Maverick watched Hal run as he tried to catch his breath. He hadn't taken a breath during the whole domination. Once he was back to normal, he shifted into his human form, rushing to catch Pilar in his arms. He pulled her in a quick kiss, murmuring, "I'm going after Hal."
“No, Maverick, you can’t. He’s too dangerous. Who knows what he will try to pull on you this time?” she said back to him. “I can’t let you do that." Her voice was pleading, but Maverick's eyes narrowed a little.
She pressed forward, feeling desperate. "You need to leave the mill with me right now. We will go somewhere safe and think of a new plan,” she begged as she tried to get him to change his mind. That new alpha part of him had clearly begun to take over.
His voice got deeper, growing commanding without being mean. She had crossed the line. That much was clear. She thought she was helping him, but she needed to let him do what he wanted.
“You can’t let me? Really?" His mouth tightened into a firm line. "I'm not leaving with you. I'm going after Hal. I have to settle this." His voice was deep, and her lioness purred as she leaned into him, not bristling at the command in his tone. "What I need from you is to call the DOD. Tell them Hal got away.”
Pilar wanted to argue with him again. She knew in her heart that it wasn’t safe for him to go after Hal, especially alone, and with the amount of rage he carried with him, he wasn't going in with a clear mind.
She had almost lost him once already, and once was one time too many. She didn’t want to risk him being lost to her for good this time. She wouldn’t be able to live with that.
Her disobedience to his demands caused his temper to flare. Though in his eyes, she could still see the tenderness of his gaze, there was also a fire burning that warned her to stop.
“Pilar!" His eyes widened at the growl that escaped him.He was usually such a gentleman.He had never spoken to her in that tone before. She had never even heard him raise his voice at anyone like that before.
She should have found his tone to be unattractively insulting. It should have absolutely enraged her that he thought he could talk to her that way, in that rough and gruff tone. She should have instantly wanted nothing to do with him. It should have changed her outlook on him.
But instead of rage being fueled, it ignited something else in her.
It caused a deeper passion for him to rise inside. It caused a longing she had never felt in her life before that very moment. His alpha side had shown through directed at her, and she had never been more attracted to him.
Was she crazy?
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
PILAR
Dirty thoughts raced through Pilar’s mind like a team of crazy fast dirt bikers doing flips inside of her head as she remembered Maverick’s powerful alpha voice.
She kept replaying it … blaming it on remembering what he needed her to do. She loved the sound of the deep, harshness his tone had as he argued back and forth with her, but she had finally decided she wanted to surrender to her alpha.
It was unusual, but she wanted to do what was asked of her, what she had been told to do.It felt good to surrender to him, to obey him.
She needed to call the DOD like Maverick had requested and tell them of the trap she and Maverick had set. They'd be pissed she hadn’t contacted them first, but there just wasn't time. If Maverick was going to take Hal down, he had to act fast, and she wasn't going to let him go alone.
Pilar ran to the car, grabbing her phone off of the passenger seat. Unlocking her phone with her Face ID, she scrolled down to her contacts and clicked on the DOD contact saved in her contacts.For emergencies like this.She listened to the awful sound it played as it rang three times before they finally picked it up.
As soon as she heard a voice on the other line, not caring who it was, she started to explain, in the calmest voice she could muster, what she had just witnessed, what had just gone on here. The whole mess that Hal had caused.
“This is Pilar Douglas with Nick’s protection agency. Maverick and I planned a meeting at the old, shuttered steel mill on Melody Lane with Hal Steik,” she began.
The man on the other line interrupted her. “Why would you do that? You two could have gotten seriously hurt out there by yourselves.”
“Yes, I know. Probably not the smartest on our part, but we had to meet him right away, or it would have tipped him off. He would have gone underground and considering his attempted murder of a respected scientist, I took a risk."
The guy on the other end of the phone tried to interrupt her again, but she kept going. "Your agency might want to come to the steel mill here to gather some … evidence." She didn't clarify that she meant bodies. "I will send you the exact coordinates, but Hal is no longer here. Hal headed north of the building." That time the phone stayed silent as the agent on the other end of the call listened to her every word.
“We will definitely need a cleanup crew out here too.” A picture flashed through her mind of Maverick as he threw Hal’s goons swirling through the air like a tornado.
The silence stretched out, and just as Pilar was about to speak again, the agent answered, “Okay, we will have some men in route as soon as you send us those coordinates.”
She ended the call without another word and began typing their location into the message box.Hopefully, they will be there soon.
She shifted into her lioness self and took off at a sprint in an attempt to follow Maverick. Pilar moved as fast as her four paws would carry her in the direction she had watched him go as she tried to catch up. She hoped to make it to her mate before anything bad happened.
Behind the mill, she skidded to a stop as it opened up to a large river.