Chapter 66 RUNNING AGAIN
Ava's POV
We were out of the guesthouse in four minutes.
Dominic didn't panic, he never panicked, he just shifted into that mode he had where everything became very fast and very certain and he was already on the phone to Adrian before I'd even processed what Sera's message meant, telling him to get the cars around the back and to bring my mother's bag if she had one.
My mother had one small bag, she'd packed light when she walked out of that hospital, and she picked it up without being asked and followed me down the stairs without a word and I thought again about how different she seemed, not just physically, something in the way she moved, like a woman who had made a decision and was at peace with it.
Elias went first out the back door to check the alley and gave the signal and we all came out fast, my mother between me and Dominic, Adrian already at the car with the engine running and the back door open.
We got in and Adrian pulled out before the door was fully closed and I looked through the back window at the street behind us and it was empty but that meant nothing because they'd found the cottage without anyone seeing them coming either.
"How did they find the cottage," I said to Dominic beside me.
"Someone talked," he said simply, and his eyes went briefly to the front of the car where my father was sitting in the passenger seat and I looked too and my father was looking straight ahead and said nothing.
"James," my mother said from the other side of me, very quietly, and my father's shoulders went rigid, "if you told them where we were I need you to say so now, not because I'll forgive it but because we need to know what they already know."
My father turned around in the seat and looked at my mother and his face was complicated in a way I didn't have the energy to decode right now.
"I didn't tell them about the cottage," he said, "but I think they may have put something on one of the cars before we left London, a tracker, I should have checked and I didn't check and that was my mistake."
"Pull over," Dominic said to Adrian immediately.
Adrian pulled over on a side street and Dominic and Elias got out and checked both cars quickly, running their hands under the wheel arches and bumpers and after two minutes Elias held something up, small and flat, a magnetic tracker stuck to the underside of the second car.
He dropped it on the pavement and crushed it under his heel and got back in and we left the second car where it was and everyone transferred into ours, seven people in one car which was not comfortable but was better than being followed.
"Where are we going," Adrian asked, pulling back into traffic.
"Sera has one more location," Elias said from the back where he was wedged between my mother and the door, and I noticed they were very carefully not touching and also very carefully not looking at each other, "a flat in East London, private, no record anywhere."
"Call her," Dominic said and Elias did and we drove.
My mother's hand found mine on the seat between us and I held it and looked out the window at London going past and felt the mark on my shoulder pulse once, warm and insistent, and pressed my free hand over it.
"It does that a lot now?" my mother asked quietly, looking at my shoulder.
"More and more," I said.
She nodded slowly like that confirmed something she already suspected and said, "when it gets warm like that it means the bond is trying to move forward, your body is ready even if your mind hasn't caught up."
"Has your mind caught up," she asked after a moment, not pushing, just asking.
I thought about Dominic beside me and everything he'd told me and everything he'd done and everything that was still unknown and terrifying and I thought about the warehouse in New York where I'd watched him transform and stepped toward him instead of running and I said, "mostly."
She squeezed my hand and didn't push further and I was grateful.
We got to the East London flat an hour later and it was on the third floor of an ordinary building on an ordinary street and Sera was already there, sitting at a small kitchen table with tea like she lived there, and she looked at all seven of us filing through the door and said only, "I'll need more cups."
The flat was small for seven people but manageable and Elias and Adrian immediately went to the windows to check sight lines and my father sat in the corner and was quiet which was the most useful thing he'd done all day and my mother sat at the kitchen table with Sera and within ten minutes they were talking like they'd known each other for years which was either a mother thing or a marked-bloodline thing and possibly both.
Dominic pulled me into the small hallway outside the bathroom and closed us in and kissed me before I could say anything. The kiss was hard and hungry, his mouth claiming mine with a desperation that made my knees weak. I kissed him back just as fiercely, my hands fisting in his shirt as I pulled him closer.
His tongue swept into my mouth, hot and demanding, and I moaned softly against him. One of his hands slid down my body, gripping my hip and yanking me flush against him so I could feel how hard he already was. The other hand pushed up under my shirt, palm rough and warm against my skin. His fingers traced the edge of my bra before slipping underneath to cup my breast, thumb brushing over my nipple until it tightened into a stiff peak.
I gasped into his mouth and he swallowed the sound, kissing me deeper, messier. Our lips were slick, breaths mingling hot and fast. He broke the kiss just long enough to nip at my bottom lip, then dove back in, smudging the kiss into something wet and filthy, tongues sliding, teeth grazing, saliva shining on our lips when we parted for air.
His hand left my breast and trailed down my stomach, fingers deftly popping the button of my jeans and sliding the zipper down. He didn’t hesitate. His hand slipped inside my panties, two thick fingers gliding through my already slick folds.
“Fuck, Ava,” he growled low against my mouth, voice rough with need. “You’re soaked for me.”
I whimpered, hips rocking instinctively into his touch as he circled my clit with his thumb, slow and deliberate at first, then faster. His fingers teased my entrance before pushing inside me—two at once, stretching me in that perfect, burning way that made my head fall back against the wall. He curled them, stroking that sensitive spot deep inside while his thumb kept working my clit.
I bit my lip to keep from moaning too loudly, but it was useless. Small, needy sounds escaped me as he fingered me harder, faster, the wet, obscene sounds of his fingers pumping in and out of my pussy filling the narrow hallway. My juices coated his hand, dripping down his wrist as he fucked me with his fingers, kissing me through every gasp and shudder.
He kissed me again, even messier this time—lips swollen, tongues tangling sloppily, spit smearing across my chin as he devoured me. I was grinding against his hand, chasing the pleasure building hot and tight in my core, so close—
A sharp knock sounded on the hallway door.
“Ava? Dominic?” My mother’s voice, calm but clear. “Sera needs everyone out here. Your father’s about to talk.”
We froze.
Dominic’s fingers were still buried deep inside me, my walls fluttering around them. His forehead dropped to mine, breath ragged.
“Fuck,” he whispered, voice strained.
He slowly pulled his fingers out of me, leaving me aching and empty. I watched, dazed, as he brought them to his mouth and licked them clean, eyes dark with frustration and hunger.
He helped me straighten my clothes with quick, efficient movements, though my cheeks were flushed and my lips were obviously kiss-swollen and shiny. He wiped the smear of saliva from my chin with his thumb, then sucked it into his mouth too.
“Later,” he promised, voice low and rough. “When this is over, I’m going to fuck you properly.”
I nodded, still trembling, and we stepped out of the hallway looking as composed as we could manage.
Then my father stood up from his corner and cleared his throat and everyone looked at him and he said, “there’s something I haven’t told you yet, about who’s running the hunters now, who’s been running them for the last three years,” and his voice had something in it that made the room go quiet, something that sounded like a man who was about to say something he couldn’t take back.
“The person coordinating the operations against bonded pairs,” he said, looking directly at Dominic, “is not someone from our faction, it’s someone from yours.”
Dominic went very still.
“Who,” he said.
My father looked at him steadily and said the name and I didn’t recognize it but Dominic did, I could see it in his face, the way the blood left it completely.
“That’s not possible,” Dominic said quietly.
“I’ve seen the communications myself,” my father said, “I’m sorry, I know what this means.”
Dominic stood up and walked to the window and stood there with his back to the room and his hands at his sides and nobody spoke and outside London carried on being completely indifferent and I watched the set of his shoulders and knew that whatever name my father had just said had changed something fundamental and we were not, in fact, almost through it.
We were nowhere near through it.