Wolf's Secret (District Shifters Book 3) Read online

  Brianna saw it again. The flash of something predatory beneath her smile. She felt a shiver go through her, and she told herself she should really slow down on the wine.

  “So, what’s she done that’s so fantastic, then?” Brianna asked.

  “She’s currently researching the effect of light therapy for children with Autism,” Caroline said.

  “Right.” Caroline’s excitement level had made her think that the woman was on the brink of discovering a cure for cancer or something.

  “You don’t look very impressed.”

  “Oh. No. I… um…” Brianna stuttered.

  “It’s okay, Brianna,” Caroline assured her. “I know other people don’t find her that interesting. But I never claimed to be like the others, did I?”

  That smile again. Brianna frowned slightly and then smiled back at Caroline as realization washed over her. She got it now. The no serious boyfriend thing; the obsession with Helen. Caroline had a crush on her, that was all. She decided against asking about it. If Caroline wanted her to know, then she would tell her.

  The conversation moved on again, and Brianna told Caroline more about Texas and growing up there. Brianna was really starting to feel the effects of the wine, but in a good way. She felt giggly, happy.

  Brianna looked up in surprise when a bell rang across the room. “What’s with the bell?”

  “It’s last call,” Caroline said.

  “Last call? No way.” Brianna looked at her watch and saw it was after midnight. “Shit. I thought it was about seven o’clock!”

  “Macey didn’t leave until ten,” Caroline laughed. “I know what you mean, though. The day has gone nowhere, has it?”

  They finished their drinks, laughing at how quickly the day had gone by and how they had found so much to talk about. When they finished their drinks, Brianna stood up on slightly unsteady legs.

  “I’ll call a cab. Do you need one?”

  “No. I’m staying on campus for now. Where are you staying?”

  “I have an apartment. It’s about twenty minutes away on foot,” Brianna said. She stumbled outside to call a cab, but she only had two numbers, and neither of them had a cab available until after one. “I guess I’m walking,” she said to Caroline, who had joined her outside.

  Caroline frowned and shook her head. “No way. Come back to the campus. I have a single. You can stay the night if you want to.”

  The idea of walking for twenty minutes through the now chilly air in her current state didn’t exactly fill Brianna with joy.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” she asked.

  “Not at all. Come on, it’s freezing out here,” Caroline said, linking her arm through Brianna’s. Brianna allowed herself to be led back to the dorm, grateful that she had made such a good friend.

  * * *

  Brianna woke up to a thumping head, and for a moment, she had no idea where she was or how she had gotten there. It came back to her slowly at first, and then all at once. She had gone to a bar for a couple of drinks with Caroline and Macey, and a couple of drinks had turned into a gallon.

  Where am I, though? Her mind clicked over slowly. She was in Caroline’s dorm room. She hadn’t been able to get a cab, and Caroline had let her stay with her. She had said it was a single, but it was actually a double. Caroline must have gotten lucky and managed to somehow not have a roommate.

  Brianna sat up slowly, wincing. She looked at the other bed, but it was empty. Caroline was gone. She shrugged and stood up to begin pulling her clothes on.

  2

  Archer Malone sat at his desk typing out an email. He had only been the alpha of his small pack for a couple of years, and he was still finding his feet, but he had discovered that keeping open communications with the alphas of some of the other packs in other districts was definitely helping him on his way, and building some solid foundations for pack alliances felt like a good move, too.

  To his misfortune, none of the people he had made relationships with seemed to be able to help him with his hunter problem. There were mortals out there who learned of the supernatural world. Some learned about it through tragedy, some were told by others who knew someone who had turned. Some found out by accident, witnessing something unusual, and some knew by necessity, as Archer had recently found out. The local sheriff knew about the supernatural community in his town.

  Archer had had a meeting with the man when he had first taken over as alpha. The arrangement was simple enough: the sheriff stayed out of supernatural business, even organizing cover-ups if things went too far between supernatural people, aimed to keep the mortals ignorant. In return, he expected the alphas to control their packs and make sure no mortals were intentionally hurt or killed.

  With the exception of people like the sheriff, most people who found out about the supernatural world either kept it quiet to protect a loved one who had turned, or they convinced themselves they hadn’t seen what they had seen. That worked well for Archer and others like him.

  Unfortunately, there were a few mortals who were told the stories about the supernatural world early, usually from a parent. These children were trained to become hunters of the supernatural creatures as they matured. It was passed down from generation to generation, the result of a long-forgotten revenge mission from back in the days, when certain supernatural creatures had taken it upon themselves to wreak havoc on mortals.

  Archer had been both annoyed and a little surprised to discover that a hunter had found his pack. He had no idea how they had been able to sniff them out, or why they were being targeted. Chances were, it wasn’t personal—the hunter had merely stumbled across them somehow. The fact that Archer and his pack had never hurt anyone nor bothered any mortals seemed to be irrelevant to them. Hunters believed that the very existence of supernatural creatures posed a threat to humanity, and they killed without reason or mercy.

