Initially, I expected this new fish delivery day to be the same as all the rest. My shifters had made their way in from our sector all morning long. I’d come in the evening before and spent the night in a cell. My wolf hated it when I did that. The iron bars made us both crazy—him because he hated being trapped and me because I could feel him pacing back and forth inside me, even when I pushed him down hard.
But it was important for me to get here first. I had to keep all the other shifters in check. We were likely to fight amongst ourselves—it was hard to keep those tendencies in check. And we were even more likely to fight with the fae clans.
Shifters and fae didn’t get along well even under the best of circumstances. We both felt a kinship to the land, an ownership of the woods. But that didn’t draw us together. It forced us apart.
I ignored the chatter of the other prisoners pouring into the yard all around us, focusing instead on the ship drawing closer and closer.
Something about this transport held my focus more tightly than usual. Every time I looked away from its gray metal hull, something tugged my attention back to it. As the transport vessel pulled into the dock, I found myself unable to quit staring at it.
“What are you thinking?” Jade whispered, her breath brushing against my ear as she pressed her breasts against my back. Normally, I might have found her attention at least mildly interesting. Today, though, I wanted nothing more than to brush her off.
Still, I wasn’t willing to undermine her position with the rest of the pack.
“Just wondering if we’ll have any new pack members on the ship.”
I felt Jade’s nod against my cheek and again fought back the urge to push her away. That was unusual, too—she didn’t generally irritate me this much. I had inherited Jade from the previous alpha when I’d fought him for primacy a year before, and I had taken her into my bed to solidify my position as alpha. It hadn’t been a hardship; with her red-gold hair and pale skin, she was beautiful and fierce, and many members of our makeshift pack were devoted to her.
She was an asset, and I tried to keep that in mind as she ran her fingertips along my shoulders.
At the dock, the crew members finished securing the transport ship and lowered the gangplank. A few moments later, guards began ushering the new inmates off the boat and toward the intake building.
The prisoners, shackled together and wearing gray prison uniforms, shuffled down the gangplank. The clothes were baggy and shapeless, rendering their forms indistinct and amorphous. There was no way to tell who was who.
But I knew the moment I saw her.
It was like her entire form was lit up by some kind of invisible magical fire. I could feel the pull of her from all the way in the yard.
Jade felt my reaction, despite my attempt to keep it under control. “What is it?” she asked. “What you see?”
This time, I really did shake her off, standing to move toward the fence to get a closer look at the woman.
Out of the corner my eye, I saw Clark moving, too. At the thought that the fae alpha might be fixating on the same woman I stared at, my wolf rose up inside me, growling, insisting she was ours. She was pack.
Clark glanced at me, his lip rising in a snarl as he sensed my wolf’s response to him.
I shoved my wolf down, using the same strength I had employed to beat down Magnus, the alpha before me. He had been unable to control his inner wolf. That was what had allowed me to win against him. I wouldn’t let the same thing happen to me.
The rest of the shifters and fae took their alphas’ movement to the fence as a sign to start the gauntlet. They moved up around us, their feet kicking against the yard gravel as they began whistles and catcalls designed to throw the new fish off balance.
Clark and I simply stared out at the line of incoming inmates, equally entranced by them.
With a supreme effort of will, I pulled myself away from the fence—but not before I got a look at her face. She had mahogany brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and luminescent eyes the color of a hunters’ moon, glowing orange with her own inner wolf.
As she passed, she held her chin high, ignoring the jeers of the inmates on my side of the fence. For just a second, though, we made eye contact, and it jolted through me like a physical blow. Her, too—when she saw me, she stumbled, jerking the chains that strung all the inmates together.
That’s when I realize she was holding another woman’s hand. A tall blonde with bright blue eyes and fine bones.
If the blonde weren’t fae, I’d be surprised.
As it was, I was shocked.
Werewolves and fae don’t work together.
As I turned to watch the new prisoners pass into the building, I realized Clark had been fixated on the fae woman.
If she had half the impact on him that the brunette had on me, we were both in trouble.
Ten minutes later, Trumbull, the head guard on duty, stepped out of the building and murmured to one of the guards waiting there, sending him to retrieve me.
“What’s up?” I asked as I approached Trumbull. It wasn’t good to be too friendly with the guards—the pack might take it as a sign of weakness. On the other hand, defying the guards too often led to its own kind of trouble.
Trumbull finished murmuring to a second guard, who moved out into the yard and called Clark to join us.
“We got a situation inside. We were sorting out the intakes to hand them over to you guys for
