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He launched in. “I didn’t say I would help. Not sure it would do any good. You might want to take this to Alpha Warren or Alpha Fergus. Each has clout in Savage Territory. I’m just a patrol officer. I’d never be able to find the girl, even if you were sure she was in Savage Territory.”
As she took several steps toward him, he could sense her distress. Her violet eyes were red-rimmed. “The young woman’s name is Vickie. I’d been working with her for the past two weeks, helping her get acclimated to her new surroundings. She was incredibly sad about her transformation, but she was making progress. Her case worker said she barely survived the alter process.”
Children below the age of twelve never survived the alter serum that had changed all of their lives so completely. Teenagers had an especially rough time of it. He’d heard different statistics about the survival rate, the latest being fifty percent under the age of eighteen.
The alter serum had resulted from the creation of the flame drugs, now rampant in the US. Five Bridges was one of the headquarters for cartels manufacturing the drugs. Most of his job as a Border Patrol officer was designed to stop the flow of drugs out of their cordoned-off area. The serum was outlawed in the United States proper, but there were always scum making up batches and infecting the food and drinks of the nation.
Phoenix wasn’t the only prison for alter species. Every major city in the US had a designated ghetto, surrounded by tall cement walls and barbed wire. Border Patrol bridges controlled the flow in and out of each ghetto.
He looked away from her. It was damn hard being this close to Lauren. He hadn’t stopped loving her. He just couldn’t trust her. “You shouldn’t have wrecked my knee.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I know you don’t believe me, but I did it to save your life. Why won’t you let me heal you?”
He flashed his gaze back to hers. “Because I don’t want you touching me ever again. If my knee hurts, it’s a good reminder to stay away from your kind.”
She released a sigh and shifted her gaze out onto the Graveyard. “I can see Maeve’s Jeep in the distance.”
Maeve was a witch with a rescue operation that saved lives every night. Her refuge was called Hard Landing, though most called it the Landing. The cartels and sex club owners dumped bodies in the Graveyard at will, though mostly in the early hours of the morning. It was a pitted, cactus-infested place where a number of large battles had erupted over the years.
The dead were hauled away at dawn by Tribunal clean-up squads and cremated. But Maeve searched the entire area night after night hunting for any who lived. Many of the discarded victims of their world were still alive when they were left in the Graveyard. Once the sun rose with its horrendous devastation on most alter skin, those who still breathed would perish before a couple of hours had passed.
He was lucky. He could tolerate the light of dawn and sunset. Most alters had to be indoors or underground by the time the horizon showed the smallest sign of gray. Crescent Territory, with its population of vampires, shut down completely an hour before dawn.
Yeah, he’d set the meet-up close to the Graveyard as a reminder of how unforgiving their world could be. Lauren would do well to remember that.
~ ~ ~
Lauren didn’t know what to do. Vickie’s plight had broken her heart all over again. She hated Five Bridges and she despised being a powerful alter witch.
But right now, she wished more than anything she hadn’t fallen in love with a wolf. Seeing Cole again was heaping salt all over again in a still-fresh wound. Yet, she’d come to him because she knew he could help. As a witch, she had few contacts in Savage Territory, yet she had good reason to believe Vickie had been brought here.
If she’d had any other recourse, she wouldn’t have come here tonight. Though she’d wept for the lovely young woman, she was also in real danger of losing it again because she missed Cole as much as she did. She had a damn hole in her heart only he could fill.
They’d been lovers for three extraordinary months. When she’d tried to protect him by using her witch killing ability, he’d broken with her for good.
He had no idea how sexy he looked leaning against the Border Patrol SUV. He was all in black: Tank, leathers and heavy boots with buckles, the typical uniform for the alter men and women who served on each territory’s serve-and-protect force. He wore his gun as well.
He had light blue eyes, a strong jawline and angled cheekbones that gave him a don’t-mess-with-me appearance. He was lean, worked out, and was amazingly cut. His shoulders showed each built muscle.
He wore his long, thick, dark brown wolf hair with two forward braids, then the entire mass pulled back with a clasp. When they’d been lovers, she’d spent time working out an intricate braid for the right side of his head. Women dating wolves often did that. It was an alter thing.
At the time, Cole had loved the attention. She’d loved doing it. She’d loved all the ways she’d engaged in an intimate relationship with him. The sex had been profound, earth-shattering and oh, God, she missed being with him.
She steeled herself against her personal grief, however, and refocused her thoughts on rescuing Vickie. “I considered contacting the lead Alphas of your territory, but both Warren and Fergus have too much on their plates to take this on. I know it and you know it. They’re both trying to figure out what to do about Julio Mendez.” Julio was a powerful wolf and the current, main drug lord in Savage Territory. “I’ve asked for your help, because I trust you and because you know me. Together, I think we could get this done. In fact, I know we could.”
“You’re way too optimistic. Do you even know where she was headed? Kidnapped, as you say she was, she could be in any of the five territories.”
He wasn’t going to like what she told him. “I recognized t
he wolves who took her. They work for Julio.”
Cole scrubbed a hand over his face and blew the air from his cheeks. A growling sound followed.
Besides his drug business, Julio also owned several sex clubs on the Savage Strip and had made it clear he intended to own several more.
In recent months, he’d also taken over two of the lowest packs in Savage and combined them into a single, large pack known as El Lobo Grande. What no one yet knew was how he’d done it, though rumors abounded he possessed an inexplicable wave power that could subdue hundreds of people at once.
Lauren suspected Julio was in league with a wizard. She didn’t possess any kind of ‘wave’ ability herself, but she knew some of her fellow witches had a similar though modest capacity.
