Here’s a sneak peek at the next book in Paige Tyler’s sizzling X-Ops series

Quantico, Virginia

“The director wants you in his office ASAP.”

Trevor Maxwell glanced up from the hot dog he was eating to look at the guy standing in front of his table. Short and stocky, the man was regarding him like something to be scraped off the bottom of his shoe. Trevor resisted the urge to bare his teeth in a snarl and took another bite of his hot dog. He wasn’t really hungry, but at least lunch was a pleasant break from the monotony of an otherwise miserable day. And the cafeteria served damn good hot dogs.

Unfortunately, he’d had a lot of miserable days at the Department of Covert Operations, the secret government organization where he worked. It came with being labeled a traitorous freak.

“You have a problem understanding what ASAP means?” the man asked, a buttload of attitude lacing his words.

Gaze never leaving the man, Trevor slowly finished chewing, then swallowed. “It means Dick Coleman wants me in his office as soon as possible. I’ll go just as soon as I finish eating. Because I couldn’t possibly leave before that.”

The man looked like he wanted to say something snide in reply, but when Trevor let his eyes glow coyote-yellow and his upper canines slide out far enough to extend over his lower lip, the guy quickly changed his mind.

“Whatever,” the man muttered. “Your funeral.”

The comment probably would have come across as more ominous if the asshat hadn’t shuddered before walking away. But hey, most of the guys that had been brought into the DCO lately didn’t have a lot of experience with shifters, and seeing a man sprout claws and fangs—not to mention flashing gold eyes—was a bit much for most of them to deal with. Most of the other people around the cafeteria were regarding him with the same mix of hatred and revulsion. It wasn’t only the muscle-headed thugs Dick—or rather Thomas Thorn, the man Dick answered to—had hired lately. The agents who’d worked alongside shifters like Trevor for years were throwing him dirty looks, too.

Trevor supposed hating shifters was sociably acceptable now that John Loughlin, the former director of the DCO and de facto champion of the organization’s shifter program, had been killed when a bomb had exploded in his office.

The day John had died everything had changed. Now the covert intelligence organization the man had spent more than a decade building from the ground up was quickly falling apart from the inside out.

One look around the cafeteria proved that. It was lunchtime, yet you’d never know it from the handful of people scattered around the room shoving food in their faces as if they couldn’t wait to be somewhere else. The place used to be filled with agents, analysts, and other support personnel at this time of day. While there’d always been some who were anti-shifter in the DCO, their numbers had been more than offset by those who realized the good that people like Trevor and his kind brought to the organization.

Somehow, John had perfected the concept of pairing shifters with highly trained covert operatives. People had said it would never work, that shifters were little more than animals and couldn’t be trusted to work in a team environment, much less be given missions critical to national defense. John had proven the doubters wrong, fielding teams that had accomplished things that should have been impossible.

But John’s death had led to a complete change at the top of the organization, and the new regime was blatant in their opposition to all things shifter. These days there were probably half as many people working for the DCO as there had been a month ago. Trevor couldn’t blame them. Why stay when Dick’s very first act had been to announce that the very shifters John had trusted had conspired to murder him? There hadn’t been any proof of course, but then again, when had that bastard Dick ever let something like proof get in the way of what he wanted? Hell, he’d barely let John’s seat get cold before sitting in it.

Lots of good agents had read the writing on the wall and bailed. The moment they were gone, Dick had filled their positions with trigger-pullers who spent most of their time chasing the rogue shifters or sitting on their asses.

It made Trevor wonder what the hell he was still doing here.

COMING SEPTEMBER 2017