by Paige Tyler
As she eyed the small backseat, she realized she should have probably been insulted by that comment about being in better shape than he thought. But she got the feeling he was trying to give her a compliment. Strangely, she found herself liking the silly idea that he thought she was fast. But just because she appreciated his compliment, that didn’t mean she was ready to jump on the bike with him yet.
“How do I know you won’t just take me to the nearest police station?” she asked.
He pushed a switch, making the bike rumble and vibrate. She’d never been on a motorcycle before, hadn’t even stood this close to one while it was running. It felt powerful.
“I guess you’ll just have to trust me,” he said. “Besides, if I wanted to arrest you, I would have done it already.”
Jayna couldn’t argue with that. She put on the helmet, then cinched the chin strap and climbed on the bike.
“Why aren’t you wearing a helmet too?” she asked as she tried to figure out how to position her feet on the metal pegs below her and where to put her hands. She finally reached around and twisted her hands into the material of his hoodie, just above his hips. She couldn’t help but notice the rippling of his abs and hip flexors as he pushed the heavy bike backward out of the parking space.
He grinned at her over his shoulder. “I only have one helmet and I figure it’s more important to protect your pretty face than my ugly mug.”
She found herself smiling back at him. It had been a long time since any guy had thrown so many compliments her way, even ones so cheesy. But cheesy or not, she appreciated them.
Eric pulled the bike out onto the road, heading back toward Canton Street and the center of the city. She almost fell off as he sped up, and she had no choice but to lean in closer and wrap her arms more firmly around his waist. Not only did it press her breasts tightly against his muscular back, but it also put her hands really close to a part of his body she refused to let herself think about. She focused on his scent instead. He smelled even better than he had in the warehouse, and it wasn’t long before she had to lick her lips to keep from drooling. What was going on? She’d never felt like this around a guy before, not even another werewolf.
After a few minutes of zipping in and out of traffic, she had to admit this motorcycle thing was more fun than she’d expected. Being able to see the road racing by under her feet while the wind whipped across her face and through her hair was pretty cool. It was a lot like the sensation of freedom she felt when she got out in the country and could run as fast as she wanted. It made her feel like she could outrun all the problems waiting for her back at the loft.
She was almost disappointed when the bike slowed and Eric turned into the parking lot of another Starbucks. They were less than two miles from the loft, but it was far enough off the main road that there wasn’t much chance of anyone she knew stumbling on them.
By the time Eric ordered their drinks, she’d gotten most of his scent out of her nose and cleared her head enough to think straight. The ride had been nice, but there were some things she needed to know—now.
“So, Cop. How did you find me?” she asked the moment they sat down at a table in the corner.
He took a sip of his boring black coffee before answering. Why go to a Starbucks and order plain coffee? That was like going to a pizza place and ordering a cheese sandwich.
“Like I said, the name’s Eric,” he said as he set down his cup. “But my friends call me Becker.”
“Okay, how did you find me…Eric?”
He didn’t seem bothered by her snarky jab. Instead, he motioned toward her drink. “That.”
“My cinnamon dolce latte?”
“I found a partial Starbucks receipt with your scent on it in that crate at the warehouse. It had the name of that drink and a time stamp on it.”
She stared at him, trying to understand how he’d gotten from a scrap of paper with a few meaningless bits of data on it to actually sitting in front of her in a single day.
“You had a receipt with a time stamp and you found me just like that?”
He gave her what could only be a sheepish look. “Not exactly. It took a bit more work than that. First, I hacked into the credit card processing company that handles the Starbucks stores in the Dallas area, then dug through hundreds of card swipes until I came up with a list of stores that made a credit sale matching the cost of your drink and the time stamp. Then I slipped into the traffic and online security cameras around each of those stores and spent a few more hours watching grainy surveillance videos until I saw you walking down Canton Street a few minutes after buying your coffee.”
She couldn’t believe he’d spent all that time tracking her down just so he could talk to her. “But…how did you find out my name?”
He shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. It was crazy seeing a guy as big as Eric looking like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“Once I confirmed which Starbucks you went to, I was able to dig a little deeper into your credit history. It’s not hard to get a name when you do that. Though I had no way of knowing if it was fake or not. Is Jayna Winston your real name?”
She nodded. There was no reason to lie. He could obviously verify her name if he wanted to. He was good with a computer, and she’d never made an effort to hide her identity in the years since leaving Detroit. She hadn’t left much of a footprint before joining the pack, and afterward, they didn’t hang around any place long enough to leave an indelible mark.
“So you decided to come and hang around Starbucks until I showed up?” she asked.
“Pretty much.” He sipped his coffee. “I got to the area a couple hours ago and sniffed around a bit to make sure I was right. All the werewolf scents in the area told me I was, so I backed off and waited for you to make another coffee run. I figured I wouldn’t have to wait too long.” His mouth quirked. “You seem addicted to your lattes.”
“You did all that—hacking into computer systems, watching endless hours of video, hanging around a coffee shop half the morning—just to find me? Why?”
