Prologue

Fuck. Based on the burning in my eyes and throat, I’d been gassed and pepper sprayed. Shit. I think I took a Taser to the ass, too. This was why we never let Benji plan missions. But this was a special case. We needed to infiltrate New Eden Asylum run by the Coalition. Based on the smell of antiseptic and incense, we’d done it.

Fuck me if I could remember how we got here. Benji refused to tell us his plan, or he said it wouldn’t work. He directed us to a Waffle House full of cop cars and then burst out of the rental SUV with a bottle of grape soda, a fist full of fireworks, and screaming about freedom and Ghostbusters.

Which was so Benji and my nose was picking up some of that grape soda, so I was guessing I ended up wearing it. I tried reaching for my bear before I opened my eyes. I could feel him and my senses were intact, but I couldn’t shift, which meant Pax had done his thing with the walls.

I cracked open my eyes, and I was strapped to a bed in a sparse room. Which was expected. Pax was sitting next to my bed dressed like a priest. Which was also expected, but also kind of sexy. Pax was not a priest. He was a special kind of warlock called a Smith. He could transfigure anything.

It was much easier for Pax to go undercover here than it was for Benji or me, and he could transfigure the silver that lined the walls to give us an edge. There was one last safeguard we needed to neutralize to give everyone their magic back and break out the green witch we’d been hired to rescue.

“You look sexy in that collar,” I growled. “You should keep it for later. Where’s Benji?”

Pax just rolled his eyes. Pax was just as much a priest as any of the priests and nuns here. The Coalition had been excommunicated a while ago and the church tried to distance themselves from it. They’d been banned in several countries as hate groups and extremists, but the United States where we lived was still dragging ass so that left Pax, Benji, and me to try to keep everyone safe.

“Benji is in the next room. He woke up first. There’s something bigger going on here than strange men who won’t give us their names and we don’t know what they are asking us to rescue—some green witch who is supposed to be insanely dangerous and they also won’t give us her name. Can you feel her? Benji and I can. She’s here. The one we’ve been waiting for.”

Benji and Pax had both been taken by the Coalition and abused. I literally found them on the side of the road like strays. I took them in, patched them up, and then realized they were pack and we had that supernatural connection. There was supposed to be a woman out there made for the three of us that we were destined to meet. Fuck me.

I couldn’t shift because of what they were pumping into the air, but I could call to my bear and reach out to my senses. I felt her right away. She was far away, underground, where they kept all the really dangerous supernaturals. She also smelled like wildflowers under the full moon.

“Mine,” I growled.

“Yeah, Benji said the same thing. In the exact same tone. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, but I’m not a shifter and I’m feeling possessive, too. She’s in the basement and a green witch. Think it’s the same green witch Di and his weirdo friends hired us to find?”

We’d been hired by three very intense men to fetch a green witch from the bowels of New Eden Asylum. We didn’t even know what they were. Two refused to tell us their name. The third gave us a fake name. He just went by Di. They gave off serious amounts of power and were probably even weirder and more intense than Benji.

Di said the green witch was his girlfriend. We’d been helping people who escaped Coalition centers, but we weren’t dumb enough to try to break into one. Di said he knew a seer, and that we were uniquely qualified to do this. He also said getting this green witch out would stop the Coalition for good. Which was a little hard to believe because most of them were more worried about plants than people.

The only reason we agreed to it was because they said this particular green witch was special and god touched. Their seer foresaw an end to all the torture of our kind if we did this. Something told me that mysterious motherfucker also knew his girlfriend was our mate and chose to just let us be surprised.

“Probably. If they hurt her like they did you and Benji…”

I couldn’t bear it. They took Pax’s eyesight and Benji got PTSD around water. I’d raze this whole place to the ground.

“Benji and I already reached out to her. She won’t tell us her name and she’s not really chatty. You’re going to have to do for her what you did for us.”

I could do that. I brought them home, bathed them, cooked for them, and talked them through it until they came to me so I could hold them, too. But still, I needed to hear that from her. With the silver out of the walls, I was able to reach out to her with my mind. The connection would be much stronger and I’d be able to feel her emotions, too, after I marked her, but right now, we could just talk.

“Mate,”my bear growled. “Did they hurt you?”

“You can’t be here. None of you can. You have to get out of here and forget about me.”

Like that would happen. She had this lovely, husky voice. She told us to leave without her, but that wasn’t a rejection.

We were breaking our mate out of New Eden Asylum. We were breaking everyone out. Then we were taking them down.