Chapter 1
Iam bored. When will we be leaving this horrendous place?
Rhys grimaced, trying to ignore his griffin as it ruffled its wing feathers, as if expecting that Rhys might shift into its form at any moment and take to the skies.
It’s not horrendous,he informed it.It’s a very nice café. So I’m told.
Perhaps the griffin had a point after all, he thought as he looked down at his six-dollar flat white.Six dollars?!
Maybe it was just because the Agency offices had a pretty good coffee machine in the kitchen and he’d become spoiled, but six dollarsdidseem like a lot to pay for coffee. And was it even good coffee? Rhys took a contemplative sip, and found he couldn’t tell.
It is brown water,his griffin informed him loftily.What were you expecting?
Perhaps both he and his griffin just weren’t cut out for the finer things in life.
Still, Rhys thought, looking around, thiswasa nice café, wasn’t it? There were paintings on the walls, flowers on the tables. The staff looked busy, but happy. The tip jar seemed full,despite tipping being an optional extra around these parts. So those were all good signs, right? He could relax here, right?
No,his griffin screeched, rearing back.Do you think we can relax at a time like this? We must remain vigilant for the slightest hint of a disturbance.It let out a low, contemptuous snort.And I do not know why you think we should be relaxing in any case, while our good name is being tarnished.
Rhys sighed inwardly.Do you think I’m happy about being suspended from my job? ’Cause I’m not,he told it.But right now, trying to do anything other than accept it isn’t exactly going to help my case.
Evidently, the griffin didnotunderstand – or at least, it waschoosingnot to understand – if the hot rush of annoyance through Rhys’s blood was anything to go by.
But he couldn’t entirely blame the griffin for its mood. They were creatures of action, after all, hot-tempered and restless. They really weren’t the kind of animal that was especially suited to sitting in cafés, sipping coffee, and trying not to eavesdrop on a couple of young, fashionable mothers who were loudly discussing the trials of finding a decent gardener.
And honestly…
And honestly, right now, Rhys was soboredhe almost wanted to go over to them and offer to mow their lawns or trim their gardenias for them himself, for free, just so he’d have something to do.
He’d never been so inactive. He’d grown up with his brother Hector and his sister Evie on a cattle station in the middle of nowhere, and there had always been more than enough to do out there, from fence repairs to feeding cattle to driving a few hundred kilometers down the road to pick up supplies. And then, of course, he’d followed Hector in joining the Agency, which was about as much action as he could handle most days. This… thissitting in cafés having a nice timewas somethingthat simply didn’t come naturally to him, and Rhys was pretty sure he didn’t like it.
But really, it wasn’t like he actually had a choice about any of this. He could sit around in a café, or he could sit around in a library, or he could sit around in his apartment. Because his work was pretty much his life, and being on suspension was wreaking havoc with his usual behavioral patterns.
Besides, even if hehadhad other things to do, he wouldn’t have exactly felt like doing them. Being on suspension was putting a pretty strong damper on his ability to feel footloose and fancy free – to put it mildly.
Especially since he’d completely and utterly ruined another agent’s mission by his actions.
Rhys grimaced. He knew that he’d done the right thing, and that his actions had absolutely been justified given the information he’d had at hand – but it still wasn’t a great feeling. Especially since his bosses had come down on him like a ton of bricks for following protocol and extracting his fellow agent, Aaron Merrett, from a dangerous situation.
He knew Aaron pretty well from their days at the training academy. They’d both been in the same class, and so they’d spent years together training to become field agents for the Agency, a tiny, extremely selective law enforcement agency that dealt entirely with shifter crimes – the things that human law enforcement couldn’t hope to investigate properly.
It was pretty hard to track drug dealers when they could turn into snakes and slither off, or gun runners who could seemingly vanish into thin air, though really they’d just turned into vultures and flown away, leaving the human cops helpless. You couldn’t exactly snap handcuffs on a bird and haul it to the station.
Worse still, there were organizations that traded in rare shifter types, using the shifters like slaves and their powers fortheir own gain, or who forced shifters to commit every kind of crime, knowing the chances of getting caught were slim.
Shifter crimes needed shifter laws – and that was where Rhys and the Agency came in.
Or at least Idid. I guess we’ll see after today whether I ever get to do any of that again.
Aaron had spentyearsinfiltrating a black market organization, going deep undercover to meet with the nastiest customers out there. A hell of a lot of time, money, and resources had gone into the project.
And then Rhys had gotten some intel saying that Aaron’s cover had been blown, and that he needed extraction as soon as possible.
Clearly, somewhere along the line someone’s wires had gottenverycrossed, because apparently that hadn’t been the case at all – and so, when Rhys had turned up to get him out, things had gone to hell in a handbasketveryquickly, and both of them had barely gotten out with their lives.
Rhys had expected that there would be an inquiry – there always was, after these kinds of things. What hehadn’texpected was just how thoroughly the Agency would turn on him. It went way beyond the expected lines of questioning, barely stopping short of outright blame.
Aaron himself had at least seemed somewhat apologetic while testifying against Rhys, but the investigation panel had been outright cold, making accusations ofhot-headednessandimpulsivity– which Rhys knew were not exactly his strongest points, but in this instance, he had one hundred percent acted appropriately. The issue in this instance had been bad intel, but the Agency simply hadn’t wanted to hear it.