He stopped smiling, his blue eyes suddenly serious. “It seemed like you were in a lot of trouble back in that warehouse. I thought I should find you and try to help.”
Since going through her change almost five years ago, Jayna had gotten freaky good at figuring out when people were lying to her, and right now, those instincts were telling her that Eric wasn’t being completely honest. But those same instincts told her that she could trust him in spite of that. Whatever he was hiding, it didn’t involve arresting her.
“What makes you think I’m in trouble?” She broke off a piece of the coffee cake he’d bought her and nibbled on it. “Maybe I’m the kind of girl who robs warehouses all the time.”
His mouth curved into a half smile. “You’re a lot of amazing things, Jayna, but you’re not that kind of girl. Your heart was thumping a thousand miles an hour when you saw me in that warehouse, even more when you heard over my radio that the other members of your pack had abandoned you.”
She snorted. “Trust me, those guys aren’t my pack.”
“Then why were you running with them?”
Jayna didn’t know why she was hesitating, especially after the omegas had left her to fend for herself. She didn’t owe them anything.
“It’s not by choice,” she finally admitted. “They’re a group of omegas my alpha brought in to serve as muscle for the Albanian mobsters my real pack and I are stuck working for.”
His mouth twitched. “That sounds like something out of a James Bond movie, you know that, right?”
That was way funnier than it should have been given the situation, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. “I’ve never been a really big fan of James Bond movies.”
“Really? I’ll have to see what I can do to change your position on them, then.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “But right now, I’m more interested in what an omega is.”
Jayna
almost choked on her latte. He was an alpha and he didn’t know what an omega was? “You don’t know?”
Eric shook his head.
He really didn’t. “An omega is a big, strong werewolf like an alpha, but they don’t have the natural pack instincts you do. That’s why those guys bolted and left me the moment the crap hit the fan at the warehouse. They don’t care about anyone but themselves.”
“Huh.” Eric took a swallow of coffee. “That explains why they didn’t fight as a team.”
“They’re more likely to throw each other to the wolves,” she said, then added, “No pun intended. That’s why werewolves like me don’t like to hang out with them. They don’t have any loyalty to anyone.”
Eric studied her for a long time, and she wondered if she’d said something wrong. Then he tilted his head to the side, a cute, quizzical look on his face.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “What do you mean, werewolves like you?”
She’d met her share of werewolves over the last five years and none of them had been this clueless. Eric must be even newer to this whole werewolf thing than she’d thought.
“Betas,” she said.
She’d hoped for a spark of recognition, but he just sat there with an interested look on his gorgeous face, obviously waiting for her to continue.
“You don’t know what a beta is either?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Exactly how long have you been a werewolf?”
He flushed beneath his tan. “A little over two years, but I was in the police academy for some of that before I joined the Pack, so I’m still learning a lot about werewolves.”
Which meant he wasn’t much further along than Moe when it came to being a werewolf. But Eric seemed so mature and in charge, she’d assumed he was more experienced. He was an alpha, though, and if half of what Liam had told her about being an alpha was true, Eric had probably spent most of that first year after the change trying to figure out how to control his inner beast. And he had to do it while going through the police academy. When she looked at it that way, he had a good excuse for not knowing what a beta was.
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought you’d been a werewolf a lot longer than I have.”
He flashed her that megawatt smile. “No big deal. I don’t have a problem with you being smarter than I am. I find smart women to be very sexy.”
She was the one who blushed this time.
“So…a beta,” he continued. “I’m guessing that’s halfway between an alpha and an omega?”
She nodded. “Betas aren’t as strong and fast as alphas or omegas. But on the upside, we typically have fewer issues with control than you guys do.”
He gave her an appraising look. “You seem pretty fast to me. In fact, you could probably outrun most of my pack. And you look like you’re strong too.”
Jayna had no idea why his words made her feel so ridiculously good, but they did. “Maybe,” she conceded. “I’m a little faster and stronger than the other betas in my pack, but in general, a beta’s true strength isn’t in their muscles or their agility. It’s in their loyalty to each other. Our pack bonds are the strongest of the three types of werewolves because they’re the only thing that keeps us safe from rogue omegas. They know that whatever beta they come after, they’ll always have to face the whole pack. Betas are linked in a way alphas and omegas never can be.”
“Wow. I’ve never heard of any of that,” he said with something close to boyish wonder. “But then again, I didn’t know female werewolves even existed until about two months ago when Khaki joined the team. So apparently there’s a lot I don’t know about werewolves.”
Jayna didn’t have to ask who Khaki was. There couldn’t be two female alpha werewolves running around Dallas. “Yeah, well, if we’re being honest, I have to admit I didn’t know female alphas existed until I saw your pack mate in the warehouse. That threw me for a loop. I didn’t know women could be alphas. I also didn’t know alphas could form a pack.”
His eyes twinkled. “I guess there’s a lot of stuff we can learn from each other.”
