Chapter Twenty-Six #2
The shivering rat shifted and stretched back into a dirt-streaked, disheveled little man.
He smelled terrible, as did the entire house, and I had the sudden urge to drag him out into the darkness and hose him down.
I kept those urges contained, though, and let the alphas take over while I remained poised to attack if the sniveling beta tried anything stupid.
Beckett threw a threadbare robe at him. “Cover up,” he spat. “And listen carefully.” The man on the chair scrambled to comply, his hands and arms trembling as his eyes darted around, taking us all in.
“L-listen,” the guy stammered, but Beck cut him off.
“Shut up. You know why we’re here. Who we are.” As the dealer nodded, Beck continued, “You’re going to answer our questions, and then you’re going to confess everything to the police when they arrive.”
The beta whined and began to protest, but snapped his mouth shut at the growls his lack of cooperation elicited from the rest of us. But just as I thought he was going to capitulate, he screwed his face up and whined again.
“C’mon, man, the Moonmusic people paid me a bunch of money to fuck with you. I didn’t want to,” he added as the growling started up again, “but I needed the money, y’know?”
“No,” Beck snapped, “I don’t know. Because no amount of money would make me hurt innocent people.”
“Look at the way I live,” the beta gestured around us wildly, “what was I supposed to do?”
“You could have come to us. Shifters Sanctuary is named that way for a fucking reason.” Beck growled back, refusing to accept the half-assed excuse.
He was a damn good Alpha.
Even though he looked like he still wanted to argue, the beta seemed to grind his teeth before nodding. He glanced down, shrugging. “Whatever. Like you would’ve helped me anyway.”
“Guess we’ll never know,” Rex snarked, having shifted back to his human form, not seeming to care that he didn’t have clothing to change back into.
If anything, he seemed poised to shift again, should the need arise.
I caught his eye, feeling the corner of my lips quirk as we shared a silent moment of understanding.
He hated the Moonmusic people for their nearly-successful attempt at kidnapping his son. I had been caught in the crossfire that night, taken by surprise and knocked unconscious, and I couldn’t say I was a fan of what they had tried to do, either.
Outside, the sound of tires on dirt and slamming car doors drifted in from the open front door. Heavy, booted footsteps followed, and a contingent of at least six men with guns burst into the room, demanding we put our hands up and slowly turn around.
“You the guys that called?” one of them asked, and Beck nodded.
“We are. We found the man you really want for all the drug activity in the area.”
“I’m being set up!” the rat cried, doing his best to look pitiful.
One of the officers scoffed and stepped towards the chair, his nose crinkling in disgust. He scented like some kind of feline shifter himself and, when he reached out, silvery handcuffs clinking in his right hand, I noticed the crescent moon birthmark on the inside of his right forearm.
“I know these guys,” the officer told the beta. “I’ve worked with the pack before. So forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
The beta’s eyes darted to the cuffs and around the crowded room.
Don’t do it, I thought, while seemingly in the same moment his body shrank and sprouted fur.
The human law enforcement contingent shouted in surprise and dismay, while Rex was back in his fur-covered form just as quickly as the rat. He snarled and tore after the scrambling rodent who had scurried around feet and made a break for the open front door.
We all hurried after him, and I hated that my own shifted form would be more of a hindrance than helpful.
I trusted my pack —and I would later realize that I truly had begun to think of Shifters Sanctuary as my pack— but I hated feeling as though I had zero control or input over the situation, especially while it was going pear-shaped.
Somewhere along the way, Beckett shed his clothes and shifted into his wolf form, taking off into the darkness with Rex.
We can’t lose him, I tried not to panic as I drew on my dragon’s abilities to see in the dark, Sage is relying on us.
The tense seconds felt like they were dragging into long minutes as I watched the wolf and the puma swerve as they ran. Beckett seemed to veer completely off course, until I realized that he was attempting to corner the rat and run him directly into Rex’s path.
I could hear their snarling and growling, then the startled, high-pitched shrieking of the rat as Rex launched through the air. My eyesight was not good enough to see the image clearly, but I imagined his claws were extended and his sharp teeth were bared and glinting in the moonlight.
Beckett closed the distance between himself and Rex and shifted back into his human form, which seemed to be the signal for the sheriff’s officers to make their way through the barren field. I hurried over as well, aware of Eric and Sergio hot on my heels and Brandt at my side.
Rex had practically flattened his body over the beta’s this time, his furry chest and belly heaving from his exertions.
“You can get off him,” Beck said, then thanked Eric for the pile of clothes he was extending towards our Alpha.
“You can,” the cat-shifter officer agreed, addressing Rex as well. He lifted the handcuffs again, the movement making the metal clink. “Once we get these cuffs on him, he won’t be able to shift.”
