Omega's Run (19 page)

The flashbang went off, there was a muffled curse from outside, and we were moving. Remus kicked out the door and I followed his breech, a blur of motion off to my right. I aimed and fired without really looking, trusting that Remus was behind me. Besides that, I knew it wasn’t him because the blur was colored similar to the woods around us. Logan’s eyes widened as at least one slug caught him in the gut and he crashed into me. Hunter’s camo explained the blend into the trees, but this was a bad place for me to be.

I went down and rolled, his fingers scrabbling at my jacket, the nails growing longer. I sucked in a breath, but just as suddenly as he was on me, he was gone. The sickening crunch of bone and he was dropped in a heap. A meaty hand closed around my upper arm and hauled me up to my feet.

I expelled the breath I’d drawn in and shouted, “Remus look out!” But it was too late. Donnell, or what used to be him, leapt from the small cabin’s roof onto Remus’ back and down we both went, Remus on top of me this time.

The breath was knocked out of me. I caught a smoldering flash of fury in Remus’ eyes, followed by a quick dash of apology, before the hands to either side of my head started shifting, the bones sliding beneath muscle, popping and clicking like a demented bowl of Rice Krispies.

Remus reared up with a roar and threw Donnell off of him. Deep furrows bled freely along Remus’ flank but his flesh began to knit back together almost immediately. I guess his healing superpower was back online. I didn’t have time to think about it, I aimed and tried to ignore my body’s need to breathe while I sighted down on Donnell. It was useless though. Remus and Donnell were as engaged as two wolf-men fighting could be, and it was clear that Remus had this. Even with training, Donnell had become fat and lazy and I guess against another wolf-kind who was fit, it really showed.

They swiped and clawed at each other, hands the size of hubcaps swinging through the air. Each one with five fingers tipped with claws that could rip through bone as easily as they sliced through skin and muscle. And Remus proved it with a quick series of slashes. One, two, three. His left hand swiped across Donnell’s face, drawing deep furrows all the way down to his skull. Right hand punched him in the left kidney as Remus side-stepped smoothly to give himself access. When Donnell reared back because of the pain Remus’ left hand flashed out again and with a disgusting, wet sound, tore open his abdomen in one smooth strike. There was a squelch as a pile of ropey intestines poured out of the new opening in Donnell’s stomach and splattered on the ground.

In the next second, Remus had gotten behind my former team member and with a triumphant, almost bark, tore out Donnell’s throat. Donnell dropped to the leaf litter, writhing but he was healing. His throat was closing even as he attempted to push his guts back inside his own body. Damn it. I went over before Remus could break his neck and put two slugs into Donnell’s skull.

I stood across from Remus who slowly shifted back to human, both of us panting. He eyed me cautiously, looking me up and down as if to gauge my reaction or mood. I raised an eyebrow at him and he pursed his lips into a grim line.

“We should go, in case there are more on the way.”

“This way,” I jerked my head in the direction where I’d left my brother’s FJ Cruiser parked and Remus nodded. He made to walk past me but I stepped in front of him, holstering my gun.

“We should move.” He went to go around me and I side stepped into his path again, only this time I stepped into his space.

“Ava…” he sounded impatient but I didn’t care. This was important. I went up on my toes because he was just that fucking tall, and pressed my lips to his in a quick, chaste kiss. I went flat footed and looked at him pointedly. He regarded me; expression hooded and finally gave me a curt nod.

“We’ve gotta go, Babycakes.”

“I’ve got you,” I murmured and still went back inside to grab my bag of goodies. I threw it in the back of the truck and went around to the driver’s side of the vehicle. Remus was already in the passenger seat.

He asked me, as I started up the truck, “What was that for?”

“Because you’re right. We need some help, and your brother might be the only place we’ve got left to turn to. If that’s the case, we’re pretty much as good as dead.”

“A last kiss then?” he asked with a smirk.

“I hope not,” I murmured and turned on the truck and put it into gear. I was surprised to find that I meant it. I really hoped it wasn’t. Remus Reese was starting to grow on me.

