Chapter Three
Arlo
The night stretched long and unforgiving as Arlo swung open the door to the safe house, tension clinging to his muscles like salt after a swim in the ocean.
The place was nothing special, just a rented two-story home in a quiet Miami neighborhood, disguised as just another vacation property.
The kind of place no one would look twice at, which made it the perfect base for their off-the-books CIA operation.
Inside, the air was thick with frustration, the scent of sweat and lingering adrenaline coiling through the space like an invisible storm.
Carter was the first to speak.
“Tell me you got something,” he said, arms crossed as he leaned against the kitchen counter. His jaw was tight, frustration radiating off him in waves.
“Yeah, tell us this wasn’t just a waste of time,” Logan added, his wolf instincts evidently still humming with leftover energy from the chase. He was pacing the living room like a caged animal, too keyed up to sit.
Seb, ever the steady presence, leaned back on the couch, arms draped over the top like a man who was in no hurry, but his sharp brown eyes locked onto Arlo with expectation.
Ezra sat beside him, flipping a combat knife between his fingers in easy, precise movements, watching the conversation unfold like he already knew something was off.
The others were in the room too. Max with his solid, controlled presence, while Toby’s intelligence shone in his eyes as he stared at Arlo, quietly curious.
Arlo exhaled sharply, lowering himself onto a chair before dragging a hand through his still-damp hair.
“We lost the bastard,” he admitted, the words tasting like acid.
A chorus of groans filled the room.
“Goddammit,” Carter muttered, shoving off the counter and stalking toward the fridge. “All that for nothing.” He pulled out a beer and twisted the cap off with more force than necessary.
Logan stopped pacing long enough to glare at Arlo. “What the hell happened to you tonight? One second, you’re leading the charge, and the next, poof. You were gone.”
Ezra twirled his knife once before putting it down onto the coffee table with a dull thunk. “Yeah, I was wondering about that, too What was up with you?”
Arlo stiffened.
Shit. He had known this was coming.
They’d all been busy dealing with the sudden, unwanted presence of the FBI, but they weren’t stupid. They would have seen that he was distracted. That he’d faltered.
He could have made up some story to appease them, but he didn’t because this team was family, and they didn’t lie to one another.
Arlo clenched his jaw. “I was chasing him,” he said carefully. “And then I… ran into something unexpected—a scent…”
Logan’s brows pulled together. “A scent? What kind of scent?”
Arlo exhaled, already regretting what he was about to say. “My mate.”
Silence.
Then…
Seb let out a low whistle. “Holy shit.”
Ezra was the first to break the moment with an amused huff. “So that’s what had you running off all starry-eyed?”
Arlo shot him a glare. “Starry-eyed my ass.”
Carter blinked at him, slow and disbelieving. “You? The same Arlo who never takes anything seriously? The guy who said mates are just ‘nature’s way of tying a rope around your neck’?”
“I stand by that,” Arlo grumbled.
Logan’s eyes narrowed. “You’re telling us you met your fated mate tonight—the one person you’re meant to be with—and you just walked away from her?”
Arlo shrugged, deliberately casual, even as his shark thrashed inside him, furious. “I had bigger things to deal with.”
Seb scoffed. “Like what? Because last I checked, you don’t just ignore a mate bond, Arlo. That’s not how it works.”
Ezra leaned forward, eyes flashing with something dangerously amused. “Did she reject you already? Because that’s the only way I see you coming back here instead of tracking her down.”
Arlo bristled. “No, she didn’t reject me.”
Carter’s brows shot up. “So, you rejected her?”
A muscle in Arlo’s jaw ticked. “It’s not that simple.”
Silence stretched between them, weighted and heavy with unspoken truths.
Seb was the first to break it. “What do you mean? Who is she?”
Arlo dragged a hand down his face, knowing there was no dodging this. “Violet Miller,” he admitted. “She’s FBI.”
Logan groaned. Carter muttered a curse. Ezra actually laughed.
“Well, that explains it,” Ezra said. “You, mated to a Bureau agent? Jesus, I’d pay good money to watch that train wreck.”
Arlo shot him a shut the hell up look, but the reaction was warranted.
CIA and FBI didn’t mix. Well, Arlo supposed that they could, technically, but not this CIA officer and that FBI agent.
Because Arlo and Violet? They were a pairing that couldn’t work.
