Page 85 of Meeting Her Mate

Hopefully, this would serve as a distraction enough for Will to escape.

I could already hear the sounds of soldiers screaming orders to take off the night-vision goggles. Making use of this diversion myself, I fled across the laboratory and took the elevators. The stairs would be flooded with soldiers. There was no telling how many mercenaries Blair had hired. With his resources pooled with those of Maurice and Ralph, there was no telling what lengths he had gone to. The only hope I had was that fate was on Will’s and my side. In my not-so-long life, the most important thing I learned was that fate was the strongest force that existed, capable of moving mountains and parting the seas. With this hope, I reached out to Will.

Which floor do you want to regroup on?

The thirty-first, Will said.

I pressed the button on the elevator, closed the doors, and headed up to the thirty-first floor.

As the elevator ascended, it came to a halt at one of the floors, and the doors slid open. The sight that awaited me was downright pitiful.

Maurice lay sprawled on the floor, having dragged himself from across the hall. He had tracked blood all over the corridor. His hand was an inch away from the elevator button, and his body was severely bruised. Upon looking at me, he immediately recoiled and fell back.

My first impulse was to kill him. Will had spared his life, presumably because of my earlier imploring for mercy, but I was not bound by any such promise. I could kill him here, and no one would know. It would put a stop to his antics in the town. There was no guarantee that he’d sober up and disappear from this town if I spared him. If anything, given what I knew about him, Maurice would only serve to be a perpetrator of more chaos.

However, on second thought, after seeing him in such a weakened and compromised state, I chose not to do anything. Even if I did nothing, he was sure to die from weakness and blood loss. Better his death be because of natural causes than me. At least this way, my conscience would remain unburdened.

The elevator doors closed before I could make a decision. The elevator resumed its ascent, and for a while, it seemed I’d make it to the intended floor and regroup with Will.

It was for the second time that the elevator doors slid open, and this time around, it wasn’t the sight of Maurice lying on the floor that greeted me but ten armed soldiers, all of them aiming their rifles at me, the red lasers of their guns fixated on my body.

Before any of them could so much as pull the trigger, I jumped up and broke through the elevator ceiling entrance. That was a narrow miss. Had my reaction been delayed for more than a second, I would have looked like Swiss cheese.

Shouts came from behind me, some faceless man barking orders to his subservient soldiers to pursue me. Bullets grazed past the elevator roof as soldiers flooded inside the elevator and tried to climb up. I closed the hatch and jammed it, allowing myself some momentary relief in which I came up with the next course of action. The elevator roof was riddled with bullet holes through which I could see the soldiers standing underneath. They were trying to open the hatch which I had jammed. It was a wonder how I had avoided the bullets so far, but I could not stay here any longer.

At that moment, my eyes fell on the air ducts that had passage through the elevator shaft. How could I not have thought of these before? I kicked open one of the air ducts closest to me and threw myself in it, crawling safely away from all the bullets and soldiers. But that hatch that I had jammed would not remain jammed forever. They’d climb into the elevator shaft and follow me.

Unless…

I rolled in the opposite direction and headed back to the elevator shaft. The taut metal wires that held the elevator were stretched beyond their recommended weight. There must be at least eight or nine soldiers in the elevator trying to open the hatch.

As I unbuckled the elevator harness to the wire, the jammed hatch swung open, and a soldier popped out, aiming his rifle at me. I looked at him and smiled, shaking the last of the harness bolts in my hand. The elevator creaked loudly, and before the soldier could understand what had happened before he could pull the trigger on me, the elevator lurched and fell, crashing against the walls of the shaft as it hurtled with terminal velocity.

I turned back and crawled through the air duct, climbing up, counting the floors in my head, and stopping only when I reached the thirty-first floor. Here, I undid one of the vent entrances and slid out of the wall panel.

To my right, the elevator entrance had smoke coming out of it. In front of me, soldiers were honing in on my location. There was no sign of Will on this floor. I looked at the elevator entrance again and saw that I had skipped a floor, and instead of thirty-one, I was on the thirty-second floor.

There was no time to alert Will of my predicament. The soldiers had made a formation around me, their knees to the floor, their guns against their shoulders, their fingers on the triggers.

I had a better bet of avoiding bullets as a werewolf. Immediately upon shifting, I leaped beyond the soldiers in one swift motion and landed behind them. Before they had time to register that they had just emptied their clips into an empty wall, I attacked them from behind. They might be soldiers, but they were humans and, as such, stood no chance against me. With a sweep of my paws, I swept them off their feet, and with a jab of my claws, I threw away their guns. Once I hammered them hard enough, they were knocked unconscious. Those who stayed conscious knew better than to butt in again and instead lay groaning and tending to their injuries.

Taking the guns away from around a dozen soldiers and knocking them out was too laborious a task. It did not drain me of energy, but it left me feeling that my time could have been better spent searching for my mate and assisting him with finding Blair.

Will? I’m on the floor above you. Where are you?

I am caught between a rock and a hard place yet again.

Hold on; I’m coming.

It was not our fault that we were finding ourselves overwhelmed. Whatever we had planned, Blair had planned something two steps ahead. And the fact that we were in too deep to call it quits only made the struggle more pertinent. The good thing, however, was that even though they had numbers on their side, we had power.

I traversed the body-ridden floor, leaving groaning and unconscious soldiers in my wake, and ascended the stairs. Here, on this floor, once I opened the door, I understood what the rock and the hard place were.

Will was entangled in a fighting match with ten soldiers at once, all of whom were using batons, nets, and bats to bludgeon and trap him. He was holding his own remarkably well, but it was only so that the other soldiers surrounding him with guns wouldn’t shoot at him. If he were to disengage from this one-sided fight, they would shoot at him.

I rolled along the length of the floor and hit the soldiers lined with their guns held up from behind, making them topple almost as a bowling ball topples over pins. When I rolled back to my feet, I saw that there was only one more soldier formation left, aiming their guns at Will.

I soared across the hallway, over the fight that Will and the soldiers were engaged in, and landed on top of the formation of soldiers below. They tried to adjust their crosshairs and aim at me, but my body tackled them before they could shift their line of sight.