Who would have thought?

Chapter 19

Remus

Three members of her team were down and out. Three people that she’d worked with, fought with, and bled with. And here she was, with me, the enemy.

I cast another sidelong glance in her direction out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t entirely certain how I felt about her throwing in her lot so solidly with me. Before that point she could have gone back to her organization with a story about trying to get information out of me. She could have made up something at least. Now, however? There was no doubt that she had turned her back on them completely. Nothing sealed the deal more completely than killing some of their number, and helping me to kill them too.

There was no way that this wasn’t going to get worse before it got better and I really didn’t like the way things were going. I wasn’t nearly as confident that William wouldn’t just kill me outright as I made myself seem. But I had to fake it to get Ava to go along with the plan. Despite some misgivings, going to William really was the best possible solution to our situation.

Well... not even a solution really. More like step one of… who the fuck knew how many it would take? I bit back on a sigh, and turned my attention back to staring out the window before she caught me looking at her.

“You know,” she said. “When you sit there staring at me, even out of the corner of your eye like that, it makes me feel like there’s ants crawling all over my skin. That whole being watched thing.”

Oops.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“What? That you were watching me? Or that I knew about it?”

“Both?”

“Well cut it out. If you’ve got something to say Fido, just spit it the fuck out already. This staring and looking away is driving me up the damn wall.”

I hesitated for a second and she growled again, that growl I was really starting to enjoy hearing from her, and I bit back a laugh, gauging that laughing at her would probably not go over very well. “I just wanted to admit that this is a risky move. Going to William.”

“You were faking the confidence. I know.”

I blinked, turning my head to stare straight at her this time. “You knew?” She nodded, a small smirk turning up the corners of her lips. Lips that had earlier been wrapped around my- I shook my head roughly, trying to dispel the thought before it really formed and forced myself to focus. “And you just let me go on with the BS?”

“So your brother doesn’t have to see you before you’re executed?”

“No, he does. Pack law dictates it.”

“But...” she said, sensing the unspoken sentences that should have followed.

“But that doesn’t mean that he has to give me a chance to speak, or even that he’ll listen if he does. It’s a risk, but a calculated one.”

“How so?”

“William isn’t the type to shoot first and ask questions later, so to speak. He always wants all the possible information before making an informed decision. It’s part of what will make him such a good leader for the pack. He doesn’t fly off halfcocked, but at the same time...”

“This is a serious breach of protocol.”

I nodded, “To say the least.”

“We’ll deal with it when we need to.”

I considered her for another moment while she kept her eyes firmly glued to the road. “It’s strange,” I said a minute later and she glanced at me for a brief second.

“What is?”

“You. You’ve got a very blasé attitude about this whole thing right now. I find that to be somewhat strange behavior for you in the short time we’ve known each other.”

“I do not have a blasé attitude,” she insisted. “I’ve just come to understand that our options really are limited. It’s either run for the rest of our lives from my people and yours, or take a chance that we can get out of this in one piece and take Mathias down in the process. If an option includes taking down Mathias, then that’s the one I’m picking.”

Revenge, I realized and nodded silently as I considered it. That was a motivation I could get behind. I was feeling a similar desire to want to kill Mathias Young. He had masterfully manipulated Romulus and I, and I really wanted to see him pay for all the misery he’d caused, and used us to do it in the first place.

I didn’t like being fooled, especially not by someone like Mathias fucking Young. Fucking bastard needed to die. I really wanted to do it myself, and I’m sure Ava did too. Honestly though? I didn’t give a shit who killed him anymore, as long as he ended up six feet under, I would be happy.

We didn’t talk much for the next few hours. Only when it came time to stop for food or gas. At the first of those stops she pulled off of the road and into a truck stop’s gas station. Turning off the SUV she tucked the keys into her pocket and then reached into the inside pocket of her jacket. That was when she paused, a frown marring her features and she pulled out a folded rectangle of dark brown leather, staring at it as if she had no idea what it was.

