On silent paws, I carefully made my way to the door that led to the basement. This one was usually kept locked, per Rich, so I had to shift back to human for this. I suppressed a smile when I thought about how being a naked female gave me a slight advantage if I were caught. Most men wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a naked male, but there was always that slight hesitation when it came to females. It would give me a little leeway to talk myself out of this.
I pulled out the lock picking kit that Davis had shoved into a bag for me before he had strapped the bag on my panther form. Lock picking was not my forte, but I wasn’t willing to let a cheap lock keep me from my prize. To my utter shock, the knob turned without me even needing to struggle with it. Someone had forgotten to lock the door.
I made my way down the stairs slowly, praying for the wooden stairs not to creak under my bare feet. I still needed my hands to get into the safe, so it wasn’t a good idea to shift back into my panther form just yet. My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the basement, and I made my way past cardboard boxes and other random debris that tended to clutter up our lives. I needed to get to the gun safe that was in the back corner of the basement.
I shook my head at just how simple it was to get into the safe with the fake fingerprint that Rich had provided me with. I hoped they didn’t keep anything in there that was actually valuable, because it had been ridiculously easy to get in here.
The metal door groaned as I opened it, and I winced. I watched the floorboards above my head for any signs that the wolves were getting off the couch to investigate, but they didn’t move. My heart sunk when I looked through the safe. There were guns, cash, some jewelry, but no wolf statue. I crouched down to search through the boxes of ammo on the bottom shelf and smiled when I saw a little black velvet bag that was the perfect size to hold what I was looking for. Sure enough, the statue was tucked inside.
I smiled as I shoved it in my bag before strapping the bag back on. It was time to shift back to a panther and get the hell out of here. I landed on all four paws and trotted across the cold concrete floor in a hurry. But voices stopped me when I got to the top of the stairs.
“I gotta take a piss, bro,” one wolf said.
“Grab me a beer while you’re up.”
I flicked my tail in irritation as I listened to the one guy thump into the bathroom only a few feet away from where I was hiding. I waited impatiently as he relieved himself for what seemed like an eternity. I grimaced when he didn’t bother to wash his hands and instead went right back to the kitchen. The kitchen was still in sight of the door I would have to sneak out of, so I still had to wait. I heard the refrigerator door open, then the clink of beer bottles, and then the hiss and clank of him pulling off the bottle caps and leaving them where they landed. He eventually went back in front of the television and handed his friend a beer before plopping his weight back on the couch.
These guys were both cocky and oblivious because he didn’t notice that the basement door, which was always supposed to be locked, was actually cracked a bit, so it didn’t latch. I pushed my way out of the door once I knew it was safe, and pushed it closed with my butt. I was almost to the door when I heard shouts outside.
So fucking close. I rapidly darted to the front of the house, since it sounded like they were approaching from the back. I had just made it out the door and shut it behind me when I heard at least three more wolves come in the house. My heart pounded as I crouched in the shadows, ready to make a run for it if I were spotted. When it sounded like the newcomers joined the others in the living room, I quietly crept along the front of the house, careful to stay out of view of the windows. How had none of them picked up on my scent yet?
I could hear more voices coming from the back yard and cursed. That must be the rest of the pack coming back from their run. I still had to make it down the driveway and across the road. There I could hide in the wooded area to make my way back to where the guys were waiting for me. It was times like this that I was extremely glad of my pure black coat. If I had been a regular jaguar instead of a black panther, I’d never get away with this.
I darted into the driveway and wove in between the cars parked there to stay out of sight. Once I was in the shadow of the last car, I waited apprehensively for a moment to make a run for cover across the street. Finally, I decided it was now or never, and I darted towards the treeline.
