Primal Heat 3
Authors: A. C. Arthur
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Shadow Shifter Tribes
Topètenia
—the jaguars
Croesteriia
—the cheetahs
Lormenia
—the white Bengal tigers
Bosinia
—the cougars
Serfins
—the white lions
Acordado
—the awakening, the Shadow Shifter’s first shift
Alma
—the name of the spa at Perryville Resorts Sedona. Means “soul” in Portuguese
Amizade
—annex to the Elders’ Grounds used as a fellowship hall
Companheiro
—mate
Companheiro calor
—the scent shared between mates
Curandero
—the medicinal and spiritual healer of the tribes
Elders
—senior members of the tribe
Ètica
—the Shadow Shifter Code of Ethics
Joining
—the union of mated shifters
La Selva
—the name of the restaurant at Perryville Resorts. Means “the jungle” in Portuguese
Pessoal
—secondary building of the Elders’ Grounds that houses the personal rooms of each Elder
Rogue
—a Shadow Shifter who has turned from the tribes, refusing to follow the
Ètica,
in an effort to become their own distinct species
Santa Casa
—main building of the Elders’ Grounds that is the holy house of the Elders
The Assembly
—three Elders from each tribe that make up the governing council of shifters in the Gungi
The Stateside Assembly
—body of shifters selected to help govern the Shadow Shifters living in the United States
Stateside Assembly Leader
—(Roman Reynolds) the shifter that has been selected to lead their people, guided by social equality and dedicated to upholding the laws of the
Ètica
Stateside Shifter Hierarchy
Stateside Assembly Leader—Roman Reynolds
Mountain Zone Faction Leader—Sebastian Perry
Pacific Zone Faction Leader—Jace Maybon
Central Zone Faction Leader—Cole Linden
Eastern Zone Lead Enforcer—Dominick Delgado
Eastern Zone Lead Enforcer—Xavier Santos Markland
Lead Guards—Ezra & Elijah Preston
Richard Cannon sat with his dress shirt rumpled, his face fixed in a scowl, across a short table from Rome. They were in a section at the far end of Havenway that had been blocked off from the rest of the facility.
They’d taken to calling it lockdown even though up until a day ago, they’d had no one to house in it. But with tensions rising for the shifters, Rome had decided that they definitely needed a location such as this. There were four rooms with steel-reinforced doors with automatic locks on either side of a narrow hallway that also had its own bolted and electronically secure access. X and Nick had been sure to design this part of the facility as if it were the humans’ Fort Knox. There were even magnetized beams that, once activated, would prevent anyone from moving throughout this part of the facility without being detected.
Today they were interrogating one of their own. Richard was not a rogue but he wasn’t aligned with the Shadows either. He’d never taken a stance on either side for as long as Rome had been working with the Stateside Assembly. In fact, Richard had been one of the few rich and influential shifters that had ignored all of Rome’s invitations to join him at the Assembly. For the past couple of years Rome hadn’t thought much of it, as he figured there would always be those shifters that had a greater desire to be considered more for their human attributes than those of their cats. He’d respected that choice. Until now.
“You’re sending money to the Comastaz Labs. Why?” Rome asked without preamble.
Richard’s response was rude but factual. “This is a free country. I can do whatever I want with my money.”
Rome had only nodded. Nick on the other hand, had moved quicker than either Rome or Richard had anticipated, grabbing the man by the back of his neck and slamming his face down on the steel table. Blood oozed instantly from Richard’s nose and Rome casually reached into his inside jacket pocket, extending his arm slowly to offer the man a tissue.
Richard snatched the tissue as Rome said, “I’m not going to repeat the question, but I am still expecting an answer.”
He used the tissue to blot the blood, an angry glare aimed at Nick as he pulled from the obviously bigger and stronger shifter’s grasp. Nick allowed that little action, but he didn’t move from standing right behind Cannon, just in case he had to do more convincing.
“Tax credits,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “I get a certain amount of tax credits for my donations to government agencies.”
“Bullshit!” Nick replied immediately.
“You run a marketing agency but that’s not where the checks originated from. Your nonprofit—the one that’s already qualified for certain tax credits—is the one cutting the checks. There’s no legal gain to that donation unless it’s somehow connected to the work the nonprofit is doing. Is that the case?” Rome inquired.
