying into the monsters with the butts of their rifles, Ransom as calmly as if he squashed giant tentacled roaches with a repurposed tranquilizer rifle every day, and Pete with a fury that made even the monsters take one look and scuttle or lurch or crawl away.

Roland, who wasn’t in any shape for running around, had discovered the sword in Ethan’s backpack. With his back braced against the forklift, he used it to neatly dispatch any monster that came within range.

Within minutes, all the monsters were either dead or fled. Against all odds, they had won.

Ethan wanted to shout out his thanks to the team and his joy to Destiny. Except he couldn’t shout, because he was a tiger. What came out was a ferocious-sounding roar. Everyone stared at him. Sheepishly, he picked up his backpack in his jaws and padded to the other side of the forklift. Destiny followed him. They became human again, and quickly dressed. She was panting slightly from the exertion, her skin misted with sweat. Heat rose from her body, along with her irresistible natural scent.

Ethan didn’t even try to resist. Seizing this brief moment of privacy, his heart singing with love and his body thrumming with adrenaline, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. From the avidity of her response, she felt the exact same way.

A polite cough made them spring apart. The Protection, Inc. shifters must have gone back to the corridor to shift and get dressed, because they were emerging from it clothed and in human form. They had a perfect view of Destiny and Ethan.

Tags: Zoe Chant Protection, Inc Paranormal
Source: readsnovelonline.net