Drake’s nostrils flared at the stench of torn flesh and congealing blood. The dirt floor of the abandoned warehouse soaked up the splattered body fluids of the dead wolf Weres, the corpses gleaming wetly under the slivers of silver moon lancing through the holes in the dilapidated roof. Her mate panted beside her, Sylvan’s dusty blond hair matted with sweat and her bronze skin streaked with blood. Sylvan’s lean, muscular body glistened with a damp coating of adrenaline and pheromones. Four deep, ragged claw marks gouged her side. Ragged rents from the rogue’s teeth covered her chest and shoulders. The rogue leader had not died easily.
How bad is it? Drake didn’t speak aloud. She wouldn’t let the others know of her worry, but she didn’t need to. Their mate bond connected them emotionally, physically, and psychically.
They’d all been in pelt during the battle and had shifted back to skin at the end of the fight. Sylvan’s wounds should have healed already, but she wasn’t at full strength. Not twenty-four hours before, Drake had plunged her claws into Sylvan’s abdomen and extracted multiple silver-bullet fragments. The silver still circulated in Sylvan’s system, poisoning her. Drake shuddered. She’d come so close to losing her, and her mate wasn’t out of danger yet. Someone still wanted Sylvan dead.
Sylvan? How bad?
The muscles in my side are torn. He missed my hip joint. I’m already healing.
You need to shift. You’ll heal faster. Drake leaned against Sylvan, needing the contact. Needing much more than that, but waiting until Sylvan had given her orders to the hunters. The centuri, Sylvan’s elite guard, formed a semicircle behind them, protecting their flanks. Sylvan had led them on a hunting raid in retribution for the assassination attempt against her that had nearly killed Lara, one of her centuri. She’d accepted the rogue Were’s challenge and fought to the death.
Drake understood why Sylvan had accepted the rogue’s challenge and why she had faced him alone, but standing by and watching the larger, mad wolf rip and tear at her mate had nearly driven her mad. She’d wanted to throw herself into the fight, to put her own body between Sylvan and the rogue, to tear his heart from his chest. She’d done nothing. Sylvan was Alpha, and she could not rule her Pack if she could not stand to a challenge. The Timberwolf Pack respected her, loved her, but they would not follow an Alpha who could not protect them. Without a strong leader and a clear hierarchy, a social order of predators that was ruled as much by instinct as intellect would descend into chaos. Drake knew all that, but her instincts, her very soul, railed at her to protect her mate. The urge still made her guts churn. You should be healed by now. Shift, Sylvan.
After I get my hunters home.
Niki will safeguard your centuri. Please, love.
Trust me, mate. I am more than strong enough to do what needs to be done. For my wolves, for you. Sylvan clasped the back of Drake’s neck, her still-extruded claws lightly scratching the thick muscles along Drake’s spine.
Drake suppressed a shiver of pleasure. Battle released a flood of neurotransmitters that blocked pain, but once the threat had passed, the chemicals morphed into sexual stimulants. All the hunters with Sylvan were aroused. So was she, even more than the others. She and Sylvan were newly mated, and the mate bond demanded near-constant physical connection and sexual release in order to fuse the chemical and hormonal markers that defined them as a mated pair. Then hurry and finish. We don’t know how many more rogues may be on their way, and you’ve fought enough this night.
You worry too much. Sylvan’s thoughts held a hint of laughter and the pride that ran in the blood of a long line of Alpha Weres. With no hint of a limp, Sylvan strode to the two cowering rogues who knelt in pools of blood and submissive urine, their heads bowed, limbs trembling. Drake and the hunters had killed the other rogues, leaving these two alive to bear witness to the outcome of the challenge and to spread the message that Sylvan was alive—not only alive, but deadly and without mercy.
“Tell your masters the Alpha of the Timberwolf Pack says these streets are mine. This city, this territory is mine. If you sell drugs to poison my wolves, I will come for you. If you threaten my Pack, I will come for you. If you break the laws of my Pack land, I will come for you. The challenge is issued.” She kicked the lifeless corpse of the rogue whose throat she had torn out. “And I will not be as quick as I was with this cur. Now go.”
The two hesitated for an instant, then spun around, still on their knees, and crawled out of sight. Within seconds, the sound of fleeing footsteps echoed through the cavernous building. Sylvan turned to Niki, her second and the leader of her centuri.
“Burn it.”
“Yes, Alpha,” the auburn-haired Were said. Smaller and fuller-breasted than Drake, Niki’s muscular body was a fighting machine. The Pack imperator, Sylvan’s enforcer, she lived to protect Sylvan. “Andrew—get the Rover. Jonathan—the accelerant is in the compartment under the floor. Max—take Jace and patrol the access road. We don’t want this mongrel’s lieutenants taking us by surprise if they come looking for him.” She spat on the naked body of the dead rogue.
