Chapter 12

“Did you just peep at me?”

Despite being caught completely naked, Cherriot sounded unnervingly calm, as though such displays were perfectly ordinary to him.

“…Hurry up and get dressed. We don’t have time for this.”

Yuri barely forced out the words, his voice hoarse, and kept his gaze rigidly averted. He could feel Cherriot staring at him.

“You’ve already seen everything there is to see, so why look away?” A trace of musical laughter entered Cherriot’s voice. “You hardly seem that innocent.”

The joke eased the tension that had stretched taut through the room. Yuri, who had gone rigid, found a little room to breathe again. Perhaps Cherriot had behaved this way so consistently that Yuri had already begun to grow accustomed to his shamelessness.

This was not the Cherriot he would be dealing with from now on, however.

“Let’s go. The sooner we leave, the sooner I can hand you over to someone else.”

Cherriot dressed with impressive speed. Perhaps he had thought ahead, because the clothes differed from what he had worn into the hotel: a plain gray sweatshirt, black pants, and a black knit beanie. The colors were inconspicuous, yet they clashed so thoroughly with Cherriot’s nature that they somehow made him stand out more. His vivid coloring had looked more natural beneath the white beanie and jacket.

“Where’s your mask?” Yuri asked.

“I threw it away.”

“Pick it out and put it back on.”

“Too late. I spilled cola in the trash earlier, so it’s dirty.”

He was not a child. Spilling cola was a ridiculous excuse.

“Do you have a spare?”

“Until today, I never had a reason to hide my face deliberately.”

Cherriot shrugged with shameless nonchalance. Judging by how casually he had mingled at the bar, he truly did not mind being recognized. Yuri could not understand that attitude at all. He preferred to remain an enigma to everyone.

Rather than prolong a useless argument, Yuri opened the room door. Cherriot followed, his pheromones drifting over Yuri’s shoulder as the distance between them narrowed. Agitation had made the scent unusually distinct. It carried the sharpness of liquor softened by sweetness, like whiskey stripped of its unpleasant burn.

A peculiar pheromone.

Realizing he was contemplating another Alpha’s scent, Yuri frowned and redirected his thoughts. On the way out, he needed to hide the attacker’s phone in a trash bin near the hotel, then drive somewhere remote.

He did not know how far the Hell’s Watchmen’s reach extended, but they had to avoid major cities where a social-media post could bring hunters down on them within minutes. Ideally, they would find somewhere no one cared about ice hockey, though such a place probably did not exist anywhere in Canada.

The elevator arrived while Yuri considered their options. Cherriot tried to step past him, but instinct made Yuri catch and pull him back. Cherriot turned with a displeased look just as the doors slid apart.

A man stood inside.

Their eyes met through the widening gap. It was the watcher from the lobby, the one in the baseball cap.

The man’s gaze shifted past Yuri and locked onto Cherriot. The instant he recognized him, his hand flew behind his waist. Yuri saw the movement and shoved Cherriot sideways.

Everything that followed happened in less than three seconds.

PHUT.

The suppressed shot tore through the space where Cherriot had been standing and buried itself in the floor. Cherriot, knocked off balance, stared wide-eyed.

Yuri hurled the suitcase at the gunman.

THUD.

The man blocked it with his forearm. Yuri charged behind it, lunged into the elevator, and shouted over his shoulder.

“Get down. Now!”

He kicked the fallen suitcase back toward the attacker and hammered the close-door button. The man raised his weapon and aimed at Yuri. Yuri drove a kick into his wrist, sending the pistol spinning through the air before it clattered to the floor.

Their eyes met.

Both men lunged without hesitation.

Yuri slipped past the fist aimed at his solar plexus and smashed an elbow into the man’s face. The impact shuddered, thick and meaty, through Yuri’s arm. The gunman staggered but did not fall. Bracing against the elevator wall, he launched himself forward again.

He drove his full weight into Yuri, forcing him back, then caught him across the cheekbone with a punch. Heather’s glasses shattered and flew from Yuri’s face. Capitalizing on Yuri’s brief loss of balance, the man locked both arms around his waist and drove a fist into his side with merciless force.

Pain flared, but Yuri gritted his teeth and held his ground. He seized the man’s ear and twisted savagely. The man cried out and loosened his grip.

Yuri took the opening.

He struck the man hard in the face, then caught him from behind as his head dipped. One thick arm locked around the attacker’s throat, and Yuri slammed him against the elevator wall.

After the burst of violence, Yuri’s pulse hammered. His mouth had gone dry, and his heart pounded against his ribs as he tightened the chokehold. The man thrashed and drove an elbow into Yuri’s abdomen, but Yuri refused to let go.

Should I kill him?

The knife waited inside Yuri’s sleeve. The man had fired at Cherriot without hesitation. His intent to kill was beyond doubt.

But killing him was not what Cherriot wanted. He had sought out Alexei precisely to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

Leaving the man alive would create another danger. Reinforcements would come, and this attacker had seen Yuri’s face. If he returned to his people, he would identify Yuri, limiting every option Yuri had for protecting Cherriot.

Experience had taught Yuri that fleeing while leaving witnesses alive was far harder than killing them, especially when those witnesses were willing to fire a gun without hesitation. Whether Yuri himself was hurt did not matter. The danger lay in the simple truth that mercy was rarely repaid in kind.

Before he reached a decision, the man went limp.

