Huntress Unleashed

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“I can’t, Dad.”

“You can, Buttercup.”

Across the gleaming conference table, the room’s third occupant cleared his throat, the electricity of an annoyed and extremely powerful shifter permeating the air. But Wolfie and I both ignored our audience, leaning closer in a father-daughter noggin knock we’d perfected when I was a mere pup.

“I’m not saying I won’t try,” I elaborated for both of their sakes. “I will, of course. But Dakota will never let me onto her property, let alone into her pack.”

After all, the female in question was my precise opposite. Left to my own devices, I spent most of my time baking goodies to cheer up friends and family. In contrast, Dakota had been responsible for my cousin’s death, had slaughtered an entire compound of humans, and had taken my only brother into custody where he disappeared without a trace...all within the same week.

Unbeknownst to me, she’d also started selling large quantities of never-before-seen pharmaceuticals to dozens of innocent shifters around the same time period. As the region’s enforcer—the one in charge of making the rules, not breaking them—she might have gotten away with the trick, too...if she hadn’t spread out her net to include the clan I used to call my own.

For an alpha like Wolfie who lived by his duty to protect, finding out that two of his pack mates had become hooked on empathy-squashing medications must have been a punch to the gut. For the other male in the room, who was legally responsible for Dakota’s actions, the female’s power-hungry manipulations came as an even more personal affront.

So this time, it wasn’t just our obliviousness to his presence that brought our companion’s wolf into existence as a shadow beneath his human skin. Instinctively, I ducked my chin down tighter to keep my jugular inside my throat where it belonged. Only then did I close my eyes in total submission, hoping that what I couldn’t see wouldn’t kill me.

Dad wasn’t oblivious to the danger. Still, the entirety of his interest remained fixated upon his only daughter—which is to say, me. “You’ve been through enough already, Ember,” he said, offering me a way out while ignoring the quivering ball of rage at his elbow. “I know this. You know this. If you want to come home and let someone else solve this problem, no one will think any worse of you....”

Wolfie’s voice trailed off hopefully, but I merely pursed my lips and shook my head. No, I couldn’t leave Sebastien’s side, even if the professor didn’t want me present. And I also couldn’t let someone with fewer connections infiltrate Dakota’s pack, only to sit back and watch as the luckless spy failed at her unenviable mission.

The fact that I’d be forced to deal with overbearing alphas like the third inhabitant of the room during the course of my spying was irrelevant.

“I’ll do it,” I repeated when both males seemed to be waiting for a verbal reply. “The only problem is—Dakota and I have history. If I apply for a job with her pack, she’ll laugh in my face then boot me out the door.”

True or not, my words were apparently not what Albert Chamberlain wanted to hear. I’d learned the Tribunal member’s name when Dad introduced us at the beginning of this negotiation, but as the pall of dominance that had been pressing against my cheeks for the last several minutes darkened and deepened, I stuck to the initial assessment I’d made when meeting the older male via video chat two weeks earlier.

His name might be Chamberlain, but to me he would always be Scary Guy.

Now, my shoulders creaked beneath overwhelming pressure as the male spat out words intended to bring our discussion to an abrupt close. “Dakota will welcome you if I tell her to,” Scary Guy retorted. And that, he figured was that.

***

ONLY, OF COURSE, IT wasn’t. For several seconds, every ounce of concentration I could muster focused upon forcing my lungs to billow and oxygenate my blood. But, at last, I was able to glance at the Tribunal member out of the corner of one eye and consider telling him that his grasp on reality was severely cockeyed.

“With all due respect, sir,” I answered, keeping my eyes carefully lowered so as not to provoke Chamberlain’s ire further, “if you were able to keep Dakota in line, you wouldn’t need me to help you.”

I didn’t expect the Tribunal member to like my answer—no dominant shifter likes to have his weaknesses thrown in his face. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the intensity of his reaction either.

Because before the final word had even left my mouth, Chamberlain’s inner wolf was growling so violently that it drowned out my assertion. Then the stubble on his chin stretched into proto-fur even as his manicured fingernails began lengthening into vicious claws.

Backing away as subtly as I could manage while still maintaining my seat, I decided that I hadn’t broached the subject in the best way after all. We all knew that the balance of power in the region was shaky, that we couldn’t afford risking civil war when one Tribunal member unilaterally squashed the actions of a regional enforcer. Thousands of lives rested in the balance, and Chamberlain was taking a risk even coming to speak with us today.

So, yes, Scary Guy had reason for his hair trigger. Maybe I should have let him maintain a foothold on his fantasy world for just a little while longer....

Luckily, Wolfie was no pissant and our father-daughter bond was fierce. “Back off,” he hissed, rising slightly to tower over the other male. And even though shifter protocol gave Scary Guy the higher rank, Dad’s boldness paid off.

Or maybe Chamberlain just remembered that he was the one asking for a favor this time around. It wasn’t as though there were other innocuous werewolf bakers waiting in the wings ready and willing to take my place.

Either way, the other male subsided gracefully, his aura of danger receding so dramatically that I was finally able to pry my eyeballs off the table and risk another fleeting glance in his general direction. “My mistake,” Chamberlain murmured, the words only moderately laden with a promise to rip my skin from the underlying bones in the near future.

“No offense taken,” I murmured, doing my best to defuse the aggression that inevitably arose when two strong males from different packs were cooped up within the same small room.

Dad was less politic. “So we’re all in agreement,” he summed up. “Ember is willing to infiltrate the pack and find out where the drugs are coming from. Her human partner will be brought in to analyze the chemical composition and determine what can be done to counteract them. But the whole strategy falls apart if Dakota won’t even let my daughter through the door in the first place.”

“So we sweeten the pot,” Scary Guy answered, his tone raising hairs all up and down my arms even though his words were perfectly cordial. “You’re a worried papa who needs Dakota to keep his wayward pup out of trouble with an easy job. And in exchange...”

I sighed, realizing at last what would make the other female willing to deal. “...and in exchange, you give Dakota the acknowledgement she craves. She becomes my alpha, my boss, my handler. Tell her you need the shifter equivalent of boot camp to shape me up. In other words, we let her win.”

And after that, it would all be up to me.