“Baby, what are you doing, who are you calling?” Jacks asked.
Ryleigh didn’t answer him, holding up her hand.
“Mia, did you do what I asked you to do before my mission? Oh, thank God. No Wyatt is here, I’ll have him run the program. Thanks,” Ryleigh said and then hung up the phone.
“Wyatt get your tracking program up and start tracking target HGA05,” Ryleigh commanded.
“What’s going on, what target are you tracking?” Kayden was screaming into the phone.
“Calm down, Kayden, and I’ll explain,” Ryleigh said. “After Wyatt had gone over his tracking program with me, I insisted that all my agents get one before a mission. Especially Zoey, since she likes to go lone wolf. So, I sent Mia out to implant her with the tracker. We can find her, the program is gold, and it sounds like Milo will either be with her or close by. We can find them and get them the hell out of there.”
“I need to be within a hundred miles of the target, Alpha,” Wyatt spoke up.
“Kayden, I am going to send Wyatt your way,” Jacks responded. “Cash can fly him out as soon as we get off the phone. What are you going to do about Cassie?”
“I had Josh take her back to our base,” Kayden revealed. “She is freaked out and a little banged up; they kept her drugged. I want to keep her there until we find out what kind of threat she’s still under.”
“Sounds good. I’ll send Mia, she can help,” Ryleigh said. “Someone is going to have to tell Cassie what is going on and will happen now that she’s been found. Those people had Cassie for a for a month, so she may already have a good idea. I also want Mia to check the other woman you found. If my suspicion is correct, they may be on the list we found at Franklin’s. If not, we need to figure out why Pandora was holding them. I’ll send you the information we found regarding known Pandora facilities; we need to make sure we are dealing with Pandora and not Eli’s Associates or God forbid someone else.”
“Roger that, forward the info, and I’ll get back to you. I’ll have Josh ready to pick up this Mia person once we have an ETA,” Kayden said.
Ryleigh was still opening files when everyone started to leave.
“Jacks, you need to go and help Kayden find Milo and Zoey, the rest of the guys should go too,” Ryleigh said.
Baby, I can’t leave you alone here. We need to have a doctor check you out, and I just can’t leave you unprotected.” Yeah, this was what Senior had been talking about.
“Jacks, I’m safe here, better yet, I feel safe here,” Ryleigh said.
“Man, I hate to say it, but she is right,” Cash said. “It sounds like it was a bloodbath down there. We need as many boots on the ground as possible to find Milo and Zoey and figure out what’s going on. Dalton can stay with Ryleigh, and I’ll fly back as soon as I drop you guys off. Wyatt needs to be close and Ethan can back him up. Kayden needs your help with Milo MIA. His team is going to be unhinged without their leader. Shit, man, you know Dalton and I will protect her with our lives. You have work to do.”
“I second that Alpha,” Dalton agreed.
“Okay, we are a go then,” Jacks said. “Dalton will remain at base alone with Ryleigh until Cash can get back. I know I don’t need to say it, but if anything happens to her…”
“Yeah, I got it Alpha, Ryleigh is top priority,” Dalton said. “I’m the Enforcer, Jacks. I’ll protect her like I’ve always protected the team. You have my word and my vow.”
Ryleigh’s face went white.
“Ah guys, we have a problem,” she said. “This goes higher than Pandora or Davis Defense. If what I’m reading is right and up to date, shit, I’m not even worried about Eli’s Associates at this point. The experiments were government sponsored.”
Dalton
Alpha Team
NAC & The Holly Group
Author: Chelsea Handcock
www.chelseahandcock.com
Copyright © 2017, Chelsea Handcock
First electronic publication: April 2017
Re-edited electronic edition – September 2017 – Sandy Ebel – Personal Touch Editing.
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted works is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
Note from the Author:
This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to person, living or dead, actual events, locale, or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third party websites or their content.
Published in the United States of America.
Dalton Hayes, Enforcer for The Alpha Team, doesn’t like change. Any part of it, he is happy with the status quo. His focus is clear that way, protect the Team at all costs as well as his people. But that isn’t how life works and when the fates decide to throw a few wrenches in his path he has no choice but to accept them. For the first time in his life his loyalty is questioned. Does he go with his heart or with his head?
Emma Connors has never had an easy life. She was placed in foster care as an infant and had to fight for everything she ever had. When an opportunity for a better life came her way, she jumped at the chance choosing to ignore any signs it might not be exactly what it was supposed to be. That was her first mistake. Her second mistake? Well that might just be the big burly bear shifter that seems too good to be true. Can she really let herself trust a man she just met and what his Team is trying to tell her? Does she really want to believe that what goes bump in the night isn’t just her imagination but fact? Shifters exists and she has been thrown right in the deep end. Now the question is does she sink or swim?
**Content Warning: If you are opposed to former sailors that swear like they are supposed to along with the women they are with, then this is not the book for you. If you don’t like hot and steamy sex scenes, then I suggest you move on by. But if you are willing to take a chance the world of the NAC & Holly Group might surprise and delight you. This book does contain explicit love scenes, naughty language, and lots of sexy secrets. Intended for mature audiences.
