Wolf Unleashed

by Paige Tyler

  A little while after that, their world had been flipped upside down again after Becker met Jayna Winston in the middle of a werewolf-on-werewolf firefight in a warehouse as she’d been pointing an automatic weapon at him and robbing the place. Considering that she and the rest of her pack of beta werewolves had been working as enforcers for the Albanian mob at the time, there should have been zero chance of a romance between her and Becker, but once a werewolf met The One for him, logic and reason got tossed out the window.

  Maybe all those months of turmoil and insanity had taught Alex and the other guys on the team something, because when Cooper and Everly’s romance had blown up in the Pack’s face thanks to a frigging suicide bomber, it barely raised any eyebrows.

  “Is it me, or does this whole marriage train seem to be moving fast?” Max asked.

  Alex snorted. “You can say that again.”

  All the werewolves in the Pack lucky enough to meet their soul mates had fallen fast, but none of them had moved to get married as quickly as Cooper and Everly. Gage and Mac had been together for ten months before tying the knot. Xander and Khaki weren’t even talking about it yet. Though to be honest, that could have been because they knew there was no way the DPD would let them stay on the SWAT team together if they found out they were in a relationship. And while Becker had moved in with Jayna and her beta pack within a couple of weeks of getting together, they didn’t seem interested in rushing anything.

  But Cooper and Everly’s wedding plans were moving at warp speed. They’d met in June and were getting married in September—a month from now. Not that Alex didn’t think it was real between Cooper and Everly. It was just scary how fast it was going. He and the other guys had been in the SWAT pack for years, and none of them had even sniffed The One. Now women were falling into their laps faster than a werewolf could catch them.

  “Speaking of moving fast,” Remy said, glancing at him. “What’s going on with Lacey? She still playing hard to get?”

  Alex bit back a growl. He knew he was going to regret telling Remy about Lacey. As the rest of the guys all turned to regard him with intense interest, he wished now that he’d kept his mouth shut. He’d only mentioned her to Remy because he thought the team’s in-house Romeo might have a few thoughts on how to get the attractive vet to go out with him. Obviously, that had been a bad idea.

  “Who’s Lacey?” Max asked, his blue eyes curious.

  Damn. This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to mention Lacey to anyone. Now his pack mates were going to jump to the conclusion that he met The One, and that wasn’t even close to the truth.

  Despite the fact that she turned him down, putting Lacey out of his mind hadn’t been as easy as he thought. Against his better judgment, he’d stopped by the clinic several times over the past few days on the off chance she’d changed her mind about going out with him. She hadn’t. He was pretty sure that meant Lacey wasn’t The One for him. He might be ready to give up on her, but he was running out of lame excuses to stop in and see her. He could only buy Tuffie so much in the way of food, dental treats, and chew toys. Lacey was going to think he was a stalker.

  “Lacey is the new vet at the animal clinic,” he finally said. “I met her when I took Tuffie in the other day. I asked her out. She turned me down. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  Alex expected the guys to say something sarcastic, maybe point out that Lacey’s lack of interest in him was likely just a sign of her good taste. But instead, they shook their heads and acknowledged how much that must suck. Too bad. He could use a little ribbing to get his mind off Lacey.

  “Did you try the flowers like I suggested?” Remy asked. “Women love them. There’s, like, a direct connection between their noses and their hearts.”

  Alex almost winced. He’d tried flowers, but Lacey hadn’t seemed very impressed. In fact, when he stopped to see her the next day, the flowers had been sitting on the receptionist’s desk. Lacey hadn’t even bothered to take them home.

  He gave Remy a wry smile. “Something tells me that Lacey isn’t the kind of woman who likes flowers.”

  Remy opened his mouth to say something but closed it again as Khaki came running down the hall. Tall and athletic, she wore the same SWAT uniform they did and had her long dark hair pulled back in a bun.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Everly was having a crisis she needed help with.”

  Brooks frowned. “Everything okay with the engagement party?”

  “I think so.” Khaki glanced over her shoulder at them as she opened the door to the training room and led the way inside. “Just make sure all the guys know whom they can talk openly to and whom they can’t. Even though her father and brothers know about werewolves, the rest of her family doesn’t. Everly doesn’t want one of us slipping up and exposing the existence of werewolves to one of her brothers’ wives—or their kids. She doesn’t want any of them freaking out during the party.”

  “Much better to wait until the wedding for the rest of her family to find out that she’s marrying a werewolf,” Alex said sarcastically as he followed the other guys in.

  “Today’s exercise is simple,” Khaki said after they had all assembled inside. “Yesterday, I gave you a few minutes to smell a piece of cloth that I’d sprayed with a particular cologne. The day before, I did the same thing with another scrap of fabric covered with a different fragrance.” She gestured to the cardboard boxes on the table along the far wall. “Each of those holds a single piece of cloth. Two are ones you already smelled. The other three are decoys sprayed with a similar but different cologne. All you have to do is tell me which two are the right ones and which cloth came from which day. There’s no time limit, so just relax and let yourself get lost in the scents.”

