Chapter One
Angel Falls, Idaho
Wyatt
In front of me was a suburban house that looked just like a million other suburban houses. It wasn’t the same as the others on this block, though. All other houses had bickering couples, blaring televisions, and children checking closets for an early glimpse at what might later be found under a tree.
This house held evil wizards, their human cronies, and a news reporter they’d blatantly kidnapped out of my cousin’s territory and unwittingly brought into mine.
We had no idea what they wanted with the human female, but if wizards wanted her so badly they’d snatched her up in broad daylight, then chances were we needed to get to her fast. I’d tapped Nyria, one of my top fighters, to join in. My brother West came along for the ride, too, because if there’s anything he likes more than patrolling on a cold winter night, it’s killing wizards on a cold winter night. Luke was playing getaway driver and techie in the dark van parked a block away. Four of us total tasked with Operation: Save Reporter.
Images my cousin had sent me of the missing reporter showed a human woman with long red hair, a confident smile, and green eyes. Stats said she was twenty-eight years old, five-seven, one hundred and thirty-odd pounds, and was mildly allergic to wasps and walnuts. I hoped that Ms. Brigit Rayna was as poised as she appeared to be in her professional headshots, or she might not survive for much longer.
In a few minutes, we’d strip off our clothes, hide them in the surrounding forest, and attack. After shifting, we would lose our ability to talk. Seemed like a reasonable time for a pep talk.
“Don’t fuck this up,” I said to West and Nyria.
Nyria rolled her eyes at me. “Thanks for the constructive advice,” she muttered. She was always all snark until the fangs and fur kicked in. Then she was all rage. My cousin used to give me shit about letting a female shifter fight, so when he last came to visit, I gave Nyria a little heads up about what he said to me behind her back. He’d barely set foot on my territory before she’d had him flat on his back with her teeth a hair away from his throat.
Needless to say, I was no longer given shit about that.
West paced back and forth, mumbling our plan of attack under his breath.
“Any questions?” I asked.
“How many do we keep alive for information?”
“The reporter. Maybe one of the bad guys—but leave that to me. I need the two of you to just worry about the reporter.” I stretched my arms out, feeling the heavy muscles roll and clench. Soon they’d twist and contort themselves until they were even stronger, even deadlier. And then I’d hunt. Kill. Do what I needed to do as Alpha to keep my shifters alive.
We waited a few more minutes, until the neighbors on one side of the house had turned off their lights and gone to bed. The humans on the other side were on vacation.
“Now?” Nyria asked.
In response, I tore of my clothes, skin instantly pebbling in the below-freezing temperatures. Shifting hurt, but it was a sort of pleasure-pain I’d long gotten used to. Anticipated, even. It took less than a minute for me to shift, although in emergencies I could do it even faster. Next to me, two more sets of clothing hit the ground, and two more wolves appeared, sitting, awaiting my final signal.
As temperatures dropped, our fur kept us warm. As our powerful forms started stalking forward, closer and closer, our enemies dined in high spirits, secure in their little suburban hideaway and confident that no one knew they were there. They’d set up several decoy groups traveling with a fake prisoner heading elsewhere, and were painfully confident in their ruse. I stopped moving forward and flicked my tail, signaling for West and Nyria to do one last patrol.
Let them eat. Let them drink. It would be their last meal.
Three shifters versus eight.
They didn’t stand a chance.
I didn’t move a muscle as West and Nyria came back, my keen eyesight seeking any unnatural movement around in case they’d been spotted. Nothing. My brother’s fur was as black as the shadows, and Nyria’s silver as snow. Both blended in, designed to hunt. To kill.
There would be plenty of that soon.
Two sentries at the front door, two in the back. Front door had humans, the back door, wizards. Five inside—three wizards, two humans. One in league with the wizards, the other the prisoner.
The sentries checked in on their walkie-talkies at the same time, as they’d been doing every fifteen minutes the entire evening. It was half-hearted at best. There were cameras, sure, but no one monitored them. If there had been, one of the sentries wouldn’t have been napping on and off for the past half hour. No one expected an attack.
