Wild as a wolf, p.1
Wild As a Wolf, page 1
Also By Paige Tyler
STAT: SPECIAL THREAT ASSESSMENT TEAM
Wolf Under Fire
Undercover Wolf
True Wolf
X-OPS
Her Perfect Mate
Her Lone Wolf
Her Secret Agent (novella)
Her Wild Hero
Her Fierce Warrior
Her Rogue Alpha
Her True Match
Her Dark Half
X-Ops Exposed
SWAT: SPECIAL WOLF ALPHA TEAM
Hungry Like the Wolf
Wolf Trouble
In the Company of Wolves
To Love a Wolf
Wolf Unleashed
Wolf Hunt
Wolf Hunger
Wolf Rising
Wolf Instinct
Wolf Rebel
Wolf Untamed
Rogue Wolf
The Wolf Is Mine
Loving the Wolf
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2023 by Paige Tyler
Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Patrick Kang
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband. Without your help and support, I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant a girl could ask for. Love you!
Chapter 1
“Officer down! Requesting immediate backup and paramedics,” a desperate voice shouted through the radio. “Repeat. Officer down. We have five shooters armed with automatic weapons. Three have already moved inside the nightclub—”
The rest of whatever the officer was going to say got cut off as rapid gunfire echoed over the radio. From where he sat in the rear passenger seat of the SUV listening to the bullets fly, SWAT Officer Hale Delaney cursed. Other voices drifted across the radio as more cops reached the scene only to quickly realize they were outgunned. Hearing them shout for backup and paramedics made Hale’s inner werewolf want to break out in the worst way.
“How far are we?” Hale asked, gripping the handle mounted above the seat and holding on for dear life as fellow werewolf Senior Corporal Carter Nelson steered the SWAT vehicle around the next corner, driving way too fast.
“Three miles and closing fast,” senior corporal and werewolf Trey Duncan responded calmly from the front passenger seat, his gaze locked on the vehicle’s GPS. “We’ll be there in a little over two minutes.”
Imagining how much damage a handful of people armed with automatic weapons could do in that amount of time, Hale didn’t think two minutes was going to be fast enough.
Pushing that thought aside, he did his best to ignore the sounds coming over the radio, focusing instead on counting the number of blocks between them and the nightclub. His efforts were wasted. There was no way to shut out the shouting, gunfire, and screams of terror.
In the front seats, both of his pack mates’ eyes glowed yellow-gold, a clear sign that their inner werewolves were trying to slip out as their anxiety built. Hale’s own inner wolf felt the same. He only prayed they arrived at the scene in time to do more than help with the wounded and cover up the dead.
“You think we’re dealing with the same people who’ve been terrorizing Dallas the past couple of weeks?” Carter asked, taking another turn so fast the tires of the SUV squawked as they slid across the pavement.
Hale snorted. “Five shooters hitting a nightclub full of people, all heavily armed with assault rifles and multiple-edged weapons. What do you think?”
Carter only grunted in agreement.
This would be their boldest move yet, though. First, there’d been the attack at a large outdoor party near Terrace Grove that ended with a dozen people dead, all of them with ties to the Hillside Riders, a local gang. Everyone assumed it was the beginning of a new turf war because the MO had fit the narrative. Five shooters, all of them big, muscular, and wearing tactical gear that obscured their faces and protected them from return fire. The way they’d gone straight after the most heavily armed members of the Riders, it made sense they were members of a rival gang.
The second incident had been against a small convenience store. Headquarters hadn’t made the connection to the first attack until the description of the same five heavily armed shooters had come through. Then they’d figured out that the store was a front for a gambling establishment run by the Russian Mafia and that all of the dead and injured were inked with known Russian crime tattoos. It was enough to toss the entire gang-war theory out the window and replace it with the thought that this was an even bigger war and that someone was making a move against all the different criminal elements in the city.
If that was true, then the attack on the club tonight made sense. It was a well-known gang hangout and served as neutral ground, where members of twenty or thirty different gangs would frequently gather. If someone wanted to make a dent in the criminal population of the city, that club was the place to do it. But the number of innocent people who would lose their lives as well was more than Hale wanted to think about.
Hale heard gunfire and screaming coming from inside the club even as Carter slid the SUV to a stop half a block short of the front entrance. The second SWAT vehicle carrying their pack mates Senior Corporal Mike Taylor and Officer Connor Malone passed them and came to a stop at an angle in front of the club’s doors, serving as a protective barricade.
