A man dressed in white and silver came through next to join the battle. James hurried through the snow to regain his weapon, so he missed who stepped through next. I gave a happy shout when I recognized Cody and Anna. They were also inappropriately dressed for the weather, but they didn’t show any signs of being cold. Anna stepped in front of Cody, and I saw the faint glimmer of magic surround them that indicated that she had put up some kind of barrier.
That was new.
I went for my weapon as quickly as I could, but I was frustrated by how slow I moved through the snow. The first group of fae stumbled back through a portal, carrying a wounded member of their group. Their pack of shifters followed close behind and barely made it through before the portal closed behind them. James had retrieved a weapon and was trudging through the snow towards Anna and the others. I pitied anyone who tried to get in his way. James wavered for a moment, unsure of whether to greet Anna or go after the fae standing too close to her. Anna made the decision for him. She ran towards him; her speed not being impacted by the snow as much as it should have been. I laughed when she flung herself on him and took him down to the ground.
Anna hadn’t come back alone, she’d brought two fae with her. James didn’t look happy to see either of them, so it looked like Anna’s presence wasn’t enough to soothe the angry wolf. After a short discussion, it was decided that James would return to Seaside with Anna and the fae while the rest of the team would continue to help Ragnar clean up the rebels that were plaguing his path.
It turned out that the shifters who were accompanying the fae weren’t the ones Ragnar had sent us after. I was happy to hear that the rebels we wanted were holed up in a warehouse very far south from here – back in Montreal. Caleb reported that he had tracked them from where they had harassed several of Ragnar’s pack mates before retreating. I was even happier that we wouldn’t have to suffer through another plane ride like the first to get back to Montreal.
We packed up our rifles in duffel bags and hid all our other weapons in bags or on our persons. Now that we were headed back to the real world, we couldn’t be walking around looking like mercenaries out on a kill job.
I gave Froston a wary look when he opened up a portal to our new location, but Anna trusted him, so I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. As I passed by him, Froston reached out with several strands of magic. I reacted instinctively and pushed them away from me. Froston gave me a small, satisfied smile, and I realized I had been played. He had picked up on the fact that I was different from the other shifters and he had been testing me.
Fuck.
There was no time for conversation as I stepped through the portal with the rest of my team, but my heart thudded. What was Froston going to tell the others about me? Would they suddenly turn on me when they found out the truth?
“You alright?” Trevor asked.
Was that my imagination, or did I hear the slightest hint of concern in his voice?
“Yup,” I said quickly, not wanting to bring any more attention to myself.
“It’s good to be back to civilization,” Rich said with a smile as he pulled out his phone.
“How is that still charged?” I asked curiously.
“It’s charged because I turned it off completely when I realized it was useless,” Rich said pointedly. “There was no sense in draining the battery just to play solitaire.” “It was worth it,” Mike mumbled.
“We’re going to meet in a hotel downtown,” Rich announced. “But there’s a bus station less than a mile from here.”
“We’ll be less noticeable if we split up,” Davis pointed out. “Mike and I will take Sam, but you and Trevor make a cute couple,” Davis teased Rich.
Trevor looked heavenward as if praying for patience while Mike smirked. “Sure, bro. You can be Sam’s brother, and I’ll be her devoted boyfriend.”
Davis opened his mouth to disagree, but Trevor beat him to it. “Good plan. Give us a five-minute head start, then follow. We’ll walk to the bus station, then take cabs from there to make our situation look slightly more normal.”
We watched Trevor and Rich disappear down the street, and I hefted one of my bags higher on my shoulder. “You know,” I teased them. “A good brother and boyfriend would probably carry everything for me.”
Davis rolled his eyes. “Spoken like a woman who’s never been in a long-term relationship. Guys only do nice shit before they have you on lock-down.” “Good thing you’re my brother, then,” I snapped back at him.
Mike shifted his bag. “If you really want-”
“No,” I interrupted. “I can handle my own shit. I was just messing with you.”
There was silence between us as we started walking in the direction where Trevor and Rich had already disappeared.
“That wasn’t really true,” Mike murmured.
“What?” I asked in confusion.
“If you really love a girl, you always do nice things for her.”
I blinked in surprise. “Uh…”
“Sorry I hit a nerve,” Davis mumbled as he trailed behind us.
I shrugged. “I’m not offended, I just hate that I’m so obvious. And for the record, I had wanted you to admit to being a terrible fake brother and an awful fake boyfriend, not expecting you to offer me help that I don’t need. It was a joke gone bad.”
“You could have any guy you wanted,” Davis told me. “I was just pointing out that you’re too independent to get tied down to a guy you’d probably never get to see because you’re always going on deployments.”
“That’s not quite the save you meant it to be,” Mike said with a grimace.
“We’re cool,” I said with a smile. “You’re not wrong, it just sometimes sucks when people point out flaws that you don’t like to admit to yourself.”
“It’s only easy to recognize because I have the same flaw,” Davis admitted. “In the past, I’d never let myself get close to a girl because I know she could never be a part of this life, and I could never let her see all of me. Most civilians would run away in horror if they could hear half the thoughts that ran through my head.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Yeah, I get it.”
