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COLE

I t took nearly an hour to get Avery calm enough for her to drift back to sleep.

I lay beside her, listening to her slow, calm breathing.

Even when he wasn’t around, Kyle was still damaging her mind and well-being, and that pissed me off.

The one good thing about her nightmare was that it helped stoke my rage.

If there’d been any hesitation on my part about killing that fucker, it was gone.

I took my phone from the nightstand and texted the guys who’d gone with us to North Crest. I told them to meet me in the morning. We had things to discuss. After that, I shot Langston and Trent a similar message.

I dozed for an hour, then slipped out of bed so as not to wake Avery. After the stress of that dream, she needed all the rest she could get.

The clock in the kitchen read 5:45 in the morning, and the horizon was the faint gray that indicated the sun would soon be rising.

I glanced down at the responses from the texts I’d sent earlier.

Everyone had agreed to be at my house at six.

I waited in the living room, sipping a cup of coffee, until I saw the first set of headlights turn into my driveway. It was followed by more headlights.

Marshall Lundy, one of the pack members, hopped out of his truck and closed the door. “Well, Cole, what’s up?”

I glanced around at all the pack members who’d already gone into battle with me once and grinned.

“I’m going to be honest with you. I need to polish up my skills.

I need to get better, and we need to get better.

I want to get us all on the same page and ready to take this bastard down.

I plan on challenging Kyle for the pack. ”

“A challenge? ” a man at the back of the group called out. “Are you serious?”

Before I could respond, another set of headlights turned onto the driveway. Langston’s car. When he pulled up to the group and climbed from the cab, he grinned at the others.

“Is this what I think it is?” he asked.

“If you’re down for it,” I answered.

He rubbed his hands together. “Oh, this is gonna be fun.”

We spent the day training as a pack. Langston and Trent orchestrated the situations, and I worked through them with the pack—ambushes, small forces versus larger forces, sneak attacks, all-out war. By the end of the day, I’d never been so exhausted, and the pack members looked equally wiped out.

I was bound and determined to be ready for the fight with Kyle, and over the next several days, I spent almost every free waking moment with Langston and Trent. The other pack members came by for an hour here and there, but most of the time was spent sharpening my skills.

Three days later, Langston and I stood in the backyard. We were drenched in sweat, readying ourselves for another sparring session.

“You ready?” Langston asked.

“Always,” I said.

Without another word, Langston shifted and bolted toward me. No matter how many times I saw it, the speed of his wolf always shocked me. He was like a runaway freight train. I shifted, dropping to all fours and rushing forward to meet him head-on.

Rather than slamming headfirst into battle, I’d begun to realize I could actually have more success using my natural athleticism versus my strength and power.

With that in mind, I banked to the side just as Langston would have intercepted me.

Before he could react, I shifted back to my human form, leapt into the air, and sent a kick to his ribs.

He tumbled to the side, and I shifted in mid-air.

Landing on his chest, I lunged down to clamp my teeth on his neck.

At the last second, Langston slammed his paws into my chest and shoved me off, scrambling over to put his own teeth on my neck.

I gave a woof of surrender, and Langston backed away, shifting again.

Rather than being upset at losing, I was excited to have gotten close. I’d never had Langston that close to defeat.

“I almost got you,” I said, pumping my fist in the air.

“Hell, yeah, you did,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “I like that double shift you did. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Cole!”

Trent’s panicked voice tore the smile from my face, and I spun around to find my best friend sprinting toward me.

“What? What’s wrong?” I shouted. “Is it Avery?”

He skidded to a stop in front of us, shaking his head. “No. It’s something else. Things are getting bad.”

“You’ve got to slow down,” I said. “What’s getting bad? What happened?”

“Sorry.” Trent wiped his brow. “Something happened in town. To a human.”

Harbor Mills was a town that had a roughly fifty-fifty population of humans and shifters, so this wasn’t entirely surprising to hear, but I still wanted to know what had happened.

“What is it?”

“Just look.” Trent pulled his phone out. “I got the call about it five minutes ago, and Zayde was able to pull the video.”

