by Meg Ripley
“I don’t know yet,” Hudson replied, “but I do know I can’t wait to go on another mission with you. I’ll see you then. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Bye.”
He hung up, looking at the phone for a long minute. Leona wasn’t even in the same room with him, and yet he felt the most comforting sense of peace settling over him. He was about to head out on another mission with the woman of his dreams, a woman he knew he was bound to forever with the most fierce loyalty in the universe.
And he couldn’t wait.
Captured By The Soldier Wolf
Special Ops Shifters
1
It’d been a long night, and Flint Myers hadn’t had much sleep. The full moon had called to him through the window of his apartment, reminding him that he wasn’t just a man. He’d slipped out through the fire escape, not interested in having nosey Mrs. Watkins from next door peeking through her peephole and wondering where he was going at that late hour. The streets had been mostly quiet, or at least as quiet as they could’ve been for D.C., and he’d made his way out to a nearby park. During the day, it was a noisy bustle of parents, nannies, and their gaggles of children, screaming and crying and all being part of the crowd. At night, it was hauntingly quiet, just the way he’d liked it.
A good run on all fours had left him feeling ready to get back home, to make another attempt at a normal life, but the artificial lights in the apartment and the closeness of the walls hadn’t sat well with him. He’d stayed up a few more hours to clean his guns, changing out some parts on a few of his rifles and making plans for a new build.
Now that the midday sunlight streamed through his blinds, Flint dragged a hand through his hair and picked up his buzzing phone from the nightstand. He squinted at the screen, finding several messages from his Special Ops Shifter Force comrades.
Emergency meeting ASAP. That one was from Drake.
The next was from Garrison. You up yet?
We’re waiting on you was the text from Hudson.
The final one was from the newest member of the SOS Force, Leona, whom Flint still wasn’t completely used to. I brought burgers.
Flint laughed a little as he hauled himself out of bed, amused by the different ways in which his brothers in arms he’d known since basic training spoke to him, and how Leona seemed to think it was better to bribe him. She wasn’t wrong, of course.
He got dressed, throwing on a pair of ratty jeans, boots that had seen better days, and a black t-shirt. There was no telling how long this meeting would last or how bored he would get, so the plans for his latest gun build and a few parts he could tinker with went into a battered brown leather satchel.
“Good morning, Flint.” Mrs. Watkins was standing in the doorway to her apartment, her frizzy gray hair hanging in a tattered braid past her shoulder. She wore a striped muumuu as a uniform, and her dark eyes were clouded with concern. “Did you hear anything strange last night?”
“Can’t say that I did.” He turned to lock his apartment door, wishing the woman didn’t have such impeccable timing. Either she stood in her doorway all day, or she just always managed to catch him every time he left or came back.
“All the dogs in the neighborhood were barking,” she asserted. “I heard them.”
He pocketed his key. “I’m sure it was just Mr. Jorgenson’s dog. You know how he carries on when he gets started.” It was true that the terrier mix down the hall was an incessant barker. If someone dared knock on a door anywhere on their floor, the dog went nuts. But it was also true that all the canines within a half-mile radius seemed able to sense when he shifted to his other form, and they bayed, howled, and protested as their masters tried to quiet them.
“I don’t think so,” she argued, pursing her lips and clutching her coffee mug. “I think this was something else. You know, there have been some strange things happening lately.”
Flint avoided her gaze as he headed toward the elevator, which was unfortunately right across the hall from Mrs. Watkins’ door. “I guess you could bring it up at the next tenants’ meeting.”
“Yes, I just might do that. You stay safe now, Flint. The world’s a dangerous place these days.”
The doors opened to reveal an elevator that was blessedly empty. “I’ll do that.”
“It’s about time,” Hudson huffed when Flint walked into the conference room at the Force’s headquarters half an hour later. “I was honestly starting to think you wouldn’t show.”
“Right. Like you don’t have some sort of GPS tracker on these babies.” Flint gestured with his cell phone in his hand, the special one that Hudson had made with his resources at Taylor Communications.
Hudson rolled one shoulder. “You have your gadgets, and I have mine.”
Leona, Hudson’s mate and the newest member of their team, flicked her fingers against his shoulder and handed a greasy paper bag across the table. “Burgers, as promised.”
“The only reason I’m here!” Flint proclaimed as he flopped down into a chair. The scent of grease and meat rose to his nostrils, and he felt his inner wolf smile. Much better than the mice his distant cousins in the wild insisted on living off of. “So what’s the big deal? And if it’s that much of an emergency, where’s Drake?”
“Right here.” The disembodied voice came from Hudson’s phone, which sat in the middle of the table. “I’ll fly out there if I need to, but I think it’s best if we come up with a plan first.” Drake had moved to California to be with his mate, but they’d managed to keep the Force together despite his absence.
“Now that we’re all here, we can go over some of the information we’ve been receiving. I don’t have a lot of time before I’ve got to get back to work.” Garrison was dressed for his job as a construction foreman in khaki dress slacks and a white button-down. His deep green eyes were impatient as he tapped the screen of his tablet. “Multiple calls have been coming in regarding the same area near Colorado Springs. There are a couple of wolf packs who seem to be having a conflict over whose territory is whose.”
