I released a breath. I was jumping at shadows.
“Yeah, I—“ Two shapes appeared within my spell.
“I got something,” Sebastian barked. “Three—no five—eigh?—“
“A team, coming in fast in shifter form,” I said, throwing open my door. “Highly organized, flanking us. At a distance right now but closing in.” I counted them as I readied more spells inmy mind. The grisly ones popped up first, but I discounted them. No one tended to walk away from those, and this might not be as bad as it seemed. “Nearly twenty-five—no, thirty in shifter form surrounding us.”
“I count forty,” Sebastian said.
Yeah, I did now, too. Or near enough.
Austin peeled out of his clothes, as did Tristan. I glanced back. My team had exited their vehicles and were readying for the attack.
My connections fired with emotions. “Everyone is wondering if they should shift,” I told Austin. “The gargoyles are asking if they should go airborne.”
So was I.
“Hold,” Austin said as the resident shifters slunk in, closing the circle around us.
I rattled off their positions. Their uniformity was damned impressive.
“I got three more,” I said, feeling them enter the spell. “On the road in front of us. Human form, one a little in front of the others. The welcome party, I’d wager.”
“Some welcome,” Tristan murmured.
Austin placed himself in the middle of the road, feet planted and shoulders squared. He’d shift at a moment’s notice.
I didn’t stand with him. This was a shifter matter, and my presence would only make him unbalanced. He’d place my protection above diplomacy, and things would escalate quickly. Besides, it would be Tristan who fired me into the air if this got underway in a hurry.
A man walked toward us, a hunk of muscle, brawn in spades. He looked like he was carved from rock, but he moved like a swimmer, fluid and with ease. His white-blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and I clocked him in his late twenties. Hard to tell at this distance. He was a smidge tallerthan Austin’s six-two and slightly less robust. His muscled arms swung from wide shoulders, swishing against the fabric of his purple muumuu.
Wide-eyed, I glanced at Tristan. He didn’t return the look, so I turned to Sebastian.
“Thatcannotbe a coincidence,” Sebastian whispered. “That is something Elliot Graves would wear in this situation to taunt an enemy.”
Yes, it was.
A man and a woman flanked Mr. Muumuu. They were dressed in pristine suits, sparkly jewelry, and expensive shoes, and they looked every bit the part of one of these meetups, except for the location. They scanned our gathered people—those they could see—but Mr. Muumuu only had eyes for Austin. The alpha’s beast moved behind those gray eyes, the color of wet stone, and power pulsed from him like a second heartbeat.
From some unseen or unheard cue, those gathered around us started to close the circle.
“Their timing with the alpha is perfect and precise,” I murmured to Austin in a low voice.
3
Austin
The shifters surrounded us,he could feel it. Alpha Ashvale had built a team with a healthy amount of power and a very loose hold on their aggression. These enforcers were used to violence and defending their territory, and they’d do so brutally.
Normally, that would be great news. Now, as they tightened around his people and his mate, it set his beast to thrumming for action.
“Alpha Steele, I presume,” Ashvale said, his voice a rough growl. He was showing Austin respect by calling him alpha, but his beast sparkled in those slate gray eyes. This man was having a hard time controlling his wild side, a sort of rolling darkness Austin was all too familiar with. Austin had honed and sharpened his darkness to a fine point, and this alpha was still using it as a blunt tool.
He stopped ten feet away, probably closer than he wanted to, but too far for this to be a meeting of equals. Drex Ashvale would not be able to stand in his beast’s way. There was no doubtin Austin’s mind that the end of this meeting would result in a challenge. Jess was about to get some practice as a referee.
“Yes,” Austin said, his own darkness rising in expectation. “And you must be Alpha Ashvale, original alpha of the Stonefang pack.”
Drex inclined his head. “You have every bit as much power as I have heard, but ten times more control. It’s a testament to your stature.”