Langston looked over my shoulder as I played the video. It showed an intersection near downtown. Several people milled around the street, going about their days. Nothing strange that I could see.

“Right here is when it happens,” Trent said.

I watched as a man, engrossed in his phone, strolled across the intersection. He passed another man and jerked, but continued on. Once he was on the other side of the street, he stopped. The guy glanced around, then staggered forward, dropping his phone as he grabbed the lamppost for balance.

“What are we looking at here?” Langston asked. “Is he having a heart attack or…”

Langston trailed off, and my stomach sank.

The man slid to his knees, and people gathered around to see if he was all right, but then he threw his head back and screamed. Blessedly, the video clip had no audio, but the pain and terror on his face were easy to see. Falling forward, the man began to convulse.

“What the fuck?” Langston whispered.

People tried to help him while others pulled out their phones, hopefully to call 911. A few seconds later, the crowd lurched away as the man’s body contorted, twisted, and morphed into a full-sized wolf.

Confused and terrified, the man-turned-wolf snarled and snapped its jaws at everyone around. The people fled, pushing and shoving at each other to get away.

There was only one person capable of doing this. We all knew it.

“Kyle,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “Motherfucker.”

Trent took his phone back. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “After this, the wolf took off into the woods and people started calling anyone and everyone they could think of. News has spread. My contact said the county mayor is aware of the situation now. He’s pissed.”

“It’s not going to be a good look,” I admitted.

“You think?” Trent said with a bitter smile. “A random human gets turned into a wolf in downtown Harbor Mills? And we’re the shifter pack of the town?”

“Looks like trouble is already here,” Langston said.

Looking up, I followed his gaze, and my heart sank. Two county sheriff cruisers were pulling into my driveway.

“Dammit,” I muttered under my breath. “Okay, boys. Smiles on. We have nothing to hide. Let’s not give them a reason to think we do.”

“Mr. Garrett?” one of the officers said as we walked toward them.

“That’s me,” I said.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Witherspoon. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Of course.” I smiled, but a storm was welling up inside my chest.

“Fantastic. Could we do this in private?” he added, sending a glance at Trent and Langston.

“They can stay,” I said. “They’re my official advisors. Anything we need to talk about, they can hear as well.”

“Very well,” the cop said, adjusting his utility belt. “We’ve had a situation occur in town. Do you know a man by the name of Gabe Kolchak?”

“I can’t say that I do,” I said, and that was the truth. I’d never heard that name in my life.

Witherspoon nodded amiably. “Well, about thirty minutes ago, Mr. Kolchak had some sort of an attack in the middle of town. Screaming, shouting, seizures, the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle. We’re here to speak to you about what happened afterward.”

“And what was that?” I asked, playing dumb but already knowing exactly who Gabe Kolchak was. The poor bastard from the video.

“This is gonna sound a little strange, but he turned into a wolf. We’ve got it on video.

Now,” he added quickly, holding a hand up, “that type of thing isn’t truly unheard of around here, not with the pack living in town.

What makes no sense is the fact that Gabe Kolchak is a human.

I don’t know about you, Mr. Garrett, but that’s pretty weird to me, don’t you think? What do you know about this?”

Taking a deep breath, I tried to think of the best way to go about this. The cat was out of the bag now. As much as we’d wanted this to remain an insular problem, Kyle had taken that option away. The only way to proceed was to let the authorities know. The local authorities, at least.

“Listen, Sergeant, I think it might be best if you called the mayor and your chief. See if they can head this way. Once we’re all together, I can tell you everything I know.”

The sergeant’s expression darkened. “Are you saying you had something to do with this?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. In fact, my pack is totally innocent of any wrongdoing. Call your people. I’d rather only tell this story once.”

He chewed at the inside of his cheek for a few moments, then came to some sort of decision.

“I’ll call ’em,” he called over his shoulder as he joined his partners, “but you better have a damn good story for me to get the mayor. He’s in the middle of a golf tournament as we speak.

He’s gonna be goddamn irate if I pull him out of that. ”

“I hate that for him,” I said with a fake smile. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about a golf tournament. People’s lives were at stake here.