“Sounds like pretty typical stuff. Not sure that’s worth getting us involved,” Flint commented. He tipped his chair back and put his feet on the table as he stuffed the first cheeseburger into his mouth. It’d gone cold, but he didn’t care. It’d been too long since he’d had anything that delicious.
Garrison nodded. “I thought it sounded like that at first, like they needed to contact their local conclave to pull up the territory lines and sort things out, but apparently, it’s more than just a squabble over a border. Shifters are being attacked on the streets, and it’s not just one group attacking the other. It sounds like a lot of back and forth, like their own local war. There’ve been some pretty major injuries and even a couple of deaths.”
“Sounds like a good job for you, Flint,” Drake’s voice said over the speaker.
Flint tipped his head to one side, glaring at the phone. “Enjoying calling the shots from the other side of the country?” he quipped. He’d never admit it out loud, but he knew Drake was their Alpha for a good reason. He was certainly the most level-headed.
“Always such a fucking comedian. Are you up for it or not?”
Flint could feel everyone’s eyes on him. He was their resident wolf, and it only made sense for him to go. His instinct was to resist, as it always was. Flint’s mother had always told him he was born to rebel, and she wasn’t wrong. The SOS Force was the only team he’d truly felt he could work with, and even that was touch-and-go.
But that urge to oppose Drake was heightened by the restlessness he’d been feeling lately. Flint was always on the move, always needing to do something, but it’d gotten worse over the last few weeks. His little jogs down to the park in the middle of the night weren’t really cutting it, especially when he knew he could only stay in his lupine form for a short time without too much risk of getting caught. And what might the D.C. Animal Control officers have to say about a wolf in the middle of their city? It wouldn’t go over wel
l.
“Yeah, I’ll go. Maybe I’ll get a chance to test out a few of my new toys. It’s not as much fun when I take them to the range.” He wadded up the wrapper from the first burger and grabbed a second one.
“You should leave ASAP to stave off more incidents,” Garrison suggested. “It sounds like things have only gotten worse, and they’ll continue to do so until we figure out how to stop it.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m going.” Flint shoved the burger in his mouth and pushed himself out of the chair.
“Hold on. I’ve got something at the office I need to give you before you go.” Hudson stood, bending back down to press a kiss to Leona’s forehead. “I’ll see you back at the house.”
Flint turned away from the display of affection between the two mates. They were fated, and during their mission, they’d realized the chemistry between them was undeniable. Flint understood that in a way, but that didn’t mean he wanted to see it.
The building that housed Taylor Communications was massive, bustling with men and women in suits, talking on their phones or poking at their tablets. Everyone was busy and on their way somewhere. They all had a sense of purpose about them, and even though they hardly glanced at him, it made Flint uncomfortable. “I don’t know how you stand it. Too many heads up in here.”
“Oh, quit whining.” Hudson strode like the lion he was, proudly surveying his territory. Being the owner of a multi-million-dollar corporation hadn’t changed him on a personal level, but Flint figured it took a certain type of personality to make it work. Hudson most definitely had it. “I need these people to get everything done.”
“If you say so.” Flint couldn’t even admire the modern design and architecture of the building. To him, it was just an oversized cage.
Hudson swiped his badge next to an elevator at the end of the hall. “I know you have to pack and head out, but I’ve got something I’ve been working on that you need to take with you.”
“Listen, you know I’m not big on this whole comm-gadget thing. The phones you gave us and our mental link are more than enough.” It’d been strange for Flint to have a telepathic link with the rest of the Force, even though it was a necessary part of being able to work as a team. When they took their animal forms, they could talk to each other without any external devices. Flint hadn’t felt that sort of bond since he’d left his family pack before joining the Army, and that was ages ago.
He allowed himself a moment to remember, even though he could never forget. His Alpha, Jesse, had been a distant cousin who’d never liked Flint in the first place. Jesse took every opportunity to belittle Flint and pick fights with him, but he was careful never to let anyone else see it. No, the only thing the rest of the pack saw was Flint’s rebellion against him, his direct flaunting of the rules, his defiance of authority and the hierarchy that kept the pack together. Flint had been young and impulsive, and he hadn’t given two shits about controlling his temper. By the time Jesse officially kicked Flint out, he was ready to leave anyway.
“I’m not going to argue with you on that,” Hudson said, bringing Flint back to the current moment. The elevator smoothly glided downward, not like the rickety one at Flint’s apartment building that was infamous for breaking down between floors. “But the problem with heading out on a covert mission that involves various clans is that we’re sometimes faced with becoming part of them. We can’t risk them getting into our heads and learning who we really are.”
“Okay, I follow you on that. But what do you plan to do about it?” Flint crossed his arms in front of his chest.
With a soft ding, the elevator doors opened and they were in another hallway. Instead of the marble tile and decorative framed paintings that Flint had seen upstairs, there was only plain white drywall and linoleum. Hudson was dressed for work in a designer suit, and he clashed with the surroundings as he strode forward.