  Archer had been trying desperately to get some information on who was hunting them down. After one of the pack members had been stalked on their way home, and an assassination attempt had been made on him, Archer knew it was serious. The pack member, Charlie, had managed to escape with his life, but he’d been lucky. The arrow that had narrowly missed him had been coated in silver, and if it had hit Charlie, he would have succumbed to silver poisoning and, ultimately, death.

  The arrow had given Archer his first clue as to the hunter’s identity, but rather than put his mind at rest a little, this only made it worse. The arrow had been marked with the insignia of the Venandi Lupi, an ancient and fearsome band of wolf hunters. The Venandi Lupi were not only dangerous; they were clever, and to Archer’s knowledge, although a few wolves had managed to kill the odd member here and there, no wolf had ever managed to get any information from the hunters.

  Archer shook his head. He had definitely picked the wrong time to become the pack’s alpha. Not that he had been given a choice in the matter, but still. It didn’t reflect well on him. For centuries, his pack had lived in peace, and within just a few years of him taking over, they were being hunted. Although his pack was loyal, and no one had come out and accused him of any wrongdoing, he still felt the guilt bearing down on him. The responsibility for the lives of his pack members was a heavy weight to carry, but Archer was determined to find the hunter and end him.

  That was easier said than done, though. No one he had spoken to, in his district or in any of the other ones, had any leads on the Venandi Lupi, although it seemed every wolf pack had a story from some point in their history. Most of those stories ended one way: the pack almost decimated and having to be rebuilt. Archer was determined not to let that happen to his pack.

  A knock on his office door pulled him out of his thoughts, and he pressed Send on his email.

  “Come in!” he shouted, looking up from his screen. Sven, his beta, came into the office. Archer knew instantly by the way his shoulders were slumped and the way he wouldn’t look Archer in the eye that something was wrong.

  “Bad news, I’m afr
aid,” Sven said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Brody. The hunter got to him.” Sven looked down at the ground. Archer felt every muscle in his body tense up. Brody was like a brother to him. They all were.

  “Is he…?” Archer trailed off, needing to know the answer to his question but not wanting to voice it out loud.

  Sven had no such compunctions. “Dead? Yes. Silver poisoning,” he confirmed.

  “Fuck!” Archer roared, anger seizing him.

  How dare some hunter take one of his pack, one of his family? How dare they come into his district and start a goddamned war?

  Archer slammed his fist down on his desk hard enough to make his computer monitor rattle. He felt the anger leave him in a rush, replaced with a quiet sorrow and the throbbing need for revenge. He could feel the wolf inside of him snarling, dying to get out, sniff out the hunter, and end his miserable life. He knew he had to bide his time, though. He had no idea where to even start looking for the hunter yet.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Sven sat down in the chair opposite him and shook his head. “No one really knows for sure. Brody left his apartment as usual yesterday morning, heading for work.”

  That gave Archer a tiny bit of relief. At least the hunter hadn’t managed to infiltrate their building. His pack occupied a full apartment building that sat above a boutique and a small office. The office was his, and the boutique was run by the pack to pay for maintenance on their building. If the hunter had gotten into their home, then it would have been much worse than Archer could even have imagined.

  “He was meant to be going to a poker game with a couple of the others that night,” Sven went on. “When he didn’t show, none of them thought it was unusual. They assumed he’d changed his mind and gone out for drinks after work or something. But when no one had heard from him by the next morning, a few of the pack started to get worried after what happened with Charlie. They went to his apartment, and there was no sign of him. His briefcase wasn’t there, and they figured he hadn’t been home overnight.

  “They brought it to my attention, and I was starting to organize a search party. At that point, part of me was still waiting for him to walk in and announce he’d spent the night with a girl. But then I got a call from the sheriff. Brody’s body was found a couple of blocks away by a jogger. The sheriff reckons he’s been dead twenty-four hours, meaning he never even got to work yesterday. I’ve sent some guys from the pack to retrieve his body.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” Archer said. “The hunter knows where our building is. He’s stalking the place, waiting for a chance to pick us off one by one.”

  “I agree he knows roughly where we are, but I don’t think he knows as much as he wants us to think he does,” Sven replied.

  Archer raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “If he knew for certain which one was our building,” Sven went on, “he wouldn’t be taking us out this way; he’d have blown the building up with a silver bomb. And he doesn’t know us all. He must have recognized Brody, but he’s not the only pack member to have left the building since yesterday morning. We’ve all been out at some point, and no one else has been targeted.”

  “So maybe the hunter only recognized Brody and Charlie,” Archer said.

  “Hopefully,” Sven agreed.

  “Send a couple of our best trackers out to the location where Brody’s body was found,” Archer instructed. “See if they can pick up a scent.”

  “I will,” Sven said. “But you know we might have to end up using Charlie as bait, don’t you?”

  The hunter knew Charlie. He had made one attempt on his life, and since then, Charlie had been lying low. They could use him to draw the hunter out and end him, but it was risky.

  “I know. But not yet. We have to try every other option first,” Archer said.

  “I was hoping you would say that,” Sven said.

