by Lynn Hagen
What a dweeb.
He stood stock-still as the doctor shined the penlight in his eyes.
Logan glanced over at Rave, making sure the man was at his side.
There was nothing he could do but stand there and allow the man to check him. The doctor knew it. Logan knew it. He was helpless.
“Your eyes are dilating, Logan.” The doctor lowered the penlight.
“And?”
“They should be restricting away from the light, not growing larger.”
What did that mean?
“Get some rest.” The doctor walked back over to the chart he had been reading when he first walked into the room, jotting something down.
“I’ll show you somewhere comfortable you can rest.” Rave waved for Logan to follow him.
“What about Cal?”
Rave glanced back at the office. “Cal is fine. He’s a cat shifter.
Max, the doctor, is a lion shifter. He won’t let anything happen to Cal.
Besides, both of you are in the safest place you could be.”
Logan wasn’t too sure he’d bet on that claim. The safest place he could think of was his mom’s.
“There is also a jaguar shifter here as well. Cal will be safe.”
Logan had no damn idea so many different species of shifters existed. He knew about Cal, and he knew about wolves, but lions and jaguars? Why didn’t he feel safer?
* * * *
Zeus sat back in his chair, looking exhausted. “Did he really just try to get us to let him walk out of the front door?”
Max nodded. “And that was just a test. Can you imagine what he’ll be like when he fully comes into his powers?” As fascinated as Max was with the case, it was a sober reality. Logan was a loaded gun ready to go off. If the pack didn’t help the young man channel his ability, so many bad things could happen.
Irreversible things.
And Max for one didn’t want scrambled eggs for brains. He was a lion shifter, self-assured, strong, and confident, but the thought of having Logan at full power made even him take pause.
“I think I need to fill Rave in on as much as I can. The more he knows about styre mentes, the better he’ll be able to handle his mate.”
Max had noticed the way Rave had resisted Logan. It wasn’t easy from the strained look on Rave’s face, but he had resisted. The rest of them were ready to dance around and dub Zeus the fairy queen if Logan had suggested it.
And that pissed Max off. But that was his lion that was angry.
Max, as a doctor, was intrigued.
* * * *
Rave kept his face closed and careful. He didn’t want Logan to know just how truly pissed off he was. He knew Logan was just coming into his powers, but his mate had purposefully tried to use his mind control on everyone in the office to get what he wanted.
Even if it was his freedom.
Maybe that was what had Rave so angry. That his mate didn’t feel safe in his presence. The tension between them was choking as Rave walked Logan to his bedroom. There were plenty of vacant rooms that Rave could have given Logan, but the man was his mate, after all.
“You can lie down in here and get some rest.”
Logan glanced over his shoulder at Rave. His cornflower-blue eyes glittered with uncertainty, and fear raw and tangible swam in them. Rave chanced a step closer, touching his fingers to Logan’s cheek. “You’re safe. I give you my word.”
Logan’s smile appeared, but wavered. “I don’t even know you.”
“But tell me you don’t feel that you are safe with me. “ He wanted to hear those words, needed to hear them to settle his wolf. His wolf wasn’t too damn happy that Logan was afraid. It was a foul smell that insulted the creature’s senses.
Logan pulled back, glancing over at the bed. Rave curled his fingers in as the soft feel of his mate’s skin left him, but didn’t force Logan to give him an answer. Logan kicked his shoes off and climbed onto the bed, resting his head on the pillow as he closed his eyes.
Rave did the only thing he could. He closed the door behind him as Logan rested. As he walked back toward Zeus’s office, his cell phone vibrated at his side. Rave grabbed it and answered. “Yeah?”
“Is that how you normally answer your phone?”
Rave froze. It was Agent Monroe. His silky voice melted over Rave and sent tiny shock waves to his gut and groin. “Long time no hear.”
He could actually feel the unease on the other end of the phone.
Monroe cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to call you.”
Rave wasn’t too sure he believed that. It had been four months, after all. How much time did it take to make a phone call and say hi, I’m still alive? Not long. He gritted his teeth as he looked back at his bedroom door.
“So what’s going on?” he asked as he moved toward the wall and then leaned against it, feeling tonight’s adventure finally seeping into his bones. He was half tempted to go back to his bedroom and rest with Logan.
He wasn’t too sure the human would welcome that.
“I finally closed the case out with the bookie. I was thinking of heading that way.” Monroe’s voice was guarded, careful. Rave wasn’t sure if Monroe was waiting for Rave to tell him to forget about it.
“When?”
A relieved sigh sounded on the other end. Not loud enough for Rave to pick up if he were human. A smile tilted Rave’s lips, and he was glad Monroe couldn’t see it.
“I can be there tomorrow evening. Did you want to meet at Theo’s?”
Rave glanced at his bedroom door again, wondering if he could leave Logan here while he met Monroe. He wasn’t sure if introducing the two would go so well since he really didn’t know either man.
“Sure.”
“See you then, Rave.”
Rave hung up, wondering how much more of a mess this was going to be. He pushed the phone back into its clip and finished walking to the alpha’s office. Max was still in there, Eagle at his side as they talked quietly. Zeus was sitting behind his desk, on the phone.
