Twenty-four hours of relentless scrabbling for another solution turned up no new leads, so we arrived at the farmer’s field the next afternoon with very little hope but with an outsized dose of determination. Surely Hunter would have simply moved the ceremony to another location after being busted for complicity. Or perhaps he was busy setting up a trap to reel us back in and would be thrilled when we stupidly showed our faces right where he expected us to be.
But the online front for the SSS that Ginger had tracked down the day before was sketchy at best, suggesting that perhaps the uber-alpha didn’t have a direct line of communication with his underlings after all. Perhaps the loose-knit group of shifters hadn’t learned how to build a phone tree and thus had no way of getting in touch with each other save turning up every Friday evening to howl together at the moon. And perhaps Hunter, like us, would simply be forced to arrive and hope he’d be able to take down as many halfies as possible in the face of our clan’s moderate show of offensive strength.
Perhaps I’ll start answering to the name Pollyanna too, I thought uncomfortably as I stepped out of our clan’s car. I couldn’t quite believe that I was leading my pack mates into danger with my eyes wide open to the stupidity of the endeavor. But I also couldn’t imagine staying home and ignoring the chance—no matter how slender—that Lia would be gutted tonight on this very field. No, as stupid as it was to show up, it would be stupider to stay away.
“I’m coming in with you,” Cinnamon said as the other three shifters joined me outside the vehicle’s metal walls. As directed, the male trouble twin had parked down a narrow lane that was nearly invisible from the main road but that was only a short jaunt upwind from the location Quill had scouted out the day before. This was the moment of truth, ten minutes before sunset...and already my pack was rebelling.
“You’re our getaway driver,” I reminded Cinnamon, but the male trouble twin—who was usually gentle and humorous—just growled a rejection of my reiteration of his role. He wanted to be part of the strike force and he didn’t seem willing to take no for an answer.
The truth was that Ginger’s brother was doing better after two days of forced rest. He’d healed enough that sitting upright was no longer a struggle, and his wounds had stopped oozing every time he moved an arm or a leg funny. Still, everyone but Cinnamon himself knew that the male trouble twin would be a liability rather than an asset on the mission ahead.
So I elaborated, trying to smooth the shifter’s ruffled fur. “You have an important job to do,” I reminded him. “If we can tear Lia and Savannah away from the SSS and get them to you, then at least we’ll know the two innocents are safe. The rest of us can take care of ourselves. But you saw the video—Lia might not be able to walk. She needs you to be ready to spirit her out of the line of fire.”
“I can do that and still come in with you,” Cinnamon argued. But he hadn’t risen from the driver’s seat yet, clear evidence that the male was still too weak to join us on the battleground.
I sighed, preparing to muster a little alpha dominance and force the malleable shifter to toe the line. But Ginger took her brother in hand before I could speak up again.
“Do I have to handcuff you to the steering wheel?” the female demanded, dangling the restraints that we’d brought along for an entirely different purpose through her brother’s open window. The young woman was revved up and ready to rumble, and her wolf was so rampant that I could almost see its image superimposed over her human skin as she spoke. Neither Cinnamon nor I doubted that she really would cuff her brother to the wheel if he didn’t toe the line.
So I didn’t have to expend my weak powers to get Cinnamon to play it safe after all. “No, ma’am,” the male trouble twin said, eyes submissively trained on our feet as he backed down. Then he muttered, “Be careful.”
“Always am and nothing bad’s happened to me yet,” Ginger agreed. She shed clothes as she spoke, and then the female trouble twin fell onto paws with a speed that nearly rivaled the traitorous uber-alpha’s. Beside her, Glen’s wolf form caught my eye and then nudged his current partner to get her moving away from the car. The pair curved into the trees as a unit, moving into place as planned so they’d be ready when the enemy shifters arrived.
Quill, Cinnamon, and I, on the other hand, remained resolutely human. It was hard for me to wait two-legged even though my weak wolf would provide little additional offensive power, but she and I both knew this was an integral part of our plan.
So I forced myself to unclasp the sword belt from around my waist and hand the weapon into the car to Cinnamon for safekeeping. In for a penny, in for a pound.
And now I’m both unarmed and thin-skinned. I shivered, knowing the unvarnished assessment of my current state was far too true. Without the aid of my katana, I had no chance of fighting free if the enemy saw through our little charade.
Focus. The word breathed from wolf to human mind and back to animal again. Inhaling deeply, we calmed our pounding pulse together. Then, through the trees, we heard the first car door slam.
One door, then another. A crunch of tires on gravel, then more metal on metal. Two vehicles, I thought. One for Lia and one for Savannah.
I reached toward my wolf, hoping to borrow her nose to gather a little additional olfactory feedback. It would be handy to know how many enemies we faced and whether both of the kidnapped halfies were present before I donned the handcuffs that Ginger had threatened her brother with a few minutes earlier.
“Only two enemies,” Cinnamon murmured. “Lia’s there, and one other female—young, weak, probably Savannah. We could take them down with a frontal assault if you’d let me help....”
My pack mate’s words trailed off as I shook my head and turned around so my back was facing Quill. “We can’t risk Lia getting injured before we reach them,” I disagreed, mouth muffled against the side of the car.
Then, allowing the cowboy shifter to fasten hard metal handcuffs around my unresisting wrists, my own partner and I strode together toward the meeting grounds of the enemy who held our pack mate’s life in their unyielding hands.