One Night with the Shifter. Theresa Meyers

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СКАЧАТЬ only had so many choices. He could go stark raving mad and give the mortals a good reason to want him dead, he could isolate himself and die of loneliness or he could form a new pack.

      He wasn’t the solitary or lunatic type. In fact, he’d been groomed most of his life as the Beta, second in command, of the Wenatchee Were Pack beneath its old Alpha, Bracken, to one day become the pack’s Alpha. But that was before the Cascade Clan vampires had interfered in their pack and changed everything. Damn bloodsuckers. If not for those vampires, he could have been the leader of an established, seasoned pack. Instead he was here, exiled, attempting to create a pack of his own.

      Ty tapped his headset, changing channels. “Blue Leader, are you closing in on the target?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Good, execute tree flyer.”

      He stood back, watching the blue team shimmy up the trees, preparing to attack the red team from overhead. His outdoor survival school had been a stroke of genius. He could pick over the finest recruits the military bases around here had to offer, and make enough to set himself up on the outside fairly well.

      Out of all the students in his first season of outdoor survival specialist training, Riley Brierly was the best candidate to become a member of his pack. The kid was smart, tough, knew how to follow orders and had been trained by the finest in U.S. military.

      Mike Johnson was a close second, neck and neck with Collin Campbell. A wolfish smile curled Ty’s mouth in the dark. Three cubs. A nice start to his Olympic Pack. Not bad, especially considering he didn’t even have a mate.

      At least there weren’t any Were packs in the area. Ty suspected it was because the Cascade Vampire Clan was so close. The small town of Sinclair sat directly across the Puget Sound from downtown Seattle, an hour-long ferry ride away from vampire central. No Were in his right mind would want to live that close. But he had little choice. He had to take territory where he could, to form a family of his own. A lone Were wasn’t going to be welcomed into an existing pack, like those that occupied the coast.

      The blue team yelled as they dove out of the trees onto the startled red team. The men rolled about, throwing punches and kicking out at one another. Grunts and the smack of flesh against flesh resounded loudly in the night air.

      “Companies, halt!”

      The men stopped midmotion and turned toward Ty as he emerged soundlessly from the bushes. “Blue Leader. Extra points for your team for executing the overhead attack so well. Extra steak at dinner.” The recruits elbowed one another in the ribs and grinned.

      “Red Leader. What happened?”

      “We didn’t expect them to attack from above, sir.”

      Ty narrowed his eyes and pointed up at the trees. “Out here, danger is everywhere. Where you least expect it. What’s rule number one of survival?”

      “Know your surroundings, sir,” they all said in monotone unity.

      Ty nodded. “Good.”

      “Red team, you need to act as a team. Not a bunch of individuals working in the same group. You should have had one man assigned to watch above, in addition to your sides, back and front. Did you?”

      “No, sir,” the red team responded.

      Ty stopped pacing and stood, pulling his NVGs off his head, then clasping his hands behind his back, his feet spread apart in a wide stance in the soft leaf litter. Moonlight filtered down from above, casting everything in the small clearing in stark relief. He made deliberate eye contact with each trainee as he spoke, letting his gaze linger a little longer on the members of the red team. “Unless you’re a team, a pack, you’ve got nothing. You are nothing. You function as a unit, you live. You go out on your own in the wilderness, your chances of survival drop seventy-five percent.”

      The recruits stood at silent attention.

      “Teams, pack your gear back to the barracks and prep for dinner. Red team, you’re on KP duty. Brierly, Johnson and Campbell, remain. Teams dismissed.”

      The three recruits stayed behind and watched their classmates jog into the dark veil of the night. “You three did really well over this past week. Good enough that I think you deserve a little something extra. You’ve got passes for tonight to go into town.”

      “Yes!” Johnson gave a fist pump.

      Campbell grinned at Brierly. “You’re the hometown boy. What’s a good bar in town?”

      Brierly’s mouth tipped up in a wicked grin. “You could hit the OON.”

      “Want to be more specific?”

      Brierly shrugged. “That’s its name, man. That or the Tavern. The neon sign used to say SALOON, but the neon has only three lit-up letters left. It’s on the main drag. Sinclair isn’t that big. You can’t miss it. I’ll show you how to get there.”

      Campbell turned and looked at Ty. “You coming with us?”

      Ty shifted his weight. “Technically you aren’t supposed to leave the school without an escort, so I suppose I could meet you there later.”

      Campbell’s goofy grin got bigger. “They got hot chicks at this bar, Brierly?”

      Brierly laughed. “Hard for me to know what you think’s hot. It’s not like I can read your thoughts.”

      “We find some hot chicks, you won’t have to,” Campbell shot back.

      Ty crossed his arms. They were still so young. Too full of themselves to be of much use to a pack, but with some training they had promise. “Head back to the barracks, clean up and you can head out.”

      The three young men snatched up their gear and jogged off in the direction of the school camp base. Ty glanced around, making sure they were all gone and well out of sight before he shucked off his clothes into a neat pile, then crouched down, letting his fingers dig deep into the earth. He needed to burn off his excess energy before he went into town. He needed to hunt. Satisfying the wolf half of him now would lower the chances of him spontaneously shifting later.

      With a wet pop and crunch, bone and muscle transformed. His skin tightened and grew hot as hair grew into a thick pelt. His fists turned into paws, his spine extended into a tail and his teeth elongated into lethal fangs. The shift took less than a minute, but in terms of strength and speed, it made all the difference. Ty loped off, disappearing into the night-dark trees.

      * * *

      Two hours later Ty eyed the door of the bar Brierly had suggested with skepticism.

      The whole damn thing looked as though it was about a hundred years old and held up by baling wire and chewing gum. A sagging roof and chipped white paint faded to a pale gray didn’t give him much hope inside would be any better. In fact, the only thing that convinced him to go in was the long row of expensive bikes parked out front. There was even an old Ford hot-rod truck, matte black with red, yellow and orange flames along the sides. To be this popular, the dive had to have something the locals liked.

      A wail of guitar backed up by the pounding beat of rock drums and the stale smell of cheap beer drifted out into the evening air, beckoning him indoors. What the hell. He’d lost everything СКАЧАТЬ