Page 19 of Hunted

My mate.

Guillermo had known. Of course my uncle had sensed the connection between us, despite the fact that she was human. He’d ordered me to go through with the memory wipe anyway. Part of me wanted to hate him for it. But then I had also seen what it was like to try to command an organization as fractured and complex as the Tracers, to be responsible for all the wolves in North America. My uncle loved me, wanted what was best for me, which included a happy mating one day. But to do his job, he had to be a ruthless bastard, not allowing the needs of one person to outweigh the good of werewolves as a whole. And that was the cold hard truth of it. The truth that faced anyone who accepted his job.

I released the vampire prince’s mind.

Cris staggered back, blinking. “Well?”

“The inside of your head might be more fucked up than mine.”

He snorted. “It took you four years of training to figure that out?” A furrow formed between his eyes. “About what you saw,” he began.

Was it just me, or was there a faint hint of color in his cheeks? Vampires couldn’t blush, and yet…

“You think I care who you fuck?”

“It isn’t that.” He squared his jaw. “My position as heir comes with certain expectations in choosing a mate. If it got out that he and I were liaising—”

“Is that what the undead are calling it now?”

Cris growled.

I smirked. “I’ll keep your secrets. For now.”

“What about Rossi?”

“I need time to think. Let’s go interrogate those bastards.”

Cris gripped my arm. The world shattered around us in brilliant shards of light. A second later, the ground rushed up to meet us. The wind roared in my ears, threatening to rip the clothes from my body. The streets of downtown Austin buzzed with energy from a dizzying drop hundreds of feet below us. I recognized the Driskill Hotel a block away, could see the state Capitol glowing softly beyond it.

“We couldn’t have done this in a parking lot?” I muttered.

Cris smiled. “For us, jumping from rooftop to rooftop is child’s play. They can’t ambush us so easily this way.”

I strode towards the two prisoners, who were bound with their hands behind their backs, both hooded. “How did you manage to hold the vampire?”

“We’ve been able to secure doses of the Solar Flare X-1 biological agent that the black ops site has been developing.”

“The one that stops vampires from dematerializing.”

“Yes.”

“Just so we’re all on the same page, some of the people we’ve recovered have been brainwashed by Rossi. They may not be acting under their own free will.”

“Your point?”

“Solar Flare is synthesized with a concentrated dose of shapeshifter blood product, mixed with a powerful paralytic agent. We don’t yet know the long-term effects of dosing someone with that biological agent, but we suspect it has the potential to increase the rate of ALDD development.”

“What would you suggest we do?” Cris asked pointedly. “Even Solar Flare impacts vampires across a spectrum. Some, it stops immediately. Others can dematerialize, albeit poorly, for a minute or two after being dosed. The only other way to prevent a vampire from dematerializing is to render them unconscious. Standard issue tranquilizer darts don’t work fast enough to stop one of us. A skull fracture comes with nasty side effects too.”

“Charming.”

“War is ugly, Tracer. And before you argue for the humane treatment of prisoners, may I remind you that I’m well aware of how your uncle holds his enemies in silver lined cells in the Tracer’s underground compound?”

I’d gone ten rounds with Guillermo on the need to update prisoner facilities and living conditions just last week. But no way was I telling this prickhead we actually agreed on something.

I jerked my chin towards the vampire. “Rossi will have written a mental shield over his mind before he was sent here and vampires are already difficult to crack. If I try to break his mind, I’ll wind up killing him.” And probably passing out on the roof. Which no way was I telling this leech crowd.

Cristof nodded to the vampire guard and a second later, they dematerialized away. I turned to the werewolf. His breathing picked up. I knelt before him, yanking the hood off.