by Paige Tyler
Diego had a hard time keeping the smile off his face. Even after the shower he took following physical training this morning, he still smelled like Bree. Not that he minded. He could have her scent on his skin all day, every day.
“Bree invited me over for dinner last night. It was”—his grin broadened—“amazing.”
Actually, that was an understatement. His date with Bree had been beyond anything he’d ever experienced. If he wasn’t so interested in maintaining his cool, calm alpha werewolf exterior in front of his pack mates, he’d be running around right now chest-thumping everyone in the greater Dallas metro area.
Around the table, his teammates were regarding him expectantly, obviously waiting for him to tell them about last night. Considering how many werewolves in the Pack had already found their soul mates, he’d think the rest would get tired of hearing about it, but from the eager expressions on his friends’ faces, he guessed not.
“Do you think she’s The One for you?”
The One. That one person supposedly out there that every werewolf was waiting to meet who would accept them for what they were. Up until a few years ago, they’d all thought it was a myth, an urban legend. Then Gage met his wife and they all started to believe that The One wasn’t a folk tale at all, but the real deal—and that gave all of them hope. Especially when the rest of their pack mates began meeting The One they were meant to be with.
Diego would be lying if he didn’t admit he’d spent a good portion of last night and most of this morning wondering if Bree was The One for him.
“Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but when I was with Bree last night, I felt a connection like I’ve never experienced before,” he said. “And when we kissed, it was unreal. My damn fangs and claws nearly slipped out the minute our lips touched.”
“Premature fang eruption? Sounds like soul-mate confirmation to me,” Connor said with a chuckle, exchanging a look with Kat as if he expected her to agree with him. Kat seemed more interested in her tuna than the conversation.
On the other side of the table, Hale grinned. “I knew it the second I saw you and Bree together. Congratulations! Though I have to admit, while I’m happy you’ve found the woman you’re supposed to spend the rest of your life with, I’m a little pissed you met your soul mate before I even caught a whiff of mine. I’ve been a werewolf longer than you. Shouldn’t seniority count for something?”
Connor snorted. “Catch a whiff? Your nose is complete crap. You could walk right past your soul mate and never know it. Hell, you might have met her already.”
Hale scowled at that. His nose didn’t work like the other werewolves in the Pack. He’d broken it severely years before going through his change, and it had never really healed. It was a sensitive subject for him, mostly because their pack mates ragged the hell out of him about it.
“Don’t listen to Connor,” Diego said as a panicked look filled his friend’s eyes. “You’ll know your soul mate when you see her. I’m sure of it.”
Hale didn’t look too sure about that. “So, you knew Bree was The One for you the second you met her? Even before going on a date with her?”
“Well…not really.” He thought back to when he’d first seen Bree in the diner. He’d thought she was gorgeous, but they’d been in the middle of a hostage crisis, so he hadn’t exactly been thinking about soul mates at the time. “Hell, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure if I’m sure of it now. I mean, it feels like she could be The One, but how am I supposed to know for certain? It’s not like there are rules for this. Every time someone else in the Pack found their mate, things got crazy as hell. I could be reading everything wrong.”
No one said anything, leaving Diego alone with his thoughts. While several of his pack mates had needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into relationships with their soul mates, fighting the connection for a variety of reasons that made sense to absolutely nobody, it wasn’t like that for Diego. He wasn’t sure why, but the idea of finding the woman he was meant to spend a lifetime with had never scared him. In fact, he’d been looking forward to it. Like discovering the woman you were quickly developing feelings for already had a fifteen-year-old son when you’d never given serious thought to what it would be like to have kids.
“Have you thought of talking to Bree about it?” Trey asked, his usual serious look back on his face.
Diego grimaced. If there was a chance Bree was experiencing the same emotions and feelings he was, it’d help to tell her about The One. But while he’d love to explain it, now wasn’t the right time.
“We’ve known each other for barely more than forty-eight hours,” he pointed out. “She just learned werewolves are real and that her teenage son is one. Now I’m supposed to tell her that fate has already determined who she’s going to fall in love with after one date? And oh, by the way, it’s me? I think we need to get to know each other a little better before I spring something like that on her.”
“What are you going to do when her emotions start going all crazy like yours and she doesn’t understand why?” Connor asked.
Diego shrugged. “I’ll worry about that proverbial bridge when we come to it. Until then, I’m going to take it one date at a time and see how it goes.”
“What are you guys doing on your next date?” Hale prodded. “I bet Gage can get you reservations at Chambre Français, if you want.”
Chambre Français was a fancy French restaurant owned by a friend of Gage. He’d gotten some of the other members of the Pack in there when they’d wanted to impress their dates, and Diego knew his boss would get him in, too, but it wasn’t exactly his kind of place.
“Bree and I have already made plans to go see a movie with Brandon.”
“Crap,” Trey muttered. “We’ve been so busy talking about her being your soul mate, I forgot she has a son who’s a beta looking for an alpha to bond with. Any chance that alpha is you?”
Diego almost laughed. Helping Brandon learn how to control his inner wolf was way different from being his alpha.
