A mating island? I stared at Asher with my mouth hanging open. "You can't be serious."

"That's not the official name, of course, but that's what they’re using it for now. For a couple of million bucks you get a private island and all the time you need to convince the girl of your dreams to mate with you." He pulled down two large backpacks from a set of hooks behind one of the hammocks.

"But what's with the ‘convince’ the girl thing? That's code for force. Why spend the money when they can do that anywhere?" I knew I sounded cold, but I liked to call a spade a spade. An evil deed isn’t suddenly okay just because it’s done in a serene setting.

"You know absolutely nothing about your people, do you?"

"I know plenty." I’d done all the research I could on wolf shifters once I figured out that I was one. At first I thought I was a freak of nature. Eventually I learned there were lots more like me out there, and a multitude of other supernatural creatures as well.

"You know that Kenai wolves can only carry on the Kenai gene if they mate with a human? And not just any human, one who has some magic in their blood, and you know how rare that is nowadays. Add in that you can’t mate through force, and you can see why there are so few left.” He opened a bench and started pulling out supplies.

“A Kenai wolf?” I repeated the unfamiliar name and walked over to where he sorted flashlights, binoculars, canteens, and some unmarked canisters.

“They descend from the extinct Kenai Peninsula wolves, and they are the only wolf species with the ability to manipulate magic. I told you, you know nothing about your people.”

“My people? You think I’m a Kenai wolf?” That was news to me. Everything I knew about my true nature I’d learned on my own. Was there even more to know?

"I don't think. I know. At least Alastair says you are. Don't think he'd get something like that wrong."

“A wolf that can manipulate magic? I can’t do that.” I could sense magic, but that was something else entirely. Wasn’t it?

“Probably because no one taught you. Doesn’t mean you can’t.” He started distributing the gear into the two backpacks.

“Ok, setting that aside for a moment, let me get this straight, a wolf brings the girl to an island and suddenly she wants to mate with him?"

"She can’t leave until she does."

"So it’s still forced; he can do that anywhere. Seems a bit drastic to drag her to the middle of nowhere.” I was playing it cool, but inside my anger was threatening to boil over. How many girls had been hurt that way? I wasn’t exactly sure what my mission was, but the wolves’ game was over. I’d blow up the island if I had to.

"I don't really get it, but it's a thing with them now." Asher slung a backpack on his back and handed me the other. “It’s only for members from the big families.”

"It's horrible. Those poor girls.” My wolf howled inside.

"Yes, it's quite awful, but that’s not the half of it.”

"There’s more?” Was there another reason to hate these creatures? I pushed aside the thought that technically I might be one of them. It didn’t matter; I’d never treat a girl that way. I’d rather spend my life alone.

"The leading Kenai wolf families are in deep with an arms deals. They are talking about a merger which could mean destruction like we’ve never seen before.”

“What kind of arms deals?” Supernaturals got up to all sorts of trouble, but arms deals weren’t usually part of the issue. We fought with claws and magic more often than guns.

“Let me preface this by saying, there’s a reason the king can’t get involved on this one. The Kenai have traditionally aligned with their enemies.”

“Gotcha. But what kind of deal?” I was still trying to wrap my head around why any wolves were involved in arms deals.

“You know how I told you the Kenai can manipulate magic?”

“Yes.” That part was a little bit hard to forget.

“They are using the magic on weapons.”

“What kind of weapons are we talking about?” I slung my backpack on.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "They want to rid the earth of humans. They blame them for the non-shifter Kenai Peninsula wolves going extinct.”

"So this isn't about saving the girls?” Clearly weapons were a big deal, but so was innocent human girls being brought to a secluded island.

“Well, there’s one girl involved right now, and we can save her. But there are millions more who might die if we don't get to the bottom of this and find out exactly who’s involved. That’s where you come in."

“How do I come in?” I still wasn’t seeing the connection beyond what I was.

"You have to infiltrate." He started back down the spiral stairs.

I followed him, still trying to understand what kind of situation I was getting myself into. "Infiltrate the island? How am I supposed to do that exactly?” I would do it, no question, but I needed somewhere to start.

