Page 2 of Hammerhead (Kinkaid Shifters #4)

T hree months later, off the coast of Texas

Miguel and Jose Aroyo didn’t claim to be shifter geniuses, but they both knew they had screwed up royally when they’d accepted a job from eccentric German billionaire Abdul Kettering. The half-Afghani Kettering was heir to a fortune made by his late, arms-dealer father, and he continued in the same line of work, among others, that were definitely gray areas, if not totally black.

As shark shifters, Miguel and Jose weren’t exactly goody two-shoes. They lived their lives in the gray and hadn’t been raised to expect mercy from land-based shifters, or the humans that ruled over the dry areas of the world. Sharks had to be tough, or they’d get trampled when they chose to walk on two legs. In the water, they were supreme—or close to it.

Miguel and Jose were hammerhead shark shapeshifters. Just like the rest of their small group of bachelors that had banded together in hopes of making a lot of money in a short amount of time and setting themselves up like those crazy bears had in Washington State. The sharks didn’t expect to start their own town or anything as grand, but they could maybe buy houses in some coastal area and form a little community.

If they got that far, they hoped to attract mates, the way the bears supposedly had. Life was hard alone, and the hammerheads just wanted a nice place on the shore where they could live life and maybe raise families. But to do that, they needed cash, and Abdul Kettering had offered them a whole lot of money to capture a few human Green Berets.

They had guessed the mission would be difficult—since the human men had extensive training—but definitely do-able. Miguel and his friends were sharks, after all. Kettering had told them that the Army guys might have a bit of magic, but they were new to it and probably couldn’t use it well. He’d also suggested going after the women around those Army dudes as a way to force them to comply, after the outright snatch attempts made by earlier teams hadn’t worked out as expected.

Boy, had that been a mistake. Miguel and his small pod had been trapped and caught like any dumb flounder.

They’d been shot with poisoned arrows by a human woman who’d turned out to be some kind of witch. At least, that’s what they believed after being magically poisoned and then given a magical antidote by the same woman.

The same woman their black-hearted mercenary colleague Kotsa, who was a sniper, had shot only a few days before. He’d shot her in the shoulder—though he’d been aiming for her heart. Yet, she’d been healed enough to draw and aim a compound bow, which was no easy feat for a woman, even one with no injuries. She’d also managed to shoot two men with that bow in rapid succession. Miguel still didn’t know how she’d managed that. They were shifters, for goodness’ sake! They should’ve been too fast and agile for her to hit even one of them, much less two.

The Green Berets had captured the pod and then turned them over to a bunch of shifters who were also Navy SEALs. The leaders were Kinkaids, which opened a whole other can of worms. No shifter wanted to get crosswise with the all-powerful lion king, Sam Kinkaid. He was rumored to be ruthless in both business—where he’d made billions for both himself and his Clan—and when it came to his people. And the entire operation on that secret military installation seemed to be run by one of the elder lion Kinkaids. The SEAL Teams were known to be lousy with Kinkaid selkies. And they were everywhere on that island where the target Green Berets had been stashed.

Oh, yeah. The whole mission had been a clusterfuck from the moment Miguel and his pod had signed on. They’d gone in without all that vital information and had been caught totally unprepared. They’d been interrogated until Miguel felt sure they had no secrets left. Then they’d been put on transport and sent to Galveston, Texas, of all places. There, they’d been put under the watchful eye of the Kinkaid Clan. Getting away from the lion king’s justice was not going to be an easy thing.

It became clear almost at once on their arrival in Galveston, as to why the sharks had been sent to the Kinkaids. The Clan wasn’t just made up of lions, but selkies as well. The Irish ancestor of the current Alpha had been a selkie—a seal shifter. As a result, the current Clan had both lions and seals in it, and it was to the seals that the sharks had been assigned.

In the wild, some species of shark might eat seals, but these shifters were not prey by any stretch of the imagination. The hammerheads had been put to work on one of the many boats owned and operated by Kinkaid Industries and sent out to do deep-sea repair work on the floating oil rigs Kinkaid owned in the Gulf of Mexico.

The work suited their abilities, and they were actually being paid really well to do it, so the sharks were going along with their punishment and semi-captivity, for now. It was better not to anger the all-powerful king of the lions and get most of the military shifters in the U.S. on their trail once more. Miguel and his pod mates had discussed their situation at length, and they all believed it was better to bide their time working for Kinkaid and saving up their money.

They still might be able to live out their dream of buying nice homes on the waterfront and attracting mates. In fact, some of the ladies of the Clan weren’t put off by their being sharks, and a few of the guys in the pod had been casually dating some of the women in the area. Those guys, in particular, didn’t mind the change of plans at all.

