by Paige Tyler
“I know I won’t be handed anything, but I look forward to proving to every one of you that I belong in the Pack and on the team.” She spoke in a light, lilting voice that, surprisingly, filled the large classroom. Xander could definitely pick up the Midwest accent, so she probably wasn’t originally from the Pacific Northwest. “I’m not asking for anything from you but a chance to prove myself.”
Xander surveyed the room again, trying to read expressions and body language. Some of the younger guys, like Becker, Cooper, Max, and Remy Boudreaux, seemed ready to accept her. And while the others were projecting a cautious wait-and-see attitude, no one appeared to oppose her yet.
That was a relief. From what Gage had told him about Khaki, she seemed like a good cop. But getting accepted into the Pack was an uphill battle for anyone new. Just ask Max and Becker—the two most recent additions to the team. It would be near impossible if some of the guys were already opposed to a female on the team before she even started.
Khaki’s scent wafted across the room and teased his nose again, more insistently this time. Xander took a deep breath through his mouth, hoping to clear his head. It seemed to work, until she and Gage walked over to him.
Xander pushed away from the desk he was leaning against to stand up straight. Being this close to Khaki, he could see that her brown eyes had little flecks of gold in them too. He had no doubt she’d look even more amazing when she shifted and her eyes turned completely gold.
“I’m giving Officer Blake the afternoon off to go apartment hunting, so you won’t be able to start training right away,” Gage said. “But I wanted to make sure she got to meet her squad leader before she took off.”
Xander was so busy figuring out how to breathe without overdosing on her scent that it took a minute for Gage’s words to register. When they finally did, he had to lean back on the desk again to keep from falling over. He’d just assumed Khaki would be assigned to Mike Taylor’s squad. Which was stupid, he realized. Xander had one less team member than Mike, so now they’d be even. But Mike was more patient than Xander, and less brusque. Or it only seemed that way because Mike thought before he spoke, whereas Xander blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Regardless, Xander felt he wasn’t the best person to train Khaki.
Even if he was, he couldn’t. She smelled too damn irresistible. He’d never be able to concentrate for more than a minute at a time, much less be objective about anything.
Khaki smiled and held out her hand. Xander shook it, trying to ignore how smooth and warm her skin felt in his rough mitt.
“Sergeant Dixon told me a lot about you, Corporal,” she said. “I’m looking forward to learning from you.”
Xander returned her smile, unable to help himself. “Welcome to the team.”
Thank God the rest of his squad came over or he might have stood there gazing into her eyes for the rest of the day. He released her hand and stepped back as Max, Hale Delaney, Becker, Cooper, Alex Trevino, and Trevor McCall crowded around Khaki, asking her where she was from and how long she’d been a werewolf. That was when reality kicked back in and reminded Xander that the woman he’d just spent the past fifteen minutes mentally undressing was going to be in his squad, and that he was going to be her supervisor.
He was in so much trouble.
There was no way he could be her boss. It wouldn’t be fair to her or his team, and it sure as hell wasn’t something he could handle. He’d end up spending all his time gazing at her like a lovesick puppy instead of training her on weapons and tactics. He’d probably get her or someone else on the team killed because he would be too distracted.
As Becker explained their rotating physical fitness program to Khaki, pointing out that she was more than welcome to put them through any kind of session she wanted when it was her turn—like yoga, for example—Xander caught Gage’s eye and jerked his head toward the door.
“What’s up?” Gage asked as they moved down the hall, stopping outside the indoor basketball court.
“You can’t put Khaki on my squad. It won’t work.”
Gage’s brows furrowed. “Why not?”
“It just won’t.” He folded his arms across his chest. “My squad is already set up and running like a well-oiled machine. I don’t want to screw that up by adding an unknown into the equation.”
Gage didn’t say anything. Damn. Xander should have known his boss wasn’t going to buy it. He’d have to come up with something better if he wanted to convince Gage to put Khaki on Mike’s team.
