by Paige Tyler
“How long did you get to stay in Paris?” Zoe asked, always the more practical one of the two. When it came to hearing about the little vacation Harley and Sawyer had taken right after the mission, she was the one asking where they’d stayed, how much it cost, whether they used public transportation or rented a car, and how the weather had been. Chloe, the more emotional twin, had asked about the experience, the smell of the Seine, whether the paintings in the Louvre were as beautiful in person, and if Paris was truly as romantic as it seemed. It was the Jimmy Choo shoes Sawyer had bought for her in Paris that both girls couldn’t stop talking about, though. Harley hadn’t realized he’d seen her drooling over them that first night they had dinner together in Paris, so she was completely wowed when he surprised her with the strappy shoes. They probably didn’t go with the jeans and tee she was wearing, but who cared?
“We spent four days in France and then four days in London,” Sawyer said, sipping his beer.
“We even got to spend a whole day with his family at their house outside Leeds,” Harley added. “His mother was thrilled he was finally settling down with someone, although less thrilled he was doing it here in America.”
“Oh please.” Sawyer snorted. “She absolutely loved you. Dad, too. Of course, neither one of them can figure out how we ended up together.” He gave the twins a grin. “I think they believe she’s out of my league. I didn’t bother telling them they’re right.”
Zoe and Chloe giggled, sharing another of those secretive glances.
“Did MI6 make it hard for you to leave?” Zoe asked, first to recover and get back to the practical questions.
“They didn’t try to convince Harley to join MI6 instead, did they?” Chloe asked, her face betraying how nervous she was that might have been a possibility.
Sawyer slipped his arm around Harley. “After my boss there realized I’m a werewolf and that Harley and I are together, he fell all over himself trying to get both of us to stay. And while I wouldn’t have minded continuing to work for MI6, I couldn’t ask Harley to leave her pack.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” Chloe smiled. “Because she’s part of the family. And now, so are you.”
They all laughed at that, but it wasn’t lost on Harley how important it was that her pack mates had welcomed Sawyer into the fold. And while she would have left to be with him, she was relieved he hadn’t asked that of her. She’d longed to find a family for years and had found it in her pack. She was just glad McKay had been open to having Sawyer join STAT.
The doorbell rang shortly after that, Misty, Forrest, and Caleb coming in and immediately making their way straight across the living room over to where Sam and Dean, two adorable black lab mix puppies, were relaxing on the floor.
“Don’t get them spun up, Caleb,” Jes warned from the kitchen. “Jake took them both out for a long run this morning just so they’d be calm for the party. If you get them all crazy again, you’ll be the one who takes them for a walk while we eat dinner.”
Harley laughed as Caleb stood there with a pout on his face, looking like a kid told he wouldn’t be able to open his Christmas presents if he didn’t behave. It didn’t stop him from crouching down beside the puppies, both of whom greeted him excitedly.
Jake came in from the small balcony where the grill was, plates piled high with cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and steak in his hands. “Okay, who’s hungry?”
That had to be a rhetorical question, Harley thought, her stomach growling at the aroma of all that grilled perfection.
“Did you get all of your stuff moved into Harley’s place?” Jake asked after they’d all filled their plates and spread out around the living room to eat.
“I did,” Sawyer said after pausing to swallow the bite he’d taken from his burger. “Although I didn’t have much to worry about. A couple of suitcases full of clothes we flew back with and a few boxes of stuff from my flat in London. Harley and I are thinking of getting a slightly larger place now that there are two of us.”
Harley smiled, amazed at how happy the simple notion of getting a place together made her. Since they both loved to read, they wanted one with a room they could designate as a library, where they could showcase all the knickknacks and mementos they’d pick up on their future travels in addition to books. The idea of a home gym was also intriguing. Truthfully, though, it wasn’t the particular details of what they were looking for in a home that interested her. It was living with Sawyer that had her excited.
Still, she nodded her head at all the right times as everyone gave suggestions on where they might look for a place and what price range might be best for them. Jake was focused on practicality, saying they should try to find a place close to STAT headquarters so they could get through DC traffic quickly when they got called in on a mission on short notice. Jes and the twins wanted them to move into their apartment building. Misty and Forrest suggested a brownstone near them in Mount Vernon Square. Caleb thought they should get an RV. Harley had no idea if he was serious or not.
They laughed and talked about anything and everything while they ate, and once again, Harley was struck by how easily Sawyer fit in with her pack.
“Did McKay ever tell you what happened with Adriana and Kristoff?” Forrest asked curiously as he reached for another burger. “I know he was trying to get Adriana to join STAT, but I haven’t heard whether he was able to pull it off or not.”
“Weatherford was working her pretty hard, too.” Jake took a long sip of beer. “But I don’t think Adriana was interested in either offer. She told me before we left Calais that she and Kristoff wanted to spend time together without worrying about people trying to kill them.”
“What about those two supernaturals you told us about?” Zoe asked, nibbling on a Dorito. “Did they ever recover from being melded together?”
