Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (5 page)

“There won’t be.” Even if the Organization was coming for them. “They’re good at what they do.” He swallowed, his throat convulsing with the effort. “If they aren’t using me to try to get into Lone Pine, the information on the hard drives could be legitimate.” Or the information itself could be the trap. “But if they know I took it, they’ll begin moving people.” Moving Rachel. Imprisoning her. Torturing her. “If we want to have any chance of rescuing them—”

“We would need to go fast,” Roman finished.

“I want to go with you.” Adrian shoved himself up higher in the hospital bed, knowing he looked like a liability right now, but trying to force strength into his body. He needed to find her. Before it was too late. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to save her or imprison her himself, but either way, she was
his
. “Even if we can’t get any of the data off the hard drives, I might be able to lead you back to where I was held.”

The odds that Rachel was still there were slim, but it was all he had.

Roman nodded. “I’ll pass that along to the Alpha.”

Adrian frowned. This wasn’t the Alpha? Who was? The Incredible Hulk? “I just have one condition.”

Roman, Not-the-Alpha, cocked an eyebrow in question.

“The doctor. Rachel Russell. I don’t want her hurt.” Not by anyone else anyway.

“She works for them?”

“I’m not sure she has a choice.” It was instinctive, defending her. But he found himself wondering if the words were true. He’d been so focused on the betrayal, so foggy with drugs, he’d never really thought about the bigger picture. There was always a bigger picture. Adrian’s energy abandoned him and he sagged back down on the bed. “She wanted to leave with me. I thought she was lying. That she couldn’t be trusted. So I left her behind.”

“And now you want us to endanger our people rescuing her.” The Not-Alpha was visibly unimpressed by that idea.

“No,” Adrian argued. “I just don’t want her killed when we’re rescuing
our
people. Make her a prisoner here. I won’t object.”

“We don’t usually hold prisoners.”

Adrian met Roman’s eyes, making his gaze unmovable. “That’s my condition.” Rachel was not negotiable.

Chapter Six

“So this Rachel. Do you love her?”

Grace spoke as Adrian lunged for a higher grip on the climbing wall. His concentration splintered, the tiny hold slipped off the pads of his fingers, and he cursed, instinctively trying—and failing—to shift as the ground rushed up to meet him with punishing force. A puff of dust rose around him in a cloud as he hit. Luckily he’d only been about ten feet off the ground, but it still hurt like a bitch. He groaned as Grace leapt down, landing gracefully in a crouch at his side.

“Nice,” he grunted.

“Did you break any of your delicate little birdy bones?”

“Fuck you.”

“You asked me to train you. Part of my training is ensuring you’re mentally sound. If you’re mooning over this Rachel bitch and fall off a cliff, I don’t want the Alpha taking it out of my ass. So are you in love or what?”

Adrian grunted and shoved himself up onto his forearms. Nothing felt broken. Thank God. The incursion team set to strike the first Organization installation—the one where he’d been held—was scheduled to leave tomorrow and there was no chance they’d delay if he broke his ass on the obstacle course today. He’d be left behind and he
refused
to be left behind—which was why he’d asked Grace to get him back up to fighting trim.

And as much as he hated to admit it, the lioness had a point. He couldn’t be distracted by his feelings for Rachel—whatever the hell they were—while they were on a mission.

“No. I’m not in love with her.” Even if he had once thought she might be The One. Even if he’d felt like a freight train of emotion had flattened him the first time he saw her. Even if he’d once believed in True Love and Love at First Sight and all the romantic platitudes. Even if he had seen his unborn children in her arms more than once in his mind’s eye—none of that mattered. That had all been before the needle. No love could survive six months of being used as a lab rat. Not when she was the cause.

“So what’s the deal with her?” Grace pushed. “Why are you so obsessed?”

He lurched to his feet, his muscles shaking with the effort, and Grace straightened beside him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy. That’s enough for now.”

Even healing shifter-fast he was pushing the limits of what his body could handle. The pride doctor had cleared him for the mission, grumbling the entire time, and Grace was helping him get his body back into military form—but he was still light-years away from his usual physical condition and the weakness was constantly infuriating. He hated being this man. This invalid.

It didn’t help that he was only a man. He still hadn’t been able to take his hawk form. His blood tests were clean now, the last of the drugs finally loosening their hold on him, but still nothing. Not a single fucking feather—though several of the cats had reported his eyes would partial-shift when he was worked up. Dr. Brandt thought that was a positive sign, a sign that he wasn’t completely cut off from his animal side, but Adrian wouldn’t feel like himself again until he felt the wind ruffling his feathers.

