Mate Claimed

by Jennifer Ashley

  “What the fuck?” Graham asked, staring at the spot from which Reid had vanished.

  “He can teleport,” Eric said. “He’s useful.”

  “Shit.”

  The Shifters circled the compound, keeping well out of sight. Shane was the most visible, but he wisely kept to the large boulders clumped to the west of the compound, his grizzled fur blending with the sun-dappled rocks.

  Then Reid walked out from between two buildings and to the fence. He looked up the ridge toward Eric and shook his head. A second later, Reid disappeared, then reappeared next to Eric in a rush of air.

  “No one there,” Reid said.

  Graham bellowed and leapt aside, then he came back, teeth bared, claws out. “Never do that again, Fae. I’ll take your head off.”

  Reid gave him a look of contempt. “Whatever.”

  “Fucking Fae.”

  Reid turned back to Eric. “I teleported in between the buildings, but they’re all locked up. No guards, and I heard nothing from inside anywhere. It looks deserted.”

  Eric stared down at the compound for a moment, contemplating. The place was a mystery, but he’d not mistaken that scent of fear.

  He quietly unfolded to his feet. “Let’s check it out.”

  Graham emitted a wolf growl and started down the hill after Eric. They picked their way along, stones rolling out from under their feet, dust rising in the still air. They met Chisholm and Jace near the gate, both of them waiting, looking grim. They’d scented the fear too.

  Graham reached for the large padlock, ready to break it, but Eric stepped in front of him. “Reid.”

  “What’s he going to do?” Graham asked. “Fae magic it open?”

  Reid pulled a flat pouch from his back pocket, unzipped it in silence, and removed lock picks. With the rest of them watching, Reid calmly worked the picks into the lock. In a few seconds, the padlock clicked open.

  “All right, so he’s useful,” Graham said grudgingly.

  “I don’t want anyone to know we got in,” Eric said. “Stealth first, fighting later.”

  “Wuss,” Graham said.

  Shane’s grizzly growl sounded right behind Graham—a long rumble that went on and on and on. Graham gave him a scowl and strode past Eric through the gate.

  “Shane,” Eric said, and the growl stopped. “Search,” he said to all the Shifters and Reid. “Let’s be quick.”

  The compound was as simple as it looked from above, three long buildings with doors and no windows. The air-conditioning units were silent, and none of the lights above the doors were on.

  Eric chose a door in the middle of the quiet compound, one that wouldn’t be seen from the surrounding desert. Reid obligingly picked the lock.

  Eric wondered where Reid had obtained the skill, but he didn’t want to pry too much. Inside Faerie, Reid was able to make iron do whatever he wanted—making the metal change shape or form, or obey his will—which scared the hell out of the high Fae, who were weakened by iron. Reid couldn’t use his talent in the human world for some reason, but maybe it helped him manipulate locks and other things made of metal.

  The door opened. Graham grabbed it and shoved himself inside without waiting for Eric. Eric followed him in closely, his senses straining, the beast in him ready to fight.

  They found themselves in a room about twenty feet long and ten wide, with no windows but with doors on either end. The room was dark, but Eric’s Shifter sight took it in—two beds shoved lengthwise against the back wall, sinks next to each door, an island in the middle of the room holding another sink and cabinets.

  Everything was white except the island, which was black with wooden cabinet doors. The pervasive odor was of antiseptic.

  Eric flashed back to another white room, where he’d lain flat on his back on a hard bed, cuffs around his wrists, chains wrapping his lower limbs. Machines on the wall beeped with his vital signs, and six different tubes snaked into his arm.

  People with nothing on their faces but mild curiosity stared down at him, not even bothering to take notes. All the while, Eric screamed.

  Sudden pain cramped his body. He hugged his arm over his abdomen, letting out a grunt that sounded loud in the silence.

  Graham swung around. “What is it?”

  “Bad memories,” Eric said through clenched teeth.

  Graham’s eyes narrowed. “Malfunctioning Collar, my ass. You’re weakening. How about if I take you out right now and put you out of your misery?”

