Jaxson (River Pack Wolves 1) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (16 page)

“Why do you have such an interest in this wolf?” The fire was back in Gwen’s eyes. “Please tell me you’re not tangled up with him. They’re sexual beasts but really not good for much else.”

Olivia straightened. “Jaxson is a good man.”

Her face transformed into a picture of horror, briefly, then melted into a piteous expression. “Oh, dear. You’re in love with the creature.”

Olivia scowled at her aunt’s obvious lack of respect for wolves, but there wasn’t much use in denying it. “Yes.”

She nodded. “And you want him for your own.”

“No.” Olivia glared at her aunt, daring her to question it.

She frowned. “I don’t quite—”

Olivia balled up her fists. “Jaxson needs to be free to choose his own mate. A proper mate. And I’m his only chance to make that happen. This is
my
only chance to do something decent with my life for once. To make up for—”

Gwen’s eyes had gone wide.

“To make up for killing my parents.” All the air went out of Olivia’s lungs. She said it. Finally.
Out loud.
And to the one person who could destroy her by barely lifting a finger.

Gwen’s face twisted up. “Olivia, dear, that wasn’t your fault! You were just a child, coming into your powers and—”

Olivia held up her hand to cut her off. She’d made all the excuses in her own head for years. None of it changed the fact that her parents were dead by her own hand. “It doesn’t matter. It happened. And I can’t undo it. What matters
now
is that I need to break this curse. Before I’m too in love with Jaxson to be able to let him go.” She was afraid it might already be too late for that, but she was going to
try.

Gwen’s concern wrinkled up her magically young face… then slowly, it relaxed. She was silent for a moment, seeming to look all over the air surrounding Olivia. She remembered that scanning look from when she was a child, when her mother would read her aura. Her aunt was judging her somehow by the essence of her intentions. Her thoughts. Olivia kept still and quiet while she did, hoping that she’d see Olivia’s determination in the colors visible only to true witches.

Finally, her aunt nodded. “I see. Well, then. We better find a way to break this spell.”

Olivia’s body sagged with relief. Then, impulsively, she reached out and threw her arms around the tall, gorgeous witch who was going to save not only Jaxson, but her as well. “Thank you so much, Aunt Gwen.”

When she pulled back, there was a shine in Gwen’s eyes to go with her smile.

Jaxson pulled his car up to the meeting spot where Jace had assembled the assault team.

Everyone, including Jaxson, had changed into combat gear—lightweight body armor they could still shift out of, if necessary, plus ultra-light helmets with built-in mics for communicating while human. All told, they had two vans, one car, a dozen shifters, and a small arsenal of weapons and tech for taking down the gate. The meetup was two blocks away from the warehouse, and the sun was starting to sink, but the cover of night was still hours away.

“What’s our status?” Jaxson asked his brother, who was holding one of their secure handsets to his ear.

Jace held up a finger, listened to something on the handset. “Copy that.” Then he turned to Jaxson. “About half an hour ago, a van arrived and entered the gate. It drove straight into the warehouse through a back garage door. Nothing has left since Murphy arrived and set up his surveillance, and there’s obviously still activity on the ground, so…”

Jaxson nodded. “You think Jared’s still in there.” The bad guys wouldn’t bring new shifter victims to the warehouse, if they’d already decamped from that location. “What do you think they’re waiting for?”

Jace shrugged. “Maybe they think Jared is the extent of our plans for assault?”

Jaxson frowned. That seemed unlikely. “More likely they don’t have a good place to go. Biding their time until they get a new prison set up.”

Jace nodded his agreement. “Either way,
someone
is still there. And I’m betting Jared is, too.”

“Agreed.” Jaxson glanced at the late-afternoon sun. “Time is still against us. I don’t think we can wait until nightfall.”

“I thought you might say that.” Jace smirked and waved over Taylor. He brought a handful of gear—thick rubber gloves, a long metal rod, and jumper cables. No doubt his electrical-fence-breaking kit.

“Hey, boss,” Taylor said. “I’m ready to take ‘er down whenever you say.”

Jaxson looked askance at the equipment. “We’re not going to have much surprise on our side. Which means we need overwhelming force. Shock and awe.”

Jace cocked his head. “What are you thinking? Just ramming the gate?”

“We’re going to have to do that regardless,” Jaxson said. “Cutting through the fence and going on foot is too slow. Too much time for them to react. On the other hand, the distance between the road and the shack is pretty small. They won’t see the truck coming until we’re breathing down their necks.”

Taylor looked disappointed.

“However, I’m worried about shocking the vehicles and dragging a ton of electrified razor wire with us into the compound.” He tipped his head to Taylor. “So I still want you to blow the fence, but I need you to wait until we’re about to ram. That means you’re sitting this one out, Taylor. And watching our rear flank.”

Taylor nodded. “You got it, boss.” He flicked on his headset and spoke through the mic. “I’ll be set up in ten.” Then he trotted off with his gear toward the warehouse.

Jace winced as he watched Taylor go. “I wish we had more manpower on this.”

Jaxson glanced at the crew they had remaining. He and Jace were ex-military—Jace was an Army medic, but he’d seen more than his share of combat—and all rest of the Riverwise pack had military experience of one kind or another.

There was one shifter he didn’t recognize mixing in with his crew.

“Who’s the grunt?” Jaxson asked, gesturing with his chin to the dark-haired kid chatting it up with Murphy. He was young, probably no more than twenty-two.