“As far as I know, Seamus and Batu were still unconscious when they transferred them to the STAT supermax in Colorado, so I’m not sure,” Jake said.
Sawyer frowned. “Assuming he wakes up at some point, how the bloody hell do you keep someone like Seamus imprisoned? He’d only pop through the walls and bars of whatever cell they put him in.”
“I don’t know,” Jake admitted. “But McKay mentioned that holding them, along with the vampire we captured, won’t be a problem. For all I know, maybe they’ll keep Seamus unconscious the whole time.”
That idea didn’t seem to sit too well with Zoe and Chloe, if the expressions on their faces were any indication. Harley had to admit, she wasn’t thrilled with the concept, either. Both Seamus and Batu were horrible people, no doubt. But keeping someone drugged and unconscious came off a little bit too much like what Yegor had done to the supernaturals he’d captured to auction off, and he was one of the bad guys.
Caleb squeezed mustard onto a hot dog. “The person I’m curious about seeing again is Brielle. I never did get her to tell me how she was able to throw Batu out the window like she did. I tried to find her after we took down Yegor, but she’d already left.”
“McKay talked to her before she took off,” Jake said. “He wanted to make one more run at her, with a job offer this time instead of a prison sentence, but she turned him down. As far as I know, she and her brother have both fallen off the radar. I don’t think we’re ever going to see her again.”
Caleb looked disappointed but didn’t say anything.
Harley thought Jake was probably right. If it hadn’t been for her dumb-ass brother, Brielle would never have shown up on the radar to begin with. Now that he was out of prison, with his record wiped clean, it would be easy for them to disappear.
“Any luck with trying a full shift again?” Caleb asked, catching Harley’s eye from the other side of the coffee table where he sat on the floor.
She shook her head. Since the raid at Gravelines, she hadn’t been able to make it back into her wolf form no matter how hard she tried. “I’ve been try
ing every night,” she admitted. “But while I can get my claws and fangs to come out easily now, even get muscles to reshape so I can run faster, I can’t get close to wolfing out. It’s like I forgot how.”
“I don’t think it’s so much forgetting as it is not being able to get back in the same headspace you were in during your first full shift,” Caleb remarked. “You said you were riding on pure adrenaline and terror, worried that Sawyer was about to die. You’re going to need to re-create some of those same feelings if you hope to be able to do it again. At least until you figure out a better way to make it work for you.”
She shuddered. “Well, if it takes Sawyer almost dying to make me shift, I’ll be fine of it never happens again.”
Beside her, Sawyer leaned in close, his lips brushing her ear. “Giving up your full wolf if it means keeping me safe is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
Harley turned her head to kiss him. “I think we both know that’s not the only thing I’d give up to keep you safe. I love you like crazy.”
Sawyer whispered that he loved her just as much. A declaration that had Caleb making gagging noises, which made everyone laugh, including Harley.
They were still teasing her and Sawyer when Jake’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and got up to go into the kitchen. Harley forced herself not to eavesdrop on the call. Even before what happened in Calais, where her werewolf abilities had improved so much, she would have been able to hear most of the conversation, even from this far away. These days, she’d be able to hear the words being spoken on the TV in the background of the person making the call. She’d had to learn to control all of her senses much better since getting back from the mission, just to keep from being overwhelmed—or hearing something she shouldn’t.
Jake walked into the living room a few minutes later. “Sorry to break up the party, but that was McKay. We have a situation in Turkey. We’re all booked on a flight out of Reagan National in a little over four hours. Support team is already en route.”
“What kind of situation?” Caleb asked, shoving what was left of his hot dog in his mouth.
“McKay didn’t say. But it must be something big because he wouldn’t even hint at it over an unsecured phone line.”
Harley looked at Sawyer. “It looks like we have our first official mission with you on the team. You ready for this?”
He gave her a kiss. “I’m always ready.”
The next SWAT (Special Wolf Alpha Team) werewolf romance from New York Times bestselling author Paige Tyler is sure to make you howl for more!
Coming August 2021 from Sourcebooks Casablanca
Chapter 1
Dallas, Texas
“Man, I hope they’re wrong about someone dumping a body out here,” Officer Connor Malone murmured as he moved through the heavily wooded area ten yards to Trey’s left. Fellow SWAT teammates and werewolves Corporal Trevor McCall was another ten yards beyond Connor, while Officer Hale Delaney was a bit farther out, bringing up the end of the search line. “I mean, dumping a body anywhere is sick, but this place is way too beautiful for crap like that.”
Trey agreed with his blond teammate. The Trinity River Audubon Center was part nature preserve, part public park along the southern side of the county. In the distance, he could hear the drone of vehicles speeding along the Interstate 20 belt loop, but for the moment at least, the area he and his pack mates were in was quiet and tranquil.
That would all change if they found anything. In a heartbeat, a place usually known only for its slow-moving streams and mist-shrouded walking trails would immediately be overrun with cops and crime scene technicians looking for clues to help them identify the person the local papers had tagged as “the Butcher.”
