“Anything else?” Brody’s deep voice beside her sent an unwanted current down her spine.
“Trafficking, definitely,” she nodded. “He said they’re dealing in serious stuff including sex trafficking. That they’re a real menace to the other shifter groups who like to deal around in the illegal things recreationally. Kyle said they’re going to bring a lot of scrutiny on the other packs if they keep this up.”
Beside her, Brody had a face that could stop a charging rhino.
“Stop saying his name,” he practically growled.
“Who?” Sienna blinked. What was he talking about.
“Kyle,” Brody spit the name out of his mouth like it was bitter and repulsive. “Stop saying his name every time you speak.”
Sienna shot her brother a questioning look, but Sage only shrugged, clearly as confused as she was.
“Anyway, Ky--, Sienna stopped as the growl returned and restarted. “The idiot wolf said that people are scared and information’s going to get harder and harder to come by. They’ve really spooked the shifter scene around here and people are trying to give these bears a really wide berth in hopes that they’ll just make some illegal, quick cash and move on.”
“But why would they?” Dane asked. “Once you’ve got a stranglehold on a place, what’s to make you move on? They’re obviously not too worried about being taken down.”
As dawn neared and the dark light outside the huge windows began to turn from black to slate to lighter blue, Sienna yawned.
“I think you guys have at least a couple leads to work with,” she said as she stood and righted herself. “I need to get some sleep. I’ve got to work another tournament this weekend and it starts tonight. You’ll be okay without me?”
That got a snort from her brother Sage. Brody didn’t say anything and Sienna was oddly offended.
“Well, okay then, boys,” she said as she made her way to the door. “Try not to get yourselves arrested. Or killed.”
Sage stood and called to her as she left.
“Do you need Brody to give you a ride home?”
Sienna stilled at the door and looked over her shoulder at the Alpha.
“No thanks,” she said as she closed the door. “I’ve had about as much of Brooding Brody as one girl can handle today.”
She didn’t miss the sound of laughter as she walked down the hallway, or the snarl that followed.
Chapter Eight
Dear Gods and Goddesses above, Brody was bored as hell.
He and Sage had been sitting outside the third empty warehouse in two days without so much as a trace of the Kodiaks or their missing pack member, Liesel.
“This is torture,” he said as he exhaled a long sigh and ran his hand through his disheveled hair.
Beside him, Sage nodded in agreement.
“At least Dane’s post is entertaining.”
Entertaining, to say the least. A panther pride had a couple of strip clubs off the strip and Dane had bravely volunteered to scope them out for any sign of the rogue bears. Brody let out a snort of laughter. True, this whole watching abandoned buildings for hours on end was boring, but the truth was very apparent to both him and his wolf. They both missed having her around.
It’d taken all of Brody’s willpower not to pepper Sage with endless questions about Sienna. What was her story? How many boyfriends did she have? What was her favorite movie?
She was invading Brody’s every waking thought and that was annoying him to no end. He wasn’t one for getting wrapped up in women—unless there were sheets involved and even then, he was gone before sunrise.
“This is a waste of time.”
Brody fired up the engine as he said it and Sage only nodded.
“I can go give Dane a little help if you need me to,” Sage could hardly contain the laugh he was holding back as he said it.
Brody just rolled his eyes as he turned his truck around and headed back to his hotel.
***
In a ballroom packed full of women in every shape, size, color, and flavor, Brody’s eyes were glued to one lanky brunette who had no idea he even existed at this moment.
It hadn’t been hard to find Sienna’s chair in the crush of tournament tables and players. His wolf picked up her uniquely feminine scent of pears and vanilla the second he walked through the doors. It’d been a beacon for him, leading him straight to her.
She had no clue he was there and it gave Brody the chance to watch this fascinating creature in her natural habitat.
Put plainly, Sienna was amazing. She was a quiet storm, observing and reacting to not only the game at her table, but the masses of bodies moving around her. He was careful to stay far enough away that she wouldn’t notice him, but where he could keep an eye squarely on her.
Sienna wore a simple black t-shirt with a distractingly low V-neck and tight, distressed jeans with strategically placed rips over her thighs. Her long hair hung straight and her pouty mouth glistened with just enough gloss to make Brody notice how the overhead lights danced off the sheen of it. He could hardly notice anything else for the space of a few breaths.
She was shrewd. She was unforgiving. She was merciless the way she played and sized up her opponents. She made grown men cry at the table as she slaughtered their hopes of tournament glory. All the while, Brody noticed that Sienna kept watch of someone three tables away from her.
Sage had mentioned what she did as a living and he assumed there was a suspected cheater she was trying to catch for the casino. Regardless, it didn’t slow her down as she made piles of destruction of the opponents at her own table. From what Brody understood, Sienna played into later rounds so she and the suspected cheater would end up at the same table together where she could use her preternatural senses to gain confirmation that the player was using less-than-fair means to gain advantages.
