Shark Shifter's Mission

Chapter One

Arlo

Arlo Harrison sprinted between the shipping containers at Miami’s port, the humid night air thick with the scent of salt water. Though his muscles burned, his pulse was steady, and every footstep calculated as he closed the gap between himself and the man he was chasing.

They couldn’t lose this one.

He led the pursuit, weaving through the maze of rusting shipping containers with ease.

Miami was his city, had been his hunting ground long before the CIA recruited him.

He knew its streets better than anyone. The suspect, however, was desperate and reckless, his boots slamming against the pavement as he zigzagged wildly, searching for an escape route.

Through his earpiece, Logan’s voice cut in, urgent and sharp.

“Look’s like he’s heading west, trying to leave the docks!”

Arlo adjusted course.

Behind him, his team moved like predators locked onto prey.

Logan ran with fluid precision, using his heightened wolf sense of smell to track the target through the tangled scent of oil, saltwater, and filth.

Carter took the high ground, his mountain lion genes making it easy to leap effortlessly onto the shipping container rooftops while Seb stayed at the rear, a moving wall of muscle, just like the bear he shifted into, ensuring their target had nowhere to double back.

Max and Toby had sat this one out, staying in the safehouse to try to gather more intel.

And then there was Ezra: impossible to predict, always two steps ahead, dangerous in ways even Arlo didn’t fully understand. The man moved with a fearless, almost reckless energy, cutting off angles before the suspect could even consider them.

Like he could smell the bastard’s fear.

Arlo’s shark genes meant he was suited to the water, but he was still lethal out of it with heightened senses that rivaled any of his friends. Now, his instincts screamed as the suspect suddenly dove between two shipping containers, breaking right instead of left.

Shit.

They’d been trying to guide him out into the open where there was nowhere for him to hide and potentially slip away from them.

Logan and Carter, anticipating a leftward escape, had overshot, while Seb and Ezra were forced to reroute.

Arlo snarled under his breath and adjusted, pushing harder, faster.

If this guy got away, it could set them back weeks.

And Arlo wasn’t about to let that happen.

He was the shark in these waters—literally—and he had a lock onto his prey.

His breath came steadily and controlled despite the punishing pace, and his muscles coiled with the raw power of a predator in pursuit.

Every instinct he had was dialed in on the chase, on the target, on the streets around him.

But then, in a split second, something changed.

His vision tunneled, and his hearing sharpened to something more than the rhythmic pounding of his own footsteps, and the city’s distant hum.

A scent that was faint but unmistakable hit him like a sucker punch.

It wasn’t the salty Miami air or the stench of oil clinging to the containers.

It wasn’t even the scent of fear pouring out of the man they chased in waves.

This was different. It was Primal. Instinctive. Something new, but also completely familiar in the weirdest way.

Arlo’s shark stirred deep within.

What’s that? The guttural words reverberated through him, low and certain.

Arlo nearly stumbled, his balance thrown off for the briefest second.

It wasn’t just a scent, it was a presence.

A strange pull or crackling awareness beneath his skin, something that thrummed at the edges of his consciousness.

His shark responded instantly, the beast’s instincts rising in a way that had nothing to do with the hunt they were on.

Arlo clenched his jaw, trying to shake it off.

Focus he instructed internally. This is important!

He wasn’t sure what that weird pull was or why it had his shark so distracted when it was usually as intent on its target as the lethal predator it was, but he couldn’t waste any time thinking on the matter and tried to shake the thoughts free from his mind so that he could focus, just as he had instructed his shark to do.

The mission came first. Always, but especially this mission.

There were children’s lives at stake.

The weight of this mission sat heavy on Arlo’s shoulders, pressing down like the dense Miami humidity that was clinging to his skin.

This wasn’t just another op. This wasn’t another mission where they could afford to lose their target and regroup with a new lead.

This was about children—shifter children, being stolen and sold like commodities.

The traffickers weren’t just a handful of criminals running an underground ring.

This went deeper. The network stretched beyond Miami, beyond U.S.

borders, feeding into a system designed to exploit those who were supposed to be hidden and protected.