  Alex got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Until they’d started this training with Khaki, he’d always thought his nose was as good as any other werewolf in the Pack. He could pick up on all the usual scents they ran into on a frequent basic in their line of work, like gunpowder, explosives, drugs, or alcohol. He could tell the difference between two people’s scents and easily identify if they belonged to a man, a woman, or a werewolf. He could even pick up on subtle smells, like the one a woman gave off when she was aroused. But Trey knew exactly who was at the gate of the compound before Alex even realized anyone was there. Brooks recognized the scent of each woman Remy hung out with. And Max could pick up the scent of a girl he’d danced with the night before, even when she was all the way across a crowded bar. Alex’s nose wasn’t good enough to do any of that stuff.

  Khaki walked along the table, taking the lid off each box. “The scents you memorized the past two days are in your heads. You just have to figure out where you put them.”

  Alex wasn’t sure he could discern one cologne from another, much less remember which piece of cloth he’d smelled before. But he leaned over the first box and took a deep breath anyway. He immediately picked up the strong smell of a man’s masculine cologne. Unfortunately, when he sniffed the second box, it smelled the same as the first one. Worse, he couldn’t say whether he’d smelled either fragrance before.

  He moved to the next box, trading places with the other guys as they each took their turn, but he didn’t recognize the scent coming from there, either. Shit, he was never going to be able to get this. He glanced over at Max and saw him grinning. Clearly, his pack mate wasn’t having any problem. Alex had always been a competitive guy, and it irritated the hell out of him that his teammates could do this and he couldn’t. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do physically as a werewolf, and when it came to tactical techniques like shooting, climbing, rappelling, hand-to-hand, you name it, he could it and do it well. But for some reason, this scent stuff seemed to be beyond him, and the harder he pushed, the worse his nose functioned.

  If that weren’t bad enough, his claws and fangs slipped out. He tried to get the damn things to retract, but they refused to
behave. Shit.

  “You know, letting your inner wolf out isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Khaki said from beside him. “I’ve discovered lately that the further I push my shift, the better my nose works.”

  He glanced at her. “Really?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. Give it a shot.”

  Why the hell not? It couldn’t hurt. Ignoring his protruding fangs and claws, he leaned over the last box in the row and took a good sniff. The scent seemed richer and deeper than it had been.

  “Damn, it really does work better,” he muttered.

  He probably shouldn’t have been surprised. His pack mates who had a better handle on their werewolf abilities—definitely did better at this scent training stuff. The fact that Khaki, who seemed to be gaining control over her inner wolf ten times faster than anyone else in the Pack ever had, also had the best nose on the team probably wasn’t a coincidence. Alex wouldn’t be shocked if she learned how to shift into a real wolf soon.

  “Can you push your shift a little more?” Khaki asked softly. “Let go and see how much it helps.”

  Alex tried to follow her advice but immediately ran up against another obstacle. While he could definitely pick up scents better, he wasn’t in any more control of his inner wolf than he was of his nose. His ability to shift had always been limited to the basics. With the exception of those rare moments when he was really fired up, claws and fangs were as far as his shift went.

  He growled and pushed harder, breaking a sweat as he tried to make his fangs extend further. They slid out another half inch before he ended up slamming into the same damn brick wall that always kept him from truly connecting with his werewolf nature. And while he had an inkling about which pieces of cloth were the ones Khaki had shown them earlier, it wasn’t much more than a guess.

  “I think this is one of the scents you had us smell the other day,” he said, pointing at the third box.

  “Excellent,” Khaki said. “How about the other one?”

  Alex tried again, but he’d already lost control over his inner wolf. Just like that, his claws and fangs disappeared—and so did his improved sense of smell.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s gone.”

  Khaki thumped him on the arm. “Don’t worry about it. You did really well, and you’re getting better. Your nose will improve as you gain more control over your inner wolf. By the time you’re capable of a full shift, your nose will be as good as mine.”

  Alex doubted that was ever going to happen, but he didn’t correct her. He looked around the room and saw that everyone but Hale had already left. Well, at least there was one werewolf in the Pack whose nose was worse than his. Hale had a good excuse for having a crappy sniffer, though. His nose had been smashed in by some asshole when he was a teenager, and it hadn’t worked right even before he’d gone through his change.

  Alex snorted. Great. He’d beaten a werewolf with a broken sniffer. He should be so proud.

  He would have been even more disgusted with himself if it wasn’t for the fact that he couldn’t imagine ever needing a werewolf super smeller. If they needed someone with a great nose, they had Khaki or one of the guys. Because if anyone ever had to depend on his nose to save them, they were screwed.

  Chapter 3

  “Someone driving by heard the sounds of dogs fighting in there last night around one in the morning.” The uniformed officer motioned toward the big junkyard several yards from where Lacey was standing with Wendy and the rest of the ACS team. “They said there were a bunch of cars parked up and down the street and a lot of people laughing and shouting. The county sent a patrol car out a couple of hours later, but the place had been locked up by then.”

