“They’ll come back fully in time.” Tiago found the flower he’d caught wind of. “It’s that small blue one.”
Dallas squatted then bent over and inhaled. “Ew. What the hell? It smells like ball sweat.”
Tiago felt his eyebrows creep up. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never sniffed particularly sweaty balls.”
“You don’t want to, either, trust me on that,” Dallas muttered. “Hey. That’s the root plant you used for Maarten, right?”
Tiago beamed his approval at Dallas. “Very good. Now let’s dig it up and take it back to Ryder. I’ll show his shaman how to prepare it and explain its uses.” Ryder’s shaman was woefully unknowledgeable. Tiago was willing to help him out.
“Maybe Keegan and Olin will be back with the phones by then. I’m having Irritated Iguanas withdrawals.” Dallas swung their joined hands as they walked. “I made that up, in case you’re wondering. I’m not big on games.”
“Hm. I can think of a few that we could play together.” They would all involve fucking Dallas’ sweet little ass in some manner.
“You dirty man. I love it.” Dallas tugged on his hand. “We should run. Exercise, you know. We also weren’t supposed to be out of the compound for more than half an hour. The guards with us are about as attentive as cardboard cutouts.”
Tiago agreed. The guards didn’t seem interested in their assigned tasks. “What are their names again?”
Dallas frowned at him. “You know…they didn’t tell us. Have they even spoken two words to us since they met us at the entrance?”
“I don’t think so. Then again, I’ve been preoccupied.” Tiago found that happened often around Dallas.
“Oh, are you putting the blame on me?” Dallas added a little wiggle to his backside as he walked.
“I—” Tiago caught a whiff of something that made his blood turn to ice.
“Run!”
The warning came too late. A black jaguar—every bit as big as him—leaped out in front of them.
“Move and I’ll kill your mate.”
The voice came from behind them. Tiago’s blood went from cold to hot in a wash of anger.
“Crooked guards. How lame,” Dallas mumbled.
The sound of triggers being cocked silenced anything else he might have said. Dallas rolled his lips in, clamping his mouth shut.
“Hands up,” one of the guards shouted.
Tiago raised them slowly, as did Dallas.
“Assholes,” that same man snarled, right before a
whoosh
sliced through the air and Tiago’s brain seemed to explode in his skull.
* * * *
“They should have been back already.” Ryder paced on his porch. “Where are Olin and Keegan?”
“Where are Dallas and Tiago?” Marcus asked in return. “Have you seen the guards they went out with? Have any of them come back? I just checked Dallas’ hut and it’s empty. There’s no new scent since they left this morning.”
“Hank!” Ryder called out to one of his guards.
Hank ran over. “Yes, Alpha Anax?”
“Who did you send out with Dallas and Tiago?”
Hank blinked a few times. “No one told me to send guards out with them.”
Ryder cursed. “Goddamn it, I told Vincenzo to get you to send the two best guards out with them. They went to find more of that root. It could have waited!”
Bur Ryder had asked for more once Tiago had said it had many healing properties and would be good to keep on hand. It wasn’t far from the pack holdings, either.
“Find out which guards are missing,” Marcus ordered when Ryder seemed at a loss for what to do.
The command kicked him back into gear. “Vincenzo, I bet, and the one he’s always with.”
“Callum, sir,” Hank supplied. “They’re cousins.”
“Are they trustworthy?” Ryder demanded to know.
Hank took a half-step back. “My dad and theirs were all best friends and—”
“And that doesn’t mean anything to me,” Ryder roared. “Are. They. Trustworthy?”
“I don’t know, Alpha Anax!” Hank’s panic tinged the air with an acrid scent. “I don’t. They were loyal to Dirk, but they aren’t the only ones. You know that. They swore fealty to you. I did the same. I served Dirk. We…we had no choice.”
Ryder got in Hank’s face. “Just how did you serve him, Hank? Did you help him with the drugs?”
Hank’s confused expression was answer enough. He still spoke. “No! I didn’t know about that. I was just a low on the guard list. I didn’t know. Vincenzo and Callum were of more importance.”
“And who is with Olin and Keegan? If anything happens to them—” Marcus was stepping all over Ryder’s authority, in a way. Then again, Keegan was Marcus’ top guard, and his friend. So no stepping after all.
