The Awakening: Britton (Entangled Covet) (23 page)

the handcuffs, she’d been horrified at the deep-plum rings around his wrists, but he assured her they would

quickly fade.

And they had. Over the last hour, the bruises had dulled to a pale green. By the next hour, they would

be gone, and no one would ever know he’d strained against those steel cuffs as the mating instinct had

roared over him, demanding he mark her. The more he’d yanked to free his hands, the more forceful the

urge had become, until he’d been desperate to make her orgasm and release the pressure of the
Drall
.

Woman, when I’m human again, I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.

He’d uttered those words without thinking, aching with the need to touch her, to take her the way he

wished, without worry, without fear…without fighting his beast.

It wasn’t until she was straddling his hips with him buried deep inside her that he’d wished he could

take those words back.

Because at that moment it fully hit him what
he
would be losing.

He didn’t
want
to be a human. He wanted to be a shifter, to have Val as his true mate, be anchored to

her even in the hereafter and not fear their deaths for the next fucking sixteen years.

The sick part about all of this was in a few short hours he may not even remember he felt like this. He

may be snarling at Val in disgust.

As much as he tried to stay positive, the negative kept creeping back in.

The deadline was only a few hours away. Something was going to give. The High Council would either

concede or attack. The kidnappers would escape, or be caught. The shifter community would either be in

mortal danger from the humans, or safe. The kid would reunite with his mother or be whisked off to
Dea

knows where. Britton would either be exonerated or resentenced.

He would either love Val or hate her.

And in each instance, he was terrified how the coin was going fall.

He kept reminding himself that the
Drall
was awakened now. If the serum had caused all those awful

emotions toward Val, maybe with the instinct flung wide-open, the serum wouldn’t be able to smother his

love for her. And he would be just a human, in love with a woman.

He’d settle for that if he had to, and just pray they both stayed alive until he was a shifter again and he

could bond them together forever.

When Val walked into the room, dressed in her sock-monkey pajamas, his chest swelled with love.

“What do you think is going on at the council?” Val asked.

He tugged her down beside him on the couch and wrapped an arm around her. “No clue.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling. It’s one thing for Harwood to order us to stand down—its happened before—

but he’s always been really good about keeping us abreast of the situation. This total lack of communication

is disconcerting and he’s not leaving us much time to react.”

“I agree. He’s spooked. I heard it in his voice yesterday. It was the first time I actually believed he may

give them what they want.”

“What could they have possibly threatened the council with?”

He’d like the answer to that himself. Sitting around and waiting made him antsy, but without any scents

to work with he and Val were cut off at the knees.

His cell phone rang. Tensing, he grabbed it off the table and glanced at the caller ID. “Speak of the

devil.”

“We’re back to work.”

“At least we’ll get some damn answers now.” He touched the phone icon. “Hello?”

“Are you both at the cabin?” Harwood said without preamble.

“Yes.”

“Put me on speaker.”

He hit the speaker button. “Okay.”

“Calhoun, can you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There should be a car pulling in any second with a package for Townsend.”

Britton glanced toward the window and, sure enough, a car was cresting the hill. “Just showed up.”

“Get the package and open it.”

Britton met the delivery boy at the door and took the square box from him. After he tore off the end of

the carton, a pile of clothes with name tags fell out. “Uh. What’s this about, Councilman?”

“Just smell them and tell me what you find.”

Ah.

Holding a white T-shirt to his nose, he breathed in deeply. Immediately, he was hit with the smell of

honeysuckle. “Shit,” he muttered as he dropped it and grabbed another piece of clothing, then another.

Each one carried a scent they’d been following in the woods.

“Do they match?”

“Yes. How did you get these? Whose are they?”

“Thank
Dea
,” Harwood breathed through the phone. “A couple of days ago, one of the founders of

MASK called us, concerned about a few people in the group. She said they had been trying to rile up the

membership and take some extreme measures to invoke change. When they went missing a few days ago,

she was worried they were planning to try something on their own, and was terrified we would believe it

was MASK behind whatever it was. So she called to warn us. She gave us names and we’ve been rushing

to acquire scent samples ever since.”

“What about this package that Seeder mentioned?” Britton asked.

“That came in a few hours later. It was another video. An interview of sorts. Charlie was being asked

questions about how he is treated at World Shifters. He’s visibly upset on the video.” There was a long

pause. “He told them we keep the children in cages, barely feed them, and even abuse them.”

Val pressed her fingers to her mouth in a gasp, then shook her head at Britton in denial.

He didn’t believe it, either. The council may be many things, but he truly believed it was working for

the good of the shifter community, however misguided its outdated laws might be.

“The kidnappers included pictures of a horrific-looking dungeon lined with cages and chains. It was in

response to my refusal to meet the demands in the letter you found. They saw I didn’t take them seriously.

And because I didn’t call Townsend off when they said, I now had to call you both off or they were going

to send the video to MASK before the deadline so the shifter community would be made aware of our so-

called treatment of mutated children. Everyone in the shifter community knows Charlie. There’s no denying

it’s him in the video.”