"They only hire Kenai wolves to work there. It’s part of keeping the island secure and secretive, although clearly the secret is out. You have an interview with the wolf that runs the island. He’s the eldest son of the Wellington family. They are the ones behind the merger.”

“I have an interview? For what?” I didn’t realize going undercover to a job interview was part of the deal.

“We have all your credentials, so you are a shoe-in for the position."

"I only signed on a few hours ago, how could you have credentials for me?”

"We've known you were coming for weeks. Alastair was sure you'd join." He crossed the domed room and opened the door.

I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Was everything about my potential a lie? Was I recruited only because of my lineage? If it was really my lineage. “What if he’s wrong, and I’m not a Kenai wolf? Have you thought of that?”

“You are Kenai. Alastair says he’s seen you manipulate magic.”

“I can sense magic. That’s different.”

“And you think regular wolves can do that?” He laughed. “You really were raised outside a pack.”

“I don’t know what wolves can do.” I didn’t lie about my upbringing. It hadn’t held me back before, but my lack of knowledge might lead me into trouble this time.

“Exactly.”

“But won’t I have to prove I can use magic?” It wasn’t that I was scared, I wasn’t. I could handle whatever I was going to face. I couldn’t fail. That meant we had to think everything through before we did it.

“You’ll either have to learn or explain you don’t know. They know you were raised outside of a pack, otherwise they’d already know you, but that’s not what you have to worry about.” Instead of crossing back through the gym, he turned to the left and headed down a dark hallway.

“And what do I have to worry about then?”

“How much do you know about medicine?” He used his thumb print to get us into another room. This one was empty, and he walked straight through it to yet another door.

“Medicine? As in what you take when you are sick?”

“As in taking care of the sick.”

“I know nothing beyond basic first aid.”

“Well, I hope you’re good at faking it.”

“Meaning?”

“Your credentials are as a doctor. It’s the only opening they had.” He pushed open a door, and we stepped out into the bright light of the morning.

Outside? So much for seeing my new room. “A doctor? I have to pretend to be a doctor?”

“Yes. I’m sure you can pull it off. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been brought onto the team.”

I was glad one of us was confident.

Asher opened the driver’s side door of a black pick-up truck.

“Are we leaving already?”

“Yes. We have no time to lose.”

I got into the passenger side as he started up the truck. He pulled out of the enclosed parking area.

“Where are we headed right now? I assume I’m going into this interview alone?”

“You are. I’ll be staying close, and I’ll be following as soon as you get on the plane.”

“As I get on a plane with the purpose of providing some sort of medical service?”

“The intel says Clayton Wellington wants a doctor on that island. We’re giving him his doctor.”

“I hope I don’t get anyone killed.” I had many strengths, but doing anything beyond the most basic forms of first aid was beyond my reach. I healed freakishly fast—the same way most shifters did- which meant worrying about that sort of thing wasn’t worth the time. Of course some shifters got sick, but not in the way humans did.

“I hope you don’t either, but people are going to die if we can’t pull off this mission. Lots of people.”

He knew how to get to me. He knew I had a weakness for protecting humans, and he could use that to mobilize me. I couldn’t let this go now without doing everything in my power to stop it. Whatever it really was. I still wasn’t convinced it was an arms deal in the traditional sense. There was something else going on, and I was going to have to get to the bottom of it.

We drove to another airstrip about fifteen miles away. The Rangers appeared to have several bases all in a relatively small area. Which reminded me.

“Where are we?” I asked Asher as he parked at the air strip.

“An airstrip. We left headquarters and…”

“I mean geographically.”

“I don’t know.” He parked in the field a little way down from a plane.

“How can you not know where headquarters is?” Either he was lying, or the Rangers were even crazier than I thought.

“It’s safer that way. There is less of a chance of us giving out the information.”

“Less of a chance, you mean impossible?”

“Yes. Impossible.”

“Then how do you get back?” By the way things appeared at headquarters, agents returned to headquarters between missions.

“They track us and bring us back in.”

“What if they can’t track you?”

“They can.” He opened his door and got out.

I followed suit and met him around back. “How? They have a tracker implanted or something?”

“Not the way you’re thinking.” Asher pulled the bags out of the back and tossed one to me.