Rave came in and took a seat in front of Zeus’s desk in one of the matching leather chairs. He waited while the man finished his phone call.
“I need to talk to you, Rave,” Max said from behind him. “I want to give you the notes I have on styre mentes.”
“Didn’t you explain everything to us at the hospital?” he asked as he turned around. He didn’t like the frown on Max’s face.
“You really should read them.”
Rave would rather have Max tell him. He wasn’t big into reading boring files, and hearing the doctor explain things to him would stick in his brain better. He never really was too good at retaining things he read if the material was long and drawn out, in terms that made Rave’s eyes cross.
“How about you tell me what I don’t already know?”
Max took a seat on the sofa, Eagle sitting next to him. Eagle may have been healed from his ordeal with the ex-alpha, Jackson, but he was still very quiet at times. Eagle placed a hand on Max’s knee as the doctor sat rigidly.
“I’ve told you everything that I’ve read about styre mentes, Rave.
But what is surfacing through his blood work isn’t in any scroll I’ve come across.”
Rave turned fully. He wasn’t sure he was going to like what Max was about to tell him. He had an urge to look up to see if a bomb was heading straight for his lap because it sure felt like Max was about to drop one in it.
“And what’s wrong with his blood work?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, Rave. It’s normal, but not.
He has the markers for a styre mente, but it’s sketchy at best. I’m still working on his blood. My advice to you is to help him control his urges. We’re still not sure how strong he may become, and he certainly has the potential for TMC. Just be careful.”
“What about the whole mate thing? Shouldn’t I be immune to what he can do?”
“Sometimes, it just isn’t that easy to hand ou
t a black-and-white answer. You know as well as I do that nature has a way of doing things on her own. The human mind is complicated, and DNA is even trickier when it comes to preternatural creatures.”
Rave sat back and sighed. And here he thought he would get a mate with a simple problem. He knew he wasn’t going to have a cakewalk when it came to mating. Dealing with Jackson and watching the other soldiers with their mates let him know things weren’t going to be easy, but this was the most complicated shit he had heard of to date.
And he lived in the paranormal world.
Chapter Four
Agent Anthony Monroe lifted his cup of coffee and took a sip as he read over the open file in front of him. He was sitting in a diner the next town over from Pride Pack Valley. He was going to see Rave today, and Tony had to admit, the idea was very pleasant, but the file in front of him was not.
He leafed through the pages, studying the jacket. He had been assigned another case, and the debriefing had taken weeks. Tony wasn’t at liberty to tell Rave any of this, so he had to make it sound as though the bookie case had taken longer than it truly had.
Rave was a nice-looking man, and Tony was interested, very interested. But he’d had his fair share of men in his bed. As much as he wanted to fuck Rave until the man lay sated in his bed, work came first. The only reason he was heading Rave’s way was because of this case.
“I still can’t believe any of this,” Agent Dorm said. “No matter how many times I read the file.”
Neither could Tony. He knew shifters existed. Hell, he was half jaguar, but his genes were so recessed that they weren’t even detectable in his DNA. Freak of nature was what his father had called him for having recessed genes, but Tony really didn’t give a shit about that. He lived with it.
But what his director handed off to him was beyond the stretch of imagination. He had been briefed on what little the men working on this case knew—which wasn’t much—and now here he sat with the order of bringing the “freak” in.
He really hated that word.
“It does seem impossible,” he muttered as he picked his coffee mug up and took another sip. He’d had better coffee, but it wasn’t like he was in the city where he could run down to the nearest Starbucks.
The coffee wasn’t that bad, though.
He glanced at the picture attached to the file. Tony studied the face, the dark irises that looked almost black, deep, dark charcoals of emotionless eyes. It was a surveillance snapshot, the perp unaware.
Or maybe not, according this the file.
The word at the top of the file was in big, bold print. Styre Mente.
He’d never heard the term before. His orders were to find Aba and bring him in. The man had committed multiple homicides, bank robberies, and blackmail. The problem was, none of those charges could be proven. The file claimed that Aba had used some sort of mind control in all these crimes. How the hell could someone prove that?
The director had also informed him that there was another in Browlers County with the same potential. It was only rumor, unsubstantiated, but Tony’s orders were to bring the suspect in as well.
Tony would find the suspect and bring him in. Being able to control minds was extremely dangerous to the human population. If styre mentes really existed, they were very perfidious according to what Aba had done already.
He had an address where the second suspect lived, but nothing more. Tony and Dorm were going to check the place out before heading to Pride Pack Valley, the last place Aba had been seen.
“You gonna eat that?” Dorm asked as he nodded toward Tony’s untouched meal.
Tony slid his plate across the speckled, yellow Formica table. He sat the file down, glancing around the diner. Director Simone had handed the case over to Tony because he had the highest rate of arrests.
Tony knew what he was doing and was damn good at his job.
“We need to head out,” Tony said as he pushed away from the orange booth seat. He dropped a few bills onto the table, grabbed the file, and headed toward the car. Staying in one place too long was not a good thing. People tended to remember a man who sat too long in a diner, especially in a small town.
