Eric gave me his word. “Do you trust Eric Pate?” Connor demanded.

Duncan hesitated. “Well, I guess it depends.”

Connor spun on his heel and started marching back toward the building.

“Hey, whoa! Wait, man, wait.” Duncan rushed into his path. “This is about the Quick woman, isn’t it? Look, she’s safe. I heard Pate give the order. He was putting her in a containment area, but no one was getting close to her. You don’t have to worry.”

Then why was he worried?

“You know werewolves move fast,” Duncan continued. “If we’re going to catch their trail, we need to go, now. Hell, even with you and me out there, we may still lose their scent.”

Because Duncan was exactly like Connor. Not just a werewolf, but more. Vampire. They had all of the strengths of both paranormal creatures. All of the strengths and none of the weaknesses, at least, according to Eric.

And that was why Connor could stand strong out in the sunlight. It didn’t burn him. Silver didn’t burn him, either.

“You ready?” Duncan pressed.

Connor cast one more look at the facility. He didn’t hear any sounds from that building then. No more screams. “I’m ready.”

But I’ll be back, Chloe. He wasn’t going to leave Chloe on her own.

***

“You lost her? Every single trace of her?”

He glared at the men in front of him. Fucking useless. If werewolves couldn’t track, then who could?

“Sir, I—”

He fired a silver bullet into that werewolf’s heart. The guy who’d foolishly tried to speak—he hit the ground.

“I don’t want to hear excuses,” he muttered, disgusted. “I told you that if Chloe wasn’t caught, then death would follow.” He’d given the idiots every single opportunity to follow his orders. They’d fanned out, hitting the woods, racing as beasts. “I mean, really, one alpha werewolf stopped you all?” Fucking unbelievable.

He raised the gun, preparing to fire at the next man. A blond male with dark brown eyes—angry eyes.

“I did my best!” The guy snarled. “That guy—something is off with him. You saw how many silver bullets we pumped into him, but he didn’t go down, not until we started using the tranq…”

He lowered the gun. Yes, that had been interesting. Is he more like me than I realized?

“You should have told us what we were up against,” the werewolf snarled at him. “You should have—”

He fired the gun. The guy howled and spun before he hit the dirt.

“I am your alpha. I don’t have to explain anything to you. You follow my orders or you die.”

“Alphas…don’t have to…use guns…” The man on the ground—the unfortunately still alive man—spat. “Where are…your claws? F-fight…”

Oh, so the fool thought to challenge him? That wasn’t going to happen. He aimed. Fired—

The bullet sank into the bastard on the ground. His rasping words stopped.

“I know where one of the agents went!” A smaller werewolf stepped forward. A man with stopping shoulders, a ladder-thin frame, and a big, slanting nose.

“I-I didn’t try to follow the alpha,” he confessed. A heavy southern drawl coated his words. “Figured the others were on him. I-I went after the human. The one here earlier.”

Yes. Now this was intel he could use.

“Since the human was working with them, I thought he’d know where the alpha went when he raced away.”

He holstered his gun. “You’ll show me where the human is.” What was that wolf’s name? Bryant? Bennett? No, Barrett.

“I will,” Barrett promised with a fast nod. “I will.”

Then we’ll find the human, and I’ll make him tell me everything he knows.

Humans were so very easy to break.

***

Chloe waved her burning hand in the air. She could see the blisters on her skin. Big, red and—fading?

The blisters disappeared in seconds. The dark red burn turned a light pink.

She sat down, not on the little cot, but on the floor. She stared at her hands. Silver burns, but I heal faster now.

So much faster. What did that mean?

Only…she looked at her left wrist. The fang marks were still there. She hadn’t healed from Connor’s bite. The marks were still just as bright, seeming to mark her skin. His mark.

Her hands curled around her knees as she hunched forward. She’d spent so much of her life afraid. Would the fear ever stop?

Maybe it never would. Death certainly hadn’t slowed things down. She was still—

The lights flashed on above her. Too bright, blinding.

“Chloe…” Her name came from the area behind her cell. A shiver slid over her spine. “I see you, Chloe…”

Slowly, her body turned toward that voice. Now that all the lights were on, she could see that there were other cells back there. One of those cells was occupied by a man.

He was standing in a cell about twenty feet away. He wasn’t touching his bars. He was just watching her.

“Do you remember me?” he asked her.

Chloe shook her head. Was she supposed to?

“That’s right…we only met at the end, didn’t we?” He laughed and she hated that grating sound. “Maybe I started by saying…I knew your father.”

She jumped to her feet.

“I was the werewolf alpha he partnered with. The one who was helping him to cure you.”

No, no, this couldn’t be happening. Eric wouldn’t have locked her up with that guy. Would he?

“I’m David Vincent,” he whispered. “I was the alpha, until you and your f**king father ruined everything.”

He lunged forward then and grabbed the bars. She thought he’d scream. She thought she’d smell the stench of burning flesh.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t burn.

“I was alpha!” Now he was yelling and his words echoed in that cavernous space. “Until you and your father brought hell to my life! He promised me power…and all I got was the death of my beast! My wolf is dead! Dead!” He was jerking on his bars and yelling at the top of his lungs. “Now you…you’re going to be dead, too, bitch!”

Chapter Five

The werewolves had cleared out. And they’d torched the safe house before they left. How f**king annoying of them.

“He’s dead,” one of the Para Agents said as he stood over the body of a werewolf. Connor knew the guy on the ground was a werewolf because his claws were out. At death, a werewolf’s teeth and claws always came out. As if the beast inside had died too, but wanted to leave his mark on the world.