It might take longer to achieve their dream this way, but at least they were doing it without earning the enmity of some very powerful people. Miguel realized that, as he got older, he didn’t really want all the conflict and strife in his life that he’d craved in his younger days. Now that he’d passed his century mark, he just wanted to settle down somewhere with a good woman and raise children, if possible. Was that too much to ask? Even for a shark?

It’s not like he was a great white. Those bastards were tough S.O.B.’s, and these days, were running with the mob in various countries. They were smuggling drugs, kidnapping pretty young women to sell to the highest bidder, and running prostitution and murder-for-hire rings all over the world. Not good people to get involved with.

Hammerheads, by contrast, were still sharks, but they were the butt of a lot of jokes among other kinds of sharks. It wasn’t fair. They were just as lethal. Just as deadly. They just looked a little weird to the modern eye. Could he help it if evolution chose to leave them as they had been millions of years ago with their eyes so widely spaced apart?

At least they had a cool name. Hammerhead. Yeah, Miguel had always liked that. It sounded badass.

But they weren’t as bad as the great whites or some of the others. They kept to themselves a lot because of the teasing and derision. Which was why this small group of bachelors had banded together when they’d met up in the ocean, and on land. There was strength in numbers, and all of the guys in his small pod were similar in skill, temperament and goals. They all wanted to settle down and figured it would be easier as a group than trying to do it solo.

Miguel leapt up out of the water in his human form to land on the deck of the Kinkaid boat. He had a work shift today, and he’d come back to the boat to get his gear. The Kinkaids were cool about letting him and his pod swim in the deep as much as they liked. It was easier to live as a shark, with lots of space to swim, than be stuck on a little boat for days on end. As a result, most of the guys stayed in their fish form on their days off, only touching base on the boat when they were scheduled to work.

The selkies spent a lot of time in the water too, so the hammerheads couldn’t get into too much mischief. A fast and supple selkie was always somewhere nearby, keeping tabs on them. Gaining more trust would take time. Miguel knew that. He and his pod had screwed up, and it was going to take a while before the Kinkaids got over it.

In the meantime, he and his friends were making really good money doing work that suited them. It honestly wasn’t like being a prisoner at all. They had a lot of freedom, though the Kinkaids did keep an eye on their whereabouts and what they got up to on their days off. Which wasn’t much. There wasn’t a lot to do around here, so far from shore, except swim, hunt and swim some more. Typical shark stuff. Not too exciting, really.

Except… Miguel had thought he’d seen something on his last big circle of the boat. He’d surfaced for a few minutes, orienting himself to where the boat had moved during the last day or two while he’d been swimming, and he could have sworn he’d seen something in the distance.

An island.

An island that disappeared when he’d taken a second look. One minute, it was there. The next, poof, it was gone.

That smelled of magic to him. Unless he’d finally gone around the bend and lost all his marbles. He didn’t think so, though. He suspected it was magic that kept that island shrouded from view most of the time.

Intrigued, he’d wanted to check it out, but he had a work shift. If not for that, and the progress he and his pod had been making with their Kinkaid watchers while all acting on their best behavior, he might have gone searching for the mysterious island. But he’d promised the rest of the guys. They were all going to behave to get the heat off the group. He couldn’t let them down.

So, he’d gone back to the boat and vowed to check it out on his next few days off.

Deidre had arrived on the boat only that morning and was still getting used to the way her Kinkaid cousins ran their business. She’d been briefed on the shark shifters who were under observation of the Clan for having done some bad stuff. She wasn’t surprised. Sharks were the ultimate bad boys of the water shifter world. She’d run across her share of sleazy great whites in her time, but she’d never encountered a hammerhead shifter.

She was looking forward to learning more about them, actually. If she was going to run a boat like this in her home waters for the far-reaching and ever-expanding Kinkaid Industries, then she was going to have to find some aquatic shifters of her own to work on her crew, and sharks were known for their muscle and stamina. She just wouldn’t hire any great whites. She didn’t like what she knew of them, and she’d never met a single one that wasn’t some kind of scoundrel.

Most of them were on the wrong side of both human law and the eternal battle of good vs. evil. She didn’t want to deal with any of that on her crew. She just wanted strong men who could handle the pressure and had the strength to do the job. Was that too much to ask?

When she saw the bronze-skinned Adonis leap out of the water and land on the deck of the boat, her breath caught. He was like something out of legend. He’d shifted in mid-air, though he seemed to have started the shift the moment he left the water, and by the time he was on deck, he was on two feet. Very human. Very naked. And very well hung.

