“This is a magical gift. It will give you the ability to shift your shape into that of a wolf. I think you’ll like that. Don’t you?”
Okay. This guy is a few nuts short of a party mix. However, knowing that didn’t make her feel any better.
“Someone’s been watching way too much TV. There’s no such thing as werewolves or any kind of shapeshifter for that matter.” Slowly, she flexed her knees and shifted her weight onto the balls of her feet. She let her arms hang loosely at her sides. There was no sense in alerting them to the fact that she planned to defend herself. “You’re stuck in some sort of fantasy world if you believe that.”
“You are mistaken, my dear.” The man pulled a small, oblong black case from his pocket. It was long and thin, and almost looked like a bracelet box. “This is all too real, as you will soon discover.”
The man took his time opening the long box. Like watching a train wreck, Kendra could do nothing but stand and stare as the lid on the thin box opened to reveal what was inside.
Why didn’t the sensei tell me that when some lunatic accosted me in a deserted parking lot that I’d most likely stand gawking at them with some kind of stunned incredulity? Kendra wanted to do nothing more than run, but her legs just wouldn’t obey the commands her brain sent to them. It was as though she had some vague desire to see what it was Mr. Comb-over planned to do. Why couldn’t she run?
Kendra gasped when he opened the lid and revealed a syringe. She wasn’t stupid. She’d read about men drugging and raping women. There was always the fear of being kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. It was all over the news lately. She spared the others a quick glance and figured it was for the latter that they had targeted her. Rapists didn’t generally run in packs, did they?
Bringing her arms up, she waited for them to attack. Her instructor had always taught her defense, not offense, so she waited for them to make the first move. It didn’t take long. Two of them moved at the same time. Each of them grabbing for an arm. First, she struck out with her feet. She knocked the third man out while the other two struggled to maintain their grip on her upper arms.
The crowd cheered in the stadium, drowning out her screams as the balding man stepped forward. “Just a little sting.” Madness shone bright in his eyes as he reached out and stuck her with the long needle and depressed the plunger.
White-hot pain sliced through her arm as whatever was in the syringe entered her body and she screamed again. It burned like hell. If Kendra didn’t know better, she would have sworn that the lunatic had set fire to her arm. She stared down at it, wondering what the hell he’d just injected her with was that could burn so damned much. She continued to scream as the pain flowed through her blood, burning like molten lava beneath her skin.
It was probably a good thing the others still held her arms. Had they released her, she probably would have dug the flesh off her bones trying to rid herself of the pain.
No one heard her screams. How could they when the crowd at the football game cheered and encouraged their team? All of her fight gone, Kendra sobbed as the men dragged her into one of the SUVs. They pushed her into a seat and secured a seatbelt around her waist. Whatever the madman had injected her with was keeping her immobile and powerless. For years she had studied the art of self-defense, only to have her hard-won knowledge and hours of practice fail her the moment she had needed it the most.
Chapter Two
Galen looked up as two of the men assigned to his detail approached his window. Pressing the switch, he rolled it down. The mist of the light rain hit his face, cooling his skin. It had grown warm in the vehicle with the windows up.
“We have new intel on Doctor Thornton, sir.” It was Jackson who spoke. He was young to be a team member specialist. Weres didn’t usually reach their prime until their nineties. But the boy was smart, smarter than almost everyone he knew.
The young genius was in his early twenties and a bit of a nerd with his mousy brown hair and glasses that kept sliding down his skinny, adolescent nose. It made little sense that the boy even wore the damned things. He was a werewolf. Werewolves didn’t need glasses. It was absurd—almost as absurd as their Alpha, Jake Blackstone, insisting that Galen bring along the MacDonald brothers as well.
The MacDonald twins had been human, until a few months ago, for God’s sake. Who gave a shit that they had once been Army Special Forces? They still thought like humans. In his opinion, being a former human was just as hindering as still being one. It was a condition synonymous with weak. The last thing he wanted to worry about was the two men dying on his watch, damn it.
Galen shook his head, scrubbed his face with his hands and sighed as he thought of his unlikely team of shifters and humans alike. “What’s the news?” He sat back in his seat and folded his arms and leaned against the headrest.
Jackson pushed his glasses up with his finger and leaned closer. Galen stared through the windshield. He couldn’t look at the idiot with those water-covered glasses he didn’t need dripping onto the door panel. Instead, he stared out through the windshield as rain dotted the glass. The wipers, set to intermittent, swiped across his line of vision, clearing the light rain, before coming to a rest just above the cowl.
“Dimitri found another of the crazy doctor’s labs.”
Dimitri was the pack healer’s, chief of security. Bastien, their healer, had been in charge since their alpha had set out on his honeymoon trip nearly three months before. Jake, had combined the trip with a diplomatic mission to enlist the help of some European shifter clans to search out the secret labs where Dr. Richard Thornton experimented on humans and shifters alike. The former Russian agent had also mated with the MacDonald brothers’ sister, Charity and had moved to the United States long ago, though you would never know it by listening to the man’s thick accent.
Galen sighed at the news. “How many fucking labs does that madman have?”
