Page 2 of Traded to the Alpha Wolf

“Why?” Kaiden asks, ever the peacemaker, but not naïve. “What are they looking for?”

Rowan’s mouth is a hard line. “They’re probably mapping bloodlines. More specifically, they’re hunting for variants, looking for alphas with old blood, I think. Looking for weaknesses, I guess.”

A chill settles over the table. For a minute, no one speaks. I feel it in my bones; the hunters aren’t just mindlessly trying to kill us; they’re evolving.

“So, they’re not just trying to attack us,” I say, louder than I mean to. “They’re looking into our blood and stuff?”

Brooks blows out a breath. “That sounds a bit creepy.”

Kaiden pushes his coffee aside and leans in, voice taut. “What’s the play here? Are they going to try to engineer a virus or something?” He glances at me, and I get the sense he wants me to say something reassuring, something that sounds like an answer. But I’m not in the business of reassurance. I’m in the business of reality.

“We don’t know yet,” Rowan says, and I can tell how much he hates that. The not knowing. “But we do know this: they’re following the families with the oldest lines. Scandinavian, Slavic, Basque. And the Pacific Northwest.”

Everyone looks at me, and I hate it. I look down at the table, fighting the urge to bare my teeth. My heritage is some of the oldest in the New World, but the others aren’t that far off, either.

“So what are we going to do about it?” I ask directly, “What are they doing in Europe?”

Rowan barely hesitates. “They’re moving east into the old Carpathian strongholds. There are reports of entire packs going underground. I’ve got a friend in Budapest who says the Order’s recruiting locals, offering big money and government contracts to look the other way.”

Alder’s voice is a rasp. “There’s always a market for it. Power, or just the thrill of killing something different. The flavor’s in the rarity.”

I fix Rowan with a more pointed look than usual. “So, what’s the plan? Sit around, wring our hands, and wait for them to find us? Or are we going to do something about it?”

Rowan doesn’t rise to the bait. He steeples his hands and looks at each of us in turn, eyes flat and cold. “We need intel. If they’re looking for something in our blood, we need to know what it is. If they’re getting smarter, we need to get smarter first. Alder’s working contacts in DC, and Kaiden’s got his people watching the border. But we can’t make a move until we know what we’re up against.”

I feel my jaw set, muscles aching with how much I want to snap at him. “It’s always wait and see. No offense, but that’s not how I was raised to deal with a threat.”

I feel the weight of Rowan’s stare, and for a second, I imagine what it would be like to throw down with him; part of me relishes the idea. It would be a hell of a fight, but I temper the urge and glance around the table. The others look conflicted, but I already know there are enough scars in this room from conflict with the hunters, and everyone wants to get the next moves right.

Rowan leans back in his chair, not a slouch but a deliberate reclaiming of space, and says, “No one moves on the Order until we have actionable intelligence. We’re not going to lose anyone else to a trap.” Rowan raises an eyebrow at me. “Any objections?”

Every muscle in my body is screaming to object, but I can read the room. This isn’t the place to take a stand against Rowan, at least not a full stand. Still, I can’t resist shaking my head as all eyes turn to me. “Yes,” I say, and the word lands heavily.

Rowan smiles a fraction, flashing teeth that aren’t all shifter. “Then we vote. All in favor of holding the line until we know more?”

Hands go up. Alder’s first, then Kaiden, but Brooks keeps his hand resting on the table. Rowan raises his hand last, throwing the vote his way.

I don’t raise mine, but I don’t need to. The math is already done, and it’s three to two. I appreciate the small nod Brooks throws my way. His vote surprised me a little, but I think we’re all showing our frustrations in different ways.

Meeting adjourned, I stand up before anyone else can say a word to me. I nod to Kaiden, who looks like he wants to talk, but I’m already moving past him. Outside, the sky’s gone from barely light to a bleak, noncommittal blue, and the wind’s picked up, howling off the mountain ridge.

I don’t drive home. I get in the truck and let it idle, hands clenched around the steering wheel until my knuckles ache. I stare at the line of pickups and SUVs, at the slant of the Mill’s roof against the sky, and I wonder how many more times we’ll have these meetings before anything happens.

We seem to have gone from all action to losing our nerve.

I set off, but just before the road forks—left for home, right for the city—I make a decision. I turn right, tires spitting gravel behind me. I can’t just sit around and wait for a perfect plan. The Order is already in motion, and nobody knows what they’re really after.

But they’ll sure as hell tell me by the time I’m done with them.

Chapter 2 - Mara

Sometimes I can still visualize the bullet passing through my mother’s sternum, a clean hole punched in the soft white cotton of her work shirt, and I wonder if it’s true that you don’t feel the second shot. The Order of Reclamation claimed her and my father in a warehouse off 503 and then burned their bodies the year I turned eleven. It’s hard to say if I was born for what followed, or if I was just the only one left to do it.

The thing about hunting hunters is that they’re naturally suspicious. But they never expect danger to look like me. At least, not at first. I’m a ghost in their midst, another runner in the low ranks, a pretty face pouring shots in the back room while the real deals are brokered on the other side of the bulletproof glass. My journey here started further north, not far from where my parents died, when I discovered hunters were still active in the area. I worked for them for two years before gathering enough information to turn over to the shifters—anonymously, of course, as I wouldn’t risk dealing with monsters like that directly. Then I stood back and watched as the pack tore them apart.

Once, I’d thought that would be enough, but the longer I spent with the hunters, the more I learned about them, their victims, and the extent of their network. I also learned that the group wasn’t responsible for my parents' deaths. I watched from a safe distance as the shifters took down the hunters for me that night, knowing I wasn’t done yet.

I drifted south and headed straight for this new cell, which took weeks to trust me enough to let me in, and now I live in the city compound, scrubbing glasses while men twice my size make a show of talking tactics and shifter kills. Sometimes it’s fun to nod along, pretending shock and awe when they bragabout last winter’s massacre, or the time they wired a hideout to collapse with a family still inside. Sometimes it makes me want to put my fist through the bar.