Thrown into the Mob (The Wolves of La Luna Noir #5)

ONE MADD

ONE

MADD

The first sign my cover was blown was the silence.

The bar had emptied and my wolf sensed what was happening seconds before my brain caught up. His hackles rose, but by then, a guy was aiming a gun at me and I was calculating the distance between us.

His colleagues swarmed inside. Three were in the doorway and they were all armed, not that I expected them to come with water guns. There was another one behind the bar where he must have been since I arrived. Damn, how was it I hadn’t scented him?

Faced with five opponents who knew how to handle a weapon and only two exits, one of which was blocked by three men, my chances of getting away weren’t great.

Run now. My wolf was tempted to shift, but these guys were dragon shifters, and being turned into a pile of charred cinders wasn’t on my to-do list. Even my butt getting singed would stall my escape while those five surrounded me.

But I had to do something, and I was already moving when the first shot took out the light above my head. It wasn’t aimed at me, but was a warning.

“Don’t,” said the one closest to me. He spoke calmly, suggesting he’d done this before.

It was the same tone my cousin and Alpha, Flint, used in similar situations, and he was practiced in the art of getting people to surrender. And if they didn’t, he’d put a bullet in them. I was under no illusion that this guy wouldn’t do the same.

He was big, not as big as Ranger, Flint’s brother, but his size alone, coupled with years of probable experience suggested he didn’t need to perform tricks or threaten anyone by slamming his fist on their jaw.

I froze and my wolf howled inside me. He urged me to keep running, but I liked my head attached to the rest of me.

The others fanned out, and I counted them again.

I’d allowed myself to be cornered which Flint and my Grandpa Arnie would say was careless and that would be them being polite.

The establishment’s few patrons had vanished just prior to me being ambushed, so I was far from being at the top of my game.

Yep, there were still five of them, so the odds were stacked against me.

“Madden Durand.”

So much for my cover. Three weeks of being Marsh Holland, a rare-spirits supplier with contacts on the east coast, and someone had exposed me. I had no idea who, but even if I wasn’t around to figure it out, I was certain Flint and his brothers would.

It wasn’t often people called me Madden. Treyton, my brother, used to make jokes about my name when we were kids and say how mad I was.

Not now. My wolf wasn’t impressed with how my brain was working.

“Guys, you’ve got the wrong man. My name’s Marsh, and I’m not into whatever this is.”

Pfft. They’re not taken in by your pretense.

The one who was doing all the talking didn’t falter. “Don’t bother. We know who you are.” He sniffed and made a face. “Besides, you smell like a wet dog.”

What? Now it was my beast who was indignant instead of planning how to get out of our predicament. We do not.

Hands at my hips removed my phone and the gun. They patted me down and discovered the second weapon at my ankle. My wolf was snarling, and though these guys couldn’t hear him, their beasts were probably begging to torch me.

I was dragged out to a car and expected them to put a hood over my head. That they didn’t showed they didn’t care that I knew where I was going.

It’s humiliating being kidnapped. My wolf was peering through my eyes at the changing scenery.

Treyton was too. It was weird that my cousins all kidnapped their mates and yet my brother’s mate did the same to him. But none of these bozos accompanying me were my mate, so maybe I’d broken the pattern.

I concentrated on what I was seeing outside the window. The road went from tarmac to gravel, and the light changed through the tinted windows from busy and bright to something more calm. We were in the countryside and trees leaned over both sides of the road as if they wanted to know who I was.

But plenty of trees was good because there was space around them, and that gave me options.

Though I’d never been here previously, I knew where we were going because being undercover meant I had studied this dragon organization. We were going to the Solari flight’s patriarch’s home.

Flint would never have taken a captive to his home.

He locked his mate in the basement. My wolf knew La Luna Noir’s history.

That’s not the same. I doubted any of these guys had scented me and decided I was their one and only. La Luna Noir and Solari were enemies, so the patriarch was more likely to end me with a blast of flames than melt in my arms.

We’re going to be the ones melting into a puddle that someone will mop away.

Nice image. But I wasn’t giving up.

We slowed, and I dipped my head and studied the perimeter. The fence was topped with shards of glass but that was for show. There’d be 24/7 security, dogs, lights, and cameras. No one was getting behind the fence unless they were invited.

