Trevor drove back to the station slowly, thinking hard, confused as to his reaction to the woman, Ella. He’d never in his life reacted to a woman like that. Like most of his kind, he found human women attractive on a sexual level, but he had never had that chemical and emotional attraction to one that made him think about… more. He knew it happened all the time, more so now that there were no female shifters, but it had never happened to him.
Idly, he wondered if she could be a one true mate, even as he knew she wasn’t. Her name was not
like flora
, and she knew who her father was. The only thing she had going for her was her age. Trevor wanted to kick himself for his attraction to her.
He shifted into low gear and let his truck coast to a halt at a stoplight, glad for the extra time to think before he arrived at the station. Maybe she was a half-breed. He’d heard of
wolven
being attracted to half-breeds almost like full
shiften
. Rarely could the half-breeds shift, but he’d heard stories that their children with
shiften
frequently could. Too bad there were no sort of databases of half-breeds that he could look up to figure out if she was. Wade would have been able to tell, maybe even Crew. But Trevor did not have their touch, and as sensitive as his nose was, he’d never been able to sniff them out either. He wondered if Troy would have known. Troy and Trent both seemed to have abilities and insights that Trevor did not, possibly because they had never shifted into human form. It kept them wilder.
The light changed and Trevor drove on, his mind spinning. He had a few things he wanted to do before his team came back to him with the results of their investigation. When he got to the station, he parked quickly and ran inside.
As he walked in the door, Trent hailed him mentally.
We heard Khain crossed over again. What’s going on?
Not sure yet,
he sent back.
He was gone when I got there. The human involved was unharmed.
Poodle-fucker is up to something.
Trevor laughed in spite of himself.
Agreed. Maybe you and Troy should find a handler. Patrol the two areas he’s shown up at the last two days.
On it.
Trevor hurried to his office, glad not to meet anyone on the way. He hurried to his black office chair and pulled his laptop close, opening a browser.
Meaning of Gabriela
, he typed in.
God’s able-bodied one.
Huh. He accessed the police department’s criminal database and looked up the last name Carmi. A Frederico Carmi had been arrested for terroristic threatening in 1972, and that was all he found. Not helpful.
His phone rang and he snatched it up. “Burbank,” he snarled, harsher than he wanted, but when he heard Mac’s voice, he wasn’t sorry.
“Nothing. He left no trace. Didn’t force the door. Just crossed over inside the front door, walked around a bit, then crossed back over from in front of the window. The
felen
said he was on our side for exactly ninety-six seconds. They said he’s still tracking differently, and it’s harder to get him but not impossible,” Mac said, his voice surprisingly free of hostility for once.
“Interesting,” Trevor said, wishing they had a way to track him when he left their world and went into his own. A way to reach him there. A way to go on the offensive and not always be on the defensive. “I’m sick to fuck of being on the clean-up crew,” he said into the phone. “Get with Harlan, maybe some of the sub-rosa team. Tell them we need a new strategy. Entertain any suggestions, no matter how crazy. Something big is about to happen and we can’t sit around and wait for it.”
“Good plan,” Mac growled and hung up.
Trevor stared at the phone before hanging it up. That couldn’t have been approval he heard from Macalister Niles.
His mind went back to Ella Carmi. He snatched up his phone again and dialed Wade.
“Chief Lombard.”
“Wade, can prophecies ever be wrong?”
“Trevor,” Wade growled. “Is this about this morning’s visit by our favorite asshole?”
Trevor ground his teeth. “Yeah.”
Wade sighed. “You tell me about it when you get a spare moment. As for your question, no, I don’t believe a prophecy has ever been proven wrong, but yes, theoretically, they could be. When we go under, language is different. We aren’t reciting something someone has told us in a conversation. We are interpreting messages that could be coming in any form.”
“Like what kind of form?”
“They could be images. Scents. Sounds. Intentions. Ideas. Thoughts. Almost never words.”
Trevor grunted. “That sounds to me like you could very easily get them wrong.”
“Yet I don’t believe I ever have.”