Jonathan, one of the newest centuri, rushed off with Andrew. Max, a craggy-faced, shaggy-haired Were, grunted his assent and loped away with Jace, a lithe blond female and Jonathan’s twin.
Sylvan slid her arm around Drake’s waist. “Happy now?”
Sylvan was trembling, and Drake instinctively drew her as close as she could without appearing to be supporting her. Watching Sylvan dominate the rogues aroused her even more than the fight, and she hadn’t thought that possible. Her skin tingled with pheromones and shimmered with sex sheen that mirrored Sylvan’s. Her clitoris pulsed and her sex clenched rhythmically. Her inner muscles pounded, and her sex glands, the olive-sized nodes buried deep at the base of her clitoris that produced the unique Were sexual neurotransmitters, were hard and ready to burst. “I won’t be happy until I have you alone and under me.”
Sylvan laughed. “Not until I’ve had you under me, and I’ve come in you.”
“You’re not strong enough for that yet.”
“I was strong enough a few hours ago.”
Drake needed Sylvan so badly her blood burned. “That was before you had to fight, and now you’re injured again. We’ll wait to tangle until you’ve shifted and finished healing.”
“I’m strong enough to take my mate.” Sylvan nipped Drake’s neck, her bite searing through Drake and making her hips jerk. “And I’m going to come on you very soon.”
“I’m ready.”
Sylvan kissed her, her hand in Drake’s hair, tilting her head back. She thrust her tongue deep into Drake’s mouth, her kiss a claiming, a demand—hot and hard and furious. Heat flared in Drake’s belly, tightening her clitoris, filling her pelvis with blood and victus, the Were life-essence. Her glands pulsed, and she growled into Sylvan’s mouth.
Niki said from behind them, “The incendiaries are set, Alpha.”
Sylvan’s blue eyes shimmered to wolf-gold and bored into Drake’s with the promise of their mating. “Do it.”
Leaving the centuri to ignite the blaze, Drake and Sylvan headed out to the heavily fortified black SUV. Drake filled her lungs with the cool, clean scent of the night—animals in the brush, pollen on the breeze, fish in the nearby river. Life. “I want you in the infirmary as soon as we—”
“No.” Sylvan stopped and gripped Drake’s shoulders. “I told you that’s not what I need.”
“I know—”
“No, you don’t.” Sylvan yanked Drake close, her mouth against Drake’s throat. “You. I need you.”
Heat roared through Drake’s blood, spiking her clitoris so hard she almost came. She needed to claim Sylvan as badly as Sylvan needed her. She ached to touch her, taste her, and know in her bones that Sylvan was alive and well and hers. Groaning at the surge of need, she pressed against Sylvan, rubbing her bare chest over Sylvan’s. Her nipples hardened, her breasts tensed, and her skin sparked. Her claws and canines extruded. Before she surrendered to the mating call, she pulled away, whimpering at the painful separation. “No, you’re injured. We shouldn’t—”
Sylvan snarled and her face shifted, the starkly beautiful planes edging into the sharp edges of her wolf. She was an Alpha Were, and denying her was dangerous.
Drake caressed Sylvan’s chest until Sylvan’s taut muscles eased. Too softly for anyone else to hear, she whispered, “Don’t snarl at me, love. You don’t scare me.”
The corner of Sylvan’s mouth twitched. “That was one of the first things I noticed about you when you were still human. You should have been afraid. Even now, you should be. But you never have been.”
“I love your fury. I love your strength.” Drake ran her fingers through Sylvan’s hair. “I love your power. I’ll never fear it.”
“But you won’t let me control you, either, will you?”
Drake opened the rear door of the Rover and they settled onto the benches bolted lengthwise to the sides of the compartment. “No.”
Sylvan laughed.
*
“I’d like to speak to Detective Jody Gates, please,” Becca Land said when the phone at police headquarters was answered by a laconic voice she recognized as the night dispatcher. For crying out loud, was he the only one who ever worked nights?
“Like I told you last time, lady, she ain’t working. And no, she ain’t called in for the five messages you already left. Maybe you should take the hint.”
Becca flushed. As if. “My interest is professional—” And why was she explaining something that was no one’s business to a man she didn’t even know? “Can you tell me when she’s scheduled—”
“She was due in at twenty-two hundred. Yesterday. She’s late.”
