by Paige Tyler
Also by Paige Tyler
STAT: Special Threat Assessment Team
Wolf Under Fire
SWAT: Special Wolf Alpha Team
Hungry Like the Wolf
Wolf Trouble
In the Company of Wolves
To Love a Wolf
Wolf Unleashed
Wolf Hunt
Wolf Hunger
Wolf Rising
Wolf Instinct
Wolf Rebel
Wolf Untamed
X-Ops
Her Perfect Mate
Her Lone Wolf
Her Secret Agent (novella)
Her Wild Hero
Her Fierce Warrior
Her Rogue Alpha
Her True Match
Her Dark Half
X-Ops Exposed
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2021 by Paige Tyler
Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks
Cover art by Kris Keller/Lott Reps
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Excerpt from Rogue Wolf
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband. Without your help and support, I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant a girl could ask for. Love you!
Chapter 1
Paris
Harley Grant ran her hands down her little black dress as she climbed the steps in her surprisingly comfortable platform heels and walked into the crowded nightclub. The throbbing techno beat immediately made her sensitive ears ring and she winced. She’d have a splitting headache in five minutes. Loud noises always did that to her, which was one of the many reasons she hadn’t been to places like this since turning into a werewolf eight years ago, when she was a junior in college.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her STAT teammate and fellow werewolf Caleb Lynch glance at her with concern on his face. Tall and muscular with brown eyes, his dark blond hair always looked like he was running his hands through it. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” she said, raising her voice a little to be heard. “I hate loud music, that’s all.”
Caleb nodded, clearly not as bothered by it as she was. Then again, Caleb was an omega werewolf. While he might be as big as a house and as strong as a bull, his senses weren’t anywhere as sensitive as an alpha’s, like she was.
“It’s not the music I’m worried about,” he said, taking in all the people around them with a frown. “I’m not a fan of big crowds. Being packed into a place like this when the shit might hit the fan at any second makes me twitchy.”
Control and temperament were another thing that differentiated alpha werewolves from omegas. Harley had dealt with some anger management issues right after her change, but Caleb would have to deal with them for the rest of his life. When he lost it, he really lost it. As in people ended up bruised and bloody—or dead. It was something everyone on the Special Threat Assessment Team was helping him work on, but it wasn’t easy. The list of things that could set him off seemed to grow by the day. Apparently, crowded nightclubs were the newest trigger.
“I think you can relax,” Harley said as they moved deeper into the club, the music getting louder with every step until she could practically feel her body vibrating. “You’re menacing enough that most people will be more than happy to give you space. And if the vague intel we got is any indication, I doubt we’re going to run into any trouble tonight. More likely we’ll walk around for a few hours, then head back to the hotel in time for the jet lag to catch up to us.”
Caleb looked skeptical at that. She supposed they’d know soon enough.
“Okay, Jake,” she said, hoping the support techs had been right about the tiny microphone concealed in her necklace working in the loud club. “We’re in.”
“Roger that,” Jake Huang, their pack alpha/team leader murmured over the radio. “Jes and I are heading toward the private rooms upstairs. Misty and Forrest are near the band, trying to work their way backstage. That leaves the dance floors for you and Caleb, as well as the lower levels, if you can figure out how to get to them.”
“Copy that,” Caleb said, then looked at Harley. “I gotta admit, wandering around looking for something suspicious that’ll lead us to the kidnappers or their captives, both of which might or might not be supernatural, isn’t much of a plan.”
Harley would like to say he was wrong, but Caleb had hit the nail on the head. Twelve hours ago, she and the rest of the team had been back home in Washington, DC, hanging out at Jake’s place, enjoying some downtime after their first mission together, when their boss had called about a possible human-trafficking ring operating out of Paris that might involve supernaturals. With little more than that to go on, they’d immediately caught the next flight to France, where a support team met them with weapons and other equipment.
But going into unknown—not to mention possibly dangerous—situations was what being part of STAT was all about. She and her teammates ran around the world sniffing out threats to see if they were common everyday bad guys or scary things that went bump in the night.
“I’m with you there.” Harley scanned the people around them, who were gyrating under the
colorful strobes on the nearby dance floor while strategically placed black lights found the fluorescent paint on the exposed parts of their bodies. She wondered what constituted suspicious in a place like this. “Let’s hope we get lucky.”