For the time, he sat in the convention hall on the outskirts of the action, Brody was a man transfixed. The curve of her beautiful lips. The shine from the smile she cast the dealer. They captivated him and the wolf beneath the surface howled in desire. It wanted her—and not just for the meantime. Brody was starting to understand that his wolf, the crazy, out-of-control demon creature that he could hardly contain, had decided that Sienna was his and that it was time for Brody to do something about it or it would.
Tearing his eyes away from Sienna, he tamped down on his wolf’s reaction the best he could and walked outside. As he was nearing his truck, his cell phone rang. It was Sage.
“Yeah? Just got a call from Jai at the pack lodge,” Sage said. Brody picked up on the tone in his voice.
“What’s wrong?” Brody growled.
“I’m not entirely sure yet, but last night two of our sentinels caught a coyote shifter on our land. It was the second one in two nights.”
Brody’s beast returned to the surface, this time mad as hell. Interlopers. Coyotes were scavengers and more than one appearing on your land meant more were nearby. That was never good.
“Fuck,” Brody bit out.
“You want to go back?” Sage offered. “Dane and I can stay here and help Sienna look a little more.”
He probably should do that. He should go back and leave the investigation into Liesel’s disappearance and Sienna’s safety in his second’s hands. But fuck that…
“No,” Brody said before he could change his mind. “You and Dane go back and rough them up a little bit. Find out what they’re up to and where their pack is. I’ll stay here and keep an eye on Sienna.”
Sage didn’t immediately respond and Brody readied himself to argue. Instead, Sage agreed.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re renting a car and heading back in the next half hour, then.”
“Let me know as soon as you find something out,” Brody replied.
“Of course,” Sage said. “And take care of my sister. She might come across as a pain in the ass, but she’s been through some shit, Brody. Please.”
Chapter Nine
Every single
cell in Sienna’s body was tired.
She’d finally floated herself out of the tournament once her target had been arrested during a break. She hadn’t even needed to make it to the final table with the idiot—he’d been that obvious that her quick text to Fallon had been more than enough for them to follow him on the security cameras and catch him.
The guy was human, too. She wasn’t sure how slick he’d thought he was, but it meant an early exit from the exhausting afternoon and Sienna was grateful down to her very tired toes.
Hungry, Sienna had stopped at her favorite all-night burger joint and run into a couple friends from her old job. She’d just wanted to get her bacon cheeseburger to go and devour it on her couch, but Nelly and Tim had persisted until she agreed to sit at their table and play catch up.
Nearly two hours later, she was finally at her exit and was making her way to her condo. Pulling into the community, she waved at the gate guard who let her through. Gregor was nice enough and tonight she appreciated the fact that the guy probably knew four words in English.
Sienna pulled into her assigned parking spot and yawned. After a quick shower and a few episodes of Supernatural, she was going to be in dreamland in no time. As she pushed her key into the new lock Brody had installed, her nose caught the slightest whiff of a strange smell. It was smoke and something else she couldn’t quite place.
Sienna glanced at the buildings behind her but didn’t see anything amiss. No plumes of smoke. No sirens sounding in the distance.
Pushing through the front door, she closed it behind her and turned the deadbolt. She grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge and drank half of it as she walked to her bedroom and turned her shower on, pushing the hot water as far as it would turn. She took her time in the shower and when she was done, she sat on her bed in a pair of soccer shorts and a black tank top brushing the leave-in conditioner through her wet hair.
Supernatural was already an episode in when the distinct sound of shattering glass came from outside. She tensed, but let it go when nothing else came. Less than a minute later, Sienna smelled smoke again, only this time it was much stronger than it was before. She was on her feet and pulled her bedroom door open to see the majority of her living room on fire.
The sharp smell of gasoline and burning fabric hit her square in the face and she coughed. The fire was strong and moving quickly.
She didn’t hesitate. As she ran past the flames, she grabbed her cellphone and her car keys from the kitchen counter, making for her front door.
Outside, she turned to face her condo while she dialed 911, tears from the smoke and her fear stinging her eyes. Within her, her wolf was growling. Seconds later, Sienna’s claws sprang from her fingers seconds too late to save her from the blunt force hitting her at the base of her skull, sending her sprawling forward.
A heavy body sat on her back, holding her down.
“Do it now, Cedric,” the voice on top of her said, the Eastern European accent obvious. Nearly as obvious as the scent of bear shifter she’d recognized too late. When she struggled to push herself up, her assailant hit her on the back of the head a second time, making Sienna’s forehead bounce against the hard cement of the parking lot.
“Watch it, asshole,” a second voice hissed from somewhere behind her. “Castillo doesn’t want her hurt.”
“Well if you’d fucking hurry up and stick her so she doesn’t shift, I wouldn’t have to hurt!”
The body on top of her forced her face back to the ground and half a breath later, she felt the stick of a needle in her right thigh. Sienna’s wolf howled inside her and Sienna let out a screech to wake the dead as she pushed herself up far enough to get enough traction to bring a knee up beneath her.
Whatever was in the needle was moving quickly and the best Sienna was hoping for was to run far enough for one of her neighbors to see her and call the cops before these two strange shifters made off with her.
