Page 336 of Immune

FORTY-SIX

KAITO

The bond doesn’t break.

That’s the first thing I know.

The second thing is worse.

It stretches, thin and wrong and dragged farther away from my chest with every passing second until Dakota becomes a line of pain being yanked from under my ribs.

Alive.

Afraid.

Furious.

Drugged.

But not gone.

Not gone. Not gone. Not gone.

I hold on to that because the alternative isn’t something I can survive. Not calmly.

Smoke has drowned the service lane, Biters are groaning and snarling against the fence behind us, bodies are piling up against the chain links and broken metal. Gunfire still splits through the air, small booms coming from the west wall. Men are shouting orders that don’t even matter anymore.

Literally none of it matters.

Because Dakota is gone, the hatch is sealed, and the chemical fog has swallowed her scent so thoroughly that my Alpha is clawing at the inside of my skin, blind and useless and really damned violent.

I stab a blade through the skull of a Biter reaching for Ewan’s back and yank it free with more force than really needed.

Ewan doesn’t make a joke, and that’s how I know everything really has gone to complete and total shit. His face ispale under the smoke and blood, eyes wide and mouth parted around breaths he can’t seem to pull into his lungs properly. His bond with Dakota is loud enough that I can literally feel the echo of it through mine, and it’s filled with panic, smoke, clove, and sheer terror turned sharp.

Fletcher is kneeling near the hatch, one hand pressed to the ground, and blood dripping from his mouth. He’s too still, but that’s not a shock. That’s the calculation forcing itself over the grief.

Good. That’s good. We’ll need that.

Xeon is standing over the sealed hatch, his hands braced flat against the metal. He doesn’t move and he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have a bond tearing him south, no thread under his ribs, and no outline of Dakota inside his chest telling him she’s still alive.

All he has is the last place she stood. Only scent stripped from the air. Only silence. His face is completely empty, and it’s that emptiness that’s the most dangerous thing in the lane we’re standing in.

Valeria eventually reaches us through the smoke with six armed guards behind her, some of them disposing of the compound’s straggling Biters that have snuck through the damaged gate. Maine is with them, a crazy-looking shotgun in both hands, and his face white under the blood and soot.

His eyes cut over the lane.

Fletcher.

Ewan.

Xeon.

Me.

Then the sealed hatch, and then back to us. His grip tightens around the shotgun, knuckles turning white, and I’m convinced I can hear his heartbeat start to speed up in his chest. Then he asks, “Where is she? Where’s Kota?”

No one is quick enough to answer, and his face changes. Not all at once, but piece by agonizing piece. Confusion first, quickly followed by denial. And then we get to the kind of fear that guts a person before the blade even reaches skin.