My ears stayed perked as I ran through the forest, listening for any sounds of pursuit. I tried not to jump at every little sound around me, but I was just waiting for those wolves to catch my lingering scent in their home. It was a few minutes until I heard the first howl. My muscles burned as I ran even faster, darting between trees and jumping over logs. A whole chorus of howls rang through the forest, letting me know that the entire pack was now on my scent. I stayed focused on the unfamiliar terrain, knowing that just one misstep would be enough to slow me down enough for them to catch up. They knew this territory like the back of their paws, unlike me.
It wasn’t until I got back to the SUV parked a couple of miles away that exhilaration replaced my nerves. I had gotten away with it. Trevor grumbled in irritation when I scratched at the SUV door, but I knew it would annoy him and the other guys if I stayed in panther form a little longer. When Mike opened the door, I hopped in, trampled over Davis, and sat proudly in my seat.
“Well?” Trevor growled.
I gave him a lazy look and wrapped my tail around myself. Davis chuckled. “May I seek your pack?” he asked with a sarcastic tone I didn’t particularly like.
I waited until his hand was on the pack before swiping my sharp claws at him. He pulled back in time, but gave a small sound of surprise that pleased me. Davis cursed when I gave him an amused look, but the other guys laughed. The howls of the wolves were getting closer and closer, and I swished my tail in irritation. These assholes better not get us caught.
“Looks like she’s going to keep us in suspense,” Mike said with a grin. “Let’s head home.” Trevor hit the gas, and my body was pressed against the seat as we accelerated faster than I thought a giant vehicle like this could move.
“You can’t sit like that,” Trevor complained to me. “I’m not getting pulled over for having a giant cat in my vehicle.”
I rolled my eyes but gracefully jumped to the back of the SUV where the duffel bags were piled. It was doubtful that the wolves would be able to catch up to us now, so I decided to relax. Davis watched in amusement as I cleared a place to lay down and then managed to get one of the bags open with a claw. I tugged out a hoodie that I used to make a comfortable bed and laid down with a yawn. I’d like to say that I picked Trevor’s bag because I wanted to irritate him the most, but the truth was that I really liked his scent. Not that I’d ever admit that to anyone.
Davis shook his head and turned back around as I rubbed my head against the fabric of the hoodie. Trevor was going to be pissed when he saw I had been using it as a cat bed. I wiggled around a little more than I had to so I could make sure to get a few cat hairs on it. I couldn’t wait to see the disgruntled look on his face.
Chapter 10
I plopped down on the cold sand as Trevor called an end to the latest torture session disguised as physical fitness. I had thought I was in pretty good shape when I was on deployment, but over the past few weeks, I had realized just how wrong I was. I was being pushed to new levels that I’d never thought I could achieve. Yeah, it sucked. But it was also awesome to see how much better I’d gotten - I was stronger and faster than I’d ever been before.
“Meeting in the bunker in one hour,” Trevor called out.
“Sounds like it’s going to be nap time for me,” I said with a grin.
“Not so fast, Sammy,” Quinn teased me. “James gave the okay to introduce you to the bat cave.”
Davis groaned. “Don’t call it that.”
“Really?” I asked suspiciously. “Did he also say to take me out back and shoot me right afterward?”
“Nah,” Mike laughed
as he pulled me to my feet. “You’ve shown us that you can pull your own weight and that you could be a valuable asset to the team.”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “James said that?”
“Not in so many words,” Davis admitted as he slung an arm around my waist as we walked back to the house.
“But he did give the okay for you to be a part of our next mission,” Mike told me with a warm smile. “And we could use your unique skills for this.” “Hmmm, I’m intrigued,” I said with a grin.
“So, curiosity outweighs your love of naps?” Davis said with a laugh. “Good to know.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I feel like there’s a cat joke lingering between the lines there.”
Davis widened his eyes in complete innocence. “What makes you think that?”
“All of you need to clean up, so you don’t stink up the bunker with your sweaty balls,” Trevor interrupted.
I opened my mouth to make a smart comment, but Mike beat me to it. “Don’t even argue, Sam, we all know you have some of the biggest balls here.”
I gave him the finger as I grinned. “But not the smelliest.”