“Ridley and Annie aren’t going to betray their Alpha Anax—or you,” Hank said. “Neither will Helen or Chris. I don’t know why you’re worried about them.”
“Because they aren’t back yet, and now I find out that Dallas and Tiago were sent off with possible traitors?” Ryder’s fury was rolling off him. “I am going to tear the guard unit apart and vet each of you. One. By. One. I should have done it in the first place. Get me Sissy Dee and Juanita over here, now. Guillermo, too.”
He turned to Marcus. “Sissy Dee did talk to every guard here. They all said—well, fuck what they said. Two of them lied, at the very least.”
“You were right to trust the ones who swore to follow you,” Marcus said to Ryder, hoping to ease his conscience. “It’s on their souls if they lied. Maybe they thought they were helping by escorting Tiago and Dallas. Not likely, I’ll admit, but we don’t know the truth yet. We need to go see if we can find Dallas and Tiago. For all we know, there isn’t a problem after all.”
“Four hours to collect a root they should have only needed half an hour to get?” Ryder shook his head. “Fuck that.”
“Fuck what, Ryder?” Sissy Dee asked, jogging over to them. In her khaki cargos and tank top, she looked like a fierce warrior, her muscles on display. Juanita and Guillermo arrived with her. “What’s going on? Why does Hank look like he’s going to keel over?”
“Because he knows two potentially crooked guards slipped away out of the compound with them hours ago to fetch something that should have only taken thirty minutes, max.” Ryder shoved his fingers through his hair. “How did I not detect it if they’re traitors?”
“Because we aren’t perfect,” Marcus told him. “We are men, not gods.”
Sissy clicked her tongue. “Even gods weren’t perfect in some of the stories I’ve read.”
“Not helping me, Sissy. Get another three people you trust and let’s go,” Ryder ordered.
“Yes, sir.” Sissy had Guillermo and Juanita wait there.
Marcus turned to Nathan. “Ready?”
“For a second I thought you were going to ask me to stay here.” Nathan kicked off his shoes. “I should have known you’re smarter than that.”
“Strongest person I know,” Marcus told him again. “And where I go—and vice versa.”
“Exactly.”
Maarten was well enough to shift and run. In fact, Marcus saw no lingering signs of the poisoning.
Ryder looked over the guards then nodded grimly. Marcus suspected he wanted to ask if they were truly loyal, but now wasn’t the time.
“Move out,” Ryder snapped before shifting.
They ran into the rainforest, following the trail from that morning.
Five minutes out, the scent of a jaguar hit him.
Not Tiago’s scent, either.
Ryder sniffed and slapped the ground with one paw. He darted over to some leaves and yipped.
Marcus joined him and immediately smelled the blood.
“Tiago’s. Not a lot, but he bled here.”
Dallas had been there too, but none of his blood had been spilled.
Marcus studied the jaguar’s scent and Tiago’s. He compared them and thought they might have a similar base.
The hair along his spine rippled. Marcus raised his head up, using his senses to check for danger. His unease could have come from knowing Tiago had been harmed and both him and Dallas taken off or worse, been killed.
He stood perfectly still, his gaze tangling with Ryder’s, who was similarly attentive. Nathan was straining to detect whatever had brought the chill of unease upon them. Marcus felt Nathan’s presence in his head, a sort of distracted sensation, since Nathan was concentrating so hard on ferreting out trouble.
Maarten was almost certainly doing the same. The guards that were with them took their cues from the Alpha Anaxes.
The silence seemed to swell until Marcus’ ears rang with it. He flattened his ears and shoved Nathan to the side, every instinct in him screaming.
Then he was thrown back in time by the sound of a bullet shattering the hushed silence that had surrounded them. More followed rapidly as Marcus and Nathan scrambled for cover.
Marcus dove down, taking Nathan with him. His mind reeled with images of his friends and guards dead, bullets ripping their lives away—people who had depended on him and sworn loyalty to him. He wasn’t a hardened Alpha Anax like he’d tried to be. His heart and soul mourned those who’d died, and being under attack again in such a similar manner brought the wounds up fresh.
He couldn’t let that distract him or make him careless. Marcus started to spring up but was covered by several bodies. Nathan, beneath him, was not happy about being squashed.
“Ryder’s guards—they’re protecting us with their own bodies!”
