He knew immediately it was the same trail Keisha had used. Her rich scent filled his nostrils. Where are you?
Here. Behind the twisted oak. I’ve got a good view of both of them. Are you okay?
I’m fine. Other than the fact he wanted to throttle her for shutting him out earlier. He had more to worry about right now than his headstrong, independent mate.
Anton rounded the oak and found Keisha hidden in a thick patch of grass beside the twisted tree. The moment she saw him, her head pressed to the turf and her tail tucked between her legs.
Submission was not typical behavior of his alpha bitch.
Anton’s anger melted away into the night. He slipped into the brush beside her and touched his nose to her muzzle. What happened?
Xandi and I were running, sniffing for game when she heard something. I scented the men almost immediately and we split up before they saw us.
They know now that at least one wolf is nearby.
I saw him shoot. Thank the Goddess he missed. What do you think they want? Your dreams…
I wish I understood my visions better. Frustration boiled through him. There’d been ample warning of all this. He hadn’t trusted his nightmares any more than Keisha had. I don’t know what these two are after, but Oliver and Mei have unwanted visitors coming up the drive. They have to be acting together. We need to deal with these two as quickly as possible.
Lily! Keisha’s beautiful wolven head snapped around and her ears flattened to her skull.
She’ll be okay. Mei and Oliver will protect both the babies. He hated the look of fear in Keisha’s eyes, but she had to know the danger facing them.
Stefan’s voice slipped into Anton’s mind, linking both females as well. Okay. I’m in position. Xandi and I are going for the guy on the right. Can you take the one closest to you?
Yes. Give me a few seconds to get in position. Make it clean and fast and final. We don’t have time to toy with them. We’ll get our answers from the ones at the house. Go now.
The intruders hardly knew what hit them. Stefan leapt down from his place in the rocks beside Xandi. His powerful jaws locked on the back of his target’s neck, the weight of his solid wolven body snapped the man’s spine.
Anton’s kill was every bit as fast, though not as clean.
His target must have heard something just before Stefan grabbed the first man. He cried out and raised his gun, but Anton’s teeth clamped onto his throat and ripped through his carotid artery. The gun fired, but the dart flew uselessly into the forest. Blood spurted high, spraying a wide arc as the man went down with Anton’s jaws still locked around his throat.
He struggled for a moment. His mouth opened in a gurgling scream. Anton reset his jaws and choked off the sound. Finally the man’s body went still. Anton held tightly to his throat until the blood stopped pumping and slowed to a trickle, the pressure no longer governed by a beating heart.
Stefan and Xandi had already shifted. Xandi quickly looked through the supplies the two men had brought while Stefan searched the pockets of the one he’d killed. Keisha sat off to one side, ears still flat against her broad skull, and silently watched her mate.
Anton released his victim and shifted.
Only then did Keisha shift. She found the man’s wallet in his hip pocket and handed it to Anton. They’d still not exchanged a single word. Anton took the wallet and touched his mate’s hand with his.
“I’m sorry. You did the right thing. I should not have given you orders you couldn’t follow.”
Keisha’s shoulders slumped and she lowered her head. “I’m sorry I blocked you. I want you to know I absolutely hate going against your directions, but I will when I feel I have to.” She raised her head then, and looked at him directly, without any sense of her earlier submissiveness. “I’m also sorry I didn’t credit your dreams for the warnings they were.”
“I know. I wish I understood them better myself.” As far as Anton was concerned, the issue was closed. He glanced inside the wallet. Credit cards, a California driver’s license and the name of a business located somewhere south of San Francisco. It sounded like a lab of some kind. He quickly handed the wallet back to Keisha. “Stefan and I are going back to the house to help Mei and Oliver. Can you and Xandi take care of these two?”
He saw Keisha glance in Xandi’s direction. Xandi took the second man’s wallet from Stefan and nodded. “We’ll drag them into the cave.” She gestured to the rocky terrace where she’d been hiding. “Their injuries are consistent with a wild animal attack, should anyone ever find them. The odds they’ll ever be discovered are fairly slim.” She took the wallet from Keisha and stuck both of them in the low cleft of a tree to retrieve later.
Anton leaned over and kissed Keisha. “Good idea. Bring the wallets back with you. We need to figure out who the hell these two were, what’s going on, who sent them. I’ll get the info to Luc Stone. C’mon, Stef.”
Anton shifted. Stefan followed him. With a final backward glance at their women, both wolves raced back down the trail and headed toward the house.
The black SUV rolled slowly into the shadows and stopped in darkness just beyond the glow of lights ringing the driveway near the main house. Oliver waited close by. His mottled leopard coat made him nearly invisible.
Mei remained on the porch, tucked down low beside the porch swing. She’d slipped through the open window and moved closer in case Oliver needed her, but first she’d turned all the house lights off. The porch was completely dark. The lights along the drive were solar powered, so she’d not been able to extinguish them, but their light might work to her advantage.
The intruders would be going from bright light to the darkened house, should they get that far.
Igmutaka’s presence was strong within her tonight. She sensed his excitement and his coiled strength. Mei knew that, were she in human form, she might have laughed out loud. Who would have thought that Mik Fuentes’s Sioux grandfather’s spirit guide would end up inhabiting a mongrel Asian shapeshifter from Florida?
Of course, who would have thought little Mei Chen would grow up to be a Chanku shapeshifter in the first place? The many turns her life had taken since Eve Reynolds caught her shoplifting in a little mini-mart in Tampa still boggled her mind.
Mei heard the sound of car doors opening and raised her head, once again fully alert to her surroundings. There was no interior light in the vehicle, but with her powerful night vision Mei picked out at least three shadows moving near the side closest to her. She wasn’t sure if there was a fourth one.
She wished Eve and Adam were here, but they’d gone south to San Francisco to see Mik, Tala, and AJ. A few extra bodies would come in handy about now.
The soft scrape of nails on the far side of the deck caught her attention. Mei jerked her head in the direction of the sound, and recognized the dark wolf as Anton Cheval the moment he rounded the corner. Another wolf, this one with silver-tipped fur, followed close behind him. Stefan Aragat.
Mei growled quietly, alerting both wolves to her presence. They couldn’t communicate while she was in leopard form.
She closed her eyes, thought wolf, and shifted. It always took her a moment to get her bearings, going from leopard to wolf, and she felt Igmutaka’s ire. He did not like this form at all.
I’m here. Silently she spoke to the two wolves, mindtalking in the way of their kind. By the swing. Be very quiet. At least three, maybe four guys just got out of an SUV parked under the big fir tree at the end of the drive. There, just beyond the lights. Oliver’s near them, in leopard form. Are you guys