“I might need to do an inspection to confirm,” Davis teased me.
I laughed out loud. “Not today, butt-sniffer.”
“Dog jokes are getting old,” Rich laughed. “You need to get some new material.”
I rolled my eyes. “As soon as you all stop offering me kitty litter.”
Trevor shut our joking down with one look. As much as I loved pushing his buttons, I also wanted to be included in this mysterious mission. I gave him a sweet smile, knowing that would probably irritate him just as much, but that my cooperation wouldn’t give him an excuse to deny my inclusion in what was to come.
We weren’t even halfway back to the pack house when the guys suddenly took off at a dead run without a word. I cursed and followed, but it wasn’t until we got to the pack house that I
realized why they had been called back for an emergency. I could feel power radiating from the office, but it wasn’t like anything I’d sensed from these wolves. This magic was cold and icy, like a blizzard.
Trevor was first to the office door and pounded on it. When it wouldn’t open, he took a step back and a deep breath. He and Mike nodded at each other, then ran at it at the same time. The door didn’t budge, and I could hear shouting from within the office. We needed to get in there now.
The magic radiating from the office suddenly winked out, and Trevor and Mike burst through the door. I stepped into the room behind the guys and was shocked at the state of the room. It looked like a tornado had been through here. Furniture was broken, papers were everywhere, and Austin looked furious. “Get Caleb, now,” he ordered.
Rich nodded and ran out of the room without question. I looked around the demolished office to see James with an anguished look in his eyes. “I’m going after her.”
“We need a location first,” Austin snapped back at him. “Trevor, prep your team for an extraction operation and be prepared to move immediately when I give you coordinates.”
Trevor nodded after glancing at a silent James. “And arrange for reinforcements here?”
Austin shook his head. “He got what he wanted for now, he has no reason to come back here.” I could feel the rage emanating from him, and it wasn’t impossible to reason that Anna had been taken. I think she was the only person on this planet whose absence could put that look in James’s eyes. But who had taken her?
“How?” Mike asked in confusion as he looked around the room and eyed the unbroken window.
“Some kind of fucking portal,” James snarled. “All we could see through it was snow and ice.”
My heart stopped for a second, and my blood ran cold. A portal could only mean one thing – the fae had been here. My eyes widened when I thought of the reasons why one of the fae would want to take Anna. What would make one of them come here to take a wolf?
Unless Anna wasn’t just a powerful wolf. Once the barrier around her magic had broken, I had realized the vast amount that had been hidden inside her. Was that the reason she had been targeted? Was she actually fae?
“Sam,” Trevor snapped. “I need you, Davis, and Rich to head to the bunker and pack up. We need to be ready to move the second we have coordinates. Our previous mission is canceled. Nothing is more imperative than this.”
“You got it,” I told him with a nod. My stomach turned as I considered what Anna must be going through right now. I was willing to do whatever I could to bring her home safe.
Rich and Davis were just as quiet as I was on the drive to the bunker. They weren’t teasing me about the big reveal any longer, and I couldn’t summon the enthusiasm I would usually feel when I learned a new one of their secrets. My brain was too busy coming up with all the possible scenarios of what was happening to Anna right now.
We rode along small roads that brought us deeper into the ‘country’ area that wasn’t as far from the pack house as I thought it would be. When Rich pulled the vehicle into a field with a small house that looked about fifty-years-old I raised an eyebrow at them.
Davis grinned at my obvious disappointment, but Rich looked focused on the task at hand. “We’ll code you in later,” Rich murmured to me. “For now, you’re going to need to stick with one of us to get in.”
“Understood.”
I followed the guys into the house, and my curiosity was piqued when they moved aside a carpet in the small living room to reveal a trap door. Davis opened the door with a creak of hinges, and I looked down to see a wooden stairway. “After you,” Davis said with a smile.
