As they all began to hop to his command, Lucan pointed a finger at Nikolai. “If I’m cooling my heels here tonight, then so are you. I’m not going to risk leaving that baby boy without a father in the first few hours of his life.”
Niko scowled, but after a moment, he gave a curt nod.
“Look alive,” Lucan ordered them all. “Time’s wasting already.”
CHAPTER 22
With a low-throated scream, a horned owl swooped off the bough of an immense pine in front of Kaya and her comrades as they crept into place in the forest that surrounded Lars Scrully’s enormous lakefront estate.
The warriors had split into three teams once they left the city. With Nikolai grounded alongside Lucan back at the command center, Mira and Sterling Chase were in charge of the unit tasked with surveillance as the other two teams got into place. Kaya, Mira, and Chase watched the northern border of the estate. Keeping an eye on the southern perimeter were Torin and Tavia, along with Lucan and Gabrielle’s son, Darion. Although Tavia had limited combat experience, it was the Breed female’s immunity to ultraviolet light that persuaded the Order’s commanders to permit her along on the mission.
For the same reason--along with the added bonus of her ability to shadow bend like Aric and her father--Carys Chase had been assigned to the second team of six, which was moving into position at various points around the property, running reconnaissance and waiting for the command to sweep onto the grounds and take out any guards who tried to block the assault. Led by Dante and Rio, the team also had the experience of Rafe and Kellan, both proven warriors. And while Carys’s mate Rune was new to the Order, he had earned his fighting skills in illegal cage matches back in Boston before he met her.
Rounding out the mission’s operatives was the third team, the vanguard consisting of Aric, Balthazar and Webb. None of the units were cleared to move in until Aric and his partners gave the all-clear.
“Shouldn’t we have heard from them by now?” Kaya could hardly keep the edge of worry from her quiet whisper to Mira.
Her friend nodded. “They should be approaching from the lake any minute now.”
As if on cue, the team’s earpieces crackled with an incoming transmission from elsewhere in the field. But instead of Aric’s deep voice announcing that he and Bal and Webb had emerged from the water as planned, it was Darion Thorne’s low growl that came over the communication link.
“Alpha. Bravo. We’ve got a problem down at the southern gate.”
Mira’s grave stare flicked to Kaya and Commander Chase. “What kind of problem?”
“Two security guards with acute lead poisoning. They’ve both been shot execution-style.”
“Shit.” Mira touched her ear and spoke with clipped urgency. “Torin, can you get close enough to pick up a reading for us?”
“On it, captain.” Silence fell for a handful of seconds that felt like days to Kaya. Then the warrior with the ability to psychically detect shifts in the energy forces of a place came back on the line. “I’m sensing a lot of fear and panic radiating from within the residence. There’s more death inside there too.”
Kaya’s stomach clenched. “Something’s not right.”
“No, it’s not,” Chase replied. “We’re too late. Opus’s assassins have already been here.”
The sudden staccato report of gunfire ripped through the quiet of the surrounding night. Mira’s face went grim. “Holy hell. They’re still here.”
As she said it, a bolt of lightning lit up the inky black sky near the lake. Then another.
Kaya looked toward the large body of water, where Aric, Webb, and Bal were currently swimming in as an amphibious team to breach the estate’s weakest perimeter. More light exploded in that vicinity. The bright illuminations reflected on the lake’s surface like fireworks.
Cold dread swept through Kaya’s veins. “It’s UV. Oh, my God. They’re shooting at them with ultraviolet!”
“Abort,” Mira called over the comm link. “All units abort right now!”
A reply came back at nearly the same time. “Bal’s down.” Webb’s usually calm voice had a catch to it now, and an edge of fear that Kaya had never heard in the arrogant male before. “Ah, Christ. They just ashed Bal. Fuck!”
Kaya’s hand flew to her mouth. A jagged moan leaked past anyway, anguish she couldn’t hold in. No. Not him. Not Balthazar.
Mira’s face held the same bleak disbelief, but the captain kept her composure. “Where are you, Webb?”
“Near the dock. Motherfuckers have me pinned down with UV fire.”
In the few seconds it took to receive that awful news, Tavia, Torin, and Darion arrived from their lookout points to rejoin Mira, Kaya, and Chase.
“We’re pulling out,” Mira told them. “If Opus has already been here, I doubt Scrully will be any use to us now. And I’m not going to lose anyone else over that asshole.”
“Aric’s already inside,” Webb reported. “As soon as we came out of the water and ditched our gear, we started taking heavy gunfire and UV. Before I knew it, Bal was down. Then Aric turned into shadow and I lost sight of him.”
“Oh, God,” Kaya murmured, every instinct she had twitching with the need to go after him. Even though Aric was more than capable of taking on a small army of human assailants purely by virtue of his Breed genetics, the thought of him charging into danger alone was too much to bear. Both the warrior in Kaya and the woman wanted nothing else but to be alongside her partner. “I’m going in too.”
“So am I,” Tavia and Carys announced at the same time. The pair of daywalking Breed females were united in their fury and their determination.
“You’re not going in there without me,” Chase demanded, his stance as unyielding as his hard gaze. “Neither one of you leaves my sight.”
Tavia’s eyes crackled with amber fire. “We’re going. And you’re staying.”