Grace guided him over to a bench on the side of the practice course—and at least he made it there before his legs gave out. They sat side-by-side, watching as other pride members made use of the course. Young soldiers training, veterans keeping their reflexes sharp.

Lone Pine was bigger than he’d dreamed. He’d heard of prides having up to fifty members, but the Lone Pine numbers were well over a hundred and growing every day. They allowed non-lions into their ranks and welcomed shifters in need of refuge at a much higher rate than any other shifter group he’d ever heard of—and there were more and more shifters in need of refuge these days.

The Organization was starting to get a reputation among shifters in the south—even if they hadn’t known what to call the mysterious scientists who were abducting their kind. More and more lions and non-lions alike had come to Lone Pine for protection as the rumors got worse—even breeds who were typically more isolated, like cougars. And hawks.

Though there were no other bird shifters at Lone Pine.

He’d heard that his kind were on the verge of extinction and the lack of a single other avian shifter seemed to support that. Adrian Sokolov. Last of his kind. And he couldn’t even fucking shift anymore.

Grace bumped his shoulder. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Question?”

“Why the obsession with the evil doctor?”

“She isn’t evil.” He didn’t know what she was, but he knew she wasn’t evil.

“She isn’t good,” Grace countered.

“I’m not obsessed.”

“Just because you’re careful not to mention her name now doesn’t mean I can’t see the obsession pouring off you in waves.”

Adrian didn’t have an answer for that, so he let his attention be caught by a sleek feline form darting through the obstacle course at stunning speed. The Siberian tiger was as large as any of the lions and should have been slowed by all that bulk and muscle, but the big cat seemed to defy the laws of physics with each leap and twist, unnaturally agile. “Jesus,” he whispered.

“Yeah. He’s a royal prick, but Dominec can sure move.”

“That’s
Dominec
?”

He’d met the surly asshole a handful of times, but never seen him in feline form. Or moving like
that
.

The tiger finished the course easily and turned his head to scoff at the rookies scrambling desperately in his wake, the move revealing the shiny, ridged scars that marked one entire side of his face in both feline and human form. His head swiveled slowly until he was staring fixedly at where Grace and Adrian sat watching on the bench.

Adrian didn’t know much about feline behaviors, but he had a feeling the sustained eye contact was intended as aggression, especially when Grace stiffened beside him. They were working with Dominec as part of the incursion team that would stage the attack on the Organization. He was an asshole, but a smart one—and of everyone on the team, he seemed the most inclined to watch Adrian with barely veiled mistrust.

Apparently through with the staring contest, the tiger leapt off the back of the course and disappeared into the woods with a flick of his tail.

“Don’t mind him,” Grace muttered, slouching back onto the bench beside him. “He’s just being a dick. Per usual.”

“He doesn’t trust me.” And he wasn’t the only one. Sometimes he would catch even Roman—who Adrian had learned was the Alpha’s chosen successor—staring at him with hints of suspicion.

“He doesn’t trust anyone.”

That much at least was true. Dominec wasn’t exactly known for making friends among his pride mates. His scars had marked more than just his face. Adrian didn’t blame him, but he was cautious around the tiger—he seemed too damaged to be relied on.

“He’ll come around,” Grace went on, though her tone was dubious.

Adrian knew as well as anyone that this first mission was a test. A test of the materials Rachel had given him and a test of his own trustworthiness. A test Dominec seemed convinced he would fail. He helped them plan and the leopard leading the team acknowledged that he was an asset strategically, but everything he said was weighed.

Adrian was allowed freedom within the pride, but there were always eyes on him. Frequently those eyes were Grace’s. Though she seemed to be a friend and never acted like a jailer, he couldn’t help wondering if she had been assigned to guard him. Keep him from learning anything too sensitive about the pride until they knew for certain where his loyalties lay.

Grace cringed as one of the rookies took a hard fall, but it was Dominec she spoke of when she said, “He doesn’t understand why you want to protect an Organization doctor. None of us do.”

Everyone he’d met in the pride seemed to have their own reason for hating the Organization. Adrian just as much as anyone else. Of course he hated Rachel. She’d betrayed him. She’d tormented him during his captivity, seeming to take pleasure in his pain, calling him a mindless animal—each insult more biting because of what he had once thought she could be to him.