  Eric couldn’t answer, being caught in a spasm of pain.

  Reid stepped to Graham and wound one long-fingered hand around Graham’s bicep. “How about if I teleport us to the top of the tallest building in town and then drop you?”

  Graham stared at Reid for a time, reassessing him. “Dokk alfar? Okay, Warden, so now I know why you let him hang out with you. You all right? Or are you going to pass out on me?”

  The pain receded a bit, and Eric straightened. “I’m fine.”

  “You’ve been in a place like this before,” Graham said, giving him a shrewd look.

  “Worse than this.” There weren’t nearly as many machines here, or the smell of as many chemicals.

  Graham looked around the room, then back at Eric. “Fucking humans.” He walked to the door on the left wall and waited for Reid to unlock it for him.

  Eric knew they should check every building and figure out what was going on here, even after they found the wolves, but he didn’t relish the thought. The ghost of pain past was still haunting him, and he wanted out of here as soon as he could.

  When Eric caught up to Graham and Reid, they’d entered the next room, which was identical to the one they’d left except that a large cage stood against the wall. The fear smell from the cage overpowered the antiseptic smell that tried to cover it—sweat, blood, a hint of urine. Eric remembered Jace’s report of the empty cages being brought into the compound by jeeps—they must have used these to transport the Shifters here once they’d taken them off the buses.

  Graham’s scent betrayed raw anger. “They were here,” he said. “My wolves.”

  Reid looked around. “They couldn’t have put twenty of them in here. Probably used rooms up and down this row. But there’s no one here now.”

  Graham swept his strong arm across the center counter. The curved faucet of the sink broke and clattered to the floor. No water came out of the broken tap—the water must have been shut off as well.

  “Where are they?” Graham roared. “Where the hell are they?”

  “Alive,” Eric said.

  Graham rounded on him. “How do you know that?”

  “No smell of death. They were here, they were scared, but they were taken away again. Not killed.”

  “Taken away where? And why are the cages still here?”

  “Fuck if I know. But we’ll find them.”

  Eric tried to keep his voice calm, but he wanted to rage as much as Graham did. Experiments on Shifters were forbidden now, and no one, no one touched the cubs. Didn’t matter that they were Graham’s Shifters, or Lupine Shifters. Eric tasted the need to find and slaughter whoever had frightened those cubs.

  Graham’s Collar started to spark. He was about to go on a rampage. Eric shared the urge, but if they tore up the place, humans would figure out that they’d been there, and the Goddess knew what they’d do—to the Shifters they’d already taken, to Shifters in general.

  Before he could tell Graham to take his ass back outside, Eric’s cell phone vibrated. He yanked it out of its holder.

  “Brody. What?”

  Eric listened to Brody’s excited and garbled words, then said, “Fine. We’re coming,” and hung up.

  He looked up to find Graham an inch away, the man fully in his space, Graham’s breath fanning Eric’s face.

  “Got them,” Eric said. “Brody’s found them—on a highway not far from here. We need to get there. Reid?”

  Eric hated what would come with the teleport back to the motorcycles—the
dizziness, the nausea—but as Reid grabbed Graham first, Eric had the satisfaction of watching Graham’s eyes widen in sudden, pure terror.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Eric slowed his motorcycle when he saw the bus canted off on the side of the road and surrounded by Shifters, both Eric’s and Graham’s. He also recognized the large pickup in front of the bus that belonged to Xavier Escobar.

  Graham pulled up alongside Eric and killed his Harley’s engine. Eric didn’t stop Graham leaping off his bike and running to the bus’s open door.

  “Tell me what happened,” Eric said to Brody, who came forward to meet him.

  “We didn’t do this,” Brody said, indicating the bus that was half-sunk into the road’s soft shoulder. Brody looked much like Shane, with black and brown hair and dark eyes, but Brody, a little younger, wasn’t as restless as his older brother. Brody was Eric’s tracker, but Shane worked for Nell, his mother, though Nell lent Shane to Eric much of the time. “Not on purpose, anyway,” Brody went on. “When the driver saw us following him, he panicked and ran off the road. I decided to hold him here and wait for you.”

