Chapter One
As the truck swerved around the corner, Griffin resisted the urge to grab hold of the door. For the fifth time in an hour he regretted letting Ronan drive. The alpha liked speed. Griffin did too, but only when he was the one behind the wheel.
Their shopping list was short: some ammunition, some explosives, a few lockpicks. Standard stuff. There were a handful of places Griffin knew they could get them, but he didn’t like to shop in the same places too often. It was too easy to become predictable, too easy to be tracked. And, to a man, they all had pasts. He didn’t want anyone’s history coming back to haunt them.
“So… Becker for the ammo, Sanjay for the tools. But where are we going to get the stuff that goes boom?” Ronan asked him as they took another turn, and the market came into view.
“Rumor has it Stets will be here today. He’s always good for that sort of stuff.”
Ronan gave a low whistle. “Haven’t heard that name in a while. Thought he’d gotten out of the game.”
“Nah. Pissed someone off and was laying low for a while is what I heard. Lucky for him, his problem got into a bar brawl and didn’t come out the other side.”
“Happy coincidence?” Ronan suggested.
Griffin grinned and shook his head. “If it was, then Stets has the best luck of any shifter I’ve ever met.”
They parked up and climbed out.
“We could split up, make this go faster?” Griffin suggested. He knew Ronan would say no, the alpha always protective in a crowd like this.
“Or we’ll stick together and just move fast.”
Together it was.
They hit up Sanjay first, Griffin admiring the intricate metalwork that went into the beta’s tools.
“Haven’t seen you around in a while,” Sanjay said.
“You know us,” Griffin replied, not prepared to be drawn into that conversation. “We’ll catch you again.”
“I look forward to it,” Sanjay called after them.
“If we were thinking of recruiting,” Ronan said to him in an undertone as they walked away. “He’d be top of the list, right?”
Griffin gave him a wry smile. “We don’t have enough of the right kind of work to keep a guy like Sanjay busy. He’d be bored. Bored shifters are trouble.”
Seeing a crowd around Becker’s stall, they headed toward the back of the market for the gray tent with the blue flag that marked Stets’ spot.
“It’s been a while,” Stets said in greeting.
“Nice to see you out and about again,” Griffin replied.
Stets was one of the few shifters that Griffin suspected saw through the fake beta scent he wore. If he did, the alpha never commented on it. He was good like that.
“What can I do for you boys?”
Ronan put his hands in his pockets. “We’re doing some mining. Need something to get the rock out of the way.”
It was an old joke, but Stets grinned all the same. “I think I have something that’ll do the trick.”
They left a few minutes later, down a good deal of cash, but with enough explosives to handle any job that came their way for the next few months.
Becker’s stall was last, the crowd having thinned a little. Griffin let Ronan do the talking, knowing Becker was an alpha’s alpha and they’d get a better deal.
While Ronan and Becker haggled, Griffin wandered a little away, staying within earshot. Raised voices from around the back of a group of tents drew his attention, and he stepped around, curious as to what was going on. There was a shifter on the ground, in chains. He was in human form but acted like he wasn’t, growling and snapping at the shifters trying to rein him in.
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked.
Two pairs of eyes landed on him, hackles raised. The chained alpha ignored him, still growling at the shifter yanking at his shackles.
“What’s it to you?” one of the men spat.
“Just curious. He’s a fighter?”
The body art and the scars gave it away.
“He was. Best we had.”
Griffin raised an eyebrow at that. It didn’t say much if this was their best fighter.
“This here is the Beast,” the other shifter said, seeing Griffin was unimpressed. “He won every fight he’s ever fought.”
“What happened?” Griffin asked, circling around but not getting too close.
“He’s gone feral,” the first shifter said, aiming a kick at the alpha’s legs. “Happens sometimes. Killed two trainers. We planned to sell him to someone who wanted something expendable…”
The other shifter snorted. “But he killed one of the guys guarding him last night. Word got around, and no one wants to touch him.”
Griffin kept circling until he was by the feral alpha’s head. He crouched, stilling when the alpha’s gaze met his. His eyes were wild, no hint of humanity left in them.
“What will you do with him?”
The second shifter pulled a gun from a holster around his waist. “Only thing we can do. Put him down.”
Griffin looked from the gun back to the alpha. The feral shifter had no understanding of what was coming to him. He was lost, more lost than any shifter Griffin had ever seen.
“I’ll give you two hundred for him.”
He stood from his crouch, raising himself up to his full height and meeting their astonished gazes head-on. The shifter holding the gun laughed.
“Right. What would you want with an animal like this?”
Griffin shrugged, playing to their expectations.
“In need of a guard dog. He seems like he’d be a good deterrent.”
They laughed again.
“Sure, if you like your trespassers, and your friends, torn to pieces.”
“Is that a no? Four hundred, my final offer.”
The shifter with the gun holstered it. “It’s not the money. A shifter like this… you need to know how to handle him. Even then… three dead in two days. If he got out, got among the humans, you’d be talking mass casualties.”
“Won’t happen,” Griffin said simply. “We can handle him.”
“Hadn’t you better run along to your alpha and let him make those decisions,” the shifter said.
The insult rankled, but Griffin didn’t let his temper rise. He heard footsteps behind him.
“His alpha is present and correct,” Ronan said.
“Then maybe you can talk some sense into your beta friend here,” the shifter continued. “Taking on a feral shifter like this… you’d have to be out of your mind.”
Ronan looked at Griffin, raising one eyebrow. Griffin nodded once.
“We can handle him,” Ronan said.
The shifter looked surprised.
“Four hundred?” he said.
“Five if you whack him with the strongest sedative you’ve got and get him ready to be transported,” Griffin said.
The two shifters exchanged a look. “Deal.”
As they got the feral shifter ready, Griffin stepped up to Ronan, talking softly.
“Did you get what we need from Becker?”
“Got it. You want to tell me what you’re doing?” Ronan said, nodding toward the alpha in chains.
“They were going to kill him. I couldn’t just stand by and watch him slaughtered like an animal.”
“If he’s as bad as they say, his death might be inevitable.”
“If it comes to that, I’ll handle it. Right now, let’s just… try.”
With the assistance of the other two shifters, they loaded the chained and now unconscious alpha into the back of the truck alongside their supplies. Griffin went to climb in next to him, but Ronan stopped him, tossing him the keys. “You drive. I’ll keep watch on sleeping beauty here.”
Griffin considered arguing, but he knew if the alpha did wake before they got him home, Ronan had a better chance of keeping him under control with brute force than Griffin did with any of his many talents.
“And take it easy on the gas, huh?” Ronan called as Griffin climbed into the driver’s seat. “We’ve got some fragile cargo here.”
Though Griffin knew Ronan was talking about the explosives and not the drugged, feral alpha, he couldn’t help but agree.