“Look at me,” I call, but she doesn’t turn her head again. I feel like I have let her down, like I have abandoned her. My heart is racing, my mouth feels dry, and my head is pounding.
“Eirik?” Colborn calls. But I ignore him as I fight this feeling of urgency within me to protect this woman. “Eirik?” Colborn places his hand on my shoulder, shaking me. “What the hell is wrong with you, we don’t have all night.”
“I’m taking her!” I can’t leave her here. She is clearly in pain, and I need to help her.
“You’re not taking anyone; you think I don’t want to take all of them with me? But there might be more, and we need help to get as many of them out of here and home before they move them or kill them. Look at me!” I know that what he is saying is true, but I can’t leave her here. “Eirik!”
“She’s mine!” The words seem to have been wrenched out of my soul. Is that possible? Is she really mine? The urgency I feel, the overwhelming sense of desperation to free her.
“Fuck me!” Colborn grunts as he lifts his phone to his ear.
“We have a major fucking problem,” he says into the phone. I know he has to be phoning Tor, and that what he said earlier is true. If I take her, we might not be able to save the other women because they might take them away or kill them before we can get to them. But how can I leave her here? How can I…
“Here, Tor wants to talk to you.”
I take the phone, continuing to look at the woman sitting on the floor. Her head is still laying back against the bed, her eyes still closed, completely ignoring me.
“Yeah?”
“Are you sure?” Tor’s question has me grunting. What does he think? He would know that from all the men I would never admit to a mate unless completely certain.
“Yeah.”
“If you break her out now, we might lose all the other women. I will get all the MC ready, and we will be there by tomorrow morning. We need to bring back as many women as we can Eirik, we need to make sure that we help them.” I know that what he is saying is true, but I don’t think I can leave her here. Everything in me is screaming for me to ignore everything else and just take her away to freedom, take her away from everything. “Eirik?” Tor snaps.
“Yeah?”
“Let me talk to Colborn.” Handing the phone to Colborn, I take in a deep breath wishing that I could take in her essence.
“We need to go. I have taken photos of all the women in the other rooms. Tor says we will be back tomorrow.” Colborn once again places his hand on my shoulder, squeezing in understanding. “You need to do this Eirik, she will be fine until tomorrow.”
“How do you know that?” They might come in and kill her before I can come back. I can’t let that happen.
“There is a schedule on that desk. Room three, which is this one, has nothing scheduled until two weeks from today. Room eight is the one that is scheduled tomorrow at one in the afternoon, so we better fucking be here before that, because I told her I would help her out.”
I take in a deep breath, raising my phone so I can take a photo of the woman. I don’t even know her name.
“Did the schedule have her name?”
“No, just numbers,” Colborn replies as he starts making his way towards the door I opened.
“Shit, we need to fix this, or they will know we were here.” I look at the door, it seems fine except for the bracket where the lock slots in.
“I will melt the fucking steel slightly. Should hold it so we can close the door again.” He takes the bracket in his hand. A few minutes later the bracket is red hot as he places it in place.
“Someone is coming. We need to hurry,” I warn as I hear the footsteps approaching.
Colborn pulls the door shut, holding it a few seconds before letting go. We both breathe out in relief when the door holds shut.
“Let’s hide in there, it’s a lab,” Colborn calls as he heads towards two doors down. We are just closing the door quietly after us when the footsteps stop.
“The machine rooms?” we hear someone saying. “We just had a check done on that board.” He starts walking again, but this time the footsteps are receding. “I’m coming down.”
I incline my head towards the door. Time to get out of here. We need to get to the kitchen and out through there.
We head in the direction we know the kitchen is at. Each step closer to the kitchen is a step further from my woman. The thought still doesn’t seem to register. After all these years thinking that Isabella was the only woman for me—thinking that no matter what, I didn’t want a mate. Now here I am obsessed with saving her from this hell hole.
I’m a protector, a warrior against injustice and evil. That must be why I have this driving force to take her to safety. She might be my mate, but I doubt she will ever make me as happy as Isabela did.