Marcus shouldn’t have been surprised. He should have known Ryder would inspire loyalty that would extend to him. The betrayal of the other two guards wasn’t a reflection on Ryder’s skill as a leader.
Marcus still didn’t want additional deaths on his hands, nor did he want him or Nathan to die. Ryder was alive. Marcus could feel his power.
Bullets thudded—some dully, some loud. Marcus fought to slip out from under the guards, not wanting to truly show his strength and hurt any of them.
Nathan needed to be able to breathe, however, so he ended up tossing one man back a good dozen feet to the left of the gunfire.
Nathan was immediately running for deeper cover. Marcus snapped an order out to the guards to go help Ryder and Maarten. He put enough force behind the order that none argued with him.
“We’ll come up behind them,”
Marcus thought to Nathan.
“Take out the gunman or men. See what’s left.”
“I hate guns. I hate bullets. Someone is getting their ass kicked for this.”
Nathan was furious, an anger fueled by fear.
“This isn’t the same as what happened at our compound.”
“It is. We’re under attack. The difference is…this time we’re not losing so many men and women. Ryder will, unless we can stop this.”
Ryder bore guilt over the attack at Marcus’ compound, too, though he had no cause for it. Marcus didn’t want him to carry more. He knew how guilt could fuck with a person’s head, especially a leader who took on the responsibility for the lives of thousands.
They cut a wide berth around the area where the shooting was occurring. Listening closely, Marcus detected two different gunmen. Two he and Nathan could handle easily.
They found them in the trees, lying on limbs not too high off the ground. Leaves had been stripped out of their way.
The two people guarding each sniper were going to be problematic.
Nathan sent a negative thought at that. He was quick and—though he hated killing—deadly when he had to be.
As was Marcus.
“On three.”
Marcus focused his mind on what needed to be done. The two men on the ground taken out before either could alert the sniper. Same for Nathan’s targets. It’d be tricky.
“Let’s do this. One, two, three!”
Nathan and Marcus worked in tandem, down to the steps they took. The first man Marcus approached was leaning against the tree trunk, eyes half-closed as he chatted with the second man.
There would be no taking out one without the other noticing. Nathan would fare better. One of his was taking a leak.
Marcus leaped and used the weight of his body to slam into both men. Curses rang out and Marcus expected bullets to follow. He quickly dispatched the first man then bared his teeth at the second when that one reached for a gun on his hip.
The man whimpered and put his hands up.
A bullet hole bloomed in the middle of his forehead.
Marcus ran behind the tree the sniper was in. The way the limb was angled, he couldn’t see behind the trunk.
Across from him, he saw Nathan shaking and dragging the second man he’d taken on. Nathan released the body when the man was no longer alive and ran for cover, his paws kicking up dirt and leaves.
He followed Marcus’ plan and took cover behind the tree.
Marcus and Nathan exchanged glances.
The soft
thud
of feet landing on the ground put an end to their moment of peace. The snipers were quiet, but even the brush of movement was detectable to shifters like Marcus and Nathan. They heard the scrape of clothing against bark, the shaky breaths and even, in Marcus’ case, the frenetic drumming of a heartbeat.
The sniper’s fear came off him in pungent beads of sweat.
Marcus almost felt sorry for him. The man was going to die and the poor fucker had to know it.
Though he was probably expecting a wolf. Marcus shifted, aware of his mate doing the same. The snipers were moving around the left and right sides of their trees respectively, so that Nathan’s would end up firing on Marcus, and Marcus’ on Nathan.
As if either of them were going to stand there and wait to catch a bullet.
Marcus crept around in the opposite direction, faster than his prey.
He saw the sweat-stained shirt on the narrow back. War was an ugly thing, he thought fleetingly as he moved to reach for the man. Marcus would rather be fighting him in a ring, face to face. Yet the use of weapons and lack of honor in that prevented him from doing so.
And these snipers weren’t concerned with honor. They were being paid to murder innocent people.
Marcus leaped onto the man, getting an arm around his neck as he did so. The scent of Tiago’s blood was on him. “He’d better be alive.”
He heard the scuffle as Nathan took down his prey. A shot rang out, but Nathan wasn’t harmed. Marcus felt him alive and strong, angrier than before.
Marcus stripped the weapon away from the sniper and took him down to the ground. “Murdering people is not nice,” Marcus said. “It’s a blight on your soul, if you have one. This isn’t murder. This is justice.”