GRAY Wolf Mate: League Of Gallize Shifters

by Dianna Love

  “I’d love to do that if that particular jackal hadn’t been killed transporting O’Donnell,” he replied wryly.

  Crap. Since Cole’s people rescued him, Brantley and SCIS would add that charge to the ones hanging over Cole.

  Regardless, the bear shifter suspected of killing the human couple had to be brought to justice.

  Tess shoved a loose strand of hair over her ear. She’d worn it up in her all-business mode with her mother’s wooden barrette. That hair accessory had been old when Tess was a child. Wearing it these days gave her comfort she couldn’t explain, especially when trying to solve these cases.

  She couldn’t be wishy-washy when it came to capturing dangerous shifters, but Cole had her questioning a lot of what she knew and how SCIS operated.

  Now was a bad time for her heart and mind to be playing a tug of war with her emotions. She wanted to believe Cole had the same goal as she did.

  If so, then he would also want to end the Black River pack reign of terror and bring a dangerous bear shifter to answer for his crimes.

  Tess couldn’t let her screwed-up feelings for Cole confuse her when it was time to act.

  And her emotions were very screwed up.

  In her mind, she knew a human and a shifter couldn’t mix, at least not her and Cole. Not in her world with a father like Senator Janver.

  And how could it possibly work for a woman who wanted to remain on the career path Tess had laid out?

  Just like Cole had said, it was complicated.

  Whoa. Was she trying to figure out how to be with Cole? As in forever? She paused, stunned to find herself considering the pros and cons of that decision.

  “Tess. Did you hear me?” Brantley asked, lifting his voice.

  Shaking off her mental debate, she cleared her throat to explain the brief delay. “Sorry. I was thinking about how that bear plays into all of this with a wolf pack that shouldn’t be allowing a bear to join them.”

  “Who knows?” Brantley said, brushing off her comment. “They’re animals. Don’t try to use logic with something that is only half human. I was saying I brought in two new jackal trackers.”

  Warning bells dinged loudly in her head. “Why? We could hand that to Scarlett when she comes in.”

  “That shifter twit isn’t consistent enough with checking in. I want two dedicated trackers focused on nothing but finding O’Donnell.”

  Brantley kept pushing Tess closer to a showdown by acting as if he had full authority. She’d let him think he was skating by for now just to keep him complacent. Once she had next week’s congressional meeting behind her, she might just put her own tracker on Brantley to get some answers before she lowered the boom on him.

  That day was coming, but only when she was ready to act.

  She’d bide her time, but she didn’t have unlimited patience, especially when it came to someone who thought they could pull the rug out from under her that easily.

  Tess dismissed him by saying, “That’s fine. I have other cases for Scarlett even though she’s better suited to the O’Donnell case.”

  Brantley cocked his head with amusement. “Not better than my new trackers. They’re bringing part of their pack with them.”

  “Excellent,” Tess bluffed. “I expect results quickly.”

  He studied her intently as if he had picked up on something.

  Tess had cheered his aggressive stance as she normally would on hunting an escapee. That normally appeased him.

  She hoped Cole was as good as he said when it came to dealing with other shifters. Brantley often described jackal shifters as invincible when they worked as a pack.

  If they were as cutthroat as Cole had said, SCIS had just put a pack of killers on his trail.

  That meant Tess had put those killers on his trail since she was in charge of this operation. Not that Brantley’s action was wrong, but she didn’t trust his motivations as being for SCIS. It was as if he wanted to bag a major shifter and present it as his capture when they met with the congressional committee next week.

  He would one day find out she was similar to a Doberman.

  Those dogs would allow you all kinds of room around them until you crossed the line into their territory.

  Then they’d silently take you down.

  She would be a team player only with teammates who worked toward a common goal.

  Ending the meeting, she told him, “Please remember to let me know when we have an ID on the body from the bombing and if anything new comes in on locating O’Donnell, no matter how insignificant.” She made a point of holding his gaze just to let him know aggressive men who liked to hear themselves talk did not intimidate her. “Some Jugo Loco testing has produced markers that connect the batch to where it was created. We need to find out if we can trace connections from the food bank to an origination point.”

  Grinning, Brantley said, “I’ll put someone on that right away ... boss.”

  Tess tilted her head in a sign that this meeting was over. “Good. Let’s recreate everything that happened inside and around the food bank forty-eight hours prior to the explosion.”

  She stood.

  Brantley popped up, too. “Where are you headed?”

  “To update the chief,” she said, not even hiding the frustration in her voice. Someone was working against her and SCIS, but she wasn’t about to broach that topic with her already irritated chief. Without solid evidence, he’d see it as trying to blame their problems on an unknown person. She’d point no fingers until she could put handcuffs on the perpetrator. She’d received a blunt text from the chief this morning. His job required that he oversee and report on major developments, and a copy of his reports went directly to the Congressional Committee on Nonhuman Affairs.

  When Tess and Brantley faced that committee next week, they had to show the tax dollars spent on SCIS were making a difference so they could request more resources.

