Authors: Paige Tyler
what Landon had read in the guy’s file, Stutmeir wasn’t that stupid.
Unless Ivy had tricked Stutmeir into believing that. The idea was comforting. It meant she was alive and
well and controlling the situation.
He looked at his watch again. He really needed to go.
Landon had to drive like a maniac to get to the self-storage unit by 0800. The DCO had picked the last
unit of the last building, so it was highly unlikely someone at another unit would be able to see what was
inside it. Even so, he pulled the Jeep around to block the doorway just in case.
Landon was opening the first of the two security locks when a vehicle crunched to a hard stop beside
the Jeep. He glanced at the car and saw Buchanan silhouetted behind the wheel. He could practically feel the
big man glowering at him.
He started to turn back to the lock but stopped when movement in the passenger seat caught his eye.
Buchanan got out of the car and slammed the door, looking as pissed off as the last time Landon had
seen him.
Landon dropped his hand down to the top of his knife and spread his legs, centering his weight as the
shifter strode toward him.
He was so intent on Buchanan, he completely forgot about the second person in the car until a woman
spoke.
“We talked about this, Clayne. Don’t even think about it.”
Buchanan growled low in his throat but grudgingly stopped at the sound of Kendra’s voice.
Landon frowned as the blonde closed the car door and hurried over to them. “What the hell are you
doing here, Kendra?”
“I’m here to make sure you two stay focused on the right enemy instead of trying to kill each other.”
Buchanan took a threatening step toward Landon, his lip drawn back in a snarl. “If Ivy’s dead, I will kill
you.”
If Ivy was dead, Landon wasn’t sure he’d stop Buchanan from trying. He bent to open the second lock.
“What the hell happened?” Buchanan demanded.
Landon gave them a brief synopsis, starting with sneaking into the lodge and finishing with his header
off the cliff. He left out the part about Ivy zoning out, saying they’d gotten separated and that he wasn’t able
to get to her before she’d gotten captured.
“So you just up and fucking left her without a fight?” Buchanan swore under his breath. “What are you,
a fucking coward? The only thing that should have stopped you from going after her is a bullet through the
spine—if you even have one.”
Landon ground his jaw. The words hurt like hell, not because he cared what Buchanan thought of him,
but because they were exactly the same things he’d been saying repeatedly to himself all night long.
“I tried!” An image flashed in his head of Ivy lying on the floor, half conscious, begging him to run. His
gut twisted. “Fuck, don’t you think I tried? I couldn’t get to her, dammit.”
The shifter growled, fangs glinting in the early morning sunlight.
Landon swore. He might need Buchanan’s help, but he wasn’t going to listen to his rantings to get it. If
the shifter wasn’t going to help get Ivy back, he’d do it without him. He didn’t have time to waste trading
insults. He needed to get back to the lodge. Problem was Buchanan didn’t look like he was going to walk
away until this thing between them was resolved.
“You want a fight, shifter?” Landon pulled his knife. “Let’s fight.”
He braced himself, waiting for Buchanan to take a swipe at him, but Kendra darted forward, putting
herself between them.
“Stop it, both of you!” She held up her hands, her eyes narrowing as she looked from him to Buchanan
and back again. “What the hell is wrong with the two of you? While you’re wasting time yelling at each
other, Stutmeir could be doing God only knows what to Ivy. Put your damn dicks back in your pants and
think about her.”
Buchanan flushed and retracted his claws, his yellow eyes going back to their normal color and
clouding with pain. Turning on his heel, he walked away, then stopped and turned back. He pinned Landon
with a glower. “Why didn’t you follow DCO rules and kill Ivy as soon as it looked like she was going to be
captured?”
What the fuck kind of question was that? “Seriously? I can’t believe you’d ask me that when you know
we slept together.”
“You’re banging her. So what?” Buchanan snorted. “That doesn’t explain why you didn’t pop her.”
Landon stared at him, speechless. Why had he thought Buchanan might help? The man was too warped
to give a shit about anything.
