Page 23

Rocco woke in the middle of the night to an empty bed that was cold to the touch.

Emmy had been gone a while. Where had his mate run off to now?

Rolling out from under the covers, he stumbled around in the dark, unfamiliar space until he found a light switch.

He was dressed and out the door less than a minute later.

Anxious tension filled him, but he didn’t know why.

He just knew something wasn’t right. Premonition wasn’t one of his powers, but one of his grandmas had had a touch of it.

He’d learned to trust his gut when he started feeling this way.

Ignoring all speed laws, he sped out of the Lunetti pack complex, engaging the magic shielding built into his bike to keep him silent and unnoticed.

The familiar pull of his magic from his mate drew him on as he wove through the city’s streets, cursing when he had to backtrack because there wasn’t a direct path from his location to Emmy’s.

Finally, he approached a familiar area—the border road between the pack and MC territories, where any shared business was undertaken.

The feeling of imminent disaster only grew as he neared a warehouse ahead.

He added more power to the usual shielding around him, ensuring no one would see or hear him coming, even if they were as powerful as he was.

Movement in a side street drew his gaze, and he slowed to check it out, cursing as he took in the gathered police cars and assorted armed officers in full tactical gear.

What the fuck was going on? The Police Chief kept his people out of the families’ business, only getting involved to clean up any evidence that might clue the humans into their existence.

The human officers didn’t stand a chance against the wolf shifters he knew would be waiting with his fiancé, but a face-off of this many would be disastrous because the pack would be forced to kill them all if they got wind of their true nature.

The Council had been very clear about what they could expect if any of the families risked exposure again. It would be a cluster-fuck.

Accelerating his bike, Rocco rode right through the open doors to the warehouse, sliding to a stop between a vehicle with blacked-out windows and a table of weaponry that definitely wasn’t legal.

A touch of his power was all it took to shut the doors behind him, buying them a bit more time before they were noticed.

Across the other side of the warehouse, Emmy’s head shot up in surprise from where he stood talking to Marco and one of their packmates he hadn’t yet met. His fiancé looked right at him despite the magic keeping him hidden from everyone else.

“Rocco? What the fuck?”

Glancing around, Rocco noticed six other shifters nearby, all on alert from the doors closing without a visible cause.

Who knew how many were outside? Fuck. Scattering his glamour across this many people was going to take a lot of power and even more concentration.

He’d have to convince the particles of the air to make multiple moving targets appear invisible to officers who’d be approaching from all directions.

Casting his power out so he’d know when the police were moving in, he dropped the glamour he’d been holding. Every wolf in the place, except Marco and Luca, growled in challenge.

“Police. Incoming. At least twenty. I’m going to hide you with my power. Don’t fucking move an inch and don’t make a sound,” Rocco ordered, already weaving the protections around them as he spoke because the officers in question had just breached his early warning system.

“What—” someone cried. Rocco cut off the noise before it could reach human ears.

“Do as he said. Line the walls,” Marco snapped, racing to the nearest one and dragging one of his pack along with him as he went.

Turning his focus outside, Rocco used his power to find the three shifter sentries, holding them rigid and silent just in time to prevent them from doing anything rash as the officers passed.

At least they’d been smart enough to stay hidden.

He hadn’t had time to warn them. He’d just have to hope Marco could smooth things over once they got out of this. If they got out of this.

The table and vehicle were next. He couldn’t risk the police walking into them as they searched, so he made them appear like an old, rusted-out piece of machinery.

The kind you might find in an abandoned warehouse like this.

Forming the image in his mind from a museum he’d visited with his parents when he was young, he sweet-talked the surrounding air into projecting his imaginings onto the incriminating objects.

As the doors slammed open and light flooded the space, he managed to fling his power out to hide all ten of the people inside from view. At least the shifters had left any lights off, relying on their night vision. It was one less thing to hide when he tried to make it appear like no one was there.

Somehow, Emmy had ended up next to him instead of against the wall.

His mate was leaning into his side, a silent support, as he drew on more and more power to maintain the many fractured illusions he’d had to create.

The strain of maintaining so many separate glamours and shields was quickly taking its toll.

He couldn’t even connect them to get a decent power flow, because he couldn’t risk any of the officers noticing something strange if they walked through a glamour as they conducted their search.

Sweat beaded on his skin, and every bone in his body began to ache.

“Police! Everybody down!” a disembodied voice called over a megaphone.

They were really going for it with this sting.

What had they expected to find, and who the fuck had tipped them off?

Rocco forced his eyes to stay open despite the pain from the floodlights.

He needed to keep a visual of his immediate surroundings, although it was beyond challenging to do that and maintain the image of the machinery stable in his mind.

Emmy nuzzled in close as he worked, as if he could sense how close Rocco was to letting something slip.

As his breathing became ragged and his vision started to blur, Emmy leaned in and bit down on his shoulder.

Hard. The pain was exactly what he needed to drag his focus back.

Reaching down, he wrapped an arm around Emmy’s waist, clinging to him as he kept his glamours steady.

The officers had flooded into the space while he fought to maintain control.

One of them walked so close he thought he was going to have to use his magic to avoid her, but Emmy managed to inch them out of her way.

As if that wasn’t enough, she then went and peered at the table covered in weapons.

