Page 1 of Hammerhead (Kinkaid Shifters #4)

O n the Top-Secret Plum Island military base

Miguel’s wrists ached in the uncomfortable iron cuffs. His shark snarled beneath his skin, but shifting would only leave him flopping around on land, unable to breathe. He might be on an island, but these military shifters weren’t going to let him anywhere near the water.

Oh, he could shapeshift to get out of the cuffs, then shift back to human, but the men around him would probably kill him before he managed the second shift. They hadn’t let him or any of his men alone long enough to even try to escape since being captured on the beach. There weren’t supposed to be shifters on this island. The intel for this op had been sorely lacking, which only made him angrier at the predicament he now found himself in.

Miguel forced his breathing to remain steady as the lion shifter across the table leaned forward, golden eyes gleaming in the dim light of the interrogation room. Kinkaid lions didn’t play games. He knew that much. Everybody knew that much.

“You think we should just let you go? When you’re probably working for the Venifucus ?” The man across the table—a Kinkaid, for sure—glared at Miguel, his golden eyes gleaming. His delivery was smooth, but there was a dangerous edge beneath his calm facade.

Miguel didn’t like hearing that word. Venifucus . He might be a shark and therefore living in the morally gray area between the Light and darkness, but he wasn’t evil. None of his guys were that bad, really. And none of them were allied with that ancient order known as the Venifucus .

Miguel lifted his chin. “We’re not your enemies.”

The man’s brow arched. “No? Because from where I’m sitting, you and your little band of sharks are working for the same son of a bitch who keeps trying to kidnap my friends. The same bastard who ordered a hit on the women closest to them. Civilian women. Human women. In order to get to the men. That’s pretty low. Even for a shark.”

Miguel swallowed hard, working to control his anger. He didn’t like this lion, or the snotty way he spoke of sharks. “We didn’t know what we were getting into when we took the job.”

The lion snorted, seemingly unimpressed. “Didn’t know? You’ve been trying to kidnap soldiers by targeting their families. That’s not just not knowing —that’s willful ignorance. Or maybe you’re just blindly following the orders of your Venifucus masters.”

Miguel said nothing. What could he say? That he’d been blinded by the promise of an easy payoff? That his pod had wanted to buy homes, build a small coastal community like those damned bears in Grizzly Cove? That they’d needed the money to escape a life of endless fighting?

Excuses. Weak justifications. None of them would change the fact that they’d taken blood money.

“Look,” Miguel growled, “we didn’t kill anyone. We didn’t intend to kill anyone. We’re not proud of what we did, but we’re just doing a job. We’re not them .” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the name of that ancient, evil sect.

The shifter’s lips curled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not them, huh? Then tell me, Miguel Aroyo—who exactly are you?”

Now, that was a really good question. Too bad Miguel didn’t have an answer.

The lion shifter stood, pacing slowly around the table. “We should have let those Green Berets finish you off.” He growled a bit, his cat issuing a warning. “But my Alpha thinks you might be worth something, so you’re not dead. Yet.”

The door creaked open before Miguel could respond. Another man walked in, but this one wasn’t a lion shifter. He carried himself differently—graceful, calm. Predatory in a way that made Miguel’s instincts sharpen. He smelled faintly of the ocean.

This one had to be a seal shifter. A selkie. The Kinkaid Clan had plenty of them, too. Miguel had no name for this one, but he knew the look in his eyes well enough. This was a man used to dragging secrets from the unwilling.

The selkie set a thick file on the table and flipped it open. A stack of surveillance photos slid across the surface. Miguel didn’t need to look to know what they contained—images of him, his brother, and his podmates moving along the coast, meeting with Kettering’s men. Proof of their sins.

The selkie finally spoke. “Let’s talk about what you’re going to do to earn your keep while you’re in our custody.”

“You’re not letting us go,” Miguel said quietly, mustering what dignity he could. “But you’re not going to kill us. What gives?”

“We have other plans. Unlike your former employers, we like to think we have a bit more patience in learning the truth about those we capture. We can’t let you go, but we’re not murderers. If you abide by our rules, you’ll stay alive and even come out of this with a bit of money in the bank. If you cross us, you’re dead. We’re giving you a chance, but only one. Screw up and you’re all history.”

Miguel exhaled slowly, feeling the cuffs dig into his skin.

Shit .

*

“What do you think?” Liam Kinkaid, a tall, blond Navy man and lion shifter asked those who had been observing the interrogation. Liam was running things under his father’s command on the top-secret military base off the coast of Long Island.

“It’s an audacious plan, if it works,” offered Captain Haliwell, the leader of the Green Beret unit that had been targeted by the hammerhead shifters and others in the employ of foreign agents. “Though it’s a shame there’s no secure prison where you can hold them until this is all over. It’s a risk letting them work for your family.”

“There aren’t many prisons that can hold shifters long term,” Liam explained again. These Green Berets had some awesome magic, but they were new to it, and to the wider world of shifters and other magical beings. “Our law is usually harsh and the penalty for doing something as heinous as they tried to do is usually death, but killing them in the heat of battle is one thing. Killing them in cold blood isn’t really something our human sides condone. And given their somewhat ambiguous reputations as men who only take jobs that aren’t completely evil, it’s good to give them a shot at redemption. Even though my lion wanted to rip their heads off at first.”

“Well, if they can be turned to work for our side, then so much the better,” Captain Haliwell said, rising from his seat at the conference table. They’d moved into the conference room to discuss the results of the interrogations more than two hours ago. Each of the shark shifters had been grilled and examined every which way and now they had to discuss whether or not their plan still seemed viable. “For what it’s worth, I think that last one—Miguel—is their leader and he seemed surprised that you were going to let them all live. He also didn’t hate the idea of working for your Clan, which surprised me. He’s not what I thought he was, but what he is, is still a mystery.”

“Exactly my thoughts,” Liam concurred. “We’ll give the Clan in Texas a chance to sort them out and then we’ll see.” Liam stood and stretched. “Like you said, if we can get them on our side, it’ll be a feather in our caps. Sharks have shady reputations, and some are downright evil, but the ones I’ve dealt with before were great whites or other varieties of shark. I’ve never really crossed paths with a hammerhead before. They’re…weird.”

Captain Haliwell laughed. “No shit. I’ve always thought those things looked downright prehistoric and I can’t really wrap my head around a person shapeshifting into one of them. I still have problems believing in lion shifters and werewolves and all the rest of you that I deal with every day.”

“Give it time, Captain,” Liam said with a grin. “We’ll grow on you. I know it.”