With a grunt, she launched her head back as violently as she could manage, connecting the hardest part of her skull with a nose and some teeth she heard crack. The man on top of her shouted a curse and fell off her to the side, allowing Sienna to stagger to her feet and try to get her bearings against the swift-moving drug coursing through her system.
Running her hand across her bloody forehead, Sienna decided to let her wolf out and let her deal with this mess before the drugs took Sienna under. She opened the bond between them and…nothing.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
She was panicking now and what was worse, her wolf was doing the same thing. Whatever they’d hit her with, it was preventing Sienna’s wolf from shifting to defend herself.
The world swayed in front of Sienna as the two shifters closed in on her. They were huge and dressed in dark clothing. She tried to make out any details in the faces, but the blood from the gash on her head was blurring her vision as it ran into her eyes. For the first time in a long, long time, Sienna was very afraid.
“Now you’ve pissed us off, little wolf,” the second male said. He was smaller than his buddy and wasn’t the one who’d been sitting on her—that guy was holding his forearm over his busted face.
“Eat a dick,” Sienna snarled, the fight not leaving her even as consciousness threatened to. The smaller man moved quick and grabbed her arm despite Sienna’s sloppy protests and threats. With one hand gripping her arm, he painfully fisted a hand full of her hair as he stepped behind her and yanked, snapping her neck up and dragging her backwards on her heels.
Sienna was losing her grip on the world quickly and a few things flashed before her eyes as they slid closed, for what she assumed was the final time. She thought about her brothers--all four of them. How they looked when they were all kids back in their old pack. She thought of their mother, before her stepfather had beaten the light from her eyes, the way she laughed with a wide grin at her brothers’ latest antics. She thought about her twin Sage, mostly. How she had so much she wanted to say to him. How sorry she was for the distance over the past seven years. How much more she wanted for him than the twisted, broken relationship she’d caused. And then she thought about Broody Brody. With his dark hair and those gorgeous deep eyes. She was sorry she never got a chance to push his buttons one last time or hear that low, guttural voice growling her name…
The very same voice growled again in her imagination and she let a sad smile play across her lips. Figures her dying thoughts would be of his moody ass.
“What the fuck was that?”
They’d heard it, too?
Her heart (and wolf) leapt at the thought that Brody was here. Half a second later, the most viscous, menacing growl rippled through the air, raising goosebumps on her skin. Her wolf responded from deep within her to the sound of his own.
Her eyes slid shut again just as the man behind her screamed in agony.
Brody. He’d come for her…
Chapter Ten
Brody paced across the plush carpeting of his suite, wearing a path between the window and the bathroom as he walked.
Whatever those assholes had given her had knocked her out clean and nearly four hours later, she was barely showing signs of trying to come out of it.
He’d lost all rational thought when he saw Sienna in the hands of the bear shifter dumb enough to grab her. With her blood flowing down her face from a blow to the head, he’d gone out of his mind and his wolf sprang to the surface before Brody could think it through. His wolf was always a risk. It was harder and harder to reign him in each time he shifted. His inner beast loved his freedom and fought hard against letting Brody the man take control again.
But when it had seen Sienna nearly unconscious and bloody, Brody and his wolf had become a well-oiled machine, thinking and acting as one. He’d shifted instantly without worry for the consequences. He’d taken the first man down easily and turned to the one who held Sienna, showing his teeth and challenging the bear to move.
The bear had been a fool to attempt to fight Brody’s wolf without shifting an
d the fight was over before it’d really ever started. Brody ripped the throat from the man’s body in seconds and as the body bled out, his wolf brokered no resistance to Brody when he wanted to shift back to get Sienna out of there.
While she was unconscious in the back seat of his truck, Brody called in a favor from a local pack Alpha who owed him. The bodies had been taken care of and a healer from Rider’s pack had even met Brody at the hotel to check Sienna for lasting damage that her fast healing abilities wouldn’t be able to take care of.
According to the woman, named Anne, Sienna and her wolf were essentially fine. Brody would simply have to wait out the tranquilizer they’d given her.
Brody was terrible at waiting and the longer he had to, the crazier it made both he and his wolf. They both needed Sienna to wake up and as the hours drew out, the more frantic they grew.
A rumbling in Brody’s very core had him ill at ease and no matter how much Brody tried to ignore it, his wolf viewed Sienna as his.
Mate.
The first time his wolf had the thought, Brody scoffed.
Mate? Highly unlikely. Nearly impossible, actually. His wolf was half-feral and dangerous and was the least likely candidate for mating and Brody the man wasn’t much better. In all of his experiences, mates had the ability to make an Alpha weak. They often grew jealous of the commitment being Alpha required and it always seemed to end in broken hearts and anger. It was why mated Alphas were so rare as far as Brody knew.
It suited him just fine.
As they rounded on hour number five, Brody couldn’t stand it anymore. He called downstairs for a change of clothes (or 10), a new cellphone, and a spread fit for a buffet for Sienna when she woke. He scrawled a note and left it on the bedside next to the new cellphone in case she woke up before he got back.
Alpha´s Desire Page 4