Chapter 1
Dalton Hayes, member of the elite Alpha team, stood in the kitchen of his team’s home base and fumed. He hated change and changes were happening all around him. The long-believed idea that their race remained secret had been proven false. There were people out in the world who wished to do them harm. The biggest change was finding out fated mates were real, not something they all believed was folklore. His Alpha had mated, claimed, and been blessed by the Gods. Those changes made memories come to light he didn’t want to surface, and that pissed him off more than the changes. He hated remembering his childhood.
Discovering that a human group, specifically The Pandora Group, had known about Shifters for a very long time was messed up. Shifters had believed the secret of their existence was safe from the general public. That belief was blown to hell when a few months ago information surfaced which showed that not only did Pandora know about Shifters, but they had been actively trying to manipulate the DNA they had collected from unknowing Shifters to create their own Shifters almost 30 years ago. So far, none of the people who Pandora had engineered could Shift. Well, those who had been discovered were found to be incapable of shifting. However, they did carry Shifter DNA. No one knew the scope of the problem yet, which had his team as well as the other teams in NAC scrambling.
Dalton turned and braced himself, bracketing his arms on the sink, looking out the window above the sink. The window faced the lake which was calm and placid in the early afternoon sunshine. He loved Lake Michigan. The sandy beach
and blue waters could rival any ocean beach. He preferred the non-salted waters to the itchy oceans where he’d spent so much time during his time in the Navy. Looking out at the water, he realized he’d never put much thought into its therapeutic effect on him. It provided him with perspective; he was just a small part of a bigger thing. This was home, the one place where he could think without feeling threatened. His well-being and sense of home were intertwined with this place. The sparkling blue water and white sand had become crucial to his mental state. He could spend hours just admiring its beauty, seemingly endless to the eye of the beholder. He had spent a lot of time staring out into the distance, listening to the waves crash upon the shore, a sense of calm always enveloping him. This place was supposed to be their sanctuary. Sighing, he realized, as he had many times before, safety was always an illusion, like the lake’s beauty; if you looked deep enough, there was always turmoil just below the surface.
The beauty outside the window couldn’t stop his thoughts this time like it had in the past, too much was happening. If Cassie Larson, a teenage girl with Shifter DNA who had been kidnapped, had remained safe with her parents, would the teams still be left in the dark? Would they even know as much as they did now? He doubted it. He wondered how long it would’ve been before this information had been handed down to the teams.
It ticked him off that his team was only now finding out this information. He understood the chain of command. He also understood that sometimes information trickled down the ranks, but this wasn’t the military. Every Shifter in existence had a right to know this information. They, along with the other teams, should have been immediately informed. The information affected Shifters and everything they had come to believe. The women of The Holly Group were also affected, but damn, things should not have gone down the way they did. In his mind, it only proved to fuel his fire. Rubbing his hand down his wary face in frustration, he thought about all he’d learned up to this point.
He had learned, again second or third in line of many team members, that Cassie Larson held one strand of Shifter DNA and Pandora had plans to breed her. The disgust he felt made his stomach turn. All the DNA and genetics stuff was above Dalton’s head, but from what he was able to piece together, Pandora started the breeding program about 30 years ago, but failed to create children, specifically girls, with multiple strands of Shifter DNA. The group considered these women failures, but a doctor, Dr. Abernathy Franklin, continued the project on his own, going rogue, pursuing what Pandora had failed to do. He created females with only one strand of Shifter DNA, like Cassie Larson. Until recently, Shifter births were random and only produced males; a Shifter male could have four children and only one would become a Shifter. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Now they were finding out that Dr. Franklin was able to produce females with Shifter DNA, something Mother Nature failed at for over a hundred years. Specifically, giving these ladies the possibility of having Shifter children if they were bred to Shifter males. When Pandora picked up that information, they decided to try the breeding programs again. The whole thing was fucking creepy. Dalton decided that he needed to do something instead of dwelling on all the crap that had happened, but his frustration was too much. Grabbing a dishcloth laying on the counter, he wadded it up, forcefully throwing it into the sink. He turned and leaned back against the sink, staring into the kitchen instead out at the lake. The answers he sought wouldn’t be found there this time. He needed to do this on his own.
Knowing that others had suffered the same fate as Cassie sickened him. Declan “Senior” Quinn, the CO and founder of NAC, and his daughter Ryleigh, had presented this information to the team leaders in a closed-door meeting. He knew how the chain of command worked having been in the military, but it pissed Dalton off that they had received the information second-hand. All Shifters had the right to this information; the creation of females carrying Shifter DNA brought about the possibility of true or fated mates. Why should only a privileged few have the information?