  “Good thinking. Where did the bus come from?”

  “We were driving around the area, like you said, and I just happened to see it pull out of an unmarked dirt road and onto the highway. Another few minutes, and we’d have missed it.”

  “The Lupines are all there?”

  “Think so,” Brody said. “I guess McNeil will know.”

  “Thanks, Brody. You did great.”

  Brody did his best to look modest, but grizzlies were bad at not looking smug. Eric patted his shoulder and went to the bus.

  The human driver was still in his seat, looking terrified. Nell sat behind him, thankfully minus her shotgun, and she was twirling a set of keys that likely had come out of the ignition.

  Xavier sat on a jump seat next to the driver, armed with a Glock, but the gun was holstered. Eric wondered whether the driver realized that Xavier was protecting him from the Shifters.

  Xav nodded to Eric as Eric climbed past him. Shifter women and kids slumped in the seats, most of them asleep, others glassy-eyed and staring. Graham was halfway down the aisle, and an older Shifter woman in the seat he bent over was clinging to his arm and crying. The woman looked groggy, her face flushed as though she’d just woken.

  “Everyone accounted for?” Eric asked Graham, moving past him.

  “Not sure yet.” Graham’s voice was gentler than Eric had ever heard it. The man was trying to be calm, reassuring, so his Lupines wouldn’t panic.

  Eric walked on through the long bus, the same size as a tour bus, and checked all the seats. Women, fast asleep, had arms protectively around their cubs. A few males were there, sitting alone, all sleeping or half-awake, staring unseeing as Eric went by.

  In the back, he found two cubs, alone. The two wolves were very young, and in wolf form. Curled up around each other, they were all ears, big paws, and long tails, with noses too large for their little faces.

  Eric, as a Feline, had an instinctive dislike for Lupines, but these two cubs were just so darned cute. He found himself smiling as he leaned over them, but at the same time, he felt a chill. They were alone—where was their mother?

  “Hey, little guys,” he said. Their faces didn’t tell him their gender, but their scent did.

  One of the wolf cubs opened his eyes. He stared at Eric in a puzzled way, then he growled. It was a tiny growl, the little body rumbling. His brother woke and blinked at Eric as well.

  Their confused frowns only made the wolf cubs cuter. Eric was careful not to reach for them though, as much as he wanted to. They were waking up to a strange Feline, and if Eric put a hand toward them, he’d soon have a hand shredded by tiny claws and teeth.

  “That’s Kyle and Matt,” Graham said, a note of relief in his voice. “Youngest in my Shiftertown. Thank the Goddess.”

  The cubs, recognizing Graham, their alpha, went crazy with glee. Their tails wagged so hard their little bodies moved, and when Graham reached down and scooped up the two cubs, they began climbing him enthusiastically. Graham stayed very still while the cubs scampered up his tattooed arms, one perching on his shoulder, the other climbing to the top of his head.

  The belligerent, angry Graham looked very different with a fuzzy little wolf on his head, Graham keeping his movements slow so as not to startle them.

  “Where’s their mother?” Eric asked, looking back down the bus’s aisle.

  “Lost her,” Graham said. “When they were born. Their dad before, in a car accident.”

  Eric didn’t like hearing that. “Goddess go with them.”

  “Yeah, it sucked. They’re being fostered. The foster mom made it to Shiftertown, and is about crazy with worry.”

  “Are all the missing here?” Eric asked.

  Kyle or Matt—the one on his shoulder—busily licked Graham’s ear. “All twenty,” Graham said. “The question is, why?”

  “Let’s go ask someone who might know.”

  Graham agreed. He steadied the cubs with his big hands as Eric led the way back down the aisle.

  Nell was speaking to the driver. Her voice was pitched too low for Eric to hear the words, but whatever she was saying, the driver looked terrified.

  When Eric and Graham stopped to tower over him, the guy said, “Please, don’t let her touch me.”

  Nell sat back, an innocent look on her face. Then her expression changed, and she reached for one of the wolf cubs. “Aw, now, who’s a sweetie-pie?”