But what else could he say? It wasn’t like he could admit he was in lust-at-first-scent with the newest member of the team.
“You saw the way Becker was mooning over her,” Xander said. “You know that kid isn’t going to be able to work with Khaki without being distracted. He’ll end up getting himself killed.”
Xander hated throwing one of his teammates under the bus like that, but if it kept Khaki off his team, he’d live with the shame. It would be best for everyone involved.
“Yeah, I saw,” Gage said. “But I’m pretty sure you can keep Becker under control, and if you can’t, don’t worry. I have no doubt that Officer Blake will have no problem dealing with Becker on her own.”
That was probably true, but still…
“Gage, I’m serious about this.”
“I’m serious too,” Gage said curtly. “It’s in everyone’s best interest that Khaki does well in this unit. Not only will it keep HR out of our business, but it will also give us another person with a unique skill set that we can tap into to get the job done. I have no idea how high the ceiling is on her potential, but my gut tells me it’s up there in the clouds. That’s why I picked you to be her squad leader. You have more experience working with female cops than Mike does. I have no doubt you’ll be able to mold her into the best SWAT officer she can be. And regardless of Becker and his endless infatuations, I think your team will be the best fit for her.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Xander,” Gage growled. “I’ve already made my decision, and if you’d been listening, you would know she’s already fitting in with the guys on your squad. Besides, you’ve been one person down for a while now. Having Khaki on your squad will even everything out.”
Xander clenched his jaw. He wasn’t going to get out of this, so he might as well save his breath. And while he appreciated all the sunshine his boss was blowing up his ass, he was sure Gage was going to regret his decision. But until then, Xander was going to have to keep his raging hormones in check and train Khaki as best he could.
This had the potential to turn into a catastrophe of epic proportions.
* * *
Sometimes having really great hearing sucked.
Khaki was fielding questions from her new teammates about her background—where was she from, did she have any family, how long had she been a cop, how long had she been a werewolf—when she heard Riggs tell Sergeant Dixon that he didn’t want her on his team.
Crap. And here she thought her first meeting with her supervisor had gone well.
She thought it had gone better than that. Dixon had told her about Riggs when he’d picked her up from the airport, filling her in on his background and training methods. He’d sounded like the real deal, and someone she could definitely learn from. As soon as Dixon had introduced her to the man, she’d known he was someone special. She couldn’t really say why, but all of her newly discovered werewolf senses told her that she and Corporal Riggs were going to mesh perfectly. He exuded confidence, yet he didn’t come off as arrogant or cocky. Not like that jackass ex-boyfriend of hers.
It probably didn’t hurt that he was so damn attractive. In a room full of Adonis-class hunks, Xander Riggs stood head and shoulders above the rest. He wasn’t necessarily taller or better built. And it wasn’t that he was more handsome than the other guys. It was simply that the combination of dark hair, chocolate-brown eyes, and kissable lips really did something for her.
Then there was his scent.
<
br /> The moment she’d set foot in the compound, she realized that the unique scent she’d picked up from Dixon back in Lakefront wasn’t actually that unique. It turned out that what she’d smelled was werewolf scent. She confirmed that when she walked into the training room and was assaulted with sixteen different versions of that same smell. Each one was subtly different, which meant she’d be able to identify each man on the team easily from now on, but in general, all of them smelled like a werewolf.
But then Riggs had walked into the training room, and snap! The scent coming off him was so tantalizing she’d almost leaned forward to get a better sniff. She controlled herself—barely. Shoving your nose into your new supervisor’s neck and snuffling at him like a pig probably wasn’t the kind of first impression she wanted to make.
She’d still been appreciating every subtle nuance of her squad leader’s scent when they’d shaken hands. And when he’d smiled…she’d gotten all warm and fuzzy fast.
She was just thinking her biggest problem was going to be not crushing on her new squad leader—a problem she was more than ready to live with—when she’d heard Riggs say she wouldn’t work on his team.