Caleb only grunted in reply.
As they made their way through the club, Harley realized it was one thing to memorize a floor plan on a piece of paper, but a completely different thing to figure out where you were in that same building when it was filled with people. Within minutes, she had no idea where she was in relation to the entrance and even less idea how much more area they needed to explore. The place was much bigger than it looked in the drawing.
“We’ll cover more ground if we split up,” she said to Caleb.
From the scowl on his face, Harley knew his first instinct was to say no. Not because he thought she was wrong about being able to cover more ground on their own, but because he was worried about letting her search alone. Even though they’d only been working together for a few weeks, he’d already become like a big brother to her. It was sweet in a bittersweet kind of way, since she’d long ago given up on her real family.
“The sooner we find these people, the sooner we can get out of here,” she added before he protested. “We’re in Paris. Don’t you want to look around a little before McKay puts us right back on a plane home? Besides, we’ll be in constant radio communication. If I run into trouble, you can be there in seconds.”
He still seemed resistant to the idea, but after a few seconds, he relented. “Okay, but don’t do anything crazy, all right? At the first hint of danger, I want you on the radio. Not once something happens, but the second you get a funny feeling, okay?”
Harley nodded. “You, too.”
Another grunt.
Giving him a smile, she slipped into the crowd before Caleb could change his mind. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being part of STAT or working with Caleb. On the contrary, she loved hanging out with her teammates. But she’d been on her own for a long time. Depending on other people was something she would have to get used to again.
She wandered through several smaller rooms, each filled with mobs of dancing people, pulsing music, and flashing lights. Harley tried to ignore the extraneous and focus on the details, looking for anything that suggested there was a human—or supernatural—trafficking ring working out of the club.
As she moved from room to room, she depended on her eyes to lead the way. As a werewolf, she should have been putting as much trust in her nose and ears, but she wasn’t a big fan of that. While her boss, Nathan McKay, had hired her because of what she was, she wasn’t keen on using her werewolf abilities. Besides, they were kind of unreliable anyway. Sometimes, she could smell a pizza delivery vehicle from half a mile away. Other times, she could barely smell her own perfume. Then again, maybe they were so inconsistent because she didn’t make use of them. But since she refused to hone them, at the end of the day, her ears and nose were going to do what they wanted.
Which was why she was a little shocked when a familiar scent tickled her nose. She smelled a werewolf. And it wasn’t Caleb or Jake. Even with her less-than-reliable nose, she knew that for sure.
What were the chances of another werewolf in the club not being connected to an alleged supernatural trafficking ring?
Harley stopped and sniffed the air, trying to be as subtle as she could. Then she was moving again, intent on tracking the scent to its source. Should she radio the team about her discovery or wait until she had more information? As sketchy as her nose was, it was possible the other werewolf had been in the club days ago and she was simply picking up residual scent.
She wove through the crowd, circling dance floors and around tables, then moved through an archway that led to a set of dimly lit concrete stairs and the lower level Jake had asked her and Caleb to find. She absently listened to her teammates reporting in over the radio, saying they still hadn’t found anything. Tuning them out, she focused on her nose, trusting it to lead her down the steps even as she lost the trail more than once.
There was yet another dance floor downstairs, this one filled with people moving to a much less chaotic rhythm than those on the level above. There were fewer flashing lights, too. That should have made it easier to scan the room and locate the source of the scent that had drawn her down there, but nobody stood out.
Maybe she was completely wrong about the scent.
Maybe it wasn’t a werewolf at all.
Then she caught a glimpse of someone out of the corner of her eye that made her snap her head around, but she didn’t see anyone. Sure she’d seen something, she skirted the outside of the dance floor in that direction. She was starting to question herself again when she spotted a tall, attractive guy with broad shoulders, casually disheveled brown hair, and scruff on his square jaw. He was circling the dancers on the floor in much the same way Harley was but in the opposite direction, keeping pace with her so they stayed exactly opposite each other.
Yeah, like that’s a coincidence.
