Chapter 5
Cricket
Mate.
My mate.
My fated mate.
I can’t fucking believe it. Of all the places in the world, why do the Fates think here and now is a good time to spring this shit on me?
I knew something was up the moment I walked into the briefing room, but I wasn’t sure what it was.
The scent was sweet and had my cat lifting his head to sniff the air, but there were a dozen people between me and the front of the room where two females sat.
The scent mixed with my brother’s, which only annoyed me and my cat, and then there was Packard’s lion and Pitch’s bear also stinking up the joint.
But when she approached me, my need to mark her was nearly impossible to deny.
I had to close my eyes and hang my head so she wouldn’t see the physical changes I fought to contain.
My fangs descended, and I’m sure my eyes glowed with predatory need, which made talking to her impossible.
I’ve spent the last hour getting myself under control, and now my mind and body are singularly focused on her—fuck everything and everyone else.
Agent Rumpert? Yeah, that motherfucker is going to die if he so much as looks at her wrong again.
And that goes for everyone else too. Watching her in action this morning, I know she won’t like my protection.
She’s a woman in a man’s world who wants to prove herself, which is great in theory, but most of these assholes would prefer to put her in the kitchen or on her back.
Fuck me. Am I really so different though? As my mate, I want nothing more than to get her on her back—or her knees, or against a wall. It really doesn’t matter.
I shrug, glancing into the dark corners behind us at Crash who watches us from the shadows. “It’s done. We did what we had to do this morning, and now we’re over it.”
“Identical twins, huh? Is that why they brought you on?” Doralee returns to punching and kicking her heart out for another ninety-second bout before slowing down and giving me a chance to respond.
“I guess so. Your portion of the operation is the most important. Identifying and building a case against the powers behind this shit show is fine, but saving these women and children is what really matters.” I dare to stare at her face.
She’s beautiful with dark, near black curly hair and hazel eyes that are more green than brown.
There is a light spattering of freckles over the bridge of her button nose, and her cheeks are flushed with exertion—although I’d love to see her otherwise exerted.
Dammit, there’s no way I can be any better than the rest of these douchebags with these thoughts running through my head.
Once again, I look past her into the darkness at Crash.
“What, motherfucker?” I project to him. “Why are you lurking in the shadows like a creep?”
“Why are you hovering around my girl?” he projects back.
I scoff. “If she was your girl, your scent would be all over her, and it is not.”
I can’t believe we’re having this fight again. The last time we had it, I ended up with a knife in my back and never saw him again.
Or at least I never thought I’d see him again.
“She’s mine,” he hisses, emerging from the shadows to walk toward us.
I growl softly, debating the sanity of telling him my truth.
She is mine.
The Fates have said so.
Of course, she might have other ideas, and I’ll have to deal with that, but she’s the only one who has a say in this.
He damn sure does not.
“Hello?” She arches her brow and glances over her shoulder as Crash comes into view. “Oh.”
“I have to go,” I say quickly, knowing if he gets close, my cat will push out our mating pheromone and he’ll know instantly. There’s a chance it’s already too late. “See you tonight, Agent Baker.”
“Uh, yeah,” she says, taking a step back from the bag.
Walking along the edge of the building, I slip out the same back door Rumpert stomped through minutes ago, but I hang out on the other side of the building opposite of the punching bags, my ears perked for any pieces of conversation I can pick up.
“Hey, Doralee,” Crash says.
“Hello.” Her tone is terse, which makes me smile.
“Are you mad at me for earlier?”
I roll my eyes at his cheesy attempt to be charming. What a dick.
“Yes,” she huffs. “You cut me off and dismissed my meeting when you stood up.”
“I was trying to shut down Rumpert before he said something that required a physical response.”
“Don’t you think one fight a day is enough?” Her tone lifts, and I believe she’s mocking him.
Another reason to like her.
“I see you’ve met my brother.” Oh yeah, he doesn’t sound pleased at all, which makes me deliriously happy.
“Yes, he started the day as an asshole, but he apparently knows how to apologize.”
“Which makes him not an asshole?”
“It definitely moves him down the list.”
“Careful with him, Doralee,” Crash warns, and my hackles go up because his voice grows softer, like he’s leaning in to talk to her.
Images of him reaching out to brush her hair back—the same thing Rumpert was about to do when I intervened—causes my cat to vibrate in anger.
“He’s a snake and only cares about himself.
If it wasn’t for the mission, there’s no way in hell I’d let him stay. ”
“Our mission of saving women and children?” Her voice comes in clearly, backing my cat down because there is no way they are whispering sweet nothings to each other.
“He seems to be one of the few people here that remember the most important part of this operation is rescuing and saving innocent lives.”
Crash sighs. “That mission is the only reason I’m here too. We don’t care about jurisdiction or any of the other bullshit the rest of you bitch about. I’m here to bring those kids home—with you.”
“Fine.” She turns her back, her voice distant now. “I’ll meet you at the vehicles at eighteen hundred.”
“Do you not want to go over the script again?”
“I know my role. You know yours. We represent different buyers with converging enterprises.”
“I was thinking we should switch it up. Present ourselves as man and wife.”