  Brantley gave her a look of concern, which she didn’t accept as real. “Want me to go instead?”

  Oh, sure. Like she’d tell him to take her place so the chief would think she couldn’t take the heat. Neither could she tell the chief that the transport arrangements had been orchestrated entirely by Brantley. That would sound like she was pushing off the blame on him even though she approved the transport.

  Brantley deserved the blame, though. His jackals had gone off in the wrong direction, which gave the appearance that they’d been hijacked or working with the person undermining the SCIS operation.

  That fiasco would be Brantley’s to explain at the congressional meeting. She planned to pass off any questions on security to him, since he claimed that area outright.

  She picked up a folder and walked past Brantley, who could let himself out since he treated her door as though it didn’t exist. She never left anything in her office she didn’t want to end up in the wrong hands in case he snooped.

  Telling her assistant where she was headed, Tess took a deep breath and went to face the chief. He’d made it clear he hadn’t wanted her at SCIS, but only because she was a senator’s daughter, and thus a high profile person he didn’t want harmed. Aside from that, the chief had always been professional and treated her fairly.

  Or he had been until she’d had two jackal shifter casualties, a brand new transport vehicle blown up and lost Colin O’Donnell in the process.

  Hell, she’d fire herself right now.

  Chapter 21

  “The Guardian wants to talk to you, Cole,” Rory said, holding out the phone.

  Cole put down his fork from his half-eaten breakfast and took the phone. He glanced around the diner where no one was paying attention to them, then said, “Yes, sir?”

  “We have a firm line on Katelyn.”

  Finally, some good news. Great way to end this week. “That’s great, sir.”

  “Possibly. What I have is a phone number you have to answer this evening, no set time, then go immediately to meet her.”

  “That’s not a problem,
sir.”

  “It wouldn’t be, but you’ll be given just enough time to reach her. If you miss that window, she won’t meet with anyone again. If anyone follows you or goes near the meeting, she’ll vanish.”

  Cole pointed out, “That means I can’t take backup.”

  “I understand.” The Guardian added, “I don’t like sending you in alone, but as I was told when we got this lead, she won’t meet with anyone except you. She said Sammy only mentioned his best friend and never gave a name. We all know he meant you.”

  Cole did not want to let Sammy down. “I’ll do my best to convince her to help us. To help Sammy.”

  “This is a risky gamble, even for one of us. I’m going to guess that Sammy has been suffering the full force of the mating curse for close to three weeks. Once it starts, a Gallize has as short as three weeks and as long as five before the mind deteriorates to the point of ...”

  “I understand.” More than the Guardian could know, Cole was keenly aware of the early mating curse stages and where it was headed. Based on what the Guardian was saying, Cole had a feeling his curse was progressing quickly, the same as Sammy’s.

  “That’s not the only reason I’m calling. We can’t allow SCIS to learn that Sammy is a Gallize. There are too many leaks coming out of that organization. I’m close to securing our position with my contact for national defense before we go public, but even when we do, it won’t be all at once and only for those who need to know. I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  The Guardian paused. Their boss always thought before he jumped.

  Cole interjected, “I’ve been hesitating to say this, because it still doesn’t ring true in my mind, but I think Sammy might have gone to the Black River pack voluntarily.”

  “You think he believed they could cure the curse?”

  “Maybe.”

  “If that was possible, I would have brought the cure here for all of you, even if it started a war among shifters.”

  Cole believed him.

  The Guardian continued. “I think there’s only one way someone would have convinced Sammy that they could cure him and that would have required a powerful magic user who could overpower Sammy’s ability to reason. It wouldn’t really cure anything, just fill him with the belief it would. The one major side effect is that every time Sammy hallucinates, the curse symptoms probably get worse.”

  If Sammy was coerced by magic, it didn’t change anything in the end game, but Cole appreciated any reason to believe his friend hadn’t just walked into their camp.

  The Guardian continued. “I was asked point blank by a congressman who sympathizes with shifters if any of our people were involved with the Black River pack.”

  Cole said, “What’d you tell him?”

  “That none of my team would willingly aid that pack and that we’re exhausting every resource to stop them.”

  A fair statement. Cole would have said the same.

  “This congressman is key to blocking the vote on branding shifters,” the Guardian continued.

  “Branding is a dangerous idea,” Cole warned. He and his teammates had the Guardian’s mark, but that was a mark of honor and protection. It was also voluntary.

  The Guardian went on to say, “Yes, but Senator Janver is on the committee trying for the second time to get a bill through as a means of containing the threat. We have to find a link to the Black River pack and at least take down this arm of it until we can locate the head. When that happens and I have the agreement I want, I’m going to present the League of Gallize Shifters in a closed-door congressional meeting as the strongest arm of shifter law enforcement. If I do that and they accept, I want full autonomy when it comes to shifter justice.”

  Going public might put a target on the head of every man on Cole’s team, but the alternative was humans thinking there was no viable police unit for dangerous shifters. That would perpetuate a return to the world of eight years ago, with humans killing shifters on sight and shifters attacking at any provocation.