Trevor thought about that, hard. “And my dad?”
“Your dad was a
Citlali
with great power and a greater gift. I would bet my life that the One True Mate prophecy is 100% correct.”
Trevor caught his lower lip between his canines and worried it a bit. “Khain entered a woman’s house today. She got away. She’s twenty-five but she knows her father and her name is Gabriela, which isn’t a flower.”
The line was silent for a moment. Trevor was just about to ask if Wade had heard him when he spoke. “Was she a warrior?”
“A warrior? No, I mean, she was a woman. Soft. Pretty.”
“Don’t be fooled by softness, son. It tells no tales.”
Trevor huffed air out of his nose. “Thanks, Wade.” Was being cryptic in the job description for
Citlali
? Or did they work at it?
Trevor hung up, still thinking of Ella Carmi. Had he made a mistake by sending her to the safe house with Adin and his partner? If Khain had been after her specifically, he could try again. Track her somehow. Two patrol officers were no real match against Khain. Two were better than one, who Khain could easily best, but at least four strong shifters were needed to drive Khain away, and more were better.
Maybe when Mac reported in again, he should send him over there, him and Harlan. They were the strongest─
Trevor felt his fangs elongate and a growl come out of his throat at the thought of Mac being anywhere near Ella Carmi. He watched as the claws on his right hand grew long and razor-sharp.
Trevor reeled himself in and stood, grabbing a coat from the back of his door.
Trent, Troy, I need you.
He would check in with his team, then go watch her himself. At least for a few hours.
Many hours later than he wanted to, Trevor and his brothers pulled into the driveway of the police-controlled house where Ella was safely ensconced. Mac had followed his instructions without hesitation for once and by the time Trevor had found him, he was in the tunnels, in an intense meeting with Canyon, Timber, Jaggar, and Sebastian, demanding a new strategy, an offensive strategy. Trevor backed Mac up, emphasizing to his team that the game was now changed. They needed a way to hunt and track Khain. He was done with damage control. The foursome hadn’t had any ideas but that didn’t matter. Getting them thinking was what was important. They would come up with something.
He’d finally made it out and drove straight to the safe house. A perfect blend of ecstasy and anxiety filtered through him at the thought of seeing her again. His boot-clad feet crunched on the stones of the driveway as he walked towards the front door, his eyes on the soft light coming from inside, his brothers falling into line behind him. He could see his breath in the cool night air.
He knocked and waited. Adin opened the door in a few seconds. “Lieutenant, hi. We got the extra officers you sent over.”
“Good. You and your partner can go until second watch tomorrow. The K9s and I will assist with the night shift.”
Adin raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything. He stepped back so Trevor and the wolves could enter, then went to gather his stuff and his partner. “She’s in a bedroom in the back,” Adin said from across the room. “The last on the left.”
Trevor stared down the hallway, his stomach doing flips. He nodded at the two officers in uniform sitting on the couch watching Bait Car with the sound down low. He approved of them being out there, and Ella not being out there, even if he didn’t know why.
He could feel his brothers behind him as his feet took him towards the hallway. Both were open, but wary, and both had noticed a change in him, although neither one had asked him what it was about yet. Could they know? No. Neither one of them had given him any shit yet, and if they knew how he was feeling for a human woman, they’d be raking him over the coals.
The hallway loomed large as he travelled through it, the warm, rich scent of cinnamon and sugar catching him by surprise. Oh yeah, she smelled like a fucking bakery. He’d almost forgotten.
You smell that?
he sent to his brothers.
Smell what?
Nothing.
Trevor licked his lips and thought about stopping, turning around, staying away. His body had other ideas. He stopped in front of the slightly-ajar door and knocked on the door frame.
“Miss Carmi?”
“Ah, come in.” She sounded nervous. Fuck. What could he do to make her feel better?
He pushed the door open. The bedroom was small with a single bed in the middle of the room and the wall lined with chairs. She sat in one of them, by the slightly-cracked window, looking out. He winced at the security breach. How had she gotten it open? All the windows should be sealed from the inside
and
outside.