  Archer raised his eyebrow again. Sven obviously had something else to say, something he had been holding back because he thought Archer wouldn’t like it. Archer didn’t like any of this, and if Sven had something that didn’t involve using a pack member as bait, Archer would most definitely consider it.

  “Out with it,” he said.

  “I had a call early this morning from Caroline Maynard. She knows about the hunter, and she said she has information. She requested a meeting with you at the mall. At ten-thirty this morning.”

  Archer glanced at his watch. It was only nine forty-five, and he could easily make the meeting. But did he want to? Caroline was a Matchmaker, and those people made his skin crawl. They made it their life’s work to find mortal women who carried a rare protein, Sanmere, in their blood. The protein allowed them to be turned into an immortal successfully and bear female children, something female immortals could no longer do, thanks to a witch’s curse. These Matchmakers would abduct the women with the Sanmere protein in their blood and sell them to the highest bidder.

  A shudder went through Archer just thinking about it. While Matchmaking wasn’t illegal in the immortal community, it was frowned upon, but until a better solution presented itself, one that didn’t end up with immortals becoming extinct, most of them were willing to turn a blind eye to the practice.

  Archer had promised himself he wouldn’t turn a blind eye; that when he was alpha of the pack, he would make it his mission to end Matchmaking in the district, but then he had become alpha, and other things had always taken priority, and now, he had been given a much bigger problem to solve.

  The last thing he wanted to do was cozy up to Caroline Maynard. But could he afford to refuse the meeting? Matchmakers were scumbags, but they always had an ear to the ground, and if she said she had information on the hunter, Archer was inclined to believe her. Said information would of course come with a price, but Archer wasn’t worried about money. Even though his pack wasn’t exactly rich, they were more than comfortable.

  They ran slightly differently to the other wolf packs he knew of. Because they were only seventy members, they didn’t need a huge amount of money behind them, and it had been decided by the last alpha that several wolves would be involved in the pack business, and the rest would go out to work normal jobs. The money was pooled, and after each pack member was given enough to live comfortably, the rest went into the pack fund. There were millions of dollars in the fund now, and Archer guessed Caroline would demand somewhere in the region of half a million.

  He could condone spending a large chunk of the money if Caroline’s information was good and the hunter was found. He might even be able to find a way to end both the hunter and Caroline and keep the money.

  “Archer?” Sven called him. Archer realized he had been thinking too long, weighing up his options and leaving Sven hanging. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that the last thing I want to do is meet up with a Matchmaker. But if she has information, then I can’t very well refuse. Not after one of our own has been killed. The pack would rebel.”

  Sven nodded.

  “I’m also thinking that the meeting could prove useful in another way. I’ll finally be able to put a face to the name Caroline Maynard. And maybe when this whole hunter business is dealt with, I can deal with her.”

  “She’s dangerous, Archer,” Sven said.

  “Oh, I know,” Archer said with a tightlipped smile. “But so am I, Sven. So am I.”

  Sven returned his smile. “You’d better get going, then. You don’t want to be late. She wants to meet at the mall, right in the center by the fountain.”

  Archer had guessed as much. Caroline was dangerous, all right, but she was smart as well, and she wasn’t about to meet Archer somewhere he could kill her without witnesses. Even the sheriff would have trouble explaining away a murder in the middle of a packed mall. One or two witnesses could be convinced they remembered something wrongly, not a whole mall’s worth of people.

  Archer dismissed Sven, reminding him to send tracker
s out to the spot where Brody’s body was found. He told Sven to make sure the trackers stayed alert; they were assuming the hunter wouldn’t recognize them, but they could be wrong.

  Once Sven left his office, Archer pulled on his jacket and headed outside. He debated taking his car, but the mall was close, and the day was warm. He could walk there and still have plenty of time to spare. He set off in the direction of the mall, and by ten past ten, he was there. He pulled open one of the doors, feeling the coolness of the air conditioning. He moved directly to the center of the mall and sat down on one of the benches that lined the fountain’s walls.

  At exactly ten-thirty, a pretty blonde woman with tight little curls sat down beside him. She was a tiny thing, petite and almost fragile looking. Archer glanced at her and looked away. This might ruin everything. Caroline might not approach him while the woman was sitting beside him, and if she did, it might put the woman in danger.

  He was debating moving to a different spot when the woman spoke to him.

  “I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said.

  Archer frowned. There was no way this tiny slip of a girl was the fearsome Caroline Maynard. She looked at him and laughed softly.

  “Don’t underestimate me because of the way I look, Archer. Many have made that mistake before you, and none of them have lived to tell the tale.” She smiled again, apparently enjoying his complete confusion. She put her hand out. “Caroline Maynard. At your service,” she said in a sarcastic tone.

  Archer shook her hand on autopilot, still shocked. He had been expecting a different type altogether, someone who looked fearsome and strong. He told himself to get a grip. Caroline had been right about one thing. Underestimating her would be a fool’s move.

  “Archer Malone,” he introduced himself. “But you already know that, right?”

  “I know a lot of things,” Caroline said. “Including how the hunter killed one of your pack yesterday.”