Worse, everybody else in the room heard it too. Most of them tried to hide it, but she saw the surprise on their faces as they heard Riggs saying anything and everything to get out of having her on his squad. Becker looked pissed when Riggs tried to pin the blame on him, saying he would be so distracted by her presence that he’d get himself killed.
She turned back to the guys, wishing she could crawl off somewhere to hide. This introduction had gone from perfect to craptastic in less than five minutes, and she didn’t have a clue why. But she knew what would happen next. She could already see it in her new teammates’ eyes. They were wondering what Riggs knew about her that they didn’t. Was she some kind of screwup? A troublemaker? She’d seen those same looks before, and she knew she was going to come out on the short end of the stick. Nobody was going to give her the benefit of the doubt over a senior cop like Riggs.
Why had she come here? The cops back in Lakefront might have disliked her, but at least she’d been able to do her job, even if she had to do it without backup. That wasn’t going to work here. You couldn’t be a loner on a SWAT team. She was wondering if she should leave when the team’s resident explosives expert, Cooper, and the hugely intimidating mountain of a man, Brooks, each took up a position on either side of her and casually leaned back against the table while Becker spun a chair around backward in front of her and straddled it.
She tensed, bracing herself for whatever they were going to throw her way.
“So,” Cooper said conversationally. “You got hit with a shotgun blast. What’s that like?”
Khaki stared at him, not sure she’d heard right. Then she looked around the room. The other guys were either sprawled in their chairs or leaning back against tables, regarding her thoughtfully.
She turned back to Cooper. “Well…um…it hurt. Like really big bee stings on crack.”
Cooper laughed. “Bee stings, huh? Well, then you don’t ever want to get hit with a MAC-10 at close range because that hurts a hell of a lot more than bee stings.”
Pushing away from the table, Cooper pulled off his T-shirt, showing off an impressive amount of muscles and almost a dozen well-healed scars along his chest and left shoulder.
“Nine .45 caliber rounds at less than twenty feet,” he said, motioning at his scars.
Brooks snorted. “You call those scars? And here I thought they were mosquito bites. Now this is a scar.”
Giving Khaki a grin, Brooks pulled up his T-shirt to show a long, thin scar that ran all the way across his chocolate-brown abs and around his side to the middle of his back. “This was from a coked-up junkie with a machete. He thought I was trying to steal his stash.”
She winced. The long, faint scar must have come from one hell of a wound. Although the scar was impressive, it wasn’t nearly as impressive as those spectacular abs of his.
“Notice how most of that scar is on Jayden’s back,” Mike quietly pointed out from across the room. “That’s because he was running away at the time.”
The other guys laughed. Khaki laughed too. The next thing she knew, the men were flashing all kinds of skin, showing off their scars and telling outrageous lies about how they’d gotten them. At least she was pretty sure they were lies. Khaki laughed so hard, she thought she was going to cry. But she didn’t. She didn’t want anything blurring the mind-boggling view of the perfectly chiseled bodies on display in front of her. If someone from HR walked in, they probably would have lost their minds, but as far as Khaki was concerned, this was the team’s way of telling her they wanted her in SWAT, regardless of what Riggs said.
“What about you?” Becker asked her. “Don’t you have any scars you want to show off?”
She almost shook her head no, but then stopped. As odd as it sounded, showing off scars and swapping stories was their way of bonding as teammates. If she didn’t do the same, she knew they wouldn’t pressure her, but it would be silly of her not to show them the one on her stomach. Unlike them, though, she wasn’t going to take off her T-shirt.
She pulled her shirt out of her pants and lifted it up enough to show them the long scar three inches above and to the left of her belly button. “A suspect knifed me last week.”
“Shit,” Alex breathed. “Was that a serrated blade?”
He got up and moved closer, leaning in to get a better look at the puckered skin. As one of the team’s medics, he was probably used to seeing a lot of really nasty wounds, but he seemed particularly impressed with hers.
“Yeah,” she answered. “The knife hurt worse coming out than going in.”