Yuri gradually eased the pressure. The attacker slid facedown to the floor with a heavy thump. Breathing hard, Yuri stared down at him, then searched him and confiscated his phone.

He deliberately avoided glancing at the CCTV camera above. After ejecting the pistol’s magazine, he kicked the weapon into a corner. If the incident was reported and the footage reviewed, he did not want to leave any more grounds for suspicion than necessary.

A few seconds later, the elevator reached the lobby. Yuri swallowed his exhaustion and straightened, ready for whoever might be waiting beyond the doors.

They opened onto the tourist couple from earlier, both carrying bags from a nearby 7-Eleven.

“Oh my God.”

The couple recoiled. Yuri glanced at them, then calmly lifted the suitcase from the floor. Stepping over the unconscious man, he offered a measured explanation.

“You should call the police. He was drunk and causing trouble.”

A firearm had been discharged inside a luxury hotel, so someone would summon the authorities regardless. Better that uninvolved witnesses made the report. The shaken couple hurried toward reception.

Another elevator opened behind Yuri. Cherriot strode out with urgent steps, and relief washed through Yuri. At least the man had possessed enough judgment to follow rather than bolt in some random direction.

“What the hell is going on?” Cherriot whispered as he approached.

“Exactly what you saw. We don’t have time. We need to leave.”

“I know, but…”

Yuri caught Cherriot with the hand not holding the suitcase and pulled him toward the exit. The moment he exerted force, a hot, searing pain flared along his upper arm.

He knew that sensation.

A bullet graze.

Yuri had thought he had evaded the shot cleanly, but it must have clipped him.

They crossed the lobby at a near-run. At reception, the tourist couple pointed back toward the elevator while speaking rapidly to the staff. The woman had gotten the glimpse of Cherriot she had hoped for earlier, but the chaos left her no time to care who he was.

Yuri quickened their pace. As soon as they cleared the hotel, he cut through the alley and reached the car. He yanked open the rear door, threw the suitcase inside, then opened the passenger door for Cherriot. The moment Yuri dropped into the driver’s seat, he started the engine.

Neither man spoke for some time. Yuri drove as fast as he could without attracting attention. Highway 1 seemed their best route out, so he headed east and away from the city.

After nearly an hour of silence, Vancouver disappeared behind them and the landscape dissolved into forest. Yuri checked the rearview mirror again and again. When he finally confirmed that no one had followed, he allowed himself to breathe.

Apparently, the men at the hotel had been the entire team for the moment. Even if someone had reported the incident, the police would first detain the armed attacker at the scene, buying Yuri and Cherriot time. There had been no CCTV in the corridor, and the elevator footage alone would not necessarily expose Cherriot’s presence.

“Did you avoid looking at the elevator camera?” Yuri asked.

Assuming, of course, Cherriot had not stared directly into it.

“What?”

Cherriot finally broke his silence. Yuri glanced toward him, his voice low and rough. Cherriot did not appear injured.

“I asked whether you looked up in the elevator.”

“…No. I’m on the run, remember? I know enough to avoid looking into a camera.”

Following Yuri’s glance, Cherriot turned toward him. The hostility that had clouded his green eyes since Yuri’s confession had softened into something closer to his earlier demeanor.

Perhaps he was frightened. Or simply shaken.

Of course he was. Ordinary people did not experience nights like this.

Yuri was still considering where to begin when Cherriot frowned. The abrupt change made him pause. Then Cherriot leaned closer.

Is he going to hit me?

People trapped in a fucked-up situation sometimes lashed out irrationally. In a sense, Yuri shared some blame. Had he controlled Cherriot properly from the beginning, no one would have posted his location online.

But Cherriot’s next words were nothing like what Yuri expected.

“You’re hurt.”

Before Yuri could react, Cherriot touched his cheekbone. Warmth spread across Yuri’s cold skin, and a dull throb surfaced belatedly beneath it. The pain did not startle him. The warmth did.

His grip tightened on the steering wheel.

It had been a very long time since anyone had touched him this way. Not since his mother, who had once stroked his hair in a distant life before she died.

He’s far too comfortable doing embarrassing things between Alphas.

To Yuri, touching someone’s face was painfully intimate. A strange man had just done something even family rarely did. A flicker of comfort stirred in him, but the feeling was so foreign that his body went rigid.

Yuri turned his head and dislodged Cherriot’s hand.

“Don’t make a fuss.”

By Yuri’s standards, being hurt meant suffering a grave wound. If he could still sit upright and drive, the injury was not serious enough to merit discussion.

“Go to sleep. We still have a long way to travel.”

Yuri consciously loosened his grip and kept his eyes on the road, but Cherriot refused to leave him alone.

“The passenger isn’t supposed to sleep.”

He unfastened his seat belt and switched on the interior light. The cabin brightened. The moment he saw Yuri’s face clearly, horror crossed his own.

“What the hell happened to your face? Pull over. I said pull over.”

The hand Yuri had just shaken off reached for him again and caught his chin. The strength in Cherriot’s grip was impossible to ignore. Despite his beautiful appearance, he possessed tremendous raw power. In a contest of pure strength, Yuri suspected he might actually lose.

He twisted his face away.

“Stop being annoying and let go.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you could see yourself.”

Cherriot pressed his fingertips near Yuri’s cheekbone. Pain radiated hot and numb beneath the skin, making Yuri narrow his eyes.

“See? It hurts.”