My hackles rise again, and I clench my hands into fists at my sides. I’m going to fucking kill him. Did he catch my mating pheromones? Does he know? Is that why he’s pulling this shit?
“Cricket?” Colonel Packard approaches, his brow furrowed. “What are you doing out here?”
“Avoiding Crash,” I mutter, no longer able to hear either of them inside the building.
“Is this going to be a problem? Can I trust the two of you alone?”
“Alone? Are you going somewhere?”
“I got called back to MirMax.” He sniffs the air and narrows his eyes on me. “I only came here to get you settled with Crash, but if your bullshit is going to jeopardize the mission, I’ll send you home.”
“No,” I say too quickly. There’s no going home for me. Not now that I’ve met my mate. “I’m good. We’ll be fine.”
He sniffs the air again. “Something’s off.”
I shake my head. “I have over eight years of animosity to work through, Colonel. It’s going to take some time, but it’ll be fine.”
“Shifter children, Cricket. That’s all that matters.”
“Yes, sir,” I nod. “You know, we haven’t discussed how I’m supposed to identify them. The teenagers, anyone within six months of their first shift, I’ll be able to sniff out… but the rest of them?”
“That’s why I came looking for you and Crash.
Let’s walk back to my office, and I’ll text him to meet us there.
” I follow Colonel Packard, feeling no need to mention that Crash is right inside with the woman I mean to make mine.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and sends a message.
We walk into the first airplane hangar and through a maze to his office, where he pulls out a bag from the bottom drawer of his desk.
At the same moment, Crash walks in. We glare at each other but say nothing audibly or telepathically to each other.
“This is a modified version of a black light.” Packard flips over his wrist and waves the flashlight over his veins where the skin is the thinnest. Tiny dots glow in his blood as it pumps through his veins, similar to the way our irises glow when our animal pushes forward to look through our human eyes.
He hands it to me, and I’m amazed by the luminescent bits floating around inside of me.
I’ve heard of this, but I’ve never seen it.
“Shifter DNA has building blocks invisible to the human eye, but with this black light and your enhanced eyesight, you’ll be able to see dormant traces of our genes in shifter children. Worse case, flash them in the eyes, but the inside of their wrists should be sufficient.”
“And how will I mark them? Invisible ink or something?”
He hands me a surgical steel tube that resembles a syringe and a clear tube of what looks like black rice. “You’re going to chip them.”
I stand still and turn my eyes to Crash, who has the decency to hang his head and study his boots. “We’re going to chip shifter children like pets? Tag them like cattle?”
Colonel Packard rolls his shoulders and gives me the ‘you’re in no position to question an order’ look. “Yes.”
“No.” Shaking my head, I dump the items on his desk. “You have to be fucking kidding me right now. Haven’t we always railed against the idea of being treated like livestock?”
He sighs. “First, these children are currently being treated like livestock. Second, we don’t know how many children are missing, or for how long they have been missing.
There could be vulnerable shifters shipped across the globe right now, and we have nothing to go on.
We’ve never developed a worldwide database of shifters—alive or dead—so we have no way to know how many are affected. ”
“So, what? Are we going to require all shifters to document themselves now? The closed communities want nothing to do with that.”
“We can’t protect them if we don’t know they exist.”
“They didn’t ask for our protection!” I stab my finger into the top of his desk. “Fates be damned, they don’t want government oversight. Even an underground government with limited power and resources.”
“What choice do we have, Cricket? They need our protection, and the truth is in today’s world of cell phones and cameras, we can’t have children shifting uncontrollably for the first time in the middle of a marketplace across the world where no one can shield them.
It’s not just about taking care of them, it’s about protecting all of us. ”
“How is chipping the children we come across over the next week going to help us find children that have already been sold and shipped across the world?”
Colonel Packard looks uneasily at Crash, who shakes his head. “We might have to leave a few behind.”
My jaw drops, and I take a step away from them.
Who the fuck are these people? How did I ever work for them? I need to talk to Erick and Kade, because my brain is about to explode.
Were we ever this immoral during our missions? I thought we were the good guys.
When I say nothing, Colonel Packard continues. “If it comes to that, and I’m not saying it will, we would be less than a few hours behind them. Yes, we’d use them, but we will never sacrifice our own.”
“Not our own, but maybe others?” I snarl through clenched teeth.
I hate everything about this.
“If we do this correctly, we’ll gather more than enough intel to launch additional operations separate from this multi-agency bullshit, and we’ll bring home all the women and children, not just the shifters.”
Now he sounds like the commander I remember following blindly. That sounds like the kind of mission we perform.
“I told you there were going to be parts of this mission you didn’t like. You’ve always been on the go team, Cricket, but this is what happens behind the scenes to get ready. It’s not always pretty, but we do what we have to do to be successful.”
“Fine,” I say with zero enthusiasm, snagging the chips and implantation device, along with the flashlight.
“My XO is in charge. I expect you two to be professional soldiers in front of the agents while I’m in Colorado.”
Sliding my eyes Crash’s way, I nod again. “Fine.”
“Yes, sir,” Crash says, also nodding.
Colonel Packard sighs. “I have to go. Something big has come up.”