“I don’t think I’m qualified to be an alpha for a fifteen-year-old kid, especially not with all the crap Brandon is dealing with right now,” he said. “Jayna would be a better fit for Brandon than I ever could. She already has experience dealing with betas, and if Brandon joined her pack, he’d be able to hang out with other werewolves like him all the time.”
“While I’m more than ready to argue with you about your abilities to be an alpha for this kid, right now, I’m more interested in what kind of crap Brandon is dealing with,” Trey said. “Assuming we’re talking about more than the normal angst associated with a teenager finding out they’re a werewolf.”
Diego grabbed his bottle of water from the table and took a long drink, then told them about Dave, his possessive and controlling behavior, the manslaughter charge and divorce, and how hard it had all been on Brandon.
“Dave got out a few months ago, which has made things harder on the kid,” Diego added. “Long story short, Brandon started hanging around with the wrong people. He was shot and turned because he was with a friend who might have been looking to buy drugs and walked right into the middle of a turf war between two gangs. Bree’s worried she’s losing her son to drugs and terrified about what Dave is going to do now that he’s out of prison.”
Connor frowned. “Is this Dave guy dangerous?”
Diego’s inner wolf must have thought so, immediately growling at the idea Dave was a threat that needed to be dealt with. But he kept that part of himself in check, focusing on the facts.
“He keeps showing up in places he’s not wanted, including at the diner after the rescue,” Diego told them. “But while it’s obvious he’s an asshole, I can’t really say he’s done anything yet to warrant being called dangerous.”
“We could look into him, if you want,” Hale offered. “Check in with his probation officer and see what he or she has to say abo
ut the guy. If anyone has an idea of what Dave is up to, it’d be his PO.”
Diego nodded as he felt a twinge of remorse for going behind Bree’s back and snooping around her ex. But every instinct Diego had insisted he do something, that Dave wasn’t the kind of man to stand back and let someone else have what he considered his, not with his possessive personality.
He and his pack mates fell silent again as they went back to looking through files and taking notes about suspects, witnesses, and crime locations. Every so often, Diego glanced over at the stuff the other guys had written, but he couldn’t for the life of him see a connection between these cases, other than the obvious—that none of the criminals involved met the typical definition of the usual suspects.
Connor was right. This was a waste of time.
When his phone dinged a few minutes later, Diego had never been so happy to get a text. “Our lunch order is ready for pickup. I’ll go get it while you guys keep working.”
“Make sure they included that small portion of meat for Kat that I ordered,” Connor called out as Diego headed for the door.
Diego shook his head as he walked outside into the hot June Texas sun. The whole pack had tried to tell Connor that cats shouldn’t eat spicy food, Mexican or otherwise, but he refused to listen. Or rather Kat refused to listen. And since it was obvious the cat was the one in charge, she was the one they’d have to convince before anything was going to change.
He moved across the compound’s parking lot toward the front gate. He normally parked his Toyota Tacoma inside the fence line with his pack mates’ vehicles, but the team’s big RV had been sitting in the way this morning, getting loaded up for a call, so he’d parked his pickup across the street in the visitor lot.
As he walked, Diego replayed his earlier conversation with the guys, thinking seriously about what it would mean if Bree really was The One for him. Unlike his pack mates’ significant others, Bree had a son to think about.
Diego had to get this right—with both Bree and her son.
He was so distracted by thoughts of Bree and Brandon as he reached his truck that he didn’t notice the nondescript black van slowly approaching him until the passenger-side window rolled down. Diego half turned toward it, assuming the driver was going to ask for directions, when the barrel of an automatic rifle slid out the opening. Diego barely had time to leap to the side before a hail of bullets tore up the ground where he’d been standing.
He hit the pavement and rolled, not stopping until he ended up behind Trey’s white Ford Bronco. He yanked his SIG out and stood in time to hear an engine revving followed by the loud crashing sound of metal on metal. He only realized it was the black van slamming into the other side of Trey’s truck when the Bronco slid sideways and slammed into him, sending him flying. He ended up flat on his back, air bursting from his lungs. Then all hell descended around him as automatic weapons fire tore apart Trey’s vehicle.
His nose told him there were four men in the van. His ears filled in more details, alerting him that the men had split up, two coming around the back of the Bronco, the other two heading for the front, obviously planning to catch him in the cross fire and mow him down like a damn carnival game.
This was a flat-out ambush, plain and simple. They were here to kill him. Diego had no doubt his pack mates were already heading his way, but if he didn’t do something to slow the four guys down, this would all be over before his teammates got there.
Diego was already shifting as he clambered to his feet and took off running with a low, deep growl. His claws extended so fast they hurt, and the feel of his fangs elongating was enough to distract him from the thought of how many times he was about to get hit with large-caliber rifle rounds and how painful it was going to be.
He didn’t bother going around what was left of the Bronco, instead launching himself straight over the top, the muscles of his legs and back twisting violently as he flew through the air toward the two attackers moving around the front of the vehicle. Diego couldn’t help but notice the emotionless expressions on the men’s faces as he descended on them with fangs and claws extended, snarling and growling in his rage. Fearless, they stood their ground, turned their weapons his way, and lit him up.