Besides, the CIA technically wasn’t even supposed to be operating inside U.S.
borders, let alone interfering in active Bureau investigations.
This was a conflict of interest wrapped in a disaster.
“Does she know about shifters?” Logan asked, still frowning.
Arlo nodded. “Yeah. She’s a shifter too. A dolphin shifter.”
That surprised them.
Seb let out another low whistle. “A shark and a dolphin. Never seen that pairing before.”
Arlo ignored the way his shark preened at the idea. It was delighted by the pairing.
It didn’t matter. She could be a damn mermaid for all he cared, it didn’t change the facts.
They had nothing in common. He was ruthless, reckless, and comfortable in the dark.
She was clearly by-the-book, disciplined, and lived in the light.
Fate could try to tie them together all it wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that they weren’t built for each other.
Seb must have sensed his train of thought because he shook his head. “You’re a damn idiot, you know that?”
Arlo exhaled sharply, already tired of this conversation. “Look, I get it. The mate bond is sacred and all that sentimental bullshit. But I don’t do relationships. Never have.”
Carter crossed his arms. “Doesn’t matter if you ‘do’ them or not. A mate isn’t just any relationship.”
“I can walk away,” Arlo said, his chin flicked up stubbornly.
Logan scoffed. “No, you can try to walk away.” He jabbed a finger at Arlo’s chest. “But if you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your damn life.”
Arlo clenched his fists at his sides, because he already knew that. His shark knew it too. It had been snarling at him the entire way back, demanding he turn around, demanding he find her, demanding he fix what he’d broken before it was too late.
Go to her.
Claim her.
She is ours.
Arlo inhaled through his nose, forcing the beast back down.
He wasn’t some lovesick shifter chasing fate like a fool.
He was a shark and he was CIA. He had a mission to complete.
And Violet Miller? She was just a complication he didn’t have time for.
He didn’t care if she was his mate. He wasn’t going to chase her.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let fate decide his future.
The air inside the safe house was tense, heavy with frustration as Arlo and his team settled into the living room for their debrief.
The chase had been a disaster. The suspect had slipped through their fingers, and now they were scrambling to figure out just how much damage that loss had done and how far it had set them back.
Arlo turned his thoughts once more to the trafficking ring.
The intel they had received from their senior officer informed them that Ray Diaz had been small-time until recently.
A low-level drug dealer who ran shipments through the docks, nothing special, nothing high-priority.
But the CIA had discovered that Diaz wasn’t just moving product.
He was helping to move people. That put him smack in the middle of the trafficking ring they were trying to dismantle.
If they’d caught him, they could’ve squeezed him for intel: locations, contacts, names.
They might have been able to get the names of people who were further up the food chain.
Instead, he was gone, and now they were left with nothing but questions and a shrinking window of opportunity.
Seb leaned forward, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “What I want to know is how the hell did he run like that? The way he moved… that wasn’t just some street thug running on adrenaline.”
Carter frowned, nodding. “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. He wasn’t just fast, he was too fast.”
Arlo sighed. “Yeah, seems our suspect was something a little more than human.”
“Son of a bitch,” Logan muttered, running a hand through his hair. “A shifter involved in the trafficking ring? That’s a whole new nightmare we hadn’t planned for.”
The fact that Diaz was a shifter meant they weren’t just dealing with ordinary criminals. If shifters were working inside the ring, they were people who knew how to hide their tracks better than humans ever could because hiding in plain sight was something a shifter could do instinctually.
“We’re on borrowed time,” Arlo said grimly, arms crossed. “Diaz’s escape means they know we’re onto them. That gives them time to clean up their mess, and disappear before we can get close again.”
Silence settled over the team. They all knew what that meant. Their hopes of finding those missing children were dwindling with each passing moment.
Carter blew out a slow breath. “One thing I don’t get, how did the FBI know about Diaz? Did they get the same tip we did?”
Arlo’s jaw clenched. That was the question that had been bothering him since the moment Violet and her team had stormed onto the scene.
The CIA worked in the dark, gathering intel through off-the-books sources. The FBI? They relied on paper trails, official reports, informants with leverage.
They weren’t supposed to have access to the same leads.
Unless someone had tipped them off, too. Someone who didn’t like what they were up to. Someone who thought it would be best to cover all their bases.
“Doesn’t matter,” Arlo muttered. “They’re involved now, whether we like it or not.”
Ezra smirked. “You especially don’t like it, huh?”