There was another pause as Britton swore softly. “But how…? Why—”

“I know people are furious over the Samantha Mills case, but no matter what anyone thinks, we do
not

mistreat or abuse those children. We provide a warm, loving, and
safe
environment that is capable of

handling their condition. I know Charlie. I’ve played Candy Land with him many times. We need to get the

boy back before we have two wars on our hands.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Now that we have positively identified the kidnappers, we have leverage to use against them. Calhoun,

I’m e-mailing you our files on each of the suspects with their background information. We want them taken

alive. You are
not
to use deadly force. There are four hours until their deadline. Get this wrapped up before

then.”

“
That’s
your plan?” Britton ground out in frustration. “How are we supposed to just happen across

them in four hours when we haven’t crossed paths in days?”

“Tracking is your field of expertise, Townsend. Not mine. Now both of you, get to work.”

With that, Harwood hung up.

“Fuck!” Britton flung a pillow across the room.

Val was already at her laptop pulling up the files.

“It’s okay,” she said while she typed furiously. “We’ve got this. You’ve already predicted where you

think they’re heading.”

There was no way in hell the High Council would be giving him a pardon if he fucked this up. Hell, that

would be the last of his worries. They might also reprimand Val for his decisions, and that thought terrified

him.

“What if I’m wrong? What if the kidnappers have spent the past two days moving even deeper into the

woods?”

Slamming down her pen, she pinned him with a scowl. “
Do not
do that. You are Britton Townsend, a

shifter with an amazing ability, and a detective with instincts that I have
complete
faith in. You will not

guide us wrong. Now get out your damn map and tell me which way we’re going.”

He held her gaze, taking strength from her faith in him. He would
not
fail her.

After he spread the topo on the table, they both stood over it.

“What’s your gut telling you, Britton?”

“That two days ago they were headed back toward the first cabin,” he said without hesitation.

“What does it say now?”

That it was almost over.

If the deadline was only a few hours away, the kidnappers wouldn’t go deeper into the mountains. They

would start moving closer to civilization, either to prepare to escape, if the council gave in to their demands,

or to get into position to reveal Charlie and his beast to the humans.

“I think they’re still at the first cabin, or will be shortly.”

“All right. That’s where we start. We need to change and get out of here.”

After Britton put on a pair of olive-green cargo pants and black thermal undershirt, he knelt down and

started going through the artillery in the backpack. When Val joined him, wearing the olive cargo pants and

black shirt he’d brought for her, he asked her, “I didn’t look at the files the High Council sent, and I sifted

through the clothes so fast I didn’t pay attention to the tags. What’s the shifter versus half shifter ratio?”

The more shifters there were, the more tranquilizers he would need. But if half shifters outnumbered the

shifters, the tranqs would be useless.

“Three shifters, not including Charlie. Two half shifters.”

Good. It would be much easier to even the numbers. Normal animal tranquilizers wouldn’t make a

shifter yawn, much less knock him out, so the drug they used was especially strong and would kill the half

shifters. To be on the safe side, he packed away twelve of the strongest tranquilizer darts.

“Do the half shifters have any special abilities?” he asked.

“No special abilities really, unless you consider being able to count cards special. The chick with the

orchid scent can heal quickly. Now
that
must be nice.”

Britton stared up at Val, his insides clenching. They were about to go into an extremely dangerous

situation. Both of them had been in this moment many times before. The calm before the storm. There was

always a sense of excitement that came along with a pending raid. But he didn’t feel any thrill now. All he

felt was an insane amount of worry for his mate. He wanted to lock her in a room to make sure she stayed

safe while he did this alone.

But that wouldn’t be fair to her. She was a cop, and a damn good one. He refused to allow his instinct

to protect her to interfere with something she was meant to do.

Instead, he came to stand in front of her, cupping the side of her face in one hand. She leaned her cheek

into his palm as her gaze met his. “I know. This time it’s different for me, too. I’ll be careful, Britton. Just

promise me you’ll do the same. No matter what happens, this”—she waved her hand between them—“has

to be put aside. If we let emotions cloud our judgment, we’re going to make mistakes.”

Easier said than done. He also had a beast with its own emotions to deal with.

He kissed her gently on the lips, then rested his forehead against hers. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Stepping back, she tilted her chin up. He grabbed a spritz bottle he’d filled with propane earlier back at

his cabin, and saturated her clothes with the stinking liquid, then his own. The more scent camouflage they

had, the better. With the kidnappers keeping their scents masked as well, the chemical should meld with the

existing stench already cloaking the air, keeping him and Val undetected.

He put the spritzer on the coffee table. “Let’s get this over with.”

An hour later, they’d hiked about three-quarters of the way to their destination, and Val had filled him

in on the files, giving him the important details he needed to know to make this takedown work.

The five people who had abducted Charlie were all a part of MASK. There was a young mated couple,

Bobby and Annie Silver. From the file, they were not connected to a mutated child, but had a long history

of jumping on any political bandwagon that was against the High Council. They had multiple prior arrests

for protests that had become violent, but nothing to the extent of this.

The other three were all related—a mother, father, and son. John and Emily Gragg were in their

midfifties and had joined MASK about three months ago. Right around the same time their daughter,

Rachel, and her mate had moved to Washington State. Britton had a feeling there was a baby hidden

somewhere in the state’s rural mountain ranges. The brother, Randy Gragg, was in his early twenties and

had worked at a body shop for last couple of years. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a Waltons-type family. If

they had been, Britton and Val might have been able to negotiate. But each of the Graggs had been in and

out of Kerker for crimes ranging from assault and battery, to possession of cocaine with the intent to sell, to