The gates opened, reminding me of a huge yawning mouth which I suspected contained sharp teeth, and we sped along the driveway to the house made of gray stone which was similar to its owner’s personality from what I’d been told.

I was bundled inside, and the interior was a mixture of stone and wood, as though the owner couldn’t decide if he liked warm or cool colors. But it wasn’t the structure that piqued my interest but a faint aroma embedded into the walls and furniture. My nose twitched as if I was about to sneeze.

They didn’t toss me in a cell in the dungeon, though I’d almost hoped they would because these old houses had cracks and crevices and sometimes secret tunnels the owners had forgotten about.

Instead, they punched in a code—and the guy covered his hand so I couldn’t memorize it—and threw me into a room with a bed, desk, and a small attached bathroom.

There were no shackles or bright lights, just a bare room meant for a prisoner or a visiting relative no one liked.

The main guy paused with his hand on the door, ready to slam it. “Someone will be along.”

Oh shoot. Was that someone with a gun or a truth drug that would have me spilling the La Luna Noir secrets? Shooting me here didn’t seem feasible because that would be messy and some poor employee would have to clean up and dispose of my remains.

“For what?” But he’d already closed the door.

I sighed and did a 360 around the room, assessing the doors, small window, and the bathroom. There was no visible means of escaping, and if there had been, it would have been a trap.

Someone cleaned the room recently, my wolf told me.

That was nice of them. Perhaps I was their special guest and they were throwing me a party.

Dream on, he scoffed. He sniffed the air, and we both caught another whiff of that not entirely unpleasant scent. But what is that? I can’t identify it.

While I was intrigued by it, I ran my mind over what I was up against. I’d counted fifteen guards in addition to the five guys who brought me here, but there’d be at least double that on the property, and there were six exits including the door where we’d entered.

I wondered if Ranger and the others had missed me yet.

He was the one running me, and he’d alert Flint when I didn’t check in tomorrow.

There were often delays when I was undercover, but once I was three days late, they’d come looking.

And Grandpa would insist on accompanying them, and Treyton, my midwife brother, would be terrified but be guilt-ridden if he didn’t tag along with Grandpa and the cousins.

Collapsing onto the bed, I ran through what I knew of the Solari dragons.

They were old money and they carried their grudges even longer.

Despite La Luna Noir’s newness—Grandpa’s brother, Florian, formed the pack—they’d been at odds with us since Grandpa stood shoulder to shoulder with his brother as young men.

The dragons had controlled territory to the east long before La Luna Noir existed. When Florian had set up shop in what the dragons considered their back yard, the disagreements started and had been going on ever since.

It was ironic that our pack was named after the moon but Solari meant the sun, though the dragon flight was more shadowy than bright and inviting.

Flint had told Ranger to put me undercover to discover how far the Solari had pushed into our territory.

They’d been buying up bars and distribution contracts, so the disagreements between the dragons and us wolves were about to escalate.

But I’d done that myself, and the situation was now hotter than a dragon’s breath.

My wolf wasn’t helping because he was still focusing on that scent neither of us could identify.

There was a knock at the door, and I leaped off the bed and braced myself for an interrogation or to be beaten to a pulp. They could rip my nails off one by one and there’d be no point shifting because they’d sear my skin.

But whoever was outside wasn’t the main guy who’d hauled me in here. He wouldn’t have knocked. And it was odd that I was being kept prisoner and the person on the other side of the door was seeking permission to enter.

“Come in.” What else was I supposed to say?

The person who entered was about my age with dark hair and eyes that were studying me. He was the patriarch’s son because La Luna Noir had a file on him that included his photo, and he was carrying a tray of food.

“I’m Evander, and I thought you might be hungry.”

My wolf took note of his quiet voice and scent. This was what my beast and I had smelled when we entered the house. The source had been him all along.

Now that he was closer, it was stronger. It wasn’t punching me in the face, but it was just out of reach, reminding me of a song I couldn’t remember the name of. My wolf pushed toward it, but I yanked him back. I was a La Luna Noir operative, and I didn’t have time for his antics.

But my beast didn’t stand down. Why am I interested in his scent? he asked.

I don’t know.

But I couldn’t dismiss it and that bothered me more than any locked door.