But there was still that idiotic hope that she had only cursed him because she was forced to, that she was still his Rachel beneath it all. The memories of his time in Organization custody were foggy and disjointed, while his memories of the time before remained vivid and fresh, screwing with his heart and mind.

He remembered with absolute clarity the first night he’d laid eyes on her. And all the nights after.

He’d known that every meeting was a gamble, known that she could be a plant, a spy, and that even if she was exactly what she advertised herself to be, she was still one of them. But every time they met, he felt it. The tug at his soul. His mate.

He’d believed she was The One, but he’d been wrong. And none of that could matter now. He wouldn’t let it.

Adrian had only one—justifiable—reason for protecting Rachel. He said as much to Grace. “She’s an ally. She’s helped dozens of shifters escape and we need what she knows. Killing her would be shooting ourselves in the foot.”

Provided she wasn’t already dead. She’d said to check the message boards where they’d once scheduled their meets online, but they taunted him with their silence.

Tomorrow the team would leave. Two days after that they would arrive at the Organization facility where he had been held. He might know what had happened to her in as little as seventy-two hours.

“Be careful picking your friends, Hawkeye,” Grace said softly, still watching the runners on the course. “Some are dangerous to have.”

She stood, leaving him then. But he knew he wasn’t alone. He wasn’t one of them yet. He’d never be left unobserved. But perhaps he could be. If he could take Rachel prisoner. Prove to them all that she was not his obsession. She was his tool, his weapon to be used against the Organization. Nothing more.

Not anymore.

There was a dent in the door and scratches in the steel that could only have been left by claws. Adrian stared at the marks, the same thought that had been rolling around slowly in his brain since the second they’d seen the facility rising again to the forefront.

Rachel was gone.

The facility had been completely abandoned. This was the place. His memory of that time was far from sharp, but he knew this door. Knew he had let it close with Rachel still trapped inside.

There was no blood. He would have thought that was a good sign, if not for the overpowering stench of bleach that had all the feline-shifters in the room gagging and covering their sensitive noses.

It was all gone. Not a scrap of paper left behind. Even the electronic pads sealing all the doors and windows had been stripped. All that was left was a husk of a building. But a husk that perfectly matched the schematics on the hard drive. That was a victory, he supposed. The data looked to be legit.

Adrian stared at the dent in the door.

One hundred and three. There were one hundred and three more Organization facilities scattered around the world. One hundred and three other prisons and laboratories and way stations where Rachel could be. One hundred fucking three.

Dominec whirled, putting his fist through a wall. “We were too slow,” the asshole tiger snarled, and for once Adrian agreed with him.

They’d waited too long. Waiting for his feeble body to be up to the trip.

“We’ll try the other locations,” Kye, their usually reticent snow-leopard leader, said. “They can’t evacuate them all.”

But they all heard the lie in the words. The Organization
could
evacuate every facility they knew of. One hundred and three empty buildings.

“We aren’t giving up,” Roman vowed. “This is just the beginning.”

The Alpha’s heir hadn’t been supposed to be on the incursion team, but on the second day Roman and a slim, dark-haired cougar-shifter named Patch had joined them. The two had been in constant physical contact with one another ever since. The other lions on the mission whispered about the Alpha’s heir and the cougar, but Adrian kept his head down and his focus on the mission at hand.

The failed mission.

Now the Alpha’s heir reached over and cupped Patch’s nape. “We aren’t giving up,” Roman murmured, the words so low that no shifter without avian hearing would have caught them. “We’ll find her.”

Her.
The reminder was sharp. Everyone on the incursion team was looking for someone. Patch’s mother was in captivity and her father now believed to be dead, thanks to the information on the hard drives. It wasn’t just Rachel they had failed to find. In fact, she would be so far down their priority list her name probably fell off the bottom of the page.

But for Adrian, finding her had just become priority one.

The door was dented.

It was a small thing, but he couldn’t stop staring at it. Only a shifter would have the strength to do that to a steel door. She’d released someone. Someone who could have attacked her and dented the door in the process of spilling her blood. Or they could have been trying to bang their way out together while he was running up the hillside as fast as that fucking super juice would carry him.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about her. The emotion that burned in his chest was too complicated to examine. He’d put it in a box, figure it out later.

He simply knew that he had to find her. It was his mission. And the Hawk always completed his missions.