  Having the Gallize go public might save a future shifter from enduring what Cole had at SCIS. Assuming shifters encountered agents who were honest and not like Brantley.

  If humans knew there was a force capable of controlling criminal shifters and that the same Gallize shifters would also protect shifter communities, then both sides would have to think twice before crossing the Gallize.

  Everyone had to work together to survive.

  That was the best hope for stopping legislation to brand every man, woman and child shifter.

  Cole shivered at the thought. “What else, sir?”

  “You have autonomy to make whatever deal is necessary to convince Katelyn to help us. I want all of you to know that I will do anything within my power to help you avoid the mating curse. Keep me informed on how the meeting with Katelyn goes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With the call ended, Cole turned to Rory and Justin. Their exceptional hearing made it easy to catch phone conversations when they were close. He still asked, “You heard what I said about Sammy going to the pack voluntarily?”

  Rory gave him a chin lift acknowledgement.

  Justin said, “Yeah, we heard that and those Black River bastards probably used magic on Sammy. What kind of magic would they have that could manipulate our bear?”

  “I’m not sure,” Cole admitted. “But I don’t think they could have gotten that close to him if not for Sammy already having problems due to the mating curse.”

  Rory mused, “If they used magic to get him into the pack and to drink Jugo Loco ... then maybe that’s how they convinced him to kill humans.”

  Cole had thought that, too, but hadn’t wanted to give voice to the sick thought. “Maybe, but we need to find him to get real answers and we’re running out of time.” He reviewed the rest of the call with his team and said, “Let’s put money on the street for a Jugo Loco buy.”

  Rory scoffed, “No one’s going to do a deal with us.”

  “They’ll do a deal with a local drug dealer. We just have to turn one we know into our puppet.”

  “I might have just the guy.” Justin stood up with that determined look on his face. “How much are we buying?”

  “Offer ten thousand dollars worth for a trial run with a guaranteed three hundred thousand if that buy goes well. Then say we’ll increase based on the quality and delivery.”

  Rory cautioned, “We’re going to have to put word out on the street and let them send someone to us. That means risking exposure.”

  “That’s why we get the big bucks,” Justin deadpanned.

  “If SCIS hears, they’ll be sticking their nose into it,” Rory warned.

  “I’ll worry about them.” Cole said. “You just get the deal struck.” Confident words he had to back up.

  “Ah, hell,” Justin muttered. “Look what’s out on an APB with orders to contact SCIS immediately.”

  Cole and Rory looked at the phone Justin turned to them. The display showed a sketched image of Cole.

  Cole sighed. Thanks, Tess.

  Chapter 22

  “That’s a bad idea, Dad,” Tess argued with her father.

  He cut into his steak, taking his time to answer. “Why? They’re beasts. They have the advantage over humans. They can scent things you can’t imagine.”

  Oh, yes, she could imagine, but she let her dad continue because interrupting him only delayed the inevitable. She’d found him the best fine-dining steak house in downtown Spartanburg, hoping a good meal on a rainy Friday night would open the door for them to communicate better.

  Maybe dial back his prejudice against shifters.

  Not happening.

  Her father continued as if she hadn’t studied shifters for years. “When these shifters change into an animal, bullets often have little effect on them. Why not require branding and do it right on their foreheads while they’re in human form? That way a real human knows immediately if they’re dealing with a dangerous animal.”

  Te
ss hid her horror at that idea. She could not see someone like Cole, or the jackals working at SCIS for that matter, allowing anyone to brand their foreheads.

  Not in this lifetime.

  That would start an all out war and she wouldn’t blame them.

  Her father belonged to the extremist’s side when it came to shifter politics. He’d been in on early issues that arose once the shifters came out in the open.

  Ironically, it had been a shifter who had outed the existence of people who changed shape into animals. Thinking of Cole, she amended that maybe not all of the shifters had been made public, but the bulk of their world had been exposed.

  A jackal shifter had been at fault.

  Cole would be saying, “I told you so.” The jackal had paid a human videographer to do a secret documentary on a wolf pack. After being invited in to talk with pack leaders, the cameraman had taken video of things that he had no authorization to shoot.

  He and the jackal shifter had enjoyed their fame for less than twenty-four hours. Unhappy shifters who took the law into their own hands had never been fingered.

  That created a huge distrust between shifters and humans early on, which had never improved.

  She did not straddle a fence when it came to her convictions. She was not a sympathizer for a shifter or a human who broke the law.

  She’d spent years hearing her father’s constant preaching against the unnatural beings, but the older she got, the more her convictions shifted to fit the conscience of the woman she saw in the mirror.

  She didn’t like calling anyone a beast.

  It wasn’t as if shifters had a choice in being born that way. She’d seen some act like rabid beasts, but others were as normal acting as her or her dad.

  Then Cole had come along, talking about being a descendant of an ancient group.

  If she believed what he’d told her, and he had yet to give her reason not to, Cole and his men had probably saved a lot of military and civilian lives.

  Was no one taking that into account?