Not that that’s what she could see. The glamour meant she’d be seeing a complex arrangement of pipes and pistons that he really hoped she wasn’t qualified enough to realise wouldn’t do a damn thing.

He’d been in too much of a hurry for accuracy.

The rusted-out metal he’d imagined was all vibes.

Finally, she moved away to join a couple of other officers over by the door.

“The advanced team saw vehicles arriving. They have to be here somewhere.”

“Did they get anything on video?”

“No, ma’am. The suspects were earlier than expected. The tip was for a hand-off at 3 a.m. We should’ve had time to set up.”

“I don’t want fucking excuses. I want to know where the damn arms dealers and their weapons went. Move out, people! And get someone onto whatever video surveillance or satellite imagery there is around here.”

Officers filed out of the seemingly empty warehouse. The floodlights turned off. The sound of tyres on gravel drifted from outside. Rocco barely noticed. He was too busy trying to hold his fraying magic together long enough for them to get clear.

Somehow, the room kept getting darker even after the lights were off. That was Rocco’s last confused thought before he collapsed to the ground and consciousness slipped away from him.

Rocco woke to gentle fingers sliding through his hair and raised voices arguing in a way that was making his throbbing headache feel like daggers inside his skull. He lay still as he tried to figure out where he was and what had happened .

The warehouse. The police.

He wasn’t in the warehouse now. He knew because whatever he was resting on was soft. A couch, maybe. Or a bed.

“You okay?”

Emmy’s voice was a balm to the stress from the increasingly aggressive argument going on around them.

Blinking his eyelids open, Rocco winced as light assaulted his eyeballs.

His head was resting on something solid—his mate’s thighs—but now that he was awake, he was more focussed on protecting Emilio from whatever was going on.

Sitting up with a groan, he looked around the room as a lull fell on the raised voices. He was in a study. Marco’s, maybe? He’d been out long enough that Blaze and Storm were there. A quick glance out the window showed the dim light of dawn breaking through the darkness.

“What’s going on?” Rocco asked.

“That’s what we were hoping to ask you ,” Marco said, eyes glinting gold with his wolf as he glared at the other MC members in the room.

“We didn’t set you up. Why would Rocco save you if we had?” Blaze asked, frustration in his tone.

“Did Blaze tell you to help us?” Marco asked Rocco.

“I don’t have to give orders for my crew to know what to do,” Blaze said before Rocco had a chance to answer.

“But you didn’t just not tell him to help us. You actively kept him away from the deal. He didn’t even know it was happening,” Marco snapped.

“What deal?” Rocco asked, proving the point and earning himself a warning look from Blaze.

“The weapons were going to the MC as an engagement present,” Emmy explained, placing a possessive hand on his nape and rubbing down his throat with his thumb repeatedly like he could grind his scent into Rocco’s skin and remove all trace of the MC if he did it long enough .

Rocco leaned into the touch as he met his prez’s gaze, noting the flash of guilt there.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’re a loose cannon. You’re too reckless.”

Emmy snarled next to him, but Rocco placed a hand on his thigh before his fiancé could surge to his feet. “I’ve never jeopardised club business. These kinds of deals are what I help you with every day.”

“You stalked the Police Chief’s son and left evidence behind, Rocco. You jeopardised everyone’s business. This deal was too important.”

Marco scoffed, his fangs flashing as he spoke. “Or you knew he was obsessed enough with Emilio to step in, and that’s why you kept him away.”

“This is exactly what the D-2S have been doing all along, Marco. Manipulating us into getting at each other’s throats. They want us to destroy each other,” Blaze said.

“Have you got any proof?”

“The Chief said it was an admin error. Calls for that address are usually rerouted to one of the guys on the take, but this one had a typo and slipped through.”

“Convenient,” Silas muttered, sneering.

“The wedding’s off if you can’t prove to me you didn’t set us up,” Marco growled.

Blaze glared at him, the taste of his fire magic tingling in the air. “I will let your pet vampire question me under compulsion.”

Rocco’s eyes widened in surprise. The witches hated vampire compulsion. Especially because the ones with less morals than Vin used it to lure unsuspecting humans into being trafficked.

Marco stared at him for a long moment before heading to the door. “Fine. He’s playing in the basement. Come.”

The room emptied as the families’ leaders and their seconds headed off to do their thing. Tipping his head back until it was resting on the couch, Rocco winced as his headache throbbed. He’d overdone it.

“You need to rest more,” Emmy murmured.

“Yeah,” Rocco said, voice croaking.

“Come on.”

Next thing he knew, he’d been scooped up into his mate’s arms. He was too exhausted to do anything about it. Turning his face into Emmy’s chest, he nuzzled in close, drawing a deep breath of his reassuring scent.

“Thank you for looking out for my pack,” Emmy said as he headed up the stairs.

“I was looking out for you ,” Rocco corrected.

“No. You weren’t. You almost put yourself into burnout holding your glamour over all of them when you could’ve just hidden me.”

Rocco grumbled as Emmy lay him down on a bed, grabbing his fiancé around the neck before he could step away.

“Stay. Please.”

Emmy sighed. “Fuck. What am I going to do with you?”

“Marry me,” Rocco said, before slipping back into a deep sleep.