“He’s dead…” Connor agreed as he inhaled…and then he turned to the right. “But that one isn’t.” He and Duncan raced ahead at the same moment, following that scent in the air. Blood and wolf. They exploded into the woods, rushed forward and saw the man. Staggering, bleeding…and not getting away.

“Stop!” Duncan yelled.

The man jerked but he kept going.

Duncan sighed. “What, does he think I’m going to fight his ass, werewolf to werewolf?” Duncan pulled out his gun. “They’re not the only ones with tranqs. Hell, I think they got the tranq idea from us.” And he fired. The tranq hit the fleeing werewolf and he stumbled.

Then fell.

Connor took his time closing in on the guy. One step. Another.

The werewolf rolled over to face him. And the guy…laughed. “They’ll have…your man…by now…” He spat out blood. Someone had shot the guy with silver. A shot in the face and a shot in the chest. “Why do you…think…they left me? To…distract…wanted you...to follow me…not them.” His eyes were sagging closed as the tranq pumped through him.

Connor grabbed the guy’s shirt front and hauled him upright. The guy couldn’t pass out, not yet. “Where did they go?”

“After…after the human…who was here…before…”

Fuck.

Connor kept one hand on the guy even as he reached for his phone. He had Eric on the line within two seconds. “Get a team over to Harris Grey’s house, now. He’s the target. They’re going after him.”

***

Connor raced hell fast to Harris Grey’s house, but when he got there, Harris was long gone. The front door had been smashed in, and the small house was filled with broken furniture. Hell, there was even plenty of blood left behind. But no Harris.

He and Duncan chased the scent of the wolves for five miles, but then that scent vanished.

He glared at the scene around him. An airfield. Hell, yeah, that would explain the loss of their scent trail. There were choppers there, and it would have been too easy for the werewolves to just fly away with their prisoner.

“I’ll start talking to folks, look for witnesses, get flight manifests,” Duncan muttered. “The usual routine.” He headed away with part of the team.

Connor nodded as his brother left, but he wasn’t hopeful. It wasn’t like werewolves would just tell everyone where they were going. This pack had power and pull—and they were using both right then.

He knew they’d taken Harris for a reason. They’d try to break the agent, try to make him share every bit of intel that he had on Connor and Eric and all those in the Para Unit. If Connor couldn’t find Harris before the guy gave in to their torture…

Then we are all f**ked.

And not in the good way.

***

By the time Connor returned to the Para Unit base, he was tired, pissed off, and more than ready to see Chloe. Every moment that he’d been gone, she’d been on his mind. He’d been out, searching for clues, but he kept thinking about her.

As a rule, he didn’t obsess over any woman. His father had been obsessed with his mother—a sick, twisted obsession because his old man had been a sick, twisted bastard. Connor had never gotten close to a woman—well, other than for the occasional f**k. Emotionally, hell no, he hadn’t let that weakness consume him.

After all, what woman wanted to be tied to a werewolf?

And…what if he was really as sick as his old man?

So he’d played it safe. Kept up the walls around him. No one had slipped past his guard, until her.

Chloe was always in his thoughts now. He felt as if she were consuming him. He wasn’t even sure when the woman had gotten to him. When she’d slept in his arms? When she’d stood by him in the middle of that slaughter of a shoot-out and refused to leave him?

No one else has stood by me that way.

He needed to see her. Right then.

He dropped off his weapons and immediately started marching to the containment area. His first priority was to make sure she was safe and—

“Ah, now how did I know you’d go to her first?” Eric stepped from the shadows. “As opposed to, you know, debriefing with your supervisor like you’re supposed to do after a mission? Does anyone care about protocol these days?”

He glared at Eric. Screw protocol. “I talked with you on the phone. Multiple times. I already told you everything I know.”

Eric sighed. “Yes, you did, but I didn’t tell you everything.” He was blocking the containment area. “I, uh, agreed that no one would hurt Chloe…”

The bastard. Connor got a sinking feeling in his gut and he lunged forward. He grabbed Eric’s shoulders and slammed the guy against the nearest wall. “What did you do?”

“I needed to see…how she’d react…to him.”

To him? To him? “Who?”

“You should ease your grip, I’m your supervisor—”

“Like I give a f**k!” He wasn’t some trained agent. He was a criminal who’d been forced into this twisted web and Eric knew that shit. “What did you do to her?”

“She’s unharmed.” Eric didn’t look even a little afraid. Annoyed, yes. Afraid? No. “She’s in containment. She’s just…not alone.”

Connor shook his head. “Tell me you didn’t—”

“David Vincent is in the cell next to her. I needed to see how she’d react to him. I needed to know if she’d been working with David. I was monitoring their conversation, listening for any clue that might give her away.”

He wanted to pound his fist into Eric’s face. “She has to be terrified,” he said. And he hated for her to be afraid. “It’s not good for her to be scared. When she’s scared, her scent…it gets different. Even stronger.”

“Yes, about that…I don’t smell anything near her. Neither does Holly and neither—”

“You’re not werewolves!” Connor shoved away from him. “And I’d already told you that she wasn’t lying. She wasn’t working with her father so she didn’t know David Vincent. She didn’t know anything about what the senator was doing—”

“How do you know that for certain?”

“Because she didn’t tuck her hair behind her left ear!” Connor exploded.

“Right.” Eric stared at him as if Connor had lost his mind. “That seals the deal. The woman is an angel. She didn’t tuck back her hair.”

He growled at the guy.

Eric raised his hands. “Easy. I might look human, but we know how deceptive appearances are,” Eric said flatly.

Connor already knew that Eric wasn’t human. He just didn’t know what the guy was.

“Before you go for my throat with fangs or claws, how about you come into the observation room with me and just see what’s happening in there, huh?”