A little voice in the back of her head told her to get on the radio and call Caleb and the rest of her teammates, but she ignored it, too mesmerized by the handsome man across the room from her. Every few seconds, piercing blue eyes locked with hers, making something inside her—maybe her inner wolf—feel a sensation she didn’t recognize.
Even if she hadn’t picked up on the scent, Harley would have known he was a werewolf from the graceful, animalistic way he moved.
He was a predator, no doubt about it.
Was he a kidnapper as well?
She wanted to say he’d never do anything like that, which was an asinine thing to consider about a man she’d never met.
Tired of stalking in circles, Harley stopped, turning carefully to keep her eyes on the big werewolf as he moved closer. She wasn’t sure, but for a brief moment, she thought she caught sight of what might have been a smile tugging at his sensuous mouth.
The other werewolf—an alpha most definitely—strode past the last few people separating them and came to a halt a few feet away. Harley couldn’t ignore that the man in front of her was possibly the most gorgeous guy she’d ever seen.
Which pretty much guaranteed he was one of the bad guys. Because that was how her luck worked out when it came to the opposite sex.
Harley took a single step forward and felt a tingle in her stomach when he did the same, that dangerous smile showing up again. She took another few steps toward him when his head whipped to the side. She looked that way, too, trying to see what had attracted his attention, and caught sight of two men slipping behind a black velvet curtain covering a section of the far wall. The second guy cast a furtive glance over his shoulder before disappearing.
That isn’t suspicious at all.
She turned back to the alpha werewolf, but he was already striding in that direction. She quickly followed, knowing she should call the rest of the team, but once again, her instincts insisted she hold off. By the time she slipped behind the curtain, all she saw was another set of stairs. The mysterious werewolf was nowhere to be found.
She paused long enough to slide a hand under her dress and pull the small frame Glock 9mm from the tiny holster strapped to her upper thigh, chambering a round as she started down the steps, rather proud of how comfortably she handled a loaded weapon. Considering that before joining STAT she’d never even held a gun, she thought she was doing rather well.
From down below, she heard the rhythmic sound of rapid footsteps along with the soft murmur of voices but no music or partying people or anything else to make her think this was a part of the dance club open to the public. Whatever the hell those two guys had come down here for, it probably wasn’t on the up-and-up.
Lit only by three low-watt bulbs mounted in cobweb-covered fixtures hanging from the rough stone ceiling, the room at the bottom of the steps was filled with crates, racks of empty b
ottles, and bags of trash. The dim glow was barely enough to throw shadows, but Harley didn’t need a lot of light to see the werewolf standing a few feet away, his broad back to her, a pistol down at his side.
“You always bring a gun when you go to a nightclub?” he asked without looking at her.
His voice was as deep as she’d imagined it would be, a little rough with a hint of a British accent, like he’d traveled extensively for much of his life and lost a bit of the distinctive sound over time.
“A girl has to be careful these days,” Harley said, smiling even though she was standing in the middle of a filthy storage room twenty feet underground with an alpha werewolf who’d probably lured her down here with kidnapping in mind—or worse. “I’ve heard big cities can be dangerous.”
The man turned to look at her, blue eyes piercing even in the dimness as they slid up and down her body. “If you think it might be dangerous, why come to Paris? And all the way from America, if I’m not mistaking the accent.”
The Brit’s perfectly sculpted nose lifted a little, his nostrils flaring the slightest bit, like he was trying to take in a scent he found tantalizing. Harley knew he was picking up her pheromones and couldn’t help wondering what she smelled like to him.
Did he like her scent?
Did she care if he did?
“You know the song ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun,’ right?” She approached him slowly, glancing around and trying to figure out where the other two men had gone. “Maybe visiting potentially dangerous places is how I have fun.”
“Strange hobby,” he said, his voice dropping down an octave to practically make her tummy vibrate…as well as regions a bit farther south. “I prefer reading, but whatever. You do you.”
Harley lifted a brow, lowering her gun to a safe position. “Is that what you’re doing down in this dank, dark room?” She stepped to the side a little, making him circle to the right as they resumed the little dance they’d done upstairs. “Looking for a good book?”
He snorted, coming to a stop again a few feet away. “We both know that’s not what I’m doing down here any more than you’re here looking for some fun. So, as entertaining as this banter is, I think it’s time we get on with what really brought us here.”
