Blind Wolf Bluff: Shifter Romance (Vanguard Elite Book 3)

by Annie Nicholas

  Or it could be the killer.

  He returned to his clothes, changed back to his original shape and dressed.

  “You could have given me more warning that you were going to change form.” Sonya stormed toward him, her steps hitting the pavement heavy with wrath.

  “I thought I had?” He distinctly recalled telling her he was shifting when she’d asked what he was doing.

  “I mean before we arrived here.”

  “I don’t see the difference. Why wouldn’t you think I’d shift when you asked for tracking help?” He’d been away from humans too long. He couldn’t remember how they thought. That or Agent Camp had serious issues.

  “Eric hadn’t shifted when he checked the scene for us.”

  Blain rubbed his chin. “You were here? I thought it was Agent, uh…Sean.” He knew for a fact she hadn’t been present and wanted to know how honest she’d be with him.

  “No, but Sean never mentioned…” She stopped. “I just wish you had prepared me more. I don’t like surprises.”

  He could imagine her biting her lip, or better, licking it. Whoa. The wolf still had a good grip on his mind and cock. He needed to shake it off. “Changing shape is what my kind do. Nothing bad came of it.” She’d been honest. He had expected her to lie to cover her embarrassment. She seemed so uptight but she surprised him as well. What went around came around.

  “Someone could have walked into the alley and seen. They could have caused trouble or called nine-one-one. We don’t need to cause a ruckus. The press is watching us very closely.”

  Blain had forgotten what it was like in a city among so many humans. He’d lived in a rural area with his pack the last five years before going to bootcamp. At both places, he could shift at will. “Sorry. I’m not used to human customs anymore.”

  Her feet shuffled as she drew closer. Before their silence grew awkward, she took his hand to lead him again. “Did you find anything new?”

  Her hand seemed so small within his. The angle at which she held her arm suggested she was petite.

  He moved to exit the alley but she blocked his way. They bumped into each other.

  “Ouch.”

  “My fault.” Her head barely reached his shoulder. He firmly believed that great things came in small packages. He hoped Sonya proved him right. “New is a relative term because all of this is new to me. Why don’t you fill me in and we can compare notes?”

  “Fair enough.” She tugged his hand. “Let’s get out of the cold and get food. I can’t believe you undressed in this weather.”

  “Did you peek?”

  He grinned at her epic silence.

  Chapter Four

  Sonya’s mouth watered. The Chinese takeout smelled like heaven to her human dull nose. She couldn’t imagine what it did to Blain’s.

  He followed her from the car without assistance, saying he could track her scent. Considering she hadn’t showered since yesterday, she wished he’d kept that to himself. Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to hold her hand anymore.

  It had been nice walking hand-in-hand with such a handsome man. At the restaurant, he had made every girl’s head turn and hadn’t seemed aware of it. Tall, with dark hair and pale blue eyes, an athletic body with a predator’s grace—there was much to drool over. Some women gravitated toward shifters because of their natural beauty. Sonya wasn’t one of them. Eric hadn’t affected her the way Blain did. She had enjoyed watching Blain assess the crime scene and liked the way he moved. He’d been methodical and careful, asking intelligent questions.

  The way he looked without clothes didn’t hurt her opinion of him either.

  Her cheeks burned. She shouldn’t have peeked.

  Some of the stories women told about shifters seemed true, though. Blain’s sex appeal was turning Sonya’s brain into jelly. She would insist Sean take over werewolf duty in the morning.

  Tomorrow.

  Tonight, she would brief Blain over dinner. She unlocked the office door, juggling bags of food.

  Blain took the packages before she dropped them. His arm brushed over her breasts in the process. “Oops.”

  He didn’t sound apologetic, but it must have been an honest mistake, right? It was difficult to blame the blind guy…who could walk from the car, up three floors to the office without a cane or a single goof until now. She gave him the side-eye and waved a hand in front of his face. He didn’t flinch.

  She shook her head and led him to the small kitchenette at the back of the office. It held a fridge, a table with four chairs, a microwave, and their sacred coffee machine. All the comforts of home. Whatever that was. She hadn’t been to her apartment in Washington DC for weeks.

  Blain set the food on the table and she separated the contents. Three quarters of the containers belonged to him. He plucked and sniffed one of her cartons. “That’s very spicy.”

  She snatched it from his hand. “I like my food to scorch the first layer of taste buds off my tongue.”

  He chuckled and let his winter jacket slide off his shoulders, then rolled his shirt sleeves to his elbows.

  “You look like you’re preparing to wrestle your food.” She took her chopsticks and plucked a piece of chicken from her boxed meal.

  “In a pack, a meal is like a sporting event.” He used a fork and started on his chow mein. “Not to mention, I hadn’t eaten anything from a restaurant in weeks.”

