“Wiccans?”her mate asked.
She smiled at him.“I don’t know your name.You know mine, though.”
“Leo Hale,” he said.
Sexy name for a sexy guy.“Well, Leo Hale, you just landed yourself a truemate with one hell of a crazy backstory.I hope you don’t mind baggage, because I’ve got loads of it.”
His eyes danced with humor and honesty.“I’m strong, Mira.I’ll help you carry all the baggage.”
“Oh my freaking crap, that’s so sweet,” a female said.“I’m Cinder, the alpha female.And I have just one question.”
“What’s that?”Mira asked as she and Leo rose to their feet.
“Can someone teach me how to read playing cards?Because that looks like so much fun.”
* * *
Brent Foley sat in the office of his current headquarters, an abandoned office space, on Saturday afternoon, watching drone footage that his people had taken of the wolf pack in Thorn Hollow.He took notes, looking for patterns in the security team’s patrols and the number of different people he saw.The men were the ones who did the majority of the security work, but there was one woman.He couldn’t tell anyone’s age because the beasts all aged slowly, so there was no telling if someone was actually young or just looked that way.
It was crazy unfair that shifters were allowed to live so much longer than humans.
There was a knock on the door, and he called out that it was open.
Freddie, his new number two, walked in.
He’d lost his last number two during an altercation with the wolf leader and a few high-ranked people in the pack.The police had scooped up the survivors of Brent’s Humans Against Shifters group, and Brent had needed to kill them so they wouldn’t spill the beans about where he was holed up.He hadn’t wanted to kill his own people, but sacrifices had to be made to keep the organization running.
“What do you have for me?”Brent asked.
He’d tasked Freddie with gathering intel on the pack using binoculars and long-range cameras to document the security features of the pack’s territory so Brent could plan his next move.He wanted the pack in ruins, as many wolves as possible dead, and the town of Thorn Hollow safe from shifters.
“So they blocked access to town except for one main road, which has a security booth that’s manned twenty-four-seven,” he said, showing Brent some glossy photos of the booth.“Security patrols to the edges of the territory all day and night.”
“What did you figure out about their businesses?”
“There are a few in the town—a deli, a gas station, a school—but outside of town is a car dealership and garage that’s manned by shifters.The town regularly gets deliveries, but now every truck leaves its things at the security booth, and the team delivers them.”
“Is the dealership and garage watched by security?”Brent asked, his mind spinning.
“Just a couple of guys during the day.They use cameras and motion detectors when it’s closed, though.No one watches it overnight.They’re so damn over the top with security for their territory, but not the car dealership.”
“Well, no one lives at the dealership,” Brent pointed out.“It just shows how worried they are.”
His mind strayed to Victor Hawthorne, legendary shifter hunter.They’d teamed up when Brent went after the tigers, but Hawthorne had lost a major catch when the albino wolf he’d tried to abduct had escaped, which caused Hawthorne to lose clients and Brent to lose a lot of men.
Hawthorne was off hunting some unique shifter and said he wouldn’t come back to help Brent unless there was another one for him to hunt.That was the problem with mercenaries and people who did shitty things for money.They didn’t have any rules to govern their actions.
Brent would do anything to see shifters erased from the world.
Hawthorne only cared about unique shifters that he could sell to the highest bidder.
But Brent knew that Hawthrone’s hunting instincts were superior to anyone he’d ever worked with, and he wanted him on his side to take down the wolf pack.
If only there were a special sort of shifter in their ranks that Brent could use to bring Hawthrone back to Ohio.
And not that damn witch-wolf leader, who was too powerful for anyone to be foolish enough to try to mess with.
Stifling a sigh that was born of a general tiredness at the whole situation, Brent turned his attention to his number two.