“I guess you wouldn’t know anything about business since you’re so hell-bent on acting like savages. The more I write off of the nonprofit, the bigger my tax breaks are,” Richard replied with distaste.
Nick grabbed his neck once more.
“Hey!” he yelled, trying to slip from Nick’s grasp. “You can’t do this! We’re not in the jungle, you filthy animals. In case you didn’t notice, this is civilization. We walk upright and behave like we have some decency in America.”
The man might have continued with his rant but Nick lifted him out of the chair and slammed him front first into the cement wall, angling his forearm on the man’s neck to keep the side of his face pressed against the dark blue paint.
“You sure you want to keep calling us names, asshole?” Nick asked, his face close to Cannon’s.
Rome remained seated.
“We cleared our schedules for the day just so we could spend this time with you, Mr. Cannon. Now, this can take another few minutes or it can take much, much longer. It’s up to you.”
It took Nick ramming his fist into the guy’s back to get a gasping, “All right, all right, get this Neanderthal off me!”
“Neanderthals couldn’t crack your skull with their teeth,” Nick said before dropping Cannon’s limp body onto the floor. “I can, you sorry sonofabitch.”
In the time they’d had Richard Cannon in their custody they’d learned a few more disturbing things about him, one of which started with the pictures he’d had on his office computer of Nivea posed in a way a father should never see their child. They’d also found receipts from Comastaz and invoices that they hadn’t quite figured out yet. All of that, coupled with Cannon’s apparent distaste of the Shadows had Nick a little on edge and a lot repulsed. Rome didn’t blame him, and so he hadn’t bothered to stop him or to help Cannon get up off the floor.
“I’m still waiting,” he said after the man had attempted to get up only to land flat on his face again.
Finally, he simply rolled over onto his back, his hands flapping like a fish out of water over his chest as he continued to heave for his breath.
“It’s research,” Richard finally coughed out. “Research to help the humans catch up to where we are. I’m only helping them to even the playing field when this shit finally hits the fan!”
Nick had been about to kick him when Rome stood abruptly, blocking Richard from his friend’s reach. Leaning down, he grabbed the front of Cannon’s shirt, lifting his top half off the floor.
“How exactly were you helping them, you piece of shit? What else did you give them besides money?”
Rome hadn’t thought about it until just a few seconds ago, the moment Richard said he’d been helping to level the playing field. He thought about those invoices they’d found in Cannon’s office. The papers that documented hundreds of units shipped directly to the labs. Rome frowned. If Cannon was saying what Rome thought he was, so help the sick bastard. If Nick didn’t rip his head off, Rome was very likely to.
“The unwanteds,” Cannon said, looking Rome directly in the eye. “I gave him what your people in the rain forest didn’t want. They cast them aside, said they were born of the wrong class of shifter and could not stand with them. So I brought them over here. I found somewhere for them to be useful since, because of their unfortunate lineage, they had no place on this earth.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Nick asked.
Rome let Richard’s body drop to the floor, standing and backing away from him as he felt his cat rising up inside, ready to shift, ready to pounce. To restrain himself, he turned away from the man, rubbing a hand down his face as Nick repeated, “What the hell are the unwanteds?”
At his side, Rome’s fists clenched as he dropped his head. “That’s what they call the children in the Gungi whose parents have been found to be rogues, or descendants of rogues. Elder Alamar reported on this when the Stateside Assembly was just being formed. The tribes in the rain forest were now afraid that the rogue trait was hereditary. I didn’t believe it until Lidia Morales arrived here with Brayden Sanchez. She’s Sabar’s niece and apparently was ostracized for that relation. That’s why the Sanchezes finally took her abroad with them. She was a big part of the reason Sabar had targeted the Sanchez brothers when he first began building his army.”
“Wait a minute,” Nick said incredulously.
Before his friend could start speaking again, Rome turned to face him, nodding his head. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. This piece of crap’s been sending shifter children to Crowe at Comastaz and Crowe’s been picking them apart to continue building those damned hybrids.”
“Because he couldn’t get his hands on my daughter,” Nick finished for Rome. “He couldn’t get her DNA so they settled for what they thought was distorted shifter DNA. And the only way they would have known that was from a sneaking traitor like this.”
The kick that landed in Richard’s gut could not have been prevented even if Rome wanted to. The man curled into a fetal position and Nick landed another kick to his spine.