Their kind wasn’t supposed to exist in the public eye.

Their children weren’t supposed to be at risk.

But someone had learned the truth, and now, these monsters were profiting off them.

The CIA weren’t technically allowed to operate inside the borders of the US, but this was a special case and he and his teammates knew how to operate like ghosts.

They had worked together for years now and were as efficient as a well-oiled machine.

“Ezra,” Arlo barked through his earpiece, forcing himself back into focus. “Get ahead of him if you can, try to force him back towards the water. It will be easier to catch him there.”

“On it,” Ezra replied, his voice sharp with adrenaline.

Even though they had been trained to expect the unexpected, Arlo hadn’t thought that their target would be so fast. The man had to be a shifter like them, because a human would have tired by now.

The fact that he was part of this kidnapping and trafficking ring made him all the more heinous.

The man was not just selling out his own kind, he was doing so off young, vulnerable children.

How anyone could do this sort of thing to a child was incomprehensible.

There were a lot of sick, twisted people in the world, and Arlo was determined that this one wouldn’t be roaming free in it any longer.

He pushed harder, but that unsettling awareness lingered, refusing to let go.

And for the second time he found his focus slipping, shifting to that wonderful new scent in place of the scent of his target.

Arlo’s steps faltered and his head turned, his body and his shark screaming at him to chase down this new scent instead.

Chase. Hunt. Find. his shark demanded.

Arlo frowned. What the hell had got into his shark?

He couldn’t deny that the desire to find the location of the scent was as appealing to him as it was to his shark, but this was important.

Arlo had never been so torn. And that hesitation, that fraction of a second of a break in his concentration, was all the suspect needed to get further away.

The shifter vaulted over a chain-link fence, landing hard before breaking into a sprint toward the nearest loading bay. Arlo dug deep, gaining on him, but just as he did, two black SUVs skidded to a stop just a couple of hundred yards away.

The high beams of the vehicles cut through the darkness like searchlights.

Doors flew open in perfect synchronicity, and a tactical team spilled out onto the street, moving with trained precision.

Dressed in dark uniforms, weapons drawn, they fanned out, their eyes locked onto the fleeing suspect.

Arlo barely had time to register the tactical vests, the clipped, professional movements…

everything about them screamed FBI. But if they were Bureau, then why the hell hadn’t his team been warned?

A sharp voice barked orders over the chaos, sending agents surging forward.

“Cole, Nash, fan out,” the male voice said. “The suspect is Caucasian. Dark hair. About six feet. And keep an eye out for Special Agent Miller. She’s in pursuit on foot. Alone.”

“You need eyes in the sky?” another voice asked.

“Not yet. Let’s do this the old-fashioned way.”

Eyes in the sky? Arlo frowned. Had they been talking about sending in a helicopter? Their conversation confirmed Arlo’s suspicions, at least. They were FBI.

The suspect had darted into the nearest alleyway and disappeared into the shadows. Arlo’s chest burned with frustration as he skidded to a halt, watching their only lead slip right through their fingers.

“Goddammit,” Logan growled over comms. “Looks like the feds are here. We need to abort. They can’t know CIA are involved.”

“Son of a—” Arlo ground his teeth, chest heaving from the exertion as adrenaline surged through his system.

The team pulled up beside him, hiding in the shadows to ensure their presence went unnoticed. They were all equally frustrated.

Carter let out a sharp breath, pacing. “What happened back there? You almost had him.”

Arlo shook his head. “I don’t…”

He honestly didn’t know how to respond to that question because he didn’t know himself exactly what had happened. He had never got distracted like that before.

The team kept on talking amongst themselves, but Arlo barely heard them.

Because that strange, electric awareness was still there.

Lingering.

Pulsing.

Like something had just shifted in his world, but he didn’t understand what or why. He just knew that now that their mission had been aborted, he was free to focus on the scent, and to see where it led and what it meant.

“Stay here,” he told his teammates, his feet moving as if on their own volition. “I’ll be right back.”