“Welcome to the Freed.” The girl who had unlocked our door spread her hands out.
We were in the yard of a makeshift camp. There was a real house, but there were also tents spread out across the grass, as if the place had grown too fast for everyone that needed to find shelter here.
“Saoirse.” It was a familiar voice behind me, and I turned to find Reed. There was a tentative smile pulling across his lips, and he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Reed?” I asked uncertainly.
The other girl was still talking, and my roommate gave him a curious look, then squeezed my shoulder as she walked past. “I’ll make sure we get a room together…you’re stuck with me now.”
“Thanks,” I said. I had so many questions about the Freed, and yet now that we were here, they all died on my lips as I studied Reed. The abashed look on his face didn’t make sense. “How did you escape? Did they just rescue you too?”
“No,” he admitted. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Okay.” My voice came out harder than expected, given how overwhelmed I was to be here. “Go ahead.”
“I think it’s better if I show you,” he said. He held his hand out to me. “Come on?”
I gave him a skeptical glance, and yet I still reached out and took his hand. His strong fingers wrapped around mine.
He led me up the front steps to a wide front porch, then into the building. Inside, the place hummed with activity. Shifters were studying maps, working on laptops, charting plans on the boards that hung on the walls.
It looked like a command center for a war.
“What’s going on, Reed?” I asked.
“We can’t go on like this,” he said. “You know what the world out there is like. You’ve seen the worst of what the packs can be.”
“Yes… that doesn’t tell me what’s going on.”
“Welcome to the resistance, Saoirse. It’s time to remake our world.”
He paused, his back against a door, and then he pushed it open.
I followed him into what seemed like an office, full of maps on the walls and charts that showed prison staff—I knew some of those faces—and yet, what drew my eye wasn’t any of the stuff in the room.
It was the two men who leapt to their feet from the desks.
Blue.
Jude.
“What is this?” I demanded.
The three of them exchanged a look.
“Now it’s a rescue,” Jude admitted. “Before, it was a test. We took the rest of the girls, but we were really there for you…”
All of the puzzle pieces came together for me in a second. The knife. The key. Even the conversations I’d heard…
“Why?” I demanded.
“We just….moonlight as runners,” Blue admitted. “Our real job is here in the resistance.”
“Girls like you don’t belong in prison,” Reed said. “They belong here. In the fight.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me…” I trailed off. I understood why. They couldn’t risk having their missions uncovered. As runners, they could pick out anyone who should be here instead. I said, heat in my voice, “I hope you’re not giving every test case a knife. You’re going to get gutted.”
Blue’s lips tilted up at the corners. “This isn’t quite the reunion I’d hoped for.”
“You—“ I sputtered, staring up at him as he crossed the room to me. His smoldering gaze held mine. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Aaron,” he told me. He stuck out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Saoirse. Now that we can meet properly.”
I stared at him, debating how to respond, then took his hand in mine.
The second I did, a sudden tingling seemed to spread across my skin, and I gasped.
“Oh.” Aaron’s eyes widened. I studied him, trying to focus despite the way my head was suddenly swimming. His pupils dilated slightly, the bright blue of his eyes taking me over in a way that was magnetic. He gazed at me just as intensely as I stared at him.
I wanted to press myself into his arms.
My heat. I hadn’t realized it would come over me so suddenly when it came back, but there it was, a flood of desire and need washing through me.
The two of us were still gripping hands as if we were going to shake politely.
I used that hand to drag him toward me, pulling him down. I pressed my lips against his in a tentative kiss. I wasn’t used to kissing anyone, and yet I wanted him with a wild, desperate throbbing.
I expected him to resist.
But after a second, his hand cupped my cheek, as he kissed me back. His lips were firm and commanding as he caressed mine open. My lips parted as the tip of his tongue danced across my upper lip, and I tilted my face up to him as my body swayed against his, giving in.
Even through our clothes, I could feel the press of his cock against my thigh, as his body responded to mine.
“I didn’t think the heat came on this fast—” Jude said, a frown in his voice.
“Maybe Aaron is her true love and fated mate and something beautiful,” Reed said, amusement in his voice.
That sparked the memory of that day in the car, but it also sparked something else. Something else that was half-memory of that day, and half here in the present, in the desire that burnt me up like fire from the inside out, a raging sense of longing.
I broke away from Aaron long enough to say, “I don’t think he’s my only fated mate.”
Aaron cleared the desk with one sweep of his arm, quick and decisive.
“That’s fine,” Jude said to no one in particular. “You’re the one who’s going to have to fix the filing later, Aaron.”
Aaron lifted me easily onto the edge of the long desk. His blue eyes smoldered as he gazed into mine, stepping between my legs.
