An Alpha's Forbidden Mate-Chapter 40: The Mirage of the Mountain

Chapter Forty:

"Ow, ow—careful!" Phillip hissed, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the edge of the medical cot.

"Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to," Bennett murmured, her brow furrowed in concentration. She worked with practiced, albeit trembling, hands to wrap fresh gauze around his thigh. The wound was jagged, a nasty reminder of the "tempered flesh" that had nearly ended him. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Bennett looked toward the cockpit of the private military transport. "Are we there yet?"

The pilot didn’t turn, his voice crackling through the intercom. "We land in five minutes. Brace for descent."

Through the reinforced windows, the world was a jagged wasteland of white. They were deep within the Alaskan interior, soaring toward a mountain range that seemed impassable. But as the jet veered toward a sheer granite face, the snow-covered rock groaned. A massive, iron blast door disguised as a cliffside slid open with a mechanical roar. The plane glided into the belly of the mountain, entering a cavernous hangar illuminated by harsh, amber floodlights.

Armed military soldiers—not the typical guards of the Hunter Association, but a private, elite detachment—surrounded the plane before the engines had even cooled.

Phillip limped down the ramp, leaning heavily on a black-lacquered walking stick. The cold air of the hangar bit at his lungs. The moment the soldiers saw him, they snapped to attention, their rifles held across their chests in a crisp "at ease."

"Where is she?" Phillip barked, his voice echoing off the metallic walls.

"In the meeting room, General," a soldier replied. "Waiting for you."

Phillip didn’t wait for a formal escort. He hobbled toward the command center, his face a mask of simmering resentment. Bennett moved to follow but hesitated at the threshold of the meeting room.

"No, you stay," Phillip commanded, glancing back at her. "I want a witness to this."

Inside, Zareth sat at a long, steel table, looking as composed and out of place as ever. She glanced at the heavy bandages peeking through Phillip’s torn trousers and raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. "What happened to your leg, Phillip? You look... diminished."

"Oh, shut up. Don’t act like you don’t know," Phillip spat, pulling out a chair and collapsing into it with a groan.

Zareth tilted her head. "What are you talking about?"

"You wanted to get me killed. That’s why you insisted on that particular herb so close to the werewolf territory," Phillip accused, pointing his cane at her.

The witch smirked, a cold, elegant expression. "Of course I knew it was close to the werewolf territory. Even a child like you knew that. Don’t tell me the dogs bit your leg and now you are looking for someone to blame for your own failure?"

"I ain’t making excuses," Phillip growled, his Ki flickering dangerously. "But you didn’t tell me those wolves were that strong. If it wasn’t for my Domain technique, the grass under my grave would already be growing as tall as you."

Zareth’s smirk vanished, replaced by a flicker of genuine curiosity. "There is no way a standard werewolf could beat you in combat. Even dozens of ’Normal’ wolves should have been fodder for your blade. Was it the whole clan that ambushed you?"

"No," Phillip said, his voice dropping. "Just three wolves... and a girl."

"What girl?"

"I don’t know. She was—"

A deafening THUMP shook the mountain. The lights in the room flickered and died for a heartbeat before the emergency red strobes began to spin. A klaxon wailed, the high-pitched alarm signaling a perimeter breach.

The door burst open, and George stumbled in. Seeing Phillip alive, the young soldier’s face lit up. He rushed forward and hugged Phillip, a rare moment of raw emotion between the two men. Phillip hugged him back, patting his shoulder before pushing him to arm’s length.

"What is happening?" Phillip demanded.

George’s face immediately shifted back into the stoic mask of a soldier. "General, we are under attack."

"By who?"

"We don’t know, sir. A fighter jet appeared on radar and opened fire on the external vents."

Phillip’s mind went into overdrive. He organized the defense with the cold precision that had earned him his rank. "Have half the men fight them off; send the other half to evacuate non-combat staff. Go!"

George saluted and vanished.

Phillip stood by the window, watching the tactical displays. Who would be bold enough to strike an Association bunker? Suddenly, his eyes widened, the blood draining from his face. "Isaac."

"Who is Isaac?" Zareth asked, standing up.

"The father of the girl," Phillip whispered. "The one with the Five Ki Elemental body."

"You mean he’s here?" Zareth asked. "That’s suicide. A lone human attacking a fortress?"

"Yeah, it’s weird," Bennett chimed in, her voice trembling. "I mean, we kidnapped his daughter. It’s natural he’d try to save her, but this..."

Phillip held his chin, his mind tracing the tactical map. "Isaac isn’t dumb. He’s a genius when it comes to combat strategy. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to expose his location with a loud frontal assault. He’d be a ghost..." Phillip paused, his breath catching. "Oh no. We’ve been tricked."