“Daniel Wilding. He’s Army, active duty, stateside between tours. Son of a lieutenant colonel in the Wilding pack. After what went down with Cassie, he wanted in on anything we were planning.”

Jaxson nodded. “All right. Brief everyone on the plan. We’ll head out as soon as Taylor gives the go.”

Jace gave a quick nod and jogged off toward the group of shifters gathered around the vans. Jaxson knew they had all tallied up the odds when they signed up for this, but he still didn’t like it. They hadn’t tried a direct assault from the beginning due to lack of intel… but also because it was dangerous, and it tipped their hand, exposing who they were and endangering the entire pack. But more importantly, they still didn’t know who they were up against.

And an unknown enemy was the most dangerous kind.

But they didn’t have a choice at this point. He wasn’t going to leave Jared to rot in their cells, enduring whatever went on in that warehouse. His brother had already been through too much—more than any man or shifter should have to. Jaxson wasn’t going to let them slice into him any further, physically or mentally.

They piled into the vans and waited for Taylor’s signal. When it came, they formed a two-van caravan, gaining speed until they took the turn toward the gate. Jaxson drove the lead van with Jace riding shotgun. Jace gave the thumbs up that Taylor had blown the fence just before they reached the shack. The surprised guard couldn’t get off a shot before they crashed the gate, but gunfire quickly followed after.

Jaxson sped around the back of the warehouse, gaining cover behind the square aluminum-siding building and also seeking out the rear garage door. Dust clouded around the van as he skidded to a stop. The second van was right beside him. His shifters spilled out of both vehicles and sprinted toward the building, taking up stations, weapons at the ready, on either side of the garage door. A small human-sized door to the side was an ambush waiting to happen, and they didn’t have time for Murphy and his munitions to blow the garage door. It looked flimsy enough, and he hoped like hell it would give way to the van, because that was all they had for a battering ram. He threw it in reverse to gain some distance, slammed to another stop, then gunned the engine and popped the clutch, spinning out rocks behind the van as it barreled toward the door.

He ducked behind the cover of the dashboard just before impact.

The shock threw him against the seat then knocked him hard on the van’s oversized steering wheel, but the van kept going, so he blindly jammed his foot on the brake. The van skidded to a stop. His vision was doubled for a moment, and he couldn’t see into the murk inside the warehouse anyway, but he heard the shouts of his crew as they spilled into the building after him. He blinked away the blurriness and checked the side mirror, which was shockingly intact—they had definitely breached the door, which was a blown-out wreckage of sheet metal behind him. The van was still running. He tensed to use it as a weapon if there were forces inside the warehouse… but as far as he could tell with the dusty, dim light, it was empty.

Jaxson blinked, put the van into park, and climbed out.

His crew were likewise standing in the middle of the warehouse with wary but amazed looks on their faces. The place was two stories tall, with darkened rafters filling the upper half, but it was the ground level that attracted their attention. Steel-barred cages, ten by ten, stood empty except for mangy cots and what looked like buckets for toilets.

“There’s the van,” Jace said over his helmet mic. He was at the front of their crew, pointing to a white van at the far end.

“So where’s the driver?” Jaxson replied, pulling his weapon out and sweeping along the empty cages. But he couldn’t see anyone in the entire building. As he crept forward with the rest of the crew, checking each cell, he heard a muffled grunt.

Jaxson said over the mic, “Everyone hold.”

They stilled and listened. The muffled sound came again, with some rattling this time.

“It’s coming from the van,” Jace said, hurrying forward. His men were already on it. As they got closer, a medical station was revealed behind it. Cabinets and tables and gleaming metal instrumentation that was obviously used for some kind of medical procedure on the inmates. Jaxson picked up his pace, but just as a shining silver table swung into view, and he saw
someone strapped to it
with hand and foot restraints, he heard one of his crew shout, “It’s Jared!”

Jaxson screeched to a stop as dread washed through him. “Jace!” he shouted.

But it was too late.

A popping, like firecrackers, filled the warehouse—Jaxson recognized the sound of tranquilizer darts just as his men started dropping like flies. Jaxson swung his weapon around wildly, looking for the source, realizing too late the ambush came from above. He fired off several rounds at the shadowy figures filling the rafters, but darts pinched his shoulder, legs, and chest simultaneously. A half dozen bee bites that blurred his vision and clattered his gun to the floor.

He shifted to wolf form, dislodging the darts and leaving them behind with his clothing, but his paws scrabbled ineffectively on the concrete floor. The tranq was already turning his limbs useless, even in wolf form.

A trap. 
The whole thing was a trap.

Jaxson only got a few feet toward his fallen brothers before the darkness took him.

“Why do I have to be involved?” Olivia asked.

Aunt Gwen pursed her perfectly shaped lips. “Well, we could invite your shifter friend
here
to help us determine whether the curse is still in effect. But that probably wouldn’t end well.”

No, it wouldn’t. Plus Olivia didn’t want Jaxson to know anything about this until it was complete… and irreversible. “All right,” she said with a sigh. “What do I have to do?”

“I need some essence of the man, something to help me find him in the magical world.”

Olivia frowned, suddenly uncertain. “You’re not going to
do
anything to him… are you?”

“Well, of course not, dear.” Gwen’s face twisted up like Olivia had suggested she take a dip in the dumpster outside the coven’s high-rise office.