  Lacey cursed silently. She knew what all that meant—a dogfighting event. This place was well outside the more populated parts of the city, so they probably thought no one would be around to hear anything. If that person with a conscience who happened to drive by at just the right time hadn’t called the police, no one would have been the wiser. As hard as Wendy and the other members of her squad worked, there was only so much they could do. Dallas had a long history of dogfighting, and it only seemed to be getting worse. The number of dead and injured dogs they’d found lately made her sick to the stomach even thinking about it.

  Wendy left the patrolman to keep an eye on Lacey while she and the other officer from the Animal Cruelty Squad served the warrant that would get them into the huge, sprawling complex of old cars, racks of repair parts, and do-it-yourself garage facilities.

  Lacey clutched the shoulder strap of her big first-aid bag and fought to control the butterflies filling her stomach. She’d been going out with Wendy and the other cops from ACS for a while now, but that still didn’t mean she was used to these situations. There was a good chance she was going to see some broken and abused dogs in there, and that was something she would never get used to.

  She used to wait back at the vet clinic while Wendy went out on these calls. Wendy would find the injured animals and get them transported to the clinic as fast as she could, but after four horribly injured dogs had died en route, Lacey decided that had to change. There was simply no way she was going to sit around and hope that the dogs survived long enough to reach her. She needed to be there when the animals were found.

  Wendy hadn’t been very supportive of the idea at first, but once she realized it was actually a benefit having someone who knew dogs so well on the team—and that Lacey was smart enough to stay out of harm’s way while the police were doing their thing—she’d finally relented.

  “I’m just the caretaker here, Officer,” the old man who answered the door said after Wendy showed him the warrant. “I ain’t the owner and have no authority to let you in here. The owner wouldn’t like it much.”

  “It doesn’t matter what the owner likes or doesn’t like,” Wendy said firmly. “This piece of paper means we get to go in there and search the property for signs of dogfighting. You can either let us in or wait all cool and cozy in the back of a patrol car while we let ourselves in.”

  The crotchety old man squinted at Wendy from behind his glasses and grumbled something under his breath but let them in. The minute they were inside, he pulled out his old-style flip phone and started punching buttons. Lacey didn’t doubt that the man was calling the owner.

  A few minutes later, Wendy came back outside, her face grim.

  “It’s bad, but I don’t think the dogs are here anymore,” she said.

  Lacey’s heart sank. If there weren’t any dogs around, it likely meant that all of the animals had already been disposed of.

  Wendy led her into the junkyard, then took a circuitous route toward the back, which opened up to an obvious fighting pit—a chain-link fence set up in a circle fifteen feet across with a single makeshift gate to let animals and handlers into the ring. Lacey didn’t have to look hard to see the splatters of blood everywhere or chunks of flesh. The ground all around the pit had been trampled flat. A lot of people had been standing around watching.

  “I told you there weren’t any dogs here,” the caretaker said from behind them. “You can all just shove off now.”

  Wendy pointed at the dark reddish-brown stains on the ground inside the fence. “Where’d all the blood come from then?”

  “What blood?” The old man squinted, trying to see. “Oh, that. It was probably just some of the boys goofin’ off and gettin’ into a fight.”

  Wendy walked over to pick up a bloody bit of fluff lying on the ground just inside the gate of the fenced-in circle, then held it up. “So I guess those boys have fur?”

  The old man started stammering and trying to talk his way out of the lie, but Lacey ignored him. Right now, she was more interested in the clear trail of blood leading away from the pit. She followed it, knowing it would probably stop wherever the dogs’ bodies had been loaded into a vehicle, but she had to know for sure.

&
nbsp; The old man moved faster than Lacey would ever have imagined, jumping in front of her and cutting her off. “You cops can’t just go wanderin’ around wherever you want. I know my rights!”

  “I’m not a cop,” Lacey told him.

  At times like these, it was probably a good thing she didn’t own a gun. Lacey shoved past the man without waiting for Wendy or any of the other officers to intercede. She didn’t need their help to deal with a piece of crud like this. She despised people who abused animals, and the anger she felt made her fearless.

  She followed the trail of blood until it stopped cold at the edge of a gravel road that circled around the property. Behind her, Wendy was arguing with the old man, but Lacey tuned them out, more interested in the separate trail of blood heading off to the left. She broke into a run, ignoring the caretaker shouting at her to stop and Wendy urging her to slow down.

  Lacey was moving so fast she almost missed the sudden right turn the trail made. She quickly doubled back and saw that the blood disappeared under the back end of a Honda Accord. She held up her hand, motioning everyone else back, then dropped to her knees and leaned forward to get a look under the car. Her heart broke at the sight of the three pit bulls she found there, bloody and savaged beyond belief. Only one of the dogs was even conscious, and he growled at her in a menacing tone.

  “Easy there, big boy,” she whispered. “I’m here to help you guys, I promise.”

  She slipped her first-aid kit off her shoulder, then dropped flat on her belly, wiggling forward to get herself under the back of the car. The dog growled again, but it was halfhearted, like he didn’t have the energy to even put up a good front.

  Lacey ignored Wendy and the other cops as they told her not to go under the car, that it was too dangerous and they would get the dogs out another way. But these guys didn’t have time for another way, and they sure as hell couldn’t survive being dragged out with a dog catcher’s noose.