He lunged for the telephone on the table, frantically dialing the internal security post for the holding cells. No one picked up.

"Ruse! It’s a ruse!" Phillip roared. He grabbed his walking stick and charged out of the room, ignoring the searing pain in his thigh. He ran toward the lower levels, toward the specialized containment unit where Stephanie was kept.

He burst through the doors, his Ki flaring in a desperate white light. But the room was silent. The glass-topped box was open. It was empty.

"No... no, no, no!" Phillip’s scream of pure rage echoed through the sterile halls.

While the red alarms were screaming in the upper levels, Liam was already deep within the emergency ventilation tunnels. He moved with a terrifying, silent efficiency. He wasn’t a supernatural; he didn’t have the raw speed of a werewolf or the immortality of a vampire. What he had was Ki Mastery and thirty years of surviving the impossible.

He emerged from a hidden hatch a mile away from the main mountain entrance, where the snow was thick and the wind bit like a frozen blade. Michael was waiting there, leaning against the hood of a nondescript black SUV. He was puffing on his smoking pipe, looking as calm as if he were waiting for a bus rather than extraction from a war zone.

"Hop in," Michael said, flicking ash into the snow.

Liam carefully placed Stephanie’s unconscious body into the backseat. As he tucked a blanket around her, her eyes fluttered open.

"Dad..." her voice was a faint, broken whisper.

"It’s going to be alright, my girl. Trust me," Liam said, his voice thick with an emotion he only showed to her. He stroked her hair, and she drifted back into a drug-induced sleep.

Liam stepped away from the car and looked at Michael. "Take care of my daughter. Get her to the safe house."

Michael stopped mid-puff, his eyes narrowing through the smoke. "I know what you’re thinking, Isaac. And my answer is no. No way in hell."

"If I don’t do this, Michael, Phillip and the Association will never stop. They’ll hunt us to the ends of the earth. I have to end this once and for all. Please."

Michael saw the zeal in Isaac’s eyes—the quiet, immovable resolve of a man who had already decided he was willing to die. "You better come back alive, Isaac. If I find out you’re dead, I’m going to find your ghost and whoop your ass."

Isaac gave a small, grim smirk. "Count on it."

The SUV roared to life and sped away into the blizzard. Isaac watched the taillights vanish, then turned back toward the mountain. He took a deep, centering breath, his Red Ki beginning to simmer beneath his skin.

He slipped back into the underground tunnels, moving toward the sound of the alarms. A squad of six guards rounded a corner, their tactical lights cutting through the gloom.

"Target sighted! Fire!"

The hallway erupted in gunfire. To a normal man, it would have been a death sentence. But Liam perception had been honed to a razor’s edge. To him, the world slowed. He could see the distortion in the air as the bullets traveled toward him.

He didn’t just dodge; he moved through the stream of lead with a rhythmic, flowing grace. He reached behind his back, drawing his twin blades. As he flooded the steel with Red Ki, the weapons began to hum with a lethal vibration.

He blurred forward. Slish. Slish. He didn’t stop to look back. He moved through the guards like a hot knife through butter, his blades slicing through tactical armor and bone with zero resistance.

Further up the hall, George was standing with a group of soldiers near a reinforced bulkhead. "I don’t understand, guys," one soldier said, wiping sweat from his brow. "We shot down the fighter jet attacking the base. Why aren’t you happy, George?"

George shook his head, his eyes scanning the shadows. "Don’t you think it’s a little weird? There was no pilot in that jet. It was a drone... a distraction."

Isaac saw George from the end of the corridor. He recognized the young man from the surveillance photos—Phillip’s right-hand man.

Liam attacked.

There was no sound of footsteps, only the chilling whistle of cold steel cutting through the air.

George felt a sudden, inexplicable chill. He waited for a response from his men, but the hallway had gone deathly silent. "Hey," George said, not looking back yet. "We have to go and report to the General. Are you listening?"

He turned and reached out to touch the soldier nearest him. The moment his finger brushed the man’s shoulder, the soldier’s body shifted. Lines of crimson light appeared across his torso, and then, with a wet, heavy sound, the man fell apart in three clean pieces. The other four soldiers followed suit, their bodies collapsing into a heap of severed limbs and gore.

George stood frozen, his boots soaking in the blood of his squad. Before he could even draw his sidearm, he felt the icy bite of a blade against the skin of his throat.

"Move," a voice growled in his ear, vibrating with the weight of a thousand battles, "and die."

George looked into the reflection of the steel blade. He saw a man with eyes of fire and a face of stone. He realized, too late, that the Association hadn’t just kidnapped a girl. They had awakened a demon.