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Duke growled. “Wolf.”

“Hm, no, sweetie. You’re definitely a bear. Anyhoo—” Zee flicked his wings and turned to me. “So yeah, Jenny isn’t at the front desk, but the good news is I took a look at the guest log and we’re the only ones staying in this fine fuckin’ five-star establishment, so whoever is doing all this has gotta be local.”

“If you think any wolf would risk Galbraith’s wrath, you’re outtah yer tiny minds,” Duke huffed, returning to polishing his engine parts.

“What if they’re not a wolf, but something else?” I asked him.

“Not much out here but wolves and you guys.”

“What about a loup-garou?” I asked. “A shifter, but one who’s able to shift into anything, including a wolf.”

“No shifter is gonna fool a wolf,” Duke tapped his nose. “We’d sniff ’em out.”

Victor nodded his agreement. This wasn’t helping. Duke hadn’t told us anything new. We were just chasing our tails, going over the same ground over and over again. Nobody wanted to talk, and those who did didn’t know anything. How was that possible? How did Agent Leomaris deal with Lost Ones every day and not pull out all his gorgeous hair?

“There was something else,” Zee added. “So, the office kinda looks like a bomb went off inside⁠—”

“What?” Victor tensed.

“It could just be that it always looks like that. It’s real hard to tell, what with all the rubbery plants everywhere.”

Victor vanished—or more accurately, did his thing where he moves faster than I can track.

“Zee, you could have led with that,” I said, getting to my feet.

“I was about to.”

“Adam!” Victor’s shout sailed from the open reception doorway.

We hurried on over, with Duke stomping behind us.

Zee was right, the office had been trashed. The chair behind the desk had toppled, leaflets for local tourist hotspots were scattered about, and the succulents had been scattered, flung about as though a tornado had torn through the space.

I stepped around the desk and found what Victor was so fixated on. He righted the chair and turned it to show us. Three huge slashes almost cut the back of the fallen chair in half.

“Oh dear.”

“We must find Jenny.”

CHAPTER 12

Duke muscled his way through the litter of leaflets, toward the front desk, and sniffed the air. “This same scent lingered where Cameron was found.”

Zee’s nose wrinkled. “Usually smells like Jenny’s perfume in here.”

“Can you track it?” I asked the beta.

He nodded, then tore off his leather jacket and dumped it on the desk. Then his shirt went next.

“Oh, okay. Usually you gotta pay for this kind of show⁠—”

Duke’s growl ended Zee’s commentary. He angled his bulk toward the door, and shifted mid-step. I had no idea what shifting looked like when I did it, and didn’t much want to know after seeing Duke’s body rip itself apart. Fur erupted, blanketing his whole body, claws sprouted, and a huge tooth-filled snout projected from his face.

He dropped onto all fours and bounded out the door.

Zee’s gulp said enough. “I cannot unsee that.”

“Follow him,” I told Victor, since he was the fastest of us all. “We’ll try and keep up.”