Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 207

Chapter 207

Jaxon

“Fucking piece of shit!” I growl, barely stifling the urge to rip the failing comm out of my ear and crush it under my boot.

The signal died and I’m on the second floor, too far from the action to know what’s happening with any certainty. I can hear movement below me, heavy footsteps pounding the floor, moving rapidly. Shit has obviously gone sideways. I just can’t tell what or how badly.

Nicolai is somewhere below them with Skye-I heard her voice, which is, I try to remind myself, the thing that matters. She’s alive and moving and giving him grief about something, which means she’s okay enough to give grief. I should find that reassuring but the entire facility is mobilizing around a situation that stopped being under our control about three minutes ago.

I have no clear path to the basement stairs and Nicolai needs help now. According to the blueprint, I can get there in about fifteen seconds if I go through the room to my left. But there’s three men in the room I’d have to go through.

Taking time I don’t have, I assess my odds. The door is partially open-they’re oriented toward the interior, toward the communications equipment one of them is using to call for Savin. Maybe I could take them if I maintain the element of surprise.

So far, they don’t know I’m here because I came through a window on the north face that wasn’t in our intelligence. I landed in a storage room that smelled of equipment and wasn’t occupied, and opened onto this hallway I’ve been in for forty seconds doing exactly this: counting, mapping, deciding.

Fourteen seconds until the corridor rotation brings more people to this hallway if they aren’t on their way already. But by the sounds of things, they’re all moving in the opposite direction.

I’m still frozen by indecision when her scent reaches me from below. My wolf does something that could get me killed, trying to drag me to her with no concern for the obstacles between us. I push it down hard, lock it behind the part of my brain that is operating right now and not the animalistic part that would respond to Skye’s heat.

That part is not available at this moment. That part can have its turn later. I have a job to do that involves us all walking out of here alive.

I go through the room.

Three men and the element of surprise and the understanding that hesitation is the thing that gets people killed, not action. I’ve made fast ugly decisions my entire adult life. This is one of them.

The door opens before they know I’m there. The first one is easy-he’s standing, oriented away, and I have all the advantages of someone who made the decision before he knew there was one to make.

“What the f-” The second one is harder, already turning around as his partner goes down.

My uppercut to his jaw is ugly but whatever I do, it needs to be fast, and fast is what I have. It stuns him long enough to land a second punch to his temple that knocks him out cold, joining his buddy on the floor.

The third one goes for the communications equipment, not even bothering to defend himself. But I get there first. He’ll probably survive the hit I deliver. His equipment doesn’t.

Thirty seconds. Roughly. I’m not actually counting time-I’m counting with done and not done and move.

I make it to the corridor. The four men at the top of the basement stairs are turning toward the sound from the

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room I just came through. Toward me.

Which means they’re not watching the stairs below.

+15 Bonus

Nicolai hears it. I know he does because of what happens next-which is nothing that was in the plan, nothing we discussed, nothing that required words. From the bottom of the stairs comes movement. Nicolai using the moment when four men turned their heads to do something about the situation.

We’ve been working together for weeks. In that time, it’s been painfully clear that we think differently. He approaches everything with structure-the plan, the positions, the angles. I go with a more people-focused approach-who’s where, what do I think they’ll do, when will they hesitate.

Neither method is better. But together they produce something better than each on its own. And despite our differences, we’ve learned to communicate with a language doesn’t require words.

Silently, we move together. I take two of the four from the top-fast and hard. No elegance. Effective.

Nicolai takes the other two from the bottom. We meet in the middle of the stairs.

“You’re late,” he grunts as he drops the body in his arms to the ground.

“I had to climb through a window.” I retort dryly. “Fuck! She smells-“My words cut off as all my blood rushes south with concerning speed and I reach for the wall to steady myself.

“Mm.” Nicolai groans the acknowledgment like just the thought is causing him pain.

From behind him, on the stairs, Skye makes a sound. It might be a laugh but the circumstances don’t quite allow for a laugh, so it comes out as half laugh, half whine. Hopefully she’s just deeply relieved and would be finding this funny if everything wasn’t also terrible. The alternative, that she’s covering the pain of dropping into full blown heat and in need of relief, is a threat to my sanity.

“We need to move,” I remind everyone.

“Yes,” Nicolai draws out the word as if to say we’re kind of boxed in here so what exactly did you have in mind?

“I have an exit.” To be fair, I probably should have led with that.

I’m not sure how to interpret the way he looks at me. Something dangerously close to surprise and I’m choosing not to be offended.

“The service road,” I announce. “Northwestern approach. It wasn’t part of our intelligence because I added it six hours ago. Just in case.”

“You arranged an alternate extraction without telling me.” Now he’s the one pretending not to be offended.

“I arranged a contingency,” I say. “Tell me you’re surprised.”

He isn’t. I can see that he isn’t.

“Let’s move.” He waves his hand in a lead the way gesture.

I turn on my heels, trusting him to keep our mate safe, and head back up the stairs.

We’ve got Skye. We’ve got my contingency plan for getting the hell out of Savin’s territory.

Now, we just have to make it out of this house in one piece.

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+15 Bonus