Hunted by the Shadow Division

Chapter 14

Ryan POV

Glass was still falling when the first operative came through the frame.

He was large and geared up in tactical black with the kind of equipment that said government budget rather than private contractor. Two more came through the door behind me, which I had left open in my rush to get to Cass, which was my fault and I filed that away for later.

Later, if there was a later.

Rhy came forward without my permission but I did not fight him. I let him come because there were three of them and I needed every advantage I had.

The first operative stopped when he saw my eyes. Gold and dark at the rim the way they get when Rhy is close to the surface. To his credit he only hesitated for a second.

A second was enough.

I took him at the window and put him through the wall beside it, which Cass was not going to be happy about, and turned to deal with the two at the door. One of them had a device I recognised from the files Aunt Joan had quietly accumulated over the years. A sonic emitter calibrated for wolf hearing. The kind of thing that dropped wolves to their knees.

It was pointed at T7.

She was already on the floor.

Her hands were over her ears and her face was contorted with pain and the amber of her eyes had flooded bright yellow with the wolf trying to get out to fight what the human body could not.

And Rhy, who had been furious with her existence for four days, said "No," in a voice I had never heard from him before. Low and absolute and final.

He took back full control before I could argue.

He put himself between the emitter and T7 and he took the full force of it.

It was not pleasant.

My knees hit the floor and my vision went white at the edges and every sound in the world became one long shrieking note that lived behind my eyes. But I stayed upright. Rhy stayed upright. And from the floor T7 looked up at us with an expression that broke something open in him that he would never fully explain to me afterward.

"Cass," Rhy said through my mouth, which was not easy with the emitter still going. "Cass, the kitchen. Now."

I heard her move. I heard the kitchen door. Good.

I reached out, found the operative with the emitter, and broke his wrist. The emitter hit the floor. The sound stopped.

The world came back in a rush.

Behind me I heard T7 get to her feet.

The third operative had a tranquilliser rig and was aiming it at T7 with the particular focus of someone who knows the target and knows what dosage is required. She saw it. She moved. And then she did something I had not anticipated.

She moved in front of me.

Not behind me. In front of me. Between me and the operative, with her back to me and her arms spread slightly in the instinctive gesture of something putting itself between a threat and something it is protecting.

The operative blinked.

Rhy made a sound in my chest that I will not repeat here because it is his and private.

The operative fired anyway.

T7 took three darts in the shoulder and the side and kept standing for five seconds through what had to be sheer will alone, and then her legs gave out and I caught her before she hit the floor because Rhy was still in control and Rhy was not going to let her fall.

Captain Miles came through the door.

He was older than I expected. Mid-fifties, hard-faced, with the kind of eyes that had seen a great deal and decided not to be troubled by most of it. He looked at his two incapacitated operatives. He looked at the one whose wrist I had broken. He looked at T7, unconscious in my arms, and at me holding her, and whatever calculation he was doing behind those eyes took a long moment.

"Mr. Rogers," he said. "Dr. Mortem would like a word."

"Dr. Mortem," I said, "can want whatever he likes."

Miles tilted his head slightly. "I have twelve more operatives outside. You are strong, Mr. Rogers. Perhaps stronger than anything we have indexed. But your wife is in the kitchen and you are holding an unconscious asset and you are working alone. Those are not favourable odds."

He was not wrong.

I hated that he was not wrong.

"She goes free," I said. "T7. She walks. That's not negotiable."

Miles looked at T7 for a moment. Something passed across his face that was hard to read. Not sentimentality. Something more complicated than that.

"That is not my decision to make," he said.

"Then make it someone's."

The silence stretched.

And then from the kitchen came Cassandra's voice, calm and clear and carrying the specific authority of a woman who has spent her career convincing underfunded hospital boards to listen to her.

"Captain Miles. My name is Cassandra Rogers. I am a biomedical engineer and I have just spent the last twenty minutes talking to your asset, who appears to have been held in conditions that would constitute multiple violations of international research ethics codes. I have also been photographing this room since you came through the window. I would think very carefully about your next decision."

Miles turned to look at the kitchen doorway where Cass stood with her phone in her hand and an expression on her face that was, in its own way, as formidable as anything Rhy or I had in our arsenal.

He looked back at me.

I looked back at him.

"I will be in touch," he said, and left.

They all left.

The room was quiet. Glass on the floor. A hole in the wall. T7 breathing shallowly in my arms with three tranquilliser darts in her and the bond humming between us like a live wire.

"Ryan," Cass said from the doorway.

"Yeah."

"Our wall."

"I know."

"We're going to talk about all of this."

"I know."

"Put her on the couch."

I put her on the couch.

Cass brought a blanket.

I sat on the floor with my back against the couch and my head tipped back and Rhy settled somewhere very deep and very quiet and breathed.