The teams of NAC often rescued girls in the same situation as Cassie Larson, but add in the genetic implication, and they knew this case was different. When Jacks, his Alpha, brought Ryleigh Quinn with him on a mission to retrieve Dr. Franklin’s data, the clash of personalities developed in Technicolor. Ryleigh was the founder of The Holly Group, a well-respected recovery agency similar to NAC. She was also the adopted daughter of Declan Quinn. Shit, no one even knew the big guy had a daughter. Like the others in NAC, its leader was also a Shifter although a very rare one. He was a dragon, and Declan “Senior” Quinn was a badass to the tenth degree.
Having served his time in the military, Senior was a force to be reckoned with. he’d gained the respect and allegiance of many of his kind. When he started NAC, many of his former charges clamored for a chance to work with the man once again, including Dalton. The mission of NAC was simple; help as many women and children they could before the inevitable happened when their animals became uncontrollable and their lives needed to be ended. he’d never doubted Senior’s loyalty until now. He wondered if the old man was more worried about his daughter than the lives and futures of his people.
Ryleigh’s team had stumbled upon the DNA information and investigated it, finding out that most of the members of her agency had been affected by Dr. Franklin’s manipulation, including herself. Feelings had developed between Ryleigh and Jacks, and after the mission, Jacks claimed her as his mate. The only other person he knew to have had the same type of connection with a female was Cash, his second in command. Unfortunately, it didn’t end as well for him. His mate was kidnapped and taken from him at a young age. Dalton didn’t know if Cash and Jessie had a true mating bond, but even as a kid, he knew their relationship was special. A true mating hadn’t happened in over a hundred years. None of the guys had even considered the possibility that what Cash had experienced as a teen was the real thing
If Dalton were an optimist which he wasn’t, he would’ve been thinking that at least now Shifters had a chance of having true or fated mates. It was a chance at that elusive happy ending, at least for the guys in the group or his other clansman. But he wasn’t an optimist, but rather a pessimist to the hilt. He couldn’t deny the connection he’d seen between Cash and Jessie or currently, Jacks and Ryleigh. He didn’t know if it was legendary or wishful thinking.
Dalton thought he was okay with his life as it was now, he questioned the need for a mate. He had already resigned himself to a death by his brothers’ hands. At least that was what he was trying to believe. Mates seemed to make men weak. he’d noticed that Jacks didn’t want to leave on the mission because of Ryleigh. His loyalty to Alpha Team and NAC were waning, and Dalton didn’t like it. Their life's mission was affected by his actions. Jacks was Alpha. He wondered if Ryleigh made Jacks less of a formable leader. She also created dissension which should not be tolerated.
His job as an enforcer was to make sure his team was taken care of and safe. It really bothered him that he wasn’t doing his job, he was babysitting. Dalton was mindlessly pacing the kitchen. His frustration was amplified with every step. The Alpha Team worked and stayed a team at all times, building and pulling from each other’s talents. Breaking that dynamic caused problems, especially with him. His job was to protect his brothers.
Smacking the wall did nothing for his mood. Laying his forehead against the cold surface seemed to help gather his thoughts. Turning from the wall and placing his back against it, he let his body slide to the floor, placing his hands on his raised knees, and bowing his head. He had to admit, even to himself, that he never was happy with the status quo. It was all that he knew. Change had always been needed, but it was never easy. Without mates, they would die. Without change they would never grow.
Most of the guys, including him, had already convinced themselves that their animals would never be bonded and whole. Dalton thought he was okay with that, and until proven otherwise, nothing would change his way of thinking. Life had taught him that things didn’t always
work out the way they should. After all, weren’t kids supposed to be loved and cherished by their parents? Not in his experience.
Jacks and Ryleigh were married, mated, and now she was living with the Alpha Team, searching the data they had recovered from Dr. Franklin’s home. Dalton had never seen a more obsessed person. Ryleigh worked day and night trying to discover the scope of Dr. Franklin’s program. She found things here and there, but nothing concrete until earlier today. She’d uncovered a list of known Pandora facilities. Other teams in NAC, mixed with agents from The Holly Group, were actively looking for Cassie Larson. Kayden Walker of Bravo Team had called to inform the team that Cassie had been found and recovered, but four of their own had been taken in the process. Zoey Clark, an operative from The Holly Group, Milo Stern, Alpha of NAC's Echo Team, and two of his men had been taken from the scene. They also found evidence of a tranquilizer which rendered Shifters immobile; something until then had never been discovered. Shifter genetics allowed the men to metabolize drugs and other substances faster than a human, often not affecting the Shifter at all. If Pandora had a drug that could immobilize them and stifle their ability to shift, the shit had hit the fan with the force of a hurricane.
What was left of the Alpha Team had left their sanctuary to assist with the situation. Well, all except for Dalton. He was left behind to watch over his Alpha’s mate. To say that wasn’t sitting well with him was an understatement. He had to laugh at himself; not sitting, right? Shit, he was hiding in the kitchen, sitting on the floor like some pansy assed fucker because he didn’t like how everything had played out so far. What did that make him?
NAC & The Holly Group - Box set: Alpha Team Page 28