I caught the bag. “These are things I need to know.”

Asher shook his head. “No, the only thing you need to know now is that you have a mission. Focus on the mission. There will be time for explanations afterward.”

“That requires putting a whole lot of faith in an organization I didn’t even know existed yesterday.”

“The fact that you didn’t know it existed should tell you all you need to know.”

“Where’s this plane taking us? Can you at least tell me that?”

“We’ll land about an hour outside Atlanta. We’ll make the drive to Oxford from there.”

“Oxford, Mississippi?”

“Yes. We can’t have you landing too close to the Wellington headquarters.”

“Got it. And you were fully briefed on this mission?” He was at least briefed a hell of a lot more than I was.

“Yes.”

“So when is my briefing?” We headed toward the plane.

“You’ll get one afterward.”

“How does that help?”

“It doesn’t, but you are still on a need to know basis.”

“Yet I’m going to be the one on the ground for this mission. Doesn’t this seem reckless?”

“Nothing the Rangers do is reckless.”

“You mean everything is.” I wasn’t one to mince words, and the current situation was no exception.

We boarded a jet after exchanging the briefest greeting with the pilot. If Asher knew him, he didn’t show it. We took seats, leaving one row of seats between us and the pilot. Asher pulled out a tattered paperback book.

Clearly he was leaving me to my own devices on the flight. I had no book or other type of entertainment with me, so the only thing I could do was think about the situation I’d just walked—or rather flown- into. I had to trust Alastair. Everything seemed legit enough, but then again, how the hell would I even know? I wasn’t surprised by the lack of interview, but I was surprised by the lack of training. Sending someone so new into this mission was reckless, regardless of what Asher said. Unless that was the point.

Why wouldn’t they exert the time, energy, and resources to train, or at least formally brief me? If I was expendable. That’s what Asher meant by having to survive a mission first. I had to prove I was worth them extending any effort.

I wouldn’t let them down. I was born to do something great. I wasn’t going back to my old position. I couldn’t. I would never.

I stared out the window as we took off, determined to notice every detail to help figure out where headquarters was. Within seconds we were over a large body of water. Not particularly helpful, but it was something. I didn’t take my eyes from the window until I was positive there would be no other land masses coming into view. That would have made the process of deduction far too easy.

I allowed myself a short nap—just enough sleep that I could stay awake another forty-eight hours without a problem. I’d gotten myself to the point that a few hours every few days was all I needed. I could technically make it seventy-two hours without sleep, but I wasn’t at my peak performance then. For the task at hand, I needed to be at peak performance.

Before I knew it, we had landed on an isolated air strip surrounded by trees. Asher had said Atlanta, but we definitely weren’t at the main airport. We grabbed our bags and transferred to a nondescript black sedan parked at the far end of the runway. It had been years since I’d been in Atlanta, but we didn’t go near the city now. Asher drove, and we took a dirt road out onto the interstate headed toward Mississippi. I still wasn’t sure why we had flown into Atlanta—considering the Rangers resources we could have landed far closer- but my guess was they were afraid of being monitored. Considering I wasn’t questioning anything else, this wasn’t worth the time to ask.

The drive went quickly enough. We made no stops, and I liked it better that way. I was antsy and ready to start.

Asher took an exit and pulled into a gas station. “This is where I slip out.”

“Are you going to tell me where I’m going?”

“The address is in the GPS. Press start when I leave. You are meeting with Clayton Wellington. Your name for this mission is Ryan Carter.”

“Wait.” He had to be kidding. “You just switched my names around.”

“Trust me, they won’t figure it out, and you will still answer to both names.”

“In other words, the powers that be think I can’t handle working under a cover name?”

“It’s not my issue. You are on your own, but we have you covered.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It means when you finish the mission, we’ll be there.”

“Great.” Talk about being thrown into a situation without any tools.

“You will need to change into this.” He pulled a garment bag from the back.

“What is it?” Obviously it was clothes, but this was the first he was mentioning them.

“A suit. You can’t go into an interview dressed like that. See you on the other side.” Asher hopped out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition.

I stared after him for a moment, watching as he disappeared inside the small store before getting out and walking over to the driver’s side. It looked like my mission had begun.