Chapter 114

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 114 Chapter 111 – Reunited? I of III Badru “We need more of us for this,” I squinted down at the compound, but it was who stood on the edge of the ridge that held my attention; Astennu.

Through the binoculars, I could tell he was scanning the enclosed chalet and finding us our best way in, a plan of attack forming in his mind. The entire drive up here, following his trail, my focus had been split between the road and our bond. We had seen each other tired from pushing our auras, but I had never seen my brother that wiped out. And on top of it all he ran for miles upon miles. I had half a mind to have knocked him out in the car and forcibly taken his place.

“No, I think if we strike quickly, we have the element of surprise,” Astennu lowered his hands, gripping the binoculars tightly at chest level. ‘And Ru? Quit staring, I’m fine.’

‘I found you out of it and bleeding. Every time we split up, you get injured.’

When I felt my shoulder burn, feeling his pain as my own as he faced Finley, a gaping fear festered away. I thought that could have been it. I knew he could win any fight that came his way, but it was the first time either of us had tasted the bitter vulnerability of mortality, that we weren’t impervious to harm.

And neither time was I there to help him.

‘I pushed my aura, that was all,’ he swivelled his head back to me. ‘I ran up here just fine, didn’t I?’

“Can you two save your twin arguments for another time?” Catalina grouched, cursing in Spanish as she gave up on the devices in her hand. “Argh! We’ll have to go in without the earpieces. They aren’t charging fast enough and the two new ones to replace those we lost after we shifted are struggling with all the rock and tree interference.”

“Then we’ll have to rely on the mind-link and hope that’s enough,” my twin approached the SUV and I followed behind him, standing at his side as we formed a circle between the four of us. “Adrian, you’ll stay up here with that long-range rifle and watch our backs.”

“You’re leaving me behind?” He faked an overly dramatic sob. “After all the hours I dedicated to you as your fake mate, you’re breaking up with m-”

Catalina cut him off with a keen slap around the back of his head. “Shut up, tonto del culo (i***t).”

He cut her a sharp glare, rubbing the point of impact.

“As I was saying, Adrian,” Astennu could hardly keep a smug grin from his face. “You need to stay up here and watch our backs. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be the only one able to raise the alarm. No matter what, don’t come rushing to help. If we’re caught, you get out and you call Matías and Thiago when you have cell reception for backup. As Alphas,” he gestured between himself, me and Catalina.

“We have value as hostages. You they could kill.”

“They can throw as many wolves at me as they want, I’m not being taken as anyone’s hostage,”

Catalina’s gaze drifted in the direction of the compound, determined yet vulnerable. “Not when my mate is down there.”

“Please, you’d just have to open your mouth and they’d be paying you to leave,” I muttered, feeling sorry for anyone who thought she would go quietly.

I was the next to receive her irritated slap, clipping the side of my ear. “Telosico (shut your trap).”

“Would you stop hitting us all?!” I rubbed my palm over the sting in my ear.

“Oh my f**k, we really are the dumbest rescue mission in existence,” Astennu massaged his aching temples and wiped his hands down his face.

‘If you don’t stop interrupting our brother, I’ll slap you!’ Baniti threatened, bouncing from paw to paw in agitation to get to our mate.

“Let’s just go and make this up as we go along,” Astennu slid a long case from the SUV’s trunk, thrusting it at Adrian’s chest. “Marceau is probably gonna see us coming anyway. There’s only one guard I can see on a heavy door and no patrol, which means he probably relies on motion sensors and cameras for perimeter protection.”

A smart approach that, unfortunately, would be harder to slip by. No physical patrol by a wolf meant no scent markers worn into the land over time, which meant little chance of finding the place via a sense of smell. And with a wolf, we could slip by it if we timed it right. Technology, not so much.

“Let me go first and I’ll take out the guy on the door,” Catalina was busy shoving items down the back of her waistband and handing me and Astennu similar bundles; a couple of sheathed knives dipped in silver and a side firearm. “I can hold my scent and my aura, he’ll never see me coming.”

“Enough talking,” I shoved the weapons within easy reach in the band of my pants and pulled my shirt over them to conceal their location. “Time to make some poor life choices.”

“And Adrian?” Astennu tagged on as we neared the ridge to climb down to make our approach. “Keep trying your cell. If you get some signal, phone your Alphas and get us a jumpstart on some reinforcements.”

“What, that’s it? No good luck kiss, pudding pie?”