“According to the woman who used to be his assistant, the crazy asshole has labs all over the world. Luckily, this one is in the Nevada desert.”
“Luckily?” He glared at the pup. “What’s so damned lucky about sand and heat?”
The boy turned red and swallowed. The young were’s very prominent Adam’s apple bobbed in his too-scrawny throat. “I thought maybe we could hit the casinos while we were there.”
“Hit the casinos?” Galen shook his head. “Look, Jackson. I know that this is exciting for you, being a new agent and all, but this is business. What about this information gave you the fucking idea we’d have time to visit casinos?”
God save him from the ignorance of childish idiots and former humans who thought themselves superheroes.
“I—I just thought—”
“Thinking was your first mistake. Leave that up to those of us who are good at it.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy pressed his lips together and turned away.
Galen wasn’t sure, but it looked as though the boy was about to cry. Damn it. Damn it all to Hell! Sighing, he took off his seatbelt, opened the door and followed the boy out into the rain.
After three long steps, he grasped the kid’s shoulder and turned him to face him. “Look, I’m sorry.” He paused for a minute, searching for the right words. Words that wouldn’t make the young werewolf feel like even more of a child than he already did. “I’m an ass. I know this is exciting. Your first assignment always is. It’s just...” Shit. What do I say now?
“You don’t want two new shifters and a kid weighing you down.” Jackson shrugged. “I get it. Just remember that it’s not my fault that Jake and Eden aren’t back from their trip yet, Carly’s pregnant so Bastien won’t leave her side and Kalen won’t let Ally step a foot out of their house now that he knows she’s pregnant, too. Dimitri won’t leave Bastien’s or his mate’s side for fear of another kidnapping and everyone else is doing intel or remodeling labs by demolishing the cells where that crazy asshole of a doctor kept his prisoners. You’re stuck with us and you don’t like it.”
<
br /> The kid very conveniently left out the other shifters on his team. They weren’t any better. Galen didn’t trust them because he didn’t know them. At least he knew Jackson and, as much as he hated to admit it, the MacDonald brothers had personal honor down to an art form. Nothing would sway them from their course of action once they had chosen it. And they had decided to protect their sister and the other shifters now that they were all werewolves, thanks to the serum the pack had confiscated and then reverse engineered.
“Come with me. We’ll sit in the truck while we go over the map.” He gave the kid a half-smile. “Who knows? Maybe if we can tie this up in a hurry, I can give you a day to hit the casinos. Just don’t tell your mother that I let you gamble away all of your money. She’ll kick my ass.”
“Naw. If anything, she’ll thank you. I have card counting down to an art and she’s been eyeing a cute little electric car but she won’t spend the money on herself. I wanted to buy her one for Mother’s Day.”
“Card counting is illegal.”
“Only if you get caught, old man. I don’t intend to let that happen.”
“Old man?”
“Well, you are older than I am.” Reaching up, he removed his glasses and stuck them in his pocket.
“You look different without the glasses.”
“I don’t look so much like an idiot, you mean.”
“I never said—“
“You didn’t have to.” Jackson grinned. “My mom hates that I wear these glasses, but I’ve found that it quickly distinguishes the assholes from the nice guys with little effort.”
“Now that you know that I’m an asshole you don’t need them anymore.” That was harsh, but the kid was right.
“No.” He grinned. “You’re not as much of an asshole as you might think. A real asshole would have let me keep walking a minute ago.”
Galen didn’t know why he always felt the need to be an ass. Perhaps it had something to do with finding out that his younger brother, Kalen, had found his mate and hadn’t really even wanted to at the time.
Damn, he was tired of being alone. Galen wanted nothing more than to find a woman, his mate, with whom he could spend the rest of his life. Hell, he didn’t think that was too much to ask.
“Did you confirm the orders to head out to Nevada and eradicate the lab?” The last time one of them forgot to confirm orders, two teams showed up. There had been a shootout between them and each team had lost a few members before they realized that their real enemy had fled and they were all under friendly fire. “We don’t need another damned cluster fuck like that one in Tennessee.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy nodded eagerly. “Dimitri confirmed us as the insertion team. They want us to go in, since we’re the closest.”
“I figured we would be.” Turning, Galen headed back to his truck. “Get to your vehicle. The faster we get there, the more likely it is that we’ll find that lunatic doctor in residence.” And the more likely they would be to find that damned doctor’s newest victim unharmed.
The image of the beautiful and feisty red-haired woman flashed though this mind. The video he’d seen of her abduction showed her fighting back as five men surrounded her. One of them had been Doctor Richard Thornton, asshole extraordinaire. Now that was a woman he could see himself claiming as a mate. The woman had valiantly defended herself against them, her strength and resolve turning him on almost as much as her knowledge of martial arts. And it had been a long, long time since any female had stirred his interest.
Keep reading to see what’s coming next in the Shifters of Wolf Lake. Reade the first two chapters of Book #4 below.
Tianna’s other books:
Zolon Warriors Series
Bewitching Birgit # 1
Seducing Sela #2
Charming Charly #3
Tempting Tabitha #4
Wooing Wynter #5
Dragon Bound Series
The Golden Dragon #1
The Ice Dragon #2
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