“You know I’ve hired some of the best scientists and developers in the world to advance my mission for this company. We’ve been enhancing communications in regions where people couldn’t even get cell service, much less log on to the internet. Our towers in metropolitan areas have more bandwidth than anything available previously, meaning service doesn’t get bogged down despite the fact that everyone is on it. That’s what you see on the surface.”
“Uh huh.” Flint watched him carefully, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Hudson paused at another door. It was a dull gray and didn’t look like anything more than the entry to a maintenance closet except for the electronic lock next to it. He swiped his badge. “That all looks great on the surface. It helps people, and it’s the public image that everyone focuses on. What the public doesn’t know is that some of the greatest minds in the world are shifters, just like us. They’ve been incredibly helpful in developing some new technology that, you could say, provides the opposite of communication.”
“Dude, you’re really obnoxious sometimes. Just tell me what you’re talking about.” Flint followed Hudson into a room that was obviously another one of his tech labs. Strange equipment sat on various tables, most of it hooked up to computers. The whole place smelled of plastics and electronics. There were no employees present at the moment, and Flint wondered if Hudson had cleared them out of there.
“This,” the tech guru said, “will keep a mental link from working. It interferes with the part of the brain that allows the bond to work.” He led Flint to a cube of glass, where a light shone on a white platform inside. A tiny green dot sat in the middle of the platform.
The idea of this device sounded intriguing, and Flint could’ve used one when he was younger, but what he saw in that box didn’t look like anything functional. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s a microchip,” Hudson said simply.
Flint let out an exasperated sigh. “Okay. Fine. Now how is something like that supposed to help me? It’s practically microscopic.”
Hudson looked particularly smug. “I know. But we’ve experimented with putting the chip in other devices. If we were just talking about humans, we could put it in something along the lines of a Bluetooth headset. But that psychic link doesn’t activate unless we’re in shifter form, which means we need something that will, shall we stay, stick with us.” He led Flint to another glass case. He opened it and took out a small, round object that pretty much looked like a sticker. “This is made with a high-quality adhesive. It should stay put throughout a transformation because the adhesive forms chemical bonds with the wearer’s DNA.”
“Should?” Flint raised an eyebrow. “With as much money as it sounds and looks like you’ve put into this thing, you only have a should?”
“It’s brand new. We haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but you just might get the chance to do that for us.” Hudson took a plastic case from a drawer, put the little circle of film inside it, and handed it to Flint. “Just like with any other mission, I wouldn’t advise becoming a part of their pack unless you have no choice. It’s safer that way. But if something happens, just stick that on right behind your ear. It shouldn’t be able to be removed unless you apply a particular solvent we have here in the lab.”
“Won’t they be suspicious when they figure out they can’t link up with me?”
Hudson seemed prepared for that answer. “In my experience, the fact that we wouldn’t join a clan officially was what gave us away. That mission put not only myself in danger, but Leona as well. I didn’t like that, and I wanted some sort of solution. I’m not saying it’s perfect. Just like any weapon, it could be used against you. But you still wouldn’t go anywhere without a gun, would you?”
Flint couldn’t argue with that. He accepted the little case and slipped it into his pocket. “Glad to be your guinea pig.”
Hudson smiled a slow and lazy grin that reminded Flint of just how much lion was lurking under the surface. “That’s not the only thing you get to test out on this mission.”
Flint let out an impatient sigh. “And since I’m sure we’re
not talking about weapons, I don’t think I care.”
“You should, though. I’ve developed a surveillance system that covers a much longer range than anything we’ve had before. When Leona and I went to Illinois, I felt like we were on an episode of Get Smart with all that clunky equipment. I won’t bore you with all the details, but we should be able to gather intel from miles away instead of just across the street.”
“Great. You do that. Now, unless you’ve got anything else for me, I think it’s time I headed out.” Flint turned for the door, wondering how Hudson had time for all this.
2
Audra held Randy’s hand as they stepped up to her parents’ house. She had no reason to be nervous. They were expecting her, and they adored Randy. There was no shame in returning home, but no matter how many times she told herself that, she couldn’t quite believe it. Audra was an independent woman. She could make it on her own no matter what happened, and that was exactly why she’d gone off to Fort Collins with Luke in the first place.
The front door opened before she’d even put her foot on the first porch step. Her mother came running out with open arms, practically bowling Audra over as she wrapped her in a hug. “Oh, sweetheart! I’m so glad you’re here! I’ve just been dying ever since you called, waiting for the day. Your father’s inside watching football, of course. It’s just the preseason, but he says if he doesn’t watch every game, the Broncos will lose. Oh, and there’s my little sugar pie!” Mrs. Larson scooped Randy up and began tickling him. “I think I’ve got presents for you!”
“Mom,” Audra protested as she followed her mother into the house. “We’ve been here all of two seconds and you’re already trying to spoil him.”
“I don’t think a few little welcome gifts will spoil him, especially after all he’s gone through.” Her mother continued to love on the little boy, nuzzling his neck and laughing.