She looked at him, eyes wide. A hot liquid filled his chest, making him feel much too heavy all of a sudden. “Miss Carmi,” he started, but then he felt his brothers push past him. Both of them swarmed quickly into the room, heading straight for Ella. He tried to call them back, they were big and he didn’t want to scare her, but her face broke into an immediate smile when she saw them and he almost sagged with relief.
“Oh cutie, you are so beautiful,” she cried, grabbing Troy by the face and petting his head and neck, leaning forward and kissing him on the nose. Trevor thought he might die with envy. Trent reached her then and she let go of Troy to smother Trent’s furry face with kisses and tell him what a gorgeous doggy he was, and how big he was, yes, and what a very good boy he was. Her fingers traced his
renqua
, then went back up to his neck.
Trevor watched in surprise. His brothers generally did not like humans, although sometimes they made exceptions for human women, especially
pretty
human women, but he didn’t sense any objections from either of them at being called a doggy.
Ella continued to pet his brothers and coo over them relentlessly, paying him absolutely no attention at all. He almost didn’t mind. It gave him a chance to gaze at her. Her red lips and pale skin, her powder-blue eyes, her full cheeks and breasts, and the way her hands moved.
Hey, mutts.
Have some pride, would you?
Troy shot him an evil look.
Shut up you jealous fucker. You just wish it was you.
Trevor smirked and sat in one of the chairs by the door, as far away from Ella as he could get. He hadn’t expected this, but he couldn’t say he was disappointed.
Ella finally looked up at him. “Are they police dogs?”
Trevor nodded. “Our best, except for the bigger one there, he’s on probation. Can’t stop him from drooling all over the back seat of the car.” Trevor smiled as Troy bared just one fang at him.
“They’re so big.”
Trevor didn’t respond. He found it best not to offer explanations.
Both wolves pressed against Ella’s legs and she continued to pet them, but when he met her eyes again, he could tell her demeanor had changed.
“I’m glad you came. No one will tell me what’s happening. I agreed to come here because I was scared, but now that I’ve had time to think about it, I want some answers, and I don’t want to be treated like a child anymore.”
Trevor only stared. The standard line when dealing with a Khain sighting was supposed to be a lone madman with explosives, but he couldn’t force out the words. He didn’t want to lie to her.
Her eyes narrowed. “So you aren’t going to tell me what’s going on either?”
His brothers both turned and sat on either side of Ella, facing him, like they were on her side. He looked to them for help, but got none.
She stood, stepping carefully around the wolves. “Lieutenant, spill it, I can take whatever it is.”
She stared him down and he could feel the force of her will, the force of her anger, and he could not resist it. He held the arms of the chair as if they might keep him from floating off into space. “You─you wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth,” he said weakly.
She stared at him for a long moment, then sagged visibly. She made her way back to her chair and curled one arm around each wolf, pressing her face first against one and then against the other.
“Yeah, you might be right,” she said sadly, and his heart broke.
***
Ella sat quietly in the chair, holding onto the beautiful dogs for a long time. Why couldn’t anything be simple? Her whole life up until that point seemed like one long mess after another.
From the corner of her eye she watched the big cop. Officer Adin had told her that his name was Lieutenant Burbank. He dwarfed the chair he was in, staring at his boots with a gruff look on his face. She still thought he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. His hair was light, but not quite blond, and now he had a five o’clock shadow that was also light, but did not hide his gorgeous cleft chin. He looked tired. Worried. Burdened.
But he made her feel safe. The instant he had entered the room, she’d known he would be able to protect her from the man who had come after her twice now.
Three times
. No. She didn’t want to face that yet. Could he really be the same person from fifteen years ago? She ran her fingers through the fur of the dogs as she turned her mind back to the man in the room with her. The dogs made her feel safe too. They were massive, and obviously bred for police work; fighting, chasing down criminals. She hoped they would stay the night. She would sleep much better knowing the three of them were in the house.