“I bet.” Becker flashed her a boyish grin. “That’s going to be a cool scar in another week or two.”
Khaki wouldn’t normally take that as a compliment, but from these guys, it was.
“I have a scar on my thigh from a bullet too, but it happened the night I…” What had Dixon said it was called? “Changed,” she finished.
“Yeah?” said the youngest guy on the team, Max. Maybe it was the glint in his blue eyes or the mischievous smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, but of all the guys, he seemed to be the one who had a bit of bad boy in him. “Show us.”
To do that, she’d have to push her pants down, and she wasn’t about to do that. Khaki opened her mouth to tell them as much, but a woman’s voice interrupted.
“What are you trying to do, drown this poor woman in werewolf testosterone?”
Khaki turned to see a pretty, dark-haired woman coming into the room, a smile on her face. While the woman wasn’t a werewolf like them, all the guys greeted her warmly. One sniff of the scent on the woman and the engagement ring on her left hand told Khaki why they gave her such a warm reception.
Mike made the introductions. “Officer Blake, meet Mackenzie Stone, Sergeant Dixon’s fiancée,” he said, confirming what Khaki already knew.
Khaki smiled. “Nice to meet you.”
Mac ignored Khaki’s outstretched hand and hugged her instead. “Call me Mac. Nobody calls me Mackenzie but Gage, and he does it just to be stubborn.”
Khaki laughed. “Mac works for me. And call me Khaki.”
“Will do.” Mac smiled again. “Gage said he gave you the rest of the day off to look for an apartment. I thought you might like some help.”
“Aww, Mac,” Becker complained. “Khaki was just about to show us the scar on her thigh.”
Khaki’s face turned three shades of pink.
“Then I got here just in time,” Mac said.
Khaki laughed and opened her mouth to agree when her nose picked up the delectable scent that could only belong to one man on the team. Riggs stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his broad chest and a frown on his face.
“In time for what?” he asked.
“To take Khaki out to look for an apartment,” Mac answered.
Riggs’s frown deepe
ned, but he didn’t say anything. Khaki refused to let his sour mood affect her. Thanks to the other guys on the team, things were back on track, and if Riggs didn’t like it, too bad. She didn’t need him to like her for this new job to work out. She had teammates who were willing to give her a chance, a new friend in Mac to help her get settled in, and a chance to be part of something special—a pack of werewolves who were just like her.
Who cared what the glowering, sinfully handsome, yummy-smelling Corporal Xander Riggs liked or didn’t like?
Chapter 3
Khaki yawned as she followed Cooper, Max, and Hale out of the admin building to the sandbox where the team gathered for physical training—or PT as Becker called it. “Sandbox” was a good term for it. About thirty feet square, it looked like a kid’s sandbox, only bigger. Khaki wasn’t exactly looking forward to doing sit-ups and push-ups in there, but it was better than exercising on the scrub grass that made up most of the compound.
When Becker had told her they did PT, Khaki had gotten excited. Like most police departments, Lakefront expected their officers to exercise on their own time. Even though she loved working out, doing it before or after the graveyard shift made going for a run or heading to the gym a chore.
But apparently Sergeant Dixon was serious about PT. The team did it together three times a week. And according to the other guys in her squad, it tended to be intense. Becker, who would be running this morning’s session, was still inside ironing out a few last-minute details with Corporal Riggs.
Khaki yawned again as she took her place in the loose circle the team had formed in the sandbox. Beside her, Cooper glanced at her.
“You sure you’re up for this? It looks like that jet lag thing is seriously kicking your butt.”
It was nice to have a coworker express some concern about her well-being—even if Cooper was essentially saying she looked like crap. It had been a while since anyone had bothered to care.
“Mac and I looked at nearly twenty apartments until we found one she thought was both a good deal and in a good part of town,” she said. “Then she kept me up half the night decorating the place and meeting all my neighbors. I don’t know how she does it—I’m exhausted.”
