“No, I can’t say I’ve seen any of that,” Caleb answered, fighting the urge to say something snarky instead. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t destroy a good portion of the world to save the rest. I’d find another way.”
“That’s because you’re naive and foolish,” Harrington ground out, glancing at Uriel as his right-hand man continued to move closer to Caleb and Brielle. “Don’t you think I looked for a better way to do this? There isn’t one. It’s this. Or the end of the world.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Caleb saw Brielle moving to a position so she could cover him while keeping an eye on all the bad guys at the same time. But that was getting harder to do by the second as the Vandals continued to spread out. He’d hoped Julian and Kiara would show up at some point to even the odds a little, but they hadn’t yet. And they might not show up at all. At least, not until it was too late to matter.
Caleb turned back to lock eyes with Harrington. “You can’t honestly believe we’re going to let you do this, can you? We’ve already taken out five of the nukes. You can’t stop us from reaching the rest.”
Harrington barely reacted to that announcement. “The five you’ve disarmed don’t matter. The ones that are left are more than enough to do what I want. They will go off. You will all die. And then the lasers will fire. Just as I planned. Exactly as I’ve already seen it.”
Caleb might have considered arguing, but Uriel and the other Vandals were lifting their weapons. And his first instinct was to protect Brielle.
But Brielle was already moving, and damn, she was fast. She charged across the room, smashing one of Uriel’s guards in the face, ripping the assault weapon out of his hand, and then firing half a dozen rounds into his chest at point-blank range. She was moving on to the next man before the first one hit the floor, her hand reaching out to borrow the next person’s abilities even as she took him down.
Caleb had watched Brielle fight before, but this seemed to be the first time she’d gone all in with her gift like this, absorbing one fighting style after the next, dropping one empty weapon only to strip another loaded weapon off the next bad guy. Even as Caleb launched himself at Harrington, knowing he had to get through him to go after the nukes, he found himself staring a little at his soul mate. Because seriously, she was frigging awesome.
Then Uriel flicked a finger in her direction and Brielle went flying across the room, smashing into a wall so hard that Caleb felt the impact. A second later, Caleb’s .45 was ripped out of his hand and sent flying down one of the tunnels.
Caleb’s instincts warred over the desire to both run to Brielle’s side to see if she was okay and kill the man who’d hurt her. In the end, he retained enough logic to realize that if he didn’t stop Uriel, the asshole would hurt Brielle again and again. So he swerved to the right, closing the distance between him and the lead Vandal in the span of a single heartbeat. Caleb brought his hand up in a slashing sweep, his claws raking across the man’s chest. But even as he drew blood, Uriel was reacting, shoving Caleb across the room without barely lifting a hand.
Caleb flew through the air, watching as Uriel turned to focus on Brielle again. Then he lost sight of everything as he crashed into something extremely hard. There was a cracking sound, and the obstruction broke under the force of his impact, the entire structure clattering to the ground with him on top of it. When a sharp pain lanced up his back, suggesting he’d broken something, he looked down to see that he’d landed on the nuke.
Seeing Uriel heading for Brielle, Caleb panicked. He picked up the nearest thing at hand that he could use as a weapon. It was only after he’d beaten one of the supernatural security guards with it, then tossed the weapon across the room toward Uriel that he realized he’d picked up the nuke. But Uriel batted it away it with another wave of his hand, smashing the weapon so violently against the far wall that it knocked out a chunk of rock.
A small part of Caleb’s mind pointed out that bouncing a nuke around like that probably wasn’t a good idea, but then Uriel turned to Brielle, and Caleb stopped worrying about the damn nuke.
Caleb ran toward Brielle, but Harrington of all people stopped him, picking up an MP5 submachine gun from one of his dead security guards and using it with more proficiency than Caleb would have ever given him credit for. No matter which direction Caleb leaped, the older man seemed to know exactly where he was going. That was likely true, considering Harrington could see the future. Caleb had no idea how many times he was hit, but he was pretty sure there wasn’t a part of his body left unharmed.
For a second, he wondered why Harrington was able to read him so well right now when earlier he’d said he couldn’t always get a read on him. But then he saw that Uriel had reached Brielle, standing right over her, about to shoot.
Caleb lost it then, his thoughts going hazy as his omega took over and reacted. He sprinted toward Brielle, his bullet-riddled body hurting like hell, slowing only long enough to pick up the nuclear warhead and sling it in Harrington’s direction.
Then he was on Uriel, only to get smashed to the ground like a rag doll. He slid across the rough floor, coming to rest against Brielle’s side. The look in her eyes when she saw how badly he was bleeding was heart-wrenching. Then she reached out and touched his face.
Brielle’s dark eyes glowed vivid blue, then pearly white fangs extended and claws appeared at the tips of her slender fingers.
Uriel smiled at Caleb as he aimed his weapon at Brielle’s back and pulled the trigger. She barely flinched as she jumped to her feet and leaped through the air at Uriel, her claws tearing into him while her savage snarls had him stumbling backward as fast as he could.
Harrington and the last of his security guards turned their weapons on Brielle and pulled the triggers.
With a snarl, Caleb was up and charging across the room, his omega werewolf taking complete control, slashing through one person after another, ready to kill anyone and everyone who’d ever considered harming his soul mate.
Caleb was fully aware of his tendency to lose control. It was so commonplace that his STAT teammates had almost come to expect it. But in truth, no matter how bad it had ever gotten, he’d always fought tooth and nail to retain at least some small piece of himself, terrified that if the werewolf inside him took over completely, he’d never find his way back. But this time, seeing Brielle being hurt, there was no thought of holding anything back. He let go, freely watching as his omega consumed every last shred of that which he thought of as Caleb Lynch.
He felt his body twist and spasm, claws and fangs extending even further than before, muscles bulking and flexing along his back shoulders and legs, rage filling his chest, urging him to tear anyone between him and Brielle to pieces.
Harrington was the one who ended up getting in his path. The seer moved his weapon rapidly left and right but hesitated to pull the trigger as if he wasn’t sure which direction Caleb’s attack would come from. But if the man was waiting until he got a read on what Caleb was going to do next, he’d be waiting a long damn time. Because Caleb wasn’t in the driver’s seat any longer. Hell, he wasn’t even in the car.