“You’re one of a kind, Sam,” Mike added. “But you fit in with us.”
I shoved down the emotions that were creeping up inside of me, and instead put a trademark smirk on my face. “Careful, I might start to think that you like me.”
I saw a flash of disappointment on Mike’s face, as if he was hoping to hear something else and I buried my guilt down along with all the other sappy stuff I couldn’t deal with. Davis just shook his head at me with a sad smile. “It’s too soon for this conversation. Let’s talk about how fun it is to shoot things.”
I laughed as if I didn’t have a care in the world, but my heart was beating faster than it should. These guys had just pushed me in a direction I was uncomfortable with, and I had run away from it like a scared little girl. They were letting it go for now, but this wasn’t over. After we finished this job, I was going to have to take a hard look at myself and what I wanted out of life. I was either going to have to make a run for it or bite the bullet and take a chance on letting these guys in. Both options terrified me.
Chapter 14
No one had mentioned that the hotel we were meeting at was in the worst part of town possible. They also hadn’t mentioned the hotel had been closed for years, and it was now infested with bugs, rats, and roaches. From the debris over the floor, it was also obvious the rooms had been used for quite a few illicit activities. I stepped over a used condom and edged past a broken syringe with the needle a few paces away.
“The staff here is terrible,” I quipped. “They’re getting a one-star rating on Yelp. And just wait until they read my review.”
“I can’t believe you brought your sister here, dude,” Mike played along as he ribbed Davis.
“She’s your girlfriend,” Davis shot back with a grin. “And it sounds like you’ll be sleeping o
n the couch for a while after this one.”
“That’s enough,” Trevor growled. “Clear a space so we have room to think. This is going to be our base of operations while we’re here.”
“I hate to be the one pointing this out,” I interrupted. “But do we know for sure these guys are bad? All we were told is that they don’t want Ragnar as their pack master. And we saw the fae take their wolves back into fae-land.”
“Caleb does the research on our targets, and Austin approves them,” Trevor explained with patience that was out of character for him.
“Are we sure Austin approved it?” The other guys all gave me strange looks, but I needed to push the issue further. “It sounded like James made the agreement with Ragnar in the moment, and you know he would have agreed to anything for Anna.”
Trevor frowned at me, but Rich looked like he was thinking about it. Mike and Davis busied themselves with moving trash out of the way and pretended they couldn’t hear the conversation. “Austin’s aware of it,” Trevor said slowly. “And Caleb is pulling satellite footage for us now.”
“We’re the good guys,” Rich told me softly. “Trust us.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t done asking questions. I would have more later when we met with the representative for Ragnar’s pack.
No one was more surprised than me when it was Ragnar himself and his mate, Ingrid, who showed up at our decrepit base of operations. I stood up from where I had been cautiously perched on a broken stool that only had three legs remaining.
Ragnar greeted all of us but kept his focus on Trevor. “Thank you for coming to help with this situation. My pack keeps to the old ways of fighting with tooth and claw, but our new enemies don’t feel the same.”
Trevor gave a nod of understanding. “Most packs have adopted human ways.”
My eyes drifted over to Ingrid when I felt her eyes on me. I narrowed my eyes and looked closer. This chick looked like a slightly older version of Anna. Were they related? There was a lot that my team hadn’t told me about this situation.
Trevor pulled Ragnar aside to talk strategy, and Ingrid approached me. “You’re Sam?” I gave her a nod but didn’t offer any other information.
She tilted her head at me. “There’s something different about you.”
I stiffened. “I’m not a wolf.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mike listening in on my conversation with Ingrid and started to sweat.
“Hmmm,” Ingrid said quietly. “I’ll let it go for now, but we should talk later.”
I gave her a casual shrug to hide my dread of that conversation. “Cool.”
Ingrid gave me a knowing smile. “I approached you because I wanted to appeal to your sense of compassion.”
I raised an eyebrow at her but was secretly annoyed. Why did everyone always assume that the female in the group was a bleeding heart?
“The rebels have taken several children from our community,” Ingrid told me solemnly. “We didn’t come to the decision to eliminate this group lightly, and we would have continued to negotiate with them if we hadn’t been informed that they were planning to sell the children to the fae.”
My jaw dropped. “This is a rescue mission?”
Ingrid nodded. “Ragnar’s main goal is to eliminate the threat to the rest of the pack. When you get close enough to the rebels, you’ll see why it’s crucial that their sickness doesn’t spread.”
I looked at her in confusion, but she continued to speak.
“Children are resilient and have an innocence that partially protects them from evil,” Ingrid murmured to me as she stepped closer and touched my arm. “But that doesn’t mean they are completely immune from the darkness that infests the rebels.”
I wanted to pull away now that she was uncomfortably close, but she was speaking so softly that it was challenging to hear her, even with my shifter hearing. That was undoubtedly intentional so that the others in the room didn’t hear us.
“Bring the children back,” she whispered. “I need to prove to Ragnar that it can be done.”