He shoved his knife into its sheath and turned back to the storage unit. “Forget it. If you have to ask,
you wouldn’t understand.”
“What wouldn’t I understand?”
Landon ignored him. He opened the second lock, then lifted the door.
Gravel crunched under Buchanan’s boots as the shifter crossed the parking lot. “What. Wouldn’t. I.
Understand?”
Landon swore silently. He turned to face the other man. “That I’m in love with her, you fucking idiot.”
The first time he said those words out loud, it should have been to Ivy, not this asshole.
Landon didn’t wait to see what effect they had on Buchanan. He didn’t care. Right now, he needed to
rework his original plan—where the shifter used his keen sense of smell to track down Ivy so they would
get her away from Stutmeir before the ex-Stasi knew they were onto him and decided to eliminate her—
because that one was shot to hell. He walked over to the far side of the unit and picked up the M4 that was
on the shelf.
“Do you even have a plan to get Ivy out?”
Landon looked over his shoulder to see Buchanan opening one of the crates on the floor. “What?
You’re in now?”
The shifter pulled an M203 rifle/grenade launcher combination out of the box. “That depends on the
plan.”
Outside, a vehicle pulled up to the unit and stopped.
“Who the hell is that?” Buchanan growled, looking around for the ammo that went with the weapon he
was holding.
“Relax.” Landon put the M4 back on the shelf. “It’s only some reinforcements.”
Landon ignored the frown Buchanan gave him and walked outside. He’d spent half the night praying
Angelo would be able to round up one or two more guys from the team, so he was shocked to not only see
Diaz, Mickens, and Griffen, but Marks, Deray, and Tredeau, too. He shouldn’t have expected anything less,
but it still brought tears to his eyes.
“As soon as Angelo said you and Ivy were in trouble, we were all in.” Diaz’s face turned apologetic.
“Everyone else would have come too, but Johnson needed to keep a few of the guys with him to give us a
legitimate cover story for coming out here on short notice.”
Landon frowned. “What cover story is that?”
“We’re supposedly doing survival training at Fort Lewis,” Tredeau explained.
Landon looked at Angelo. “You told Johnson you needed to go out on a completely unauthorized
training op, and he didn’t flip out?”
“Nah. I knew he wouldn’t.” Angelo shrugged. “You’re his commanding officer. Former commanding
officer, anyway. He’d do anything for you. Besides, it was either talk him into coming out here with us or
go AWOL—which we would have done if he’d said no, by the way. Top didn’t even ask why you needed
us. He just told me to get the team together and meet him at the airfield. By the time we got there, he was
waiting on the ramp of a C-17 with that cigar shoved in his mouth. No idea how he did it, but he got the
battalion to agree to a no-notice training exercise. He’s got the rest of the A-team at Fort Lewis taking up
space to make it look good.”
Landon was speechless. He knew his team was incredible, but this was too much.
Buchanan grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. “Sorry to rain on the reunion, but who the hell
are they?”
Leave it to the shifter to spoil the moment. “Guys from my old Special Forces team. We needed help;
they came to help.”
Buchanan swore. “Ivy’s life is in danger, and you bring in a bunch of half-trained snake eaters to rescue
her? Are you trying to get her killed?”
Landon shoved the shifter’s hand away. “Dammit, Buchanan. This is more than we can handle by
ourselves. When we go in that lodge, we’re going to be facing twenty-five trained killers, maybe more.”
“So? I can handle the first twenty. You just have to handle the other five.”
Landon glanced at Kendra. She’d come out of the storage unit and was standing with her arms wrapped
around her waist. She looked as terrified for Ivy as he was.
“You didn’t tell him about the shifters, did you?” Landon asked. He didn’t wait for an answer, but
turned back to Buchanan. “The size of your balls might be impressive, but I don’t think even you can take
on twenty-five super-powered shifters.”
Buchanan’s brows drew together. “Stutmeir has shifters working for him? Where did he find that
many?”