“Is that my wallet?” I asked.

She flipped it open and there, behind its clear plastic window, was my driver’s license. “Apparently. I completely forgot I shoved it in my jacket when I went to get you back at the facility.”

I shrugged and reached for it. Digging around for a moment I came up with my gold card and smiled. “Works in our favor. Gas and food’s on me.”

Without a word, but with a small smirk on her lips, she plucked the card from my hand and jumped out of the truck, telling me to stay when I started to follow after her. Before I could get annoyed she gave me a pointed look up and down and I glanced down, realizing that I was still wearing nothing but a pair of sweat pants. She had been fully dressed when we’d left the cabin. I think mostly as a byproduct of her childhood and training.

I settled in and sighed, exasperated with the whole situation but in ten minutes she was back with a pair of jeans, t-shirt, and another hoodie. Not my usual fair but it’d do, for now.

While she got the gas going I stripped out of my sweats, ignoring her low wolf-whistling at me through the window, and pulled on the jeans. I stuffed my feet into a pair of generic boots that she’d picked up and was as dressed as I needed to be for the moment. The boots were a little smaller than I liked, only a single size too large for my feet as opposed to the two sizes or bigger that I liked, but I could deal with that. The hoodie she had picked up however was a different story.

It was a solid white number that zipped up in the front and while it would fit overall, the sleeves were just too small. They wouldn’t fit properly around my arms. I thought about it for a second before I shrugged and just ripped them off at the shoulders. I shoved my arms in the openings I had torn, pulled the garment on and zipped it up part way. The t-shirt I ignored.

“Not bad at all,” she admitted a moment later when I got out of the fancy FJ Cruiser and stood before her; I flashed her a grin. Wasn’t long before we piled back into the truck and hit a fast food joint before getting back on the freeway.

That was basically how the day went. Stopping for gas, or food, or restroom breaks, but otherwise heading steadily west toward Washington. It was weird how familiar the situation was, too. Seven months earlier I had made a similar trip. That trip had been on the back of my Harley, with Rom riding beside me. And we were the ones doing the chasing back then, not being chased. William, with Chloe who he’d recently kidnapped, had been able to keep ahead of us and got inside of the Washington borders before we were able to catch up to him more than just the one time.

It left me with a feeling I couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t nostalgia, but it felt similar to it. Maybe just wanting for a simpler time? Back then, even such a short time ago, the world seemed simpler. It was cut and dried. We do this to avoid that or to escape something else.

Now though... everything just seemed like the nastiest snarled mess of a knot that you could possibly imagine. In my hands I held many threads. William, Chloe, Ava, Mathias, the Pack... All of these different threads and I wasn’t entirely positive where one started and any of the others ended anymore.

It took a little over a day, but eventually we rolled into Washington. I directed her to stop at a hotel in Spokane. We’d traded off back and forth on driving while the other slept and we’d made good time, but more than anything I wanted a shower and a good night’s sleep.

And, to be honest, I really wanted a bed available to bury myself to the hilt inside the beautiful woman riding with me. Guess I was starting to learn how William could have so easily fallen for the daughter of a hunter. Ava was really starting to grow on me.

An impressive cloud of steam followed Ava out of the bathroom when she finished her shower. I glanced up from the TV where I hadn’t really been paying attention to a news report on wildfires, and my finger jerked on the power button as I took in the sight of her.

She’d obviously dried off in the bathroom and had already pulled on her black pants again. The same ones she’d been wearing, I thought, that was all though. As she came out into the room her arms were raised, a towel in hand as she ran it over her hair, her breasts shaking slightly as she moved.

She dropped the towel and moved over to the room’s single table where we’d piled some supplies from the truck; drinks and some food. Sitting in a chair she grabbed a bottle of water and leaned back as she twisted the cap off and wrapped her lips around the neck, drinking deeply.

I realized a moment later that my mouth was hanging open and I hadn’t stopped staring at her since she’d entered the room. By the knowing look in her eyes I figured that was exactly the reaction she’d been looking for too.