The stairs were old, but sturdy. What worried me was the rough walls of the passageway that we navigated down. There was a wooden door at the very bottom of the stairs, and Davis opened it with a key. My jaw dropped when the old door revealed a sleek metal one with a keypad for entrance. “We change the codes at least once a week,” Rich told me as Davis slowly opened the high-tech door and revealed what lay beyond.
We stepped into a large room with computer workstations set up in the center and a huge flatscreen on the wall that you could see from anywhere in the room. “This is the best part,” Davis told me with an excited grin. He led me through the room and to another keypad. After entering his code, the entire wall lifted to reveal an arsenal that made me drool. Rifles, grenades, handguns, knives, and everything else you could ever want lined the shelves and decorated the walls.
“I think I just came,” I groaned.
Davis laughed as he lovingly ran his hand over a grenade launcher. “You and me both.”
Rich snapped his fingers. “Keep your pants on and remember the mission.”
Davis smirked at me. “I bet that’s the first time a guy has ever told you that, Sam.”
I rolled my eyes. “Some of us are capable of being professionals.” I tore my eyes away from the arsenal that I would have loved to spend a couple hours fondling. “Without specifics, how do we know what we need?”
“We know Anna was taken somewhere cold and snowy,” Davis told me as his grey eyes lost their twinkle. “Cold weather gear is a starting point.”
“And we know this is a search and rescue mission,” Rich added. “Assume we may have to go to remote locations and be prepared for an extraction.”
“You get the tech,” Davis told Rich. “Sam and I will handle the gear.”
Rich nodded in agreement, and Davis gave me a tour of the rest of the bunker. There were enough food stores to last a group of ten people a year, plus living quarters, bathroom facilities, a work-out room, and a storeroom of ammo. “What exactly are you preparing for?” I asked curiously. This had to have cost a lot of money and time to build.
“We believe in being prepared for anything and everything,” Davis told me as he brushed by me with a nudge.
I murmured in appreciation of the sentiment but couldn’t help but wonder how many more secrets this wolf pack was hiding beneath their surface. I glanced around
the bunker once more before starting to look for the supplies that we’d need. It was a good thing that I thrived off danger, otherwise, I’d probably be worried about what I’d gotten myself into.
Chapter 11
I followed Mike up the stairs to get on the private jet that had been sent to pick us up. Austin had sent Trevor’s team with me in lieu of Quinn, and James was here as our sixth member. We were headed to Montreal because we suspected that the fae had taken Anna to the North and we wanted to find their trail. The Montreal Pack was helping us for several reasons, but first and foremost, it was because Austin had promised Ragnar that we would help him calm a pack rebellion while we were in the area.
I knew that Austin and the others didn’t trust me fully, because I could tell that there was a lot of the story they weren’t telling me. I was guessing that Anna was part fae because that would explain why her magic was so intense. It would also explain why the fae would come for her if she were one of their own. But I couldn’t confront the rest of the pack with my suspicions without letting them know that I was keeping secrets of my own. Most wolves just thought of the fae as bedtime stories and didn’t believe they really existed. They had no idea what kinds of monsters lurked in our world and others.
James had given me some intense glaring when I had asked what the plan was, so I wisely avoided his attention for the rest of the flight. James was a cantankerous asshole on good days, so now that the love of his life had been stolen out of his arms, he was absolutely intolerable.
I tried my best to get some sleep on the flight, because I wasn’t sure when we would be getting more down-time, but I was too worried about Anna to really fall asleep. She had been nothing but sweet and kind to me since the day we met, and it was obvious that she was the glue that kept the Seaside alphas together.
When I first met Anna, I had sensed that she was hiding her magic from the world, but I hadn’t realized it wasn’t voluntary until recently. Something had happened when she was attacked by Mr. Zilker’s minions and then suddenly she was radiating magic like crazy. It had overwhelmed her at first and she had been stuck in a magical coma. I had done what I could to stabilize her magic, and it had been enough for her to wake up, but the poor girl was still a mess.
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