Fine with me.
Take out the sentries, break in, kill everyone except for one bad guy and the hostage. Luke, parked down the street, was ready to knock out the electricity across the whole block the second he heard the sounds of fighting. Our hearing was sharp enough that he’d be able to hear even if the humans next door couldn’t. Good thing humans were busy staying cozy indoors with the windows tightly shut, or already away for their holidays.
I bared my teeth in something only a fool would call a smile. Time to hunt.
Nyria and West took off low to the ground, writhing and slinking with the shifting shadows. I followed behind at a slower pace, ears swiveled to catch any unusual sounds. Soon I’d be sinking my teeth into enemy flesh. Feel it crunch as I hit muscle and bone. I lived for this, the thrill of the hunt, the kill, of methodically taking out one enemy after another to keep my pack safe.
The front sentries were easy. One human was sleeping, the other repeatedly swiping right on his phone with palpable frustration. He didn’t get a chance to touch his weapon before Nyria’s jaws clamped on his throat, screams caught in his crushed windpipe. The sleeping one never even woke up before his blood sprayed over the walls and porch.
It took only a few seconds to drag the bodies into the bushes surrounding the house and to kick at the blood-stained snow until most of it was relatively hidden. A bit sloppy, sure, but no human would look closely at it until it was too late. Not much to do about the blood on the wall, but it blended in with the shadows anyway.
A quarter of a minute later, we’d circled back to where the wizards were. This wouldn’t be as easy as the humans had been. I signaled for Nyria to let us take the lead and she did, even as her tail flicked up with fury and her lips rose to reveal sharp teeth designed to rip a chunk of flesh off of my bones. Female shifters were rare, and I allowed her to fight alongside my males under the condition she fell back on command. She resented me deeply for it at times, but better that than her dying. I could survive a few muttered comments under her breath; she wouldn’t survive a fireball to the chest.
It was my job as the Alpha to look after the pack. To protect our females.
What sort of Alpha are you if you can’t even protect your mate? a cruel voice whispered. I ignored it.
To the untrained eye, the wizards looked like easy targets. But there was a faint smudge in the air around them, like the remnants of an oil slick on a fishbowl. Exactly which spell it was, I wasn’t sure. But the last time I’d seen something like that, bullets hadn’t been able to reach those protected inside.
Let’s see if it can keep me out.
Our clashes with wizards had been minimal for dozens of years, and only now were the distant rumblings of unease starting to reach me. One enemy’s movement was a blip on the radar, but hundreds of small actions were a warning hum. They were up to something, and the human inside would give me answers.
Or die.
But I really hoped she surviveds.
Dusk had slowly inked out everything that wasn’t lit by human inventions. The shadows grew darker and the pool of light from the porch light became stronger in comparison. Hopefully this would blind the wizards and help shield our approach.
Every other animal had fled the area when we first showed up. The birds had stopped singing, the rabbits and mice had stopped tunneling through the snow, and bats that normally circled overhead had chosen to swoop about elsewhere. It wouldn’t be long before the wizards realized the silence was abnormal.
The two wizards had brought a small table outside and placed it between them order to play a casual game of poker. Over the past hour, their body language changed from having their backs to the wall and surveying the area between hands, to twisting their torsos toward each other, eyes focusing more and more on their cards than on what existed outside their pool of light. At some point, one of them had gone to the restroom, and had left the back door slightly ajar in order to better yell for more beer every so often.
Idiots.
West and I slowly stalked them from different sides, our bodies pressed hard enough against the walls of the house that we’ll probably have a bruise or two there the next day. Both of us were ready to strike at any moment. Even if the wizards didn’t glance behind them or look over each other’s shoulders, the security cameras covering everything might lead to someone in the house sounding the alarm. But everyone was too absorbed in–
The small table and the stack of cards on it went flying as the wizard closest to me leaped to his feet, having seen West over his partner’s shoulder. One hand flew up in the universal wizard gesture for, I’m going to throw a fireball at you.