By about twenty-four hours. “Surely you have procedures for—”
“Her lieutenant don’t seem too worried. Maybe she should take the hint and look for another kind of work.” He snorted. “Don’t really need Vampire cops, now do we?”
A click was followed by empty air. Becca stared at the silent phone. Since when was it okay for city officials not to even pretend to hide their prejudices against Praeterns? Or had the discrimination always been this blatant, and she was just now noticing? God, she hoped she hadn’t been that blind.
This plan to track down the elusive Detective Gates wasn’t working—time to try something else. She’d been watching Jody’s town house almost nonstop since someone shot the Were Alpha there following a meeting with Jody. Jody had given her own blood to revive a dying Were guard and nearly died herself. Talk about a huge scoop, and she hadn’t called it in. She’d been right there—really right there. Kneeling in blood and praying that someone didn’t die. She’d held off reporting the shooting because she didn’t have the bigger story—she wanted to know what was behind those gunshots. And if she reported an assassination attempt on the U.S. Councilor for Were Affairs, the AP would bury the city in TV newscasters and there’d go her chance at the real story. Nope, something big was brewing and Jody was her best source. Sort of a sad statement, considering how the Vampire detective wasn’t speaking to her at the moment, but hey, a reporter worked with what she had. Detective Jody Gates. God, what a pain in the ass.
She didn’t even like the damned Vampire, but she hadn’t wanted to see her die either—or whatever living Vampires did before they reanimated as Risen Vampires. She hadn’t even known that a Vampire could die from giving up too much of her own blood, but then who knew what the rules were anyhow? It wasn’t as if the Vampires—or any of the Praeterns—let humans in on their secrets. Well, okay, maybe that was understandable, considering that humans had done a pretty good job of wiping out the Praetern species something like a millennium ago, and they’d all gone into hiding and hadn’t resurfaced until two years ago, when Sylvan’s father more or less announced to the world, “Hey, everybody, there are a whole lot of preternatural species who have been living among you for forever, and we are tired of hiding.” The great Exodus had pretty much turned the world upside down, and humans, outnumbering the Praeterns by thousands to one, weren’t so sure they really wanted to share living space with species like Vampires and Weres who just might consider them prey, or the Fae who had all kinds of magical powers, or the Psi who might be influencing minds, or the Magi whose incantations and spells and wizardry were better weapons than anything humans had been able to construct. Humans, despite their numbers, often built their cultures based on fear, as Becca came to realize more every day.
Well, she wasn’t afraid. She was pissed off. She’d tried to help Jody—she’d offered her blood—and what did she get for her efforts? Jody had practically tossed her out on her ear. She’d left Jody’s house, but she wasn’t going to stay gone.
She was an investigative reporter, and she wanted to know who had taken shots at someone as high profile as Sylvan Mir, and while she was at it, she wanted to know what was going on with the mysterious girls who were showing up in ERs with deadly fevers no one wanted to talk about. Not quite true. Someone wanted to talk about them because he—she thought it was a he, she couldn’t really tell from the muffled voice on the phone—had been calling her to tell her about these cases. Why? Why did someone want to alert the press to these infections? Were they, as the caller claimed, instances of Were fever being transmitted to humans? If that was true, she needed to alert the human population. Didn’t she? Wasn’t that her responsibility—to report the stories that made a difference, to expose the dangerous secrets that ultimately cost lives? She hadn’t written anything about it yet. She told herself it was because she didn’t know enough, but how could she know enough if no one would tell her anything?
Feeling like a stalker, she’d waited and watched and waited some more, from before dawn the day before until well after sunup, for Jody to return. When the Vampire hadn’t shown, she’d figured Jody was spending the daylight hours somewhere else, and she’d gone home for a few hours’ restless sleep, then back on watch before sundown. As the hours passed with still no sign of Jody, she’d started to worry. Maybe Jody hadn’t recovered from nearly bleeding out, or the Vampire equivalent of it. Maybe Jody was at the hospital, although come to think of it, she’d never seen a Vampire patient in the ER. Like Weres, they didn’t seek conventional medical care. After giving the Were her blood, Jody had said she’d needed to feed. And she’d said to Sylvan Mir, You may not thank me when your centuri wakes up hungry. I need to be there when she does. When I’ve taken care of my needs, I’ll come.
Becca pulled her laptop from underneath the front seat and ran a Google search on Sylvan Mir. She’d read enough exposés and editorials about the Were Alpha and the Adirondack Timberwolf Pack to have a general idea where their Compound was located. After scanning a few articles, she clicked Google Maps and punched in the coordinates on her GPS. Time to hunt. First stop—the private headquarters of the most powerful Were Alpha in the Western Hemisphere.