I wanted to tug those handcuffs out of his hold and destroy them for what they represented, for what the very same magic was doing to my mate, but I had to acknowledge that, in cases like this, the magic came in handy.
Rex carefully inched backwards, his muscles coiled tight, and slowly lifted his claws to reveal the shivering ball of re-captured rat.
In a moment that felt like déjà vu, Beckett barked, “Shift back,” with a wave of his alpha power. The rat shuddered and squealed, then morphed back into the huddled human version of himself.
This time, the officer was on him immediately, pulling his hands behind his back to get the cuffs on him. He read the beta his rights, then Sergio stepped forward, demanding, “Confess everything you’ve done to us and our pack.”
While my alpha’s tone was quieter than Beckett’s, it radiated with the same energy as the pack Alpha’s. He was using all the force of his own alpha abilities to make sure Sage was pardoned for the crimes he hadn’t committed, making the real criminal confess to everything he had done.
The beta bit down so hard on his lip that I thought it might bleed.
“Now.” Beckett helped things along.
It was probably (okay, okay, definitely) coercion, but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over using underhanded tactics to see justice served, and I didn’t think anyone else in our little gathering would, either. This was karma.
The beta blubbered as he began to admit all of his crimes, from taking payments to supply our people with drugs and the scent blockers, to setting Sage up to take the fall, to trying to run away when we had caught him, and a bunch of other little things in between.
Every word he spoke, specifically when it came to exonerating my mate, incensed me and mollified me in equal measures. I wanted to destroy him for daring to pin his crimes on one of the men I loved, but I was also relieved that this meant the end of Sage’s suffering.
Sergio’s arm looped around my waist as we listened, and I sagged against him, trembling as the adrenaline of the evening faded away.
“Shhh,” he murmured into my ear, low and soothing, “it’s almost over, darling. He’s coming home.”
Home.
I’d been living in Shifters Sanctuary for a year or so, but only now did I feel as though the word fit. After all, home was where the heart was, and Sage and Sergio were my heart.
“Can we get him now?” I asked. “I don’t want him to spend a single second longer than necessary behind those barbaric bars.”
“You’ll have to wait until morning, “ a nearby officer said, answering before anyone else could.
“That’s not acceptable,” Beckett informed him smoothly. “You have all the evidence and a confession right here. Why should an innocent man continue to suffer overnight?”
“There’s a process to be followed. Rules and laws and—”
I scoffed. “Pardon my frankness, but your system and laws are the reason my innocent mate is wasting away in a jail cell right now. So fuck your process. You’ve got the shifter you want,” I jutted my chin in the direction of the cruiser, where the beta in question was slumped in the back seat, hands cuffed at his back and the door securely shut.
“So call ahead to your little friends and arrange his release.”
“We can’t—”
“Yes you can,” I interrupted again, Sergio’s hand gripping my bicep the only thing preventing me from lunging into the officer’s personal bubble.
I suspected that the urge to grab the man and shake him until he complied was written on my face, though, because he put his hand on the weapon on his hip and took a bracing step backwards.
Forcing calm into my tone, I tried to reason with him.
“He’s innocent. Scared. Alone. Feeling sick. ”
“Sick?” The officer frowned. “How do you know that?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that Sage was pregnant, but I knew doing so would only cause more trouble than it was worth.
Humans were funny when it came to things involving sexuality and biology.
I could never understand it, but then humans were a different species altogether.
They couldn’t understand us, which was what made them so dangerous.
Additionally, I didn’t want to risk one of Morstein’s supporters hearing about Sage’s condition and taking advantage of his vulnerable state, locked behind bars without access to his shifter side.
So, instead of going into detail, I shrugged, “His lawyer mentioned it after their meeting.” Still hoping to appeal to his sense of justice and sympathy, though, I continued, “The magic in the bars which prevents him from shifting is hurting him.”
That hadn’t been proven, of course, but it was still a concern for us. I swore, if these humans had hurt our unborn child by detaining Sage in one of their evil magical cages, they would rue the day they first slapped cuffs on my mate.
The shifter officer grimaced and turned to his partner. “We could make some calls, right?”
Despite his raised eyebrows, the taller, broader man nodded slowly. I wondered if he even knew that his partner was a shifter, but none of that was of my concern.
“Please,” I begged, pulling free of Serge’s hold, clasping my hands in front of my chest as if in prayer, “you’ve got your man now. Give me mine back.”
“We’re not going to go quietly until you do,” Sergio added firmly. “And if we have to fly down there and break down walls to get him out, we will.”
“You’re a dramatic bunch, aren’t you?” The shifter’s partner snarked, but he looked to the officer I had been arguing with and said, “Guess we’re all in for a long night after all.”
I might have been desperately in love with my mates, but in that moment, I could have kissed that officer.
Sage was going to be released that night.
My mate was coming home.