As Hale shoved open his door and jumped out of the back seat, he realized a barricade wasn’t going to be necessary. While the area in front of the club was complete bedlam with people shouting and running everywhere, the shooters had already moved inside.
Hale scanned the area as he started forward, trying to see into every dark corner and alley while also keeping his gaze on all the people fleeing the club. Many of them were bleeding and even more were freaking out. He was pretty sure he saw a handgun or two among the crowd. But this was Texas, so people carrying weapons wasn’t exactly uncommon.
He reached the two Dallas Police Department patrol units parked nose to nose up on the curb in front of the club, doors wide-open, lights blazing, shattered glass lying everywhere. There were three injured cops on the ground near the doors. One was groaning in pain from a leg wound, but the other two were unconscious. His keen werewolf hearing picked up heartbeats, but they were both slower than they should have been.
Hale scooped up the cop with the slowest heart rate and sprinted back to the SWAT vehicles. Trey was there already, treating three injured people from the club. As one of the SWAT team’s medics, Trey was used to dealing with gunshot wounds, though he was admittedly more experienced with treating werewolves than non-supernaturals. But he simply needed to keep everyone alive until the scene was safe enough for paramedics to move in.
The moment Hale placed the injured cop on the ground, he shouted an alert to Trey that the guy was in bad shape, then he was racing back for the next wounded officer. He passed Connor on the way, carrying the other unconscious cop. When Hale reached the cop with the leg wound, he yanked the man’s belt off without preamble and strapped it tightly around the officer’s right thigh, then picked him up and ran over to Trey.
There were even more injured people from the club scattered around Trey a
Hale had to urge several terrified people out of the club before he could force his way past the rest of the crowd trying to push their way out. If the area outside the building was pandemonium, inside was chaos beyond his imagination.
The place was dark except for the neon signs illuminating the bar and the strobe lights above the huge dance floor. The darkness didn’t keep Hale’s keen werewolf sight from seeing as clearly as if it was day, but the spastic lighting made a nightmarish scene all that much worse as people climbed over each other to reach the door. He couldn’t blame them, as five big men in heavy tactical gear moved through the still-crowded club shooting in what seemed an indiscriminate fashion.
But then Hale realized the attackers weren’t merely blazing away at anything that moved. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they were only going after the most heavily armed opponents. In this crowd, that left them with a lot of options.
Carter and Mike were on the far side of the club, engaging with three of the black-clad attackers, leaving the other two to roam free through the crowd. Locking his sights on the nearest one, Hale shoved his way through the throng of panicked people. The huge man was pointing an assault rifle at a group of young men crouched down behind a table they’d flipped over—a table that wouldn’t come close to stopping the rounds that weapon fired.
Hale itched to pull his Sig Sauer .40 caliber as he moved closer, but in the crowded space he knew that wasn’t an option. No matter how accurate he was with the handgun, the risk that he might hit a bystander was too great, considering how many innocents were around the shooter. So instead, Hale put his shoulder down and bulled through the crowd, the muscles of his legs and back beginning to twist and spasm as he partially shifted.
He was less than ten feet away when the guy with the assault rifle somehow picked up on his approach, spinning suddenly and bringing his weapon up and pointing straight at him.
With a growl, Hale launched himself the last few feet, knocking the barrel of the weapon downward just as it went off, bullets ricocheting off the concrete flooring. Praying the stray rounds didn’t hit anyone, he slammed into the big man’s chest at full speed.
It felt like hitting a brick wall. Hale felt the bones in his shoulder and chest crack as pain surged up and down his spine. Cursing, Hale took the man to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. He got a grip on the barrel of the assault rifle, ripping it away before another burst of gunfire nearly took his face off. With a heave and a snarl, he slung the weapon across the club, then turned all his attention on his opponent.
The man was back on his feet, circling him with what could only be called a bloodthirsty look in his dark eyes. Hale had studied Muay Thai and Krav Maga since he was seventeen, so he wasn’t concerned about engaging in hand-to-hand combat, especially because he was a werewolf, but all it took was one punch from the guy to realize he was dealing with someone inhumanly strong. Even the glancing blow nearly broke his jaw. And when Hale slipped the man’s strikes and moved in to slam an elbow into his jaw, the guy barely seemed to notice.
Was he dealing with some kind of supernatural?