“Is his mate attached to him?” Astennu hissed through his teeth when we reached the bottom of the rocky peak. “Because I may have to bury him on this mountain.”

“Ha, she’ll have your ass and not give a s**t that you’re an Alpha,” Catalina hopped down the tree-lined base of the ridge, taking up a position to shoulder a trunk and size up her opponent in the distance.

‘Do I get a good luck kiss?’ I playfully elbowed my brother in his side. ‘Or do pudding pies supersede twins?’

‘Goddess, all the times you can grasp sarcasm and it’s now?’

‘You’re joking around and haven’t even realised the devil spawn is waving over at you?’ Baniti pounded on the side of my head to gain my attention. ‘Hemar (ass).’

My head flew up in her direction to see the guard sprawled on the ground and Catalina waving her arms at us furiously that the coast was clear.

‘Am I saving your mate for you as well, or what?’ She signalled us from the door of the compound building. ‘Move it, clones.’

Hearing no alarms and no rush of enemies swarming to assist their fallen comrade, Astennu and I kept low and ran along the snow-covered clearing, illuminated by the crescent moon above. The only stain upon the white snow was the blood split from the guard, a precise slice made directly to his carotid artery on the side of his neck.

‘You moved fast,’ Astennu bent down to dismantle the firearm the man carried and check for a possible silent alarm he could have triggered.

‘You clones were busy with your clone banter,’ she huffed in an effort, shouldering the stiff and heavy metal door open. ‘I swear, am I the only one who wants their mate?!’

I was about to bite back a retort, incensed she thought I was taking any of this lightly. Of course I wanted my mate back, I had dreamed of my nour el-ain ever since she was taken from me. To my surprise, it was my own wolf that held me back.

‘She’s edgy because she has a mate and hasn’t even been able to hold them. We sailed through the air naked without a second thought when Evie ran,’ he reminded me of one of my more stupid ideas.

At the time, I naïvely thought it was the gallant way to catch my mate; to course through the air, have her land on top of me so she wouldn’t be hurt and then we would stare into each other’s eyes and fall in love in an instant. In hindsight, I saw the flaw in my plan.

The distorted reverberations of shouts and yelling echoed around the small clearing surrounding the mix of the cold concrete prison building and cosy French chalet. It was coming from an unknown point on the other side to us and it would only be a matter of time before it spilt out at our feet.

‘I don’t know what’s going on down there, but it’s pandemonium on the other side of the compound,’

Adrian put an answer to the commotion. ‘I can’t see what exactly from my vantage point, but it looks like a prison break is beginning to rage. I suggest you hurry, no dilly-dallying, pooh-bear.’

‘Is Evie with them?’ I asked for my brother, seeing as his temple was busily throbbing with a vein.

‘I can’t tell, but I don’t think so. And I’m not seeing anyone who looks like the description of her father or Catalina’s mate. You need to be quick and come out the way you’re going in. The guards are starting to fight and I can’t cover you if you head out another way.’

The stark corridor ahead of us through the doorway was only lit with the dim emergency lighting strips overheard, a silence emanated from it, punctuated by the odd shout and crash that could well stem from whatever riot boiling over outside.

‘Evie wouldn’t go anywhere without her father and if he was injured worse than we know in that match, they might have taken him to get medical attention,’ Astennu slowly crept forward inside, listening out for any dangers ahead. ‘If she went anywhere, it would be to get him.’

‘We follow the bond,’ I trailed behind my brother, sensing the same as him and feeling a gentle pull on our tether like soft hands pulling on a rope.

With every step, my adrenaline raced and the pulse in my ears soared. My body reacted like this once before, when I raced my twin up the stairs of our home to find our mate creeping from my bedroom. My whole world had spun on its axis for her in that moment and there wasn’t a mountain I wouldn’t have moved for her. The further I quickly marched into the corridor the more my world began to spin again, the embers that warmed it reigniting.

I was so engrossed in it, I almost missed the rustle and click of someone concealing themselves around the corner, multiple someones.

In a blur of movement, they spun from the corner to aim their gun. I yanked the long barrel up as they fired, sending the shot over my shoulder and I heard it clank into the stone behind me.

My world ceased to spin and came to a screeching halt, staring into a pair of eyes that glistened in every shade of grey and blue imaginable. They were more beautiful than I remembered and glazed with more sparkle than was possible.

“Evie?”

‘My queen!’ My wolf howled.