Bullet after bullet ripped through his body—thighs, stomach, upper chest. The pain was intense, but Diego ignored it as he landed on the first man while turning the SIG in his hand toward the second attacker and squeezing the trigger repeatedly.
Diego lost his grip on his handgun as he and the man he’d tackled tumbled to the ground of the parking lot, and he didn’t have time to reach for it as he fought for control of the AR-15-style weapon the man was trying to wrestle in his direction.
Out of the corner of his eye, Diego saw the two attackers who’d been circling around the rear of Trey’s truck loop back his way, weapons aimed straight at him. Diego reached out one hand and slashed his claws across the throat of the man he was wrestling with, then grabbed hold of the man’s dark-blue shirt and flipped over with the body, wincing as multiple bullets tore into the corpse.
Shit. The man’s buddies hadn’t hesitated.
The sound of handgun fire erupted from his left, barely audible above the louder rifle noise. Diego instinctively knew it was his pack mates, and a second later, there were two thuds as bodies hit the ground.
The pain he’d been suppressing decided to make an appearance, and he clenched his jaw to keep from groaning as he lay there. Boots pounded the pavement, then someone was yanking away the corpse that was still draped over him. Diego looked up to see Trey, Hale, and Connor standing there looking down at him.
“Damn,” Connor muttered. “I hope all that blood didn’t come out of you.”
Diego winced as Trey grabbed his hand and pulled him into a sitting position. “How bad is it?”
“I got hit at least three times,” Diego told him, looking down and trying to figure out which blood on his uniform was his and which wasn’t. “I’m pretty sure they’re all still in me.”
Trey cursed. “We need to get you inside so I can get those bullets out, and we need to do it fast before this place turns into a zoo.”
Hale and Connor half carried, half dragged Diego across the street and through the compound into the admin building while Trey ran ahead. Diego gritted his teeth every step of the way. The bullets inside him wouldn’t cause more damage, but a werewolf’s body was well aware when there was foreign material in it and used the pain as motivation to make sure someone got it out. Having Trey do that wouldn’t be fun, but it was a hell of a lot better than leaving the crap in there.
As they reached the door of the building, Diego heard the wail of approaching sirens. Trey wasn’t going to be able to be leisurely about this, which was only going to make it more painful.
Shit.
* * *
Diego walked out of the admin building less than fifteen minutes later, Trey at his side, still complaining about his truck being totaled. They both stopped when they realized the SWAT compound had turned into that zoo Trey had mentioned.
There were at least twenty patrol units lining the road outside the fence line, while half a dozen ambulances were parked a little farther back. Beyond them were row after row of news vehicles as far as the eye could see.
The crime-scene techs were already processing the scene across the street in the parking lot, black tarps draped across the four men Diego and his teammates had killed. A slender woman with blond hair and a notepad kneeled beside one of the bodies, looking closely at the corpse. It was the guy whose throat Diego had ripped out, and the woman examining the injury so intently was Samantha Mills, one of the county’s medical examiners.
As if sensing him and Trey standing there, the ME lifted her head and stared at them through the fence like she knew there was no way in hell those wounds had been created from a gunshot. The scariest part was that this was at least the third o
r fourth time she happened to be at a crime scene where he and his pack mates had used their fangs and claws.
“Do you think she knows something?” Trey murmured, gazing intently at the forensics expert across the compound. “She’s looking at us like she knows exactly what we are.”
“Maybe she has a thing for you,” Diego suggested, forcing himself to stop looking in the direction of the ME—and the corpses.
Trey snorted. “I’m pretty sure that’s not it.”
Chief Leclair was near the training building, talking with Gage, Mike, Hale, and Connor. Catching sight of Diego and Trey, she motioned them over. Her eyes went wide when she saw the bloodstains on Diego’s uniform. Damn, he wished he’d taken the time to change.
“Very little of this is mine,” he said quickly.
Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to provide as much relief as Diego had hoped. But at least she stopped looking at him like she expected him to pass out at any moment. Before she could reply, a uniformed officer hurried up to them and handed Leclair four plastic badges. The chief glanced at them with a frown before looking at Diego.
“Hale and Connor told me it seemed like those four men lying dead out there were going after you specifically. Do you think that was the case?”
Diego glanced at Hale to see him nod. “When we moved to engage them, they didn’t bother to look our way. They were focused on you like a couple of bloodhounds.”
Diego couldn’t argue with that. “Hale’s right. They rolled right up and started shooting at me and didn’t seem to care if they hit their own in the attempt to take me out.”
Leclair’s frown deepened. “All four of the men were baggage handlers at DFW,” she said, handing the ID cards to Gage while keeping her gaze fixed on Diego. “Please tell me you recognized them and know why they might have attacked you.”
Diego shook his head. “I wish I knew.”
Muttering under her breath, the chief said she’d be in touch, then headed across the street to where the crime-scene techs were working.