Not on my watch. I gathered all my strength and flung myself forward, lips peeling back on the snarl as I soared through the protection spell.
Oh, shit. Every single nerve in my body felt as though it had caught fire, and my vision start to black out. My teeth missed the target. Even so, the weight of a fully-grown wolf slamming into him had the wizard stumbling forward and tripping over the table before he could fire off any spells. As he yelled out for help, I raked at him with claws and teeth, catching the wizard’s throat in time to turn most of the cry into a bloody gargle. It wasn’t a clean bite though—his heart still beat strong and a fireball just barely missed my face. The smell of burning hair filled the air around me and my already-sensitive skin took another hit of icy pain on my left side.
Impressive, I thought grudgingly. Even with part of his neck missing, the wizard clearly planned to go down fighting.
The wizard that West had been sneaking up on had been partially knocked out of the sphere of protection by his friend’s falling body. West grabbed his unprotected leg and swung the man like a rag doll out into the backyard. The wizard’s blood had barely sunk into the snow before Nyria leaped gleefully on him to finish the job.
The sphere of protection collapsed, and West jumped in to fully snap my target’s neck. Shaking off the pain, I threw a glare in Nyria’s direction—so much for steering clear of the danger—but there was no time to lecture her. Yells inside meant that the wizards knew something had gone wrong, but Luke had heard the sounds of battle and shut down the electricity, rendering all lights and hopefully most of the security measures useless. Before the wizards could gather their bearings, West hurdled himself through the cracked-open back door, Nyria and I hot on his paws.
Two of the wizards were using the flashlight app on their cellphones, turning the interior of the house into a murderous funhouse of shifting shadows and bright patches. I snatched the biggest one from the back as he tried to barricade himself in one of the bedrooms, snapping his neck in my powerful jaws before any of those damn fireballs could hit me.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
A yelp of pain.
Bullets. Silencer. Shit.
Dropping the body, I turned to see Nyria shredding into one with her fur on fire. I lunged forward to help, but Nyria had already finished him off and was rolling on the ground. The look she gave me when she got back to her feet was a mix of grouchiness and wariness. Something along the lines of, Yes, I caught on fire, but don’t give me shit about it because you did, too.
No lie there. Where was my brother?
My fear rose again when West loped out of the second bedroom, one rear leg dragging and leaving behind a trail of splattered blood. Concerned, Nyria nuzzled him and whined softly between her breath. He gave her a reassuring lick in response, washing away a bit of the soot that marred her pale fur.
There was a brief moment of silence as we surveyed the gory scene in front of us. Not a single heartbeat could be detected in any of the bodies, nor any movement of their chests. Just the ever-widening pools of blood underneath their various wounds.
West switched to human form in the kitchen. Grabbing one kitchen towel to throw over his head to disguise his face and another to tie around the small bullet nick in his leg, he quickly set to work breaking all the cameras in case they were connected to an alternate energy source. Chances were any images already captured would reveal who we were, but it never hurt to cover whatever tracks possible. Besides, I always got a kick at the idea of the wizards building a database of bare shifter ass for when facial recognition wasn’t an option.
“The bullet barely grazed me. Don’t worry about it. The last enemy target is with the hostage in the basement,” West said quietly once the job was done. Nyria made a movement to run down the stairs, but I blocked her with my body, teeth bared. Every time. I had to go over this every damn time. You don't go first.
She pouted, but with blood dripping from her snout and paws and soot marring her beautiful coat, she couldn't say I kept her in a gilded cage. She had far too much bloodlust for that. But when I tried to move toward the stairwell, West stopped me. "Can't have the pack leader dying on a tripwire," the naked shifter said merrily.
Judging by the yipping noise, Nyria appreciated the irony.
West sniffed around the door in a decidedly inhuman way before carefully easing it open. Whoever had run down there had either skipped the lock, deeming it pointless, or had left it undone in hopes of tricking someone into running into a trap.
“Come down here and I’ll shoot her!” The voice was male, high-pitched, and full of fear.
Bingo.