Page 94 of The Bonds of Nyx
My heart twisted at the thought of her, and my wolf whimpered. We could already feel her distance. I didn’t try to contact her, not yet, not with these asses around.
“I don’t know the full plan. I just know the next steps,” Jay finally said. “We’ve got coordinates for the next location. A clean-up team is coming in to deal with the dead. We need to be out before they get here.”
“We aren’t leaving our guy,” one of Nash’s—Jessup, I thought his name was—growled, rising from a crouch where he’d been bandaging up his calf.
I shrugged. “You know the protocol. We move on, let clean-up handle it.”
Jessup sneered and stalked towards us. “Bullshit. We don’t take orders fromyou.”
It took all my strength not to snap his neck. “Youwilldo as I say because this isn’t about you and your team. It’s about protecting our Queen.”
The bastard rolled his eyes. “Don’t act all superior because you’re warming her bed, Beckham. You’re just a toy for her ple—”
I slammed my fist into his nose before he could finish the sentence. All noise ceased as they watched Jessup crawl to his feet, cradling his broken nose. “I am hermate,” I seethed, stepping up to the foolish demon. Power radiated through me, something I’d only felt in small bursts since completing the matebond. Now, it felt like a rush. “And if you so much as step a toe out of line, I will end you. My priority is protecting her and our family. Ifanyof you try to stop that, you will answer to me. Understood?”
Jessup’s dark eyes watered as he bowed his head. The rest seemed to follow, each bowing their heads like they would do in the presence of one of Queen Greer’s mates.
I stood a little taller as Jay’s eyes met mine. He gave a shallow nod in assurance.
“Now,” I said, stepping back from Nash’s second and his team, “we follow protocol. And hope to Nyx our Queen is safe.”
~
It took us an hour to get ourselves away from the original safe house. However, with each passing mile and as the sky grew darker, my annoyance seemed to increase, as we drove silently with a prisoner in the back of our SUV. Two other vehicles took their route to the next safe house, each with a different bound and gagged enemy soldier riding between two of our own.
The hours passed in tense silence from there. It took much of my control to stop myself from reaching out to Ivy. Instead, I sent my emotions down our bond, but from what I could feel on her end, she wasn’t awake to speak anyway. So, I’d leave her to her dreams and hope she wasn’t suffering from one of her nightmares. Hopefully with Adrian’s bond being completed, she wouldn’t be suffering anymore.
We took secluded back roads through darkened, near-abandoned towns. The driver, one of Jay’s men, gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles.
“Problem?” I asked.
The mage jumped. He was scrawny, with curled brown hair and umber skin, and like the mages on my team, marked with runes to amplify his power.
“N-no, Sir.” He spared me a look from the corner of his eye. “Everything is fine.”
His heart-rate spiked, and I growled. “Truth. Now.”
The mage swallowed audibly. “S-sorry, Sir. I just—I’ve only ever been around Sir Ya’Dahir.”
My eyes narrowed, brows drawing together as I watched him. A pearl of sweat ran from his forehead down his face, and his heart thumped mercilessly in his chest. It took me a moment to realise why.
I barked a laugh without meaning to and he jumped in his seat again. “Seriously? You’re nervous because of my mate?”
Uncertainty wafted from him, not enough to override his nerves. But he nodded. “Y-yes, Sir.”
Before I could respond, one of the soldiers in the back seat laughed. “Not his fault, Beckham. You tend to be a sullen ass most of the time. And the kid’s new.” In the rear-view mirror, I watched the soldier shrug. He’d been part of the program with me, a year younger though. He was a Born vamp—rare, considering they were usually taken in by older vampires and trained away from the rest of our world because of how delicate they were when they were young.
I snorted and shook my head. “As long as the job is done and my girl is safe, I don’t fucking care.”
Nothing else was said, not as we pulled into the secluded drive of what looked to be an abandoned warehouse in an industrial area. I spied one of the assholes from Nash’s team walking the perimeter, dressed like security.
As we pulled in, the vampire did a check before pressing the code for one of the large roller doors usually used for trucks and shipments. As it opened, we crawled through, the SUV joining one other already sitting inside.
It wasn’t the fact that we were the first to arrive.
It was the fact there was only one other group here.
I was out of the SUV before a word could be said. The stench of aged oil and fumes filled my lungs, the usually overpowering scent of Ivy nowhere in the bay.