  “Why? Are there no restaurants in your area?”

  “Not allowed to leave our land without permission. I’m in training. Like a bootcamp but for werewolves.” He’d already finished his box, between sentences, and started on a second.

  Fascinated, she stared as he shoveled mouthfuls and swallowed without choking. “Training?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you tell me about the case?”

  The average person wouldn’t want to talk about such details while eating, but it didn’t seem like anything would affect his appetite. “We found the first body two weeks ago.”

  “During the full moon,” he mumbled.

  She blinked. “I guess. Is that significant?”

  He shrugged and gestured for her to continue.

  “So far, there have been three victims.” She cleared her throat. “The killer abducts young women between the ages of eighteen and twenty.” The same age as her sister when she had died. No, been murdered. There was a huge difference. “The amount of time he keeps them before he kills them has varied.”

  Blain paused in his food shoveling contest. “How does he do it?”

  “Cause of death is unknown, but he burns them postmortem, destroying most of the evidence. The only way we could identify the bodies was dental records.” She poked at her chicken with the chopsticks, appetite gone. Thoughts of her sister did that. If she didn’t return her focus on work, the nightmares would come back.

  “All local girls?”

  For some reason, his stoic reaction made her like him more. In this field of work, there was no room for kid gloves. They had to bulldoze through the gruesome details to keep people safe and live with the horror later. None of her exes could stomach talk of her work—during meals or otherwise. Having someone to talk candidly with, besides other agents, was unique.

  “So far, that’s the only thing connecting them. No similar friends, family, or acquaintances. Schools and jobs are different. We are combing through their cell phone records and social media. We have no idea how he’s picking his victims.” She stared into her carton of spicy chicken as if the answers were inside. “Three women in two weeks. We’re no closer to finding him.”

  Blain set his fork aside and took her hand. “We will.”

  *

  The food tasted like sawdust by the time Sonya finished telling him about the murder cases. He ate because the wolf in him was starved and hungry animals acted in unpredictable ways. Unfortunately, the meal did little to satisfy the emptiness inside. It had started upon arrival to the office today. Maybe the crime scene had affected him more than
he cared to admit. Either way, food hadn’t cured him.

  It only grew worse when he touched Sonya’s hand.

  She didn’t jerk from him. Most females treated him like blindness was contagious. Not all of them—Clare and Penny treated him like pack. He had the bruises and bites to prove it. He wasn’t sure about Sonya though. She’d run the gamut of emotions in their short time together. He couldn’t call her boring.

  Most shifters viewed him as weak. Going to the bootcamp had proved them wrong. Helping the FBI would prove it more. He needed to catch the psycho killer for so many reasons, the least being his ego. He had to find out if the killer was a shifter. If so, this would be bad on so many levels.

  He pushed aside his unfinished meal and pressed his lips to the back of Sonya’s hand. Was she already involved in a relationship? Her heart raced and her breathing grew heavier. She smelled aroused. Blain took a deeper breath searching for the scent of another male on her. When people were intimate they tended to carry each other’s smell even after washing. Her aroma carried hints of gunpowder and something herbal. Nothing masculine. He could breathe her in all day and night. This trick didn’t always work though. She and her mate could have been separated due to this case. He could be waiting for her back home, wherever that was. Humans didn’t fight for their mates, so he couldn’t even challenge for the right to woo her.

  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t want to beat the shit out of her lover.

  If she had one.

  “I have an important question to ask you.”

  She leaned forward. “Go ahead.”

  “Are you involved with anyone, Sonya?”

  She stiffened. “That’s an inappropriate question, Mr. Smith.”

  “Maybe.” He turned her hand over and kissed her palm. She didn’t struggle. “That’s not an answer.”

  She shivered at his touch. “Yes, it is. It means it’s none of your business.”

  “What would your lover think of my kissing your hand?

  Silence was all the answer she gave him and that was answer enough for him. After spending the evening with her, he suspected she would have decked him by now if she was involved with another man.

  “Consider this a fair warning,” he said.

  Her breathing grew irregular. “Warning for what?”

  “I’m a hunter by nature.”

  She withdrew her hand from his slowly as if struggling to decide if she really wanted to. “So am I.”

  He leaned across the table. “Yes, you are. In this instance though, you’re my prey.

  If she complained to Eric about his behavior, Blain would get more than an earful, but the unease growing in his heart lessened at his declaration. Ian and Darrell had described intense desire as part of their mating call.

  Agent Camp, who didn’t like surprises, was in for a big one.

  He leaned back in his, chair crossing a foot over his knee, giving her space. A wolf needed to be patient when he hunted. He didn’t want her to bolt, after all. “There was something off at the crime scene.”