While the name of the latest serial killer to terrorize Dallas might not be original, it was unfortunately devastatingly accurate. Four bodies had been found over the past week and a half. Or more precisely, parts of four bodies had been found. In each case, the corpses—all men—had been found dumped in wooded or remote locations missing their heads and both hands. The theory was that the killer was mutilating the bodies to make it harder to identify the victims. If that was the plan, it was working, because the Dallas Police Department had yet to put a name to a single one of them.
Four bodies found with hands and heads removed was morbid and depraved enough, but unfortunately, there was more. Each victim was also missing at least one other body part—the right arm in the first case, right leg in the second, both lungs in the third, and on the body found two nights ago, several whole sections of skin had been missing. The DPD had tried to keep those details secret until they had a suspect, but somehow, it’d leaked out and the media had been running the Butcher storyline nonstop ever since.
“Did you hear what happened to make them think there’s a body out here?” Hale asked as he dropped to one knee to look under some thickets near the edge of the stream that served as the leftmost boundary for this part of the search grid. Tall and muscular, he had dark-blond hair and blue eyes.
Trey could have told him there weren’t any remains to be found under there. If there were, they’d be able to easily pick up the odor. But even by normal human standards, Hale’s nose was bad. Compared to the other members of the pack, their fellow werewolf couldn’t smell anything at all. That’s why he tended to trust his keen eyesight for everything.
“Something about an older couple out here walking their dog, I think,” Trevor said as he waited patiently for Hale to finish looking under the brush. There was a time when everyone in the Pack used to rag on Hale about his nose, but now, they all felt bad for him.
“Yeah, that’s it exactly.” Hale stood and rejoined their line moving through the woods. “But you missed the best part. It turns out the couple’s dog ran off while they were here, and when the poor guy finally came back a few hours later, he was covered in blood. They assumed he was hurt, so they took him to the vet. When the vet figured out the dog was okay and the blood wasn’t his, she ran a precipitin test, then called the PD first thing this morning when she confirmed it was human.”
“No wonder Chief Leclair pushed to get so many volunteers out here searching.” Trevor ran his hand through his dark hair. “If the dog was loose for hours, there’s no telling where he was when he found the body. It could be miles from here.”
Trey didn’t comment and neither did his pack mates. They searched in silence for a while until Trevor spoke again.
“So, how’d your date go last night, Connor?”
If they had been close enough, Trey would have fist-bumped Trevor to thank him for coming up with something to talk about besides the mutilated remains they were out there looking for.
“In a word—disaster,” Connor said, tilting his head back to sniff the morning air like he’d picked up a scent. But whatever it was must not have been all that interesting because he continued, “Seriously, it was the worst date ever.”
Trey was fairly sure his pack mate was exaggerating. He’d seen Connor and the nurse talking a couple weeks ago after Connor had gotten roughed up during a confrontation with a drunk man on a bulldozer. Connor hadn’t been hurt—he was a frigging werewolf after all—but a reporter had seen the blood, so a trip to the hospital had been mandatory. Which meant Trey had been forced to watch her and Connor flirt for nearly an hour as she’d taken her time cleaning his injuries. There’d definitely been a spark there.
“Come on,” he scoffed. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”
Connor snorted. “Trust me, it was worse.” He sighed. “I mean, dinner went fine and there was some chemistry—not any kind of serious connection, but we clicked well enough to see where it might lead—but it all went downhill once I took her back to my place and she met Kat.”
“Ah,” Trey said in understanding even as Hale and Trevor did the same.
In theory, Kat was the SWAT team’s feline
mascot, but honestly the cat put up with the SWAT Pack simply because that’s who Connor hung out with. She was definitely his cat. Hell, she even followed him on their incident calls, regardless of the danger. And forget trying to keep her and Connor separated. Trevor had tried locking her in the armory to keep Kat from going out on a barricaded active-shooter situation, and the damn cat had shown up at the scene five minutes after the SWAT team, somehow having hitched a ride with a uniformed patrol officer who had no idea she was even in his car. No one had a clue how she’d done it. Suffice it to say, Trevor was her least favorite werewolf in the Pack. The look she gave him every time she saw him would melt the paint off a car. The only reason the creature hadn’t come this morning was that it was o dark thirty. Kat never got out of bed this early unless it was to watch Connor and the rest of them shower after physical training.
“What happened?” Trey asked, though he was sure he already knew. Kat had a way of letting people know what she thought of them.
“Nothing at first,” Connor said. “Kat was nowhere in sight when Michelle and I got back to my place after dinner, but the moment we sat down on the couch, she jumped up and shoved her way between us, deliberately knocked the glass of wine out of Michelle’s hand, then clawed her dress.”
Trevor snorted. “I guess Kat didn’t approve of your date.”
“You think?” Connor asked drily. “Suffice to say, the date was over. And before you ask, Michelle and I won’t be going out again.”
“It’s not her fault she decided to date a werewolf with a possessive cat for a pet.” Trey would have said more, but a familiar scent caught his attention. He stopped and looked left, out across the slow-moving stream.
Trevor and Connor must have smelled it, too, because they both paused and sniffed the air.
“What is it?” Hale asked.