“He didn’t. I don’t know how he did it, but he found a way to make them. Test tube shifters, apparently
—and vicious as hell. They fight like they’re insane—sort of like you.”
Buchanan grunted.
“When we go in there,” Landon continued, “we’re going to need a lot of firepower.”
The shifter’s gaze went to the other men and he shook his head. “There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t. It’s these guys—whom I trust a hell of a lot more than I trust you—or the DCO. Do you
honestly think they’ll mount a rescue op when they find out Stutmeir took Ivy alive? My guess is it’d be
more of a sanitizing mission, but what do I know?” He pulled out his cell phone. “So, you want to call the
DCO, or should I?”
Buchanan ground his jaw, but that silenced him.
Angelo walked over. “What’s going on? Who is this asshole, where’s Ivy, and what the hell is a shifter?”
Landon shoved his phone back in his pocket. “This is Clayne Buchanan. He’s a friend of Ivy’s.”
“Which is the only reason I’d ever get involved with you fucks,” the shifter growled.
Angelo ignored the comment. “Okay, that answers one of the questions. What happened to Ivy?”
Landon swore under his breath as the rest of his former team crowded around them. While they were
wasting time here, Stutmeir could be making his escape and taking Ivy with him.
“We came here to get some intel on an ex-Stasi-killer-turned-arms-dealer named Stutmeir, but there was
a problem and Ivy got captured.”
Angelo frowned. “And I take it these shifters you keep mentioning are the reason you couldn’t get her
out, and why you need our help?”
“What are these shifters?” Deray asked. “Super soldiers or something?”
“Something like that.” Landon sighed. “Look, this is real black ops shit, and none of you are cleared to
know a damn thing about it, so I’ll keep it short and simple. Shifters are humans that are…well, part
animal.”
They stared at him like a pig with a Rolex.
“Part animal?” Mickens snorted. “You’re shittin’ us, right?”
“Do I look like I’m shittin’ you?”
“Shifters.” Angelo’s voice was thoughtful. “You mean like skinwalkers?”
Landon wasn’t surprised at the intuitive leap. Angelo’s Native American heritage gave him a completely
different set of beliefs than other people. “Not in the way you’re thinking. They can’t turn into animals.
They only display certain attributes.”
“I’m not sure if I’m following this.” Mickens held up his hands. “No offense, sir, but it sounds a little
batshit to me.”
Landon knew it sounded crazy. He didn’t believe it the first time, either, and he’d seen Ivy’s claws with
his own eyes. “I know this sounds like something from the SyFy channel, but shifters are real, and they’re
dangerous.”
“So are we,” Griffen said.
This was getting nowhere fast. “Maybe it’d be easier if I show you.” Landon glanced at Buchanan.
“Could you demonstrate?”
The shifter scowled. “I’m not a trained monkey, you know. I don’t do tricks on command.”
Kendra muttered something under her breath. “For heaven’s sake, Clayne, just show them, dammit. The
sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can get to Ivy. You do remember Ivy, don’t you?”
Buchanan stopped glaring long enough to shift into the golden-eyed, clawed menace Landon knew and
didn’t love. Growling deep in his throat, the shifter whipped out his arm and raked his claws down the side
of the building, leaving four long, jagged grooves in their wake. The whole show was probably only a
second or two, but it was effective. Every one of his former teammates gasped and jumped back.
“What the…?” Marks said.
“Buchanan’s a shifter. He was born with the DNA of a wolf,” Landon explained. “The shifters with
Stutmeir aren’t natural born, though. He’s figured out a way to turn humans into them.”
“Damn,” Deray muttered.
“It gets worse.” Landon ground his jaw. “I’m only guessing here, but I think he might have taken Ivy to
experiment on her.”
Angelo’s eyes narrowed. “You think he’ll try to turn her into a shifter?”
“He won’t have to,” Kendra said.
“Why not?” Diaz asked.
“Because she’s already a shifter,” Landon said.
“Like me,” Buchanan added.
No doubt that was for Landon’s benefit. It was probably the shifter’s way of pointing out how different