  She made a frustrated noise. “And you’re telling me this now?”

  “I needed to know if I could trust you.” He’d only spent a few hours with Sonya, but he considered himself a good judge of character. People like her devoted their lives to these types of jobs because they cared about others.

  He only hoped that she cared for more than just the fate of humans.

  Her heart rate slowed and her scent grew broken-glass sharp. She rested her free hand on the table. “Solving this case isn’t about trust. It’s about doing what’s right.”

  Shifters and humans had lived side-by-side for as long as recorded history and beyond. This was the first time they weren’t enemies. Not officially. An olive branch had been extended by this country a few decades ago, allowing supernatural creatures to live openly so long as they followed the laws.

  Their laws.

  Hurt feelings and fear still existed. The big bad wolf could be their neighbor. Mercy and compassion weren’t things given to his kind when one broke the law. Neither was justice. By telling Sonya he’d smelled a strange shifter at the crime scene, he could be condemning an innocent.

  He moved supernaturally quick, unable to fight the urge to touch her again, and rested his hand over hers, fingertips over the pulse point of her wrist. Not once had he smelled fear on her since they’d met. Even when he’d shifted and she’d stood guard at the mouth of the alley. Everything in his being pushed him to trust her to do the right thing, but they might differ in opinion about what the right thing would be.

  He let go of the breath he’d been holding. “I smelled another shifter in the alley.”

  He wouldn’t risk another girl’s life because he feared retaliation. Shifters were used to persecution It came with the territory of being different. This was basic knowledge everyone had to learn before accepting to be infected by the shifter virus.

  Humans could choose to apply to be changed into shifters or vampires—not everyone was accepted. Not everyone survived the change. By miracle, he had.

  “It wasn’t Eric?” She didn’t remove her hand from his. Instead, she leaned forward, her chair creaking.

  “His scent was there, but I picked up another. Promise this won’t become public knowledge until we know for sure it’s not some random shifter.”

  She shook her hand free. She was strong for someone so little, reminding him of Clare. “Why would some random shifter be at the crime scene?”

  He tilted his head. She seriously was being honest. How adorably naïve and frustrating. “One of your task force members, maybe? A local cop? The busboy who found the body? We don’t all live in rural bootcamps. The largest pack in the country is here in Chicago. Not all of them live openly.”

  She rose and crossed the kitchen, placing some distance between them. “You see a lot for a blind guy.” Her scent had changed from sharp to watery, as if she were nervous. She leaned her hands on the counter behind her. “How’d you do it? How can you maneuver around things without bumping into them? How did you grab my wrist like that without missing?”

  Blain pursed his lips. Many had asked him this question. He’d never been tempted to answer until now. “I guess you have to think of it in more than five senses. I can’t see like you. I can’t tell what color your eyes are, but I can feel balance and direction. Micro changes in the density of the air, blankets of temperature variations. What I hear. What I smell. Together, it paints an image in my head.”

  He left the chair—it slid back, hitting the wall behind him—and he moved around the table, crossing the room and pinning Sonya where she stood.

  She sucked in a sharp gasp as his lips stopped mere millimeters from hers.

  He ran his fingers over the curled edges of her hair. The strands felt like silk.

  “Your alpha said you were special,” she whispered.

  “You spoke with Ian?” His alpha hadn’t mentioned speaking to the FBI and only Pallas had access to a working phone.

  “I met Eric.”

  “Eric isn’t my alpha. He leads the Vanguards pack.” Though he had wondered if the Vanguards, due to their financial support, considered them the same pack He doubted Ian and Clare would agree, or anyone else training. Eric wasn’t the one bleeding next to them in training. Ian and Clare were the ones lifting them up when they fell down.

  “What I mean is that you’re not what I expected.” She cleared her throat. “It’s not like I’m going to round up every shifter in the city asking for alibis.”

  Her scent lured him to taste and touch her skin. His wolf’s urges were very clear. What was it about this human that his wolf found so irresistible?

  She didn’t close the gap between them. Just a slight lean forward and they would kiss, but she denied him. He wouldn’t force himself on her, no matter what his wolf wanted. He backed off, letting her slide along the counter’s edge, away from him.

  She busied her hands by clearing the table.

&nb
sp; He stood with his back to her, listening to her body move, sensing every shifted air current as she swirled around him.

  “We’ll have a busy day tomorrow. First, we’ll clear everyone on the list of those known at the crime scene for the scent you discovered.” She paused and he could sense her stare daggering between his shoulder blades. “Is that okay with you?”

  He gave a sharp nod. The knot of apprehension in his chest finally loosened. He’d been carrying it ever since he had discovered that smell.

  She took his hand once again. Good, he hadn’t scared her away. She knew he didn’t need to be led around, but she took his hand anyway.