I nodded in agreement, but I was missing a big part of the puzzle. Rescue stolen children? Got it. Take out bad guys? Done. But her talk about sickness and evil? Not so sure about that.
“What was that about?” Mike murmured to me as I drifted closer to him.
I shrugged. “She wants a woman there to comfort the stolen kids.”
My voice must have been too loud, because my words got Trevor’s attention. “Kids?” he asked Ragnar.
Ragnar gave a one-shouldered shrug. “We just need you to take out the rebels, we’ll handle the rest.”
Trevor shook his head. “That’s not how this works,” he growled. “We need all the information about the job. Having hostages involved changes our plan.”
“It doesn’t change anything for you,” Ragnar said coldly. “We want these guys taken out, regardless of the cost.”
“You’re willing to sacrifice young pups?” Mike asked in disbelief.
“It’s for the greater good,” Ragnar insisted. “You have no idea what’s at stake here.”
“Then I suggest you tell us.” I could feel rage vibrating from Trevor, and I was all the way across the room from him. Ragnar might be the most powerful wolf in his pack, but Trevor was an intimidating guy.
Ragnar avoided Trevor’s eyes. “The hostages were the only thing I kept from you, all the other information I gave is accurate.”
“You’re hiding something else,” Trevor said bluntly.
Ragnar gave a defeated sigh. “There’s something wrong with the rebels, something’s infected their minds.”
“Like a virus?” Rich asked. “Is it contagious?”
“You won’t be infected unless you have extended contact with them,” Ragnar told us.
“We think it’s magical in nature, but it takes a while to set in.”
“The fae,” I hissed. The stupid fae were somehow influencing wolves to hand over their own young. That was horrible.
Trevor gave Ragnar a cold look and then turned to look at us. “We take out as many as we can from afar. We only infiltrate after we’ve taken out their defenses and left them vulnerable.”
“Where are the kids in the warehouse?” Rich asked with a frown. “If we have to blow our way in, I don’t want to risk hitting them with debris.”
Ragnar straightened up, his commanding presence once again filling the room. “As far as we can tell, they’re being held in the back section that used to be a walk-in freezer. The thick walls should protect them from most of the violence.”
Trevor looked thoughtful, but Davis and I exchanged a glance. There was no guarantee that our ammo wouldn’t penetrate through the old walls of a decrepit warehouse. Hitting a kid with a stray bullet wasn’t an option. If I were the bad guys, I’d position myself right in front of those kids to hamstring the rescuers. We wouldn’t be able to fire at them unless we were absolutely sure of the shot.
“What about gas?” I asked. “Something strong enough to get the adults, but not cause long-term harm to the kids.”
Ingrid smiled at me. “That’s how having a white wolf on your side is going to be an advantage. If I can get close enough to the building, I can create a mist that will disorient and confuse them.”
“And if we have to go in?” Mike asked. “What protection will we need?”
Ingrid frowned at the question. “You’ll have to wait until it clears.” “And if it wears off?” Davis asked.
“We need to hit at exactly the right time,” Trevor growled. “No room for mistakes.”
“I need some supplies,” Rich announced before turning to Ragnar. “This is your territory - do you have a contact that can get me what I need quickly and without asking an abundance of questions?”
Ragnar nodded, and the two of them walked off to talk quietly about what Rich needed. I turned to Trevor. “If we’re blowing shit up and having an all-out firefight, do we need to worry about the humans? This is Canada, not Afghanistan, and I don
’t think Canadians would appreciate us demolishing one of their neighborhoods.”
Trevor chuckled. “Ragnar’s pack is going to be stationed around the area to keep humans away. He’s already used his connections with the police department to ensure we aren’t interrupted, and the warehouse is several miles away from the closest human homes.”
I cracked my neck. “Alright, let’s do this.”
Davis and I shared a bloodthirsty grin, and I could feel Trevor’s magic swirling around him in readiness. Mike looked relaxed at a glance, but I could see anticipation glinting in his eyes. It was time to see what we could do as a team.
Chapter 15
I darted between shadows as I crept through the darkness towards the target. I could feel Mike, Davis, Rich, and Trevor close to me as we quickly made our way through the maze of warehouses. After a short argument, Ragnar and Ingrid had decided to sit on the sidelines for this mission. That was fine with me, because it didn’t sound like Ingrid’s magic was predictable enough to take out the enemy but not hurt us.
Mike peeled off from the group to get into position on a nearby rooftop to take out any bad guys that tried to make it out of the trap we were about to lay. There was only one door to the warehouse, but Rich was about to make another one. Mike would be able to watch both from his perch and get anyone who shouldn’t be walking out of there.
Trevor had a silencer on his rifle, so he quietly took out the guy standing near the front door. The sentry slumped down the wall, leaving a trail of blood until he lay motionless on the ground. Rich darted to the left wall as I covered him, and Trevor covered the front door. He worked quickly to set up his explosives, and I watched with a grin on my face. I loved blowing shit up. Meanwhile, Davis headed to the back to cut off the power that led to the building. We wanted the enemy left in the dark and surprised by the explosion when we burst in there.
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