For the millionth time, Hale wished that his nose worked as well as all the other werewolves’ in the Pack. If it did, he’d have known right away whether the guy was a werewolf or not. But his nose hadn’t worked since he was seventeen and some asshole had broken it. Even becoming a werewolf years later hadn’t fixed the damage.
The two of them rolled and tumbled across the floor of the club as they fought, smashing through tables and chairs, people screaming as they scrambled away. While Hale couldn’t bear to even think about pulling his sidearm in this crowd, his opponent didn’t have that problem. In a blur of motion, the man’s hand came up with a large-frame automatic handgun.
Hale had no choice but to let the claws on his right hand extend. Hoping the darkness and strobing lights would keep anyone nearby from seeing anything too clearly, he slashed his claws across the guy’s forearm. He wasn’t aiming to inflict serious damage, but he couldn’t let this guy start firing off rounds in the club. Hopefully, he’d be able to explain the claws marks away as a byproduct of all the smashed furniture. It was a risk but worth it to disarm one of these killers.
His claws struck true, digging into the man’s forearm. But instead of drawing blood, his claws merely scraped across the skin with a grating sound like nails on an old-school chalkboard.
That didn’t make sense. A werewolf’s claws could rip through wood, concrete, and even steel in the right situation.
Okay, it was starting to look like this guy definitely wasn’t human.
The man yanked his arm back a little, glancing down at the scratches Hale’s claws had left instead of the bloody gashes Hale had expected. The man lifted his head to regard Hale with an expression that was part anger, part curiosity.
Hale tensed, expecting the guy to put a bullet through his forehead. That would be bad. A werewolf could survive damn near any amount of damage, but a bullet to the head or heart would be enough to kill him.
But instead, the man lunged to the side and grabbed the first person within reach—a woman with dark, curly hair who couldn’t have been more than twenty-one years old. She screamed as he put a heavily muscled arm around her neck and dragged her in front of him like a shield as he backpedaled, angling toward the back of the club. He was no longer pointing the gun at Hale; he was aiming it at the woman.
Hale bit back a growl and finally drew his own weapon. “Freeze right there! Let the woman go. No one needs to get hurt here.”
The guy never slowed, heading for what was most assuredly a rear exit with the woman in front of him as a human shield.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hale saw that Carter and Mike still had their hands full with the other four shooters. There’d be no help coming from that direction.
In the fraction of a second Hale had wasted glancing at his pack mates, the guy with the hostage had moved all the way across the club, regardless of how hard the terrified woman was kicking and struggling. Hale hurried after them, worrying about what would happen to the hostage if he lost sight of them. Being forced to fight his way through the throng of people still in the club looking for a way out slowed him down, and by the time he raced along the dark corridor behind the DJ’s booth, the back door was already swinging closed.
Hale slammed through the metal door, darting his head left and right as he found himself in a trash-strewn alley. When he spotted the woman on the ground, his stomach plummeted, but then he picked up her heartbeat.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sliding to his knees besides the woman.
Besides her tousled hair and clothes, she seemed fine. She was definitely dazed though.
She pushed herself upright, nodding and pointing down the alley. “He let me go the moment we got outside. Then he kept running that way. He was so damn fast.”
Hale looked in the direction she pointed, expecting the man to be long gone. Which was why he was stunned to see the guy standing at the end of the alley returning Hale’s gaze with a look that could only be called challenging. Then he slowly turned and took off.
Any thought Hale might have had about not going after the man disappeared the moment he started running. There was a part of Hale that insisted he was simply doing his job as a cop by chasing a dangerous bad guy. But there was another part—the bigger part—that saw the man running away and couldn’t help but think of him as prey.
And as a werewolf, Hale simply couldn’t ignore chasing down prey.
Within three blocks of dark, trash-filled alleys, Hale was surer than ever that the man he was chasing was some kind of supernatural. There was no way a human could run this fast, leaping over walls and dumpsters like it was nothing. Hale was one of the faster alpha werewolves in an entire pack of alphas, yet he was still fighting to keep up with the man ahead of him, much less gain any ground.
He must have chased the man for two damn miles, pretty sure the guy was purposely staying just out of reach instead of leaving him in the dust. Hale’s gut told him that he was being lured into a trap, but when he finally decided to pull up and end the pursuit, he rounded a corner to find the man standing in the middle of a dimly lit alley, three-story buildings on the left and right, and dumpsters blocking a good portion of the far end.
