“The smell of your blood trailed all over the ground is driving my wolf crazy,” Rafe said, burrowing his nose into Adri’s neck and biting down hard enough to bruise.
Adri’s eyes rolled back as pleasure shot through him. “Gonna make me bleed some more, Doc?”
“This isn’t the time or place,” Marco said, voice teasing as he reminded them he was still standing right there. “Use your magic to make that mark stick for long enough to calm your wolf down and find your kitten some boots so we can get this sorted.”
Adri’s groan deepened as the suction on his neck grew deeper and the familiar tingle of Rafe’s moonlit magic bit deep into his skin. Marco squeezed his shoulder one last time and stepped away, adjusting his pants as he went. Rafe huffed in annoyance, and Adri turned his head to nuzzle into him, pressing biting kisses across his lips before sucking a hickey into his neck in return. A low chuckle left him as he realised Rafe was using his magic to make that one stick as well.
“What is it with wolves and marking people up?”
“You’remine. Everyone needs to know it,” Rafe growled, kneeling to put socks and boots on Adri’s feet.
“I can do that, Doc,” Adri said.
“Just give me thirty more seconds to touch you. To reassure my wolf you’re alive,” Rafe whispered.
Adri ran his fingers through Rafe’s salt-and-pepper hair where he knelt, his other hand reaching up to press at the dull ache where Rafe had bruised his neck. The sensation went straight to his cock, making him shift uncomfortably where he sat as it hardened even further.
Finished with his boots, Rafe turned his head to nose at his erection through his sweats, making Adri groan again. The moment was broken by a call from the building behind them.
“Doc! We need you!”
Their thirty-second bubble was over. Jumping down from the car, Adri’s grim focus returned as he shadowed Rafe back toward the chaos. His people needed them.
Five people. Five fighters he’d trained from the first day they’d stepped foot in the gym and bullied into resting when they were tired. Friends.Family. All missing.
They weren’t dead. Between shifter senses and witch magic, the pack had thoroughly searched the rubble of the building once they’d cleared the trapped and injured. Thanks to supernatural healing, no one had died in the attack. Yet. But the likelihood that someone was digging around in his people’s brains, inserting foreign objects that would turn them feral, while they stood around staring over Luca’s shoulder as he hacked into every camera he could find within five blocks of the site was high.
“We’ll find them,” Rafe promised, wrapping his arms around him from behind.
Adri allowed himself a moment to rest his head back on Rafe’s shoulder. The doc had been busy dealing with a raft of injuries. It was true no one had died, but Jay had taken longer than Adri could stand to regain consciousness, one of their newer fighters had lost their leg below the knee, and another’s arm had been crushed so badly it had taken Rafe hours of meticulous work with magic and surgery to make sure it healed right as he slowed down the shifter’s natural healing so he could rearrange the bones into their proper positions.
“You’ve worn yourself out again. You should be resting,” Adri murmured, turning to press a kiss to his neck. Rafe had been right. Life was too fragile, even for shifters. After the trauma of the evening, he was done resisting this thing between them.
“Only if you come rest with me.”
“I’ll rest when we find them,” Adri said.
“That might take a while,” Luca said, voice tense with frustration. “I can see them collecting the bodies of anyone they could reach right after the blast, but the trail just disappears in a blind spot a few blocks away. It’s like magic, but there’s no sign of a witch with them, and Rocco and Cal couldn’t sense any residue or power signature when they searched the area. That theory about a tunnel system under the city is sounding more and more likely, although how they’ve kept it hidden from us all these years is a mystery.”
“I might know something about that,” Leah said, her voice emerging from the laptop where she and Viviana had called into this meeting from wherever they were holed up.
“Explain,” Marco ordered, a growl entering his voice as he glared at the screen.
“I researched the city in the old Council archives in the capital before I was deployed there. The records that hadn’t been digitised,” Leah said. “I majored in history, so I probably poked around more than most people would. I found an old map from just after the last shifter wars. It showed a series of tunnels and underground chambers that stretched across the central city. When I asked the regional councillor about it, she said it was a plan for subway construction that was never funded, but the layout made no sense for that. It was too tightly contained in the middle of the city, and the chambers were too close together to be of any use as subway stations. It also had witch sigils marked at each exit and a depiction of a massive stone formation of some kind near Central Park.”
Rocco straightened from where he’d been leaning against a wall, checking his phone. “Did it show a connection between the central stone and the sigils? Do you remember the pattern?”
Leah shrugged. “I only got a quick look. I didn’t get a chance to take a photo before the councillor took it off me. In retrospect, I think I must’ve triggered a silent alarm in the archives with how fast she appeared. The only other thing I remember is the label of the map. It read:Founding Agreement Human Bilateral.”
“I thought the New Trinity Founding Agreement was a tripartite between the three crime families. The humans weren’t involved,” Rafe said.
“So did I, and I signed the damn thing,” Marco added. “What are you thinking, Rocco?”
“There are a few all-supernatural cities in the world that operate within self-sustaining magical shielding that keeps them hidden. The last magic user capable of creating that kind of shield died years ago, but the thing they all have in common is the use of pieces of a specific, unique meteorite to anchor and store the power so that it’s not reliant on a witch to permanently maintain it. No one has found an Earth-produced mineral that can perform the same, so they are extremely limited. The properties of the meteorite make it all but impossible for magical searches to pick up its presence.”
“So, they have a permanent magical shield under the city? That would explain why we keep losing them,” Luca said.
“Can they do anything else with the store of power? Is it just for shielding, or can they channel it into something else?” Marco asked.