  The cub held back a little, smelling bear, but when Nell’s strong hands closed around him, the cub recognized the maternal touch and relaxed against her. The second cub clung to Graham’s head and made little growling noises.

  Xavier leaned back in the jump seat and looked at the driver. “Now how could you do bad things to these adorable little guys?” he asked.

  “I didn’t do anything to them.” The driver had reddish curly hair cut short at his neck, reddish razor stubble, and wide blue eyes lined with pale lashes. “I swear to God. I was told to drive them to Shiftertown in Las Vegas. That’s it.”

  “Who told you?” Eric crouched next to the driver’s seat, which put his head lower than the driver’s. There was something about looking up with full confidence at a person you wanted to interrogate. Height wasn’t always an advantage.

  “My boss. He called me early this morning, told me to come in, get my bus, pick up a bunch of Shifters, and take them to the Shiftertown.”

  “Where did you pick up these Shifters?”

  “At a place out in the middle of the desert. I don’t know what it was—a military outpost or temporary housing, or something. I drove out, the people there loaded the Shifters on, and I drove away.”

  “Early this morning.” Graham grunted, choosing to tower over his victim. “It’s after ten now. What took you so long?”

  “Finding the place, first,” the driver said. “It took for-fucking-ever to drive out there—there’s no good roads, and this bus isn’t high clearance. I thought I was going to get stuck lots of times. Then it took a long time for them to get the Shifters in here, because they were all like that.” He jabbed his thumb at the back, where most of the wolves were still slumped in sleep.

  “Tranqed,” Eric said. “Then what?”

  “I drove back out. I finally made it to the highway, thank God, but then I was surrounded by bikers. I see some of them wearing Collars, and I know they’re Shifters. I thought they were going to kill me.” He looked at Xavier. “You’re human.”

  Xavier showed white teeth in a smile. “Yep. But these Shifters are my friends.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” the driver asked, looking fearfully up at Graham. “I have a wife, and two little girls…”

  Nell patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll go home to them.”

  “Maybe,” Graham rumbled.

  “Who’s your boss?” Eric asked. The driver’s attention swiveled back to him.
r />   “I work for Sun Valley Transportation. It says so on the side of the bus.”

  “Yes, but who hired your company? These aren’t the buses that brought the rest of the Shifters in this morning, are they, McNeil?”

  “Nope,” Graham said. “Those were government crap-mobiles.”

  “Find out,” Eric said to the driver.

  “What?”

  “Find out who hired the bus. Tell me, and no one else, and life will be good for you.”

  The driver stared. “Find out? I won’t be able to, will I? I’ll lose my job over this.”

  “No, you won’t.” Eric laid a strong hand on the man’s trembling shoulder. “You’ll deliver the Shifters to Shiftertown as requested, and then you’ll go turn in your bus, wash it off, whatever you do. As soon as you can, find out who asked for this special service, and call me. Where’s your cell phone?”

  Xavier was the one who took a phone out of his own pocket and handed it over. Of course, Xavier would have relieved the man of any kind of communication ability first thing. The bus’s radio was dead as well.

  Eric punched his phone number into the driver’s top-of-the-line smartphone. He was willing to bet that the phone had been a gift from one of the driver’s kids, and that the driver probably had never figured out how to use all its functions.

  “That’s me, E. W.,” Eric said, handing the phone back. “Now we’ll get you out of this little ditch and on your way. I’ll ride with you to make sure nothing else goes wrong.”

  “And me,” Graham said. Little Matt or Kyle must have understood that Graham was staying with them, because his tail wagged faster, and he leaned down to start working on Graham’s ear with his tongue.

  “And me,” Nell said. “We can have a nice chat on the way back, and I’ll look after these little guys.”

  “You’re not a wolf,” Graham said.

  “Maybe not.” Nell reached up for the second cub, who wriggled his hindquarters and then took a leap into her outstretched hands. “But I raised two grizzlies on my own, and these kiddos could never be anywhere near the trouble Shane and Brody were. Still are.”