As a shifter herself, she was used to nakedness. Almost every shifter went into and came out of their shift without their clothing. Only the really super magical species could take their clothing into shift and have it return when they resumed their human form. She didn’t know where it went or how it all worked, but she just chalked it up to another magical mystery.

As a selkie, she had a lot more magic than the majority of shifters, but she still had to do the naked thing when she shifted shape, so nakedness was nothing new or exciting to her. Except maybe when she saw a bod like the one that had just leapt onto the deck like it was no big deal.

He was a handsome so-and-so, she’d give him that. He had dark hair that had just enough natural curl to make it look silky and inviting. His body was ripped. Sleek muscle, broad shoulders, and washboard abs that made Deidre’s mouth go dry. Sweet Mother of All, that man was hot .

“Oh, good,” came a voice from behind her. “Cousin Deidre. When did you come aboard?”

She turned to greet her cousin, Tom Kinkaid, with a big smile. “Just a few minutes ago, actually,” she told him, reaching up to give him a big hug. “I swam up and borrowed clothes from the bin.”

Most shifter households and boats, for that matter, kept extra clothing available for those who arrived in their animal forms. On a boat like this, it was even more important for there to be towels and dry clothing available for those coming out of the water. Deidre had her hair wrapped in a towel and was dressed in a loose T-shirt and shorts that she’d found in a compartment on deck.

Tom was a lot taller than her, and he gave great big bear hugs, even though he was a seal shifter, like herself. They’d known each other a long time, and he was like another brother to her. In fact, it had been his idea to expand this operation to the European market, and he’d even suggested her family to run it. This first visit to the Gulf to check out how it all worked might be the beginning of a new business line for her family back home.

“That was a long swim for you,” Tom said as he pulled back to look at her. “Are you tired? Do you need to rest?”

“In these temperate waters? It was nothing. Truly. I enjoyed the exercise. You’re a spoiled selkie with such warm water to swim in. It feels almost tropical down here to me,” she told him, laying the brogue on thick, just to tease him.

“Let’s go to the galley and get some coffee. I want to hear all about your family and how everyone is doing. I’ll give you the nickel tour of the boat on the way down,” Tom offered.

She agreed, and they headed below for the tour and the promised coffee, as well as a plate of sticky buns and some other confections that Americans loved so much. Who was she kidding? Deidre liked them just as well and enjoyed her frequent trips to the U.S. and the varied cuisine in different parts of the country.

It wasn’t until later that same day that she ran into the handsome shark shifter. The crew had gathered in the galley for dinner, and Tom introduced her as an observer. The dark-haired man was there. She learned his name was Miguel, and his brother, Jose, sat next to him. The other sharks were spending most of their time in the water since they were off duty at the moment. Tom explained how the on-duty crew lived on the boat while the off-duty guys generally liked to spend their time in the wild rather than cooped up on the boat. It made sense to her, though the waters of her homeland weren’t nearly as comfy and warm as these. Still, they were creatures born of the sea, and nature had all sorts of beauty, even in the harshest of weather.

She found herself sitting across from Miguel when they were all seated in the relatively small galley, and every time she looked up, she found his dark eyes trained on her. His intensity made her feel a bit uncomfortable, but she tried not to let it show. She could handle a handsome man who probably knew just what effect he usually had on the fairer sex. Best not to let him know he was getting to her.

He was a shark. She wanted nothing to do with sharks of any kind, no matter how handsome. She was a selkie of a long and proud magical heritage. None of her ancestors had ever gotten mixed up with a shark. Lions, maybe, but no sharks. And lions tended to be noble creatures at heart. She couldn’t say the same about sharks. They weren’t even mammals. Who knew what was going on in their fishy minds? And she had no clue how it worked when half your soul was human and half giant, deadly fish.

They didn’t have a good reputation and everything she’d seen of the sharks in her home waters hadn’t impressed her. They were apex predators and most species of shark hunted seals in the wild. None would dare hunt a selkie, of course. Her innate magic protected her from that sort of degradation. But the great white shifters she’d known would threaten selkies just for fun. They were all pretty warped and the biggest, baddest bullies of the sea.

She’d never had any interaction with hammerhead sharks, though. The ones present at the meal were handsome. Miguel was, by far, the most alluring man she’d ever seen, even knowing he shared his soul with a shark spirit. No matter her low opinion of sharks, she couldn’t help but notice him, especially when he seemed to be watching her as much as she was watching him.

Was it possible? Was he as fascinated by her as she was by him? She wasn’t sure, but it was beginning to feel that way.