She studied him over the rim of her cup, trying to figure out if he was playing her. Was he looking to trick her into giving up information about her pack? But every instinct she had told her that wasn’t what was going on here. Eric seemed like he was genuinely interested in talking to her. There was only one way to find out if he was toying with her: ask him a question that might pose a threat to his pack and see how he responded.
“How many alphas are in your pack?”
He didn’t even hesitate. “Seventeen now that Khaki joined the team. And every one of us would bleed and die for each other.”
Jayna’s eyes widened. Seventeen alphas all in one place bonding with each other? Liam had said that wasn’t even possible. Eric’s pack alpha must be one fierce beast to keep all of them in line.
Across from her, Eric leaned in a little closer. “Not counting the omegas, how many members are in your pack?”
She was so distracted by his scent that she almost didn’t hear the question. Why did he smell so different—and so much more delicious—than every other werewolf? She wanted to bury her nose in his neck and breathe in even more of him.
Jayna quickly sat back before she did.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t tell him anything that would put her pack in danger, but telling him how many of them there were wouldn’t pose a threat. It wasn’t like he and his alpha buddies had anything to fear from five betas. Besides, he’d been so open with her. It seemed wrong not to answer him.
“There are four other betas besides me. And our alpha.”
“How long have you been with them?”
“Four years,” she said. “I changed about a year before that.”
She expected him to ask why she’d changed and what she’d done for that year on her own. But instead, he took the conversation in a totally different direction.
“How did you and your pack get mixed up with a gang of Albanian mobsters?”
When Jayna had gotten on the back of his bike, she hadn’t intended to tell Eric anything at all, but she’d already revealed how many members were in her pack and now she found herself confiding in him about things she shouldn’t be, including how her pack had been forced to steal stuff over the years just to survive.
“None of us liked stealing, but we didn’t have much of a choice. No matter how much we worked, we never seemed to have enough to buy food and keep a decent roof over our heads at the same time.” She broke off another piece of cake but didn’t eat it. “Then a few weeks ago, Liam—that’s our alpha—admitted he’d had to borrow money to help us through some rough patches. And it wasn’t from a bank.”
“I’m guessing this is where the Albanians come in,” Eric said.
She nodded. “For some reason, Liam told the Albanians about our pack. When they got their hands on all of his outstanding IOUs, we had no choice but to work for them to pay off that debt. Either that, or they’ll kill him.”
Eric frowned. “You know if you and your pack stay with these Albanians, you’re going to get yourselves killed, right?”
“I know. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Jayna popped the piece of cake in her mouth and chewed in frustration. She could have killed Liam for getting the pack into this mess.
“Why the hell not?” Eric demanded. “If you know this is dangerous, why don’t you and the rest of your pack just leave?”
“They won’t leave Liam. He’s the alpha, and they won’t walk away from him.”
“And you won’t walk away from them.”
“I can’t,” she said softly. “They need me.”
Eric didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he sighed. “Okay, I get that. What I don’t get is why Liam doesn’t stand up to the Albanians. I know they threatened his life, but he’s your alpha. Where I come from, an alpha does whatever he has to do to protect the Pack.”
She stared down at her cup. That’s what she though
t an alpha was supposed to do too. But how could she admit that to Eric? Worse, how could she tell him she thought Liam had been lying to the pack all along?
When Liam had told them about the Albanians holding his IOUs, she’d thought something had been off. It wasn’t until they’d gotten to Dallas and she saw how at ease Liam was with them that she began to suspect he’d lied about everything. She had no proof, but it just seemed like Liam had manipulated the whole pack to get them to work for the Albanians.
“We can still take down the Albanians,” Eric was saying. “You just have to make sure you get your pack out of the loft before the raid.”
Jayna’s hand tightened around her coffee cup as she fought to keep her claws from coming out. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted a cop. “Raid? I thought you said you weren’t interested in arresting us.”
Okay, that was semantics. Actually, he’d said he wasn’t interested in arresting her. He didn’t say anything about her pack. But they were a package deal.
If Eric knew how close she was to shifting, he didn’t let it show. “I’m not. And as long as you and your pack are far away from the loft when my pack and I go in, no one else needs to know you were involved in the robbery at the warehouse.”
She relaxed a little at that. “The Albanians never let all of us leave at the same time. They know that if they always keep one of us there, the rest of us won’t ever try to run.”
The muscle in Eric’s jaw flexed. “Dammit. Tell me about the Albanians, then.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How many of them there are, who’s in charge, what their routine is like—anything you can think of.”
Jayna started with Frasheri, then moved on to Kostandin. Eric’s eyes flashed gold when she said Kos was half a chicken nugget away from being a serial killer. She was about to remind Eric where they were, afraid he might shift right there in Starbucks, but his eyes were back to their normal color before she could get the words out. Well, that was unexpected. All she’d done was mention she and her pack mates were wary of Kos, and Eric looked like he wanted to rip the Albanian to shreds. She wished Liam were as protective of their pack.