He wore plain black jeans, a solid dark-grey shirt and cowboy boots. He blended in, nondescript, and that was the point.
Dorm took one last sip of his coffee before tossing his paper napkin down and joining Tony.
“Y’all have a good day,” the waitress called out as Tony exited the diner. He opened the trunk and stored the file in a hidden compartment on the side wall, behind the fuzzy lining, before getting in the driver’s seat.
“What’s the possibility that we’ll secure the second suspect on day one?” Dorm asked as he sat back, resting his arm on the frame of the door as Tony pulled away.
“Zero to none.”
Dorm nodded. “Just asking.”
Dorm hadn’t been with the FBI as long as Tony had. But they had been partners for two years. He hadn’t brought Dorm with him when he’d come here as a favor to Zeus to clear up the bookie case. He knew shifters lived in Pride Pack Valley and didn’t want to expose them.
So much for trying to keep their secret.
Now they were ordered there. Tony would try his best to keep Dorm in the dark about the shifters who lived there, but catching the styre mente was his first priority. Having someone like that on the loose was dangerous, more dangerous than Dorm finding out that more than humans inhabited the earth.
Tony drove to Browlers, pulling into a narrow driveway with a red Nissan sitting in front of a single-car garage. The lights in the house were out. It didn’t look like anyone was home. Tony climbed from the car, closing the door behind him. He didn’t have a photo on the guy they were looking for, or even what his name was, but Tony wanted to check things out.
Placing his hand close to his Glock, which was secured in the holster around his shoulders, Tony walked slowly to the door. If the suspect was one of those mind controllers, he wasn’t sure a gun would be enough. But he did have his backup, a small Star handgun in his ankle holster.
Dorm knocked on the front door as Tony crept around back. He glanced around the chain-link fence, seeing that the backyard was just as dark. Tony eased the small gate open, but the metal creaked, sounding like a marching band was coming straight into the yard.
Tony silently walked to the back door, and stilled. The lock was busted, and the door was hanging halfway open. It looked as though someone used force to break in.
He pulled his Glock and slowly eased inside, checking the small house. He met Dorm in the front room. “No one is here.”
So much for catching a break on day one.
Tony checked the bedroom, rifling through the drawers, trying to find a clue as to who lived here.
“Hey, I have some papers here with the name Cal Winters.” Dorm sounded optimistic.
Tony found some mail and sighed. “And I have some mail here for a Logan Albinster.”
“Well, we narrowed it down to two names. That should make things a little easier,” Dorm said as he tossed the papers he had onto a table in Logan’s room.
Tony knew better. From the looks of the back door, things were about to get harder. He hadn’t a clue where to look or who could have possibly broken into this place. Was the suspect kidnapped, killed, or had he been the one to do the damage? Tony wasn’t sure, but he knew he would be back here.
“Let’s get moving.” He tossed the mail aside and headed for the door. Tony caught movement from the corner of his eye and had his Glock pulled and pointing in under a second.
“Tony?” Dorm said his name questioningly as he stood frozen in the living room. “There’s nothing there, man.”
Tony blinked, seeing shadows all around the house. There wasn’t a light on, but he knew he saw something. He didn’t spook easily. He glanced around the thin shadows again, pools of light softening the edges of darkness from the streetlights outside. He shoved his gun back into the holster and grunted as he heade
d toward the door.
“You all right?” Dorm asked as they walked to the car. “I’ve never seen you this jumpy before.”
That was because Tony had never tried to shoot a damn shadow before. What the hell was going on around here? Things weren’t adding up, and he didn’t like it. Tony drove to Pride Pack Valley, arriving after midnight. There was a small motel on the outskirts of town where he and Dorm checked in. They got separate rooms and Tony gladly went to his. His eyes burned he was so damn tired.
Sliding his gun under his pillow, Tony lay down and closed his eyes. He had thought about calling Rave to come to his room, but it was late and all Tony wanted right now was some sleep.
Tony’s eyes flew open, his hand sliding under his pillow. He grabbed his gun and eased it from its hiding place. He glanced at the clock to see it was after three. The room was bathed in darkness, the curtains drawn tight.
“I hear you are looking for me.”
A wave so subtle, so caressing wrapped around Tony’s mind. The ripples were soft, comforting, like being held in his mother’s arms. He lay there feeling as though he really didn’t want to work this case and needed to just close it. There was no such thing as mind controllers, no such thing as styre mentes.
Tony fought against the invasion in his mind, knowing that what he was thinking was wrong. He knew what the person in his motel room was doing, but Tony felt powerless to stop it. The need to walk away was strong, and the pain in his head was getting worse, as if the shadow in his room knew Tony was fighting him.
Tony rolled from the bed, aiming his gun at the darkness. He let his eyes adjust to his surroundings, but as he darted them around, he didn’t see anyone.
But he could feel them. He could feel a presence somewhere in the room, watching him, mocking him.
As Tony glanced around the motel room, his fingers began to tremble uncontrollably, his wrist bending awkwardly as the gun slowly began to turn. Tony gritted his teeth as he tried to release his gun, to drop it, but no matter how hard he tried to open his hand, he couldn’t.