Chapter 1

Blissful silence surrounded Elliot Young as he ran through the woods around his home. After his service had ended, Elliot returned to Morefield Village to live. He had his home on the outskirts of the village and was content to spend time alone.

He didn't want or need anything. He had a roof over his head, food in the fridge, and some close friends. And that was enough for him. His mate had died when he was a child; he knew he would never have that connection.

He still mourned her, his Beth, but at least he'd had the chance to know her. Most shifters never had that and settled for someone who would make them happy. Elliot had had that connection and had watched her die in front of him. A car crash. One he'd survived, but she hadn't.

He'd been twelve when he'd held her in her final moments, her parents already deceased. Somehow, Elliot had survived. Broken bones and lacerations, but he'd survived. He would have given anything for Beth to have survived as well.

As soon as he was old enough, Elliot had left, enlisting in the military. He'd had to leave. Everything reminded him of her and what he'd lost, but now he was in a better place. Except for the nightmares. Every night, trying to save his team but somehow failing. Waking, covered in sweat, most times on the floor, curled up in a ball. Being back home made it easier, and he'd wanted to live the remainder of his life in peace and quiet.

That hadn't lasted long.

Deacon Morrison, Mayor of Morefield, had a job for him, and Elliot had a hard time refusing. A mysterious organization was hunting shifters down, kidnapping and experimenting on them and finally disposing of their emaciated wasted bodies once they no longer needed them.

Indigo Dubois, who ran Salutem, a town close to Morefield, worked with Deac and the town to try to stop what was happening. They had a good system in place where both security teams liaised and worked together to ensure they were as safe as possible.

Security had a good mix of people working in it. Shifter, vampire, and human. Mated couples who could communicate using telepathy meant when one was out in the field, they could pass information back to their mate working in one of the security buildings. Made them far quicker to respond to danger. Far more effective in saving lives.

It had been working as well. Kidnapping attempts had decreased, spies had been found and removed, and more information about this group, this A.S. as they were known, was coming to light. Then something new entered the mix.

A creature, a thing—whatever they wanted to call it—appeared. And it was deadly.

Fabien had died. A good friend to Elliot. Someone he'd brought to Morefield. He felt responsible. Fabien would be alive if he'd stayed away. Albie was in the hospital, alive when he, too, should be dead. But he was mated to a shifter and no doubt had her strength flowing through him because of their bond.

People he cared about dead and injured and the rest of the team trying to pick up the pieces. Jim and his brother were both still recovering from their fight with the creature. Hunter and Preston, too, which meant everyone else was doing double shifts. Running on fumes, Elliot knew mistakes happened when people didn't get enough sleep.

Sighing, Elliot slowed until he walked and then stopped. He waited for his heart rate to slow, his breathing to become regular, then walked over to the house. A house he knew the outside of well but not the inside. He'd never been inside, and he never would either. His mate's house.

How that had happened was beyond Elliot. You only had one mate, and Elliot had watched his die. Yet here he stood outside the house of his mate. Alvin Small. So much younger than he, with a family he'd been left to raise. Siblings. His parents left in the middle of the night, and Alvin was just a kid when they'd gone, but he'd become an adult overnight and taken over raising them.

He had help. The people of Morefield were there for them—except Elliot. As soon as he'd realized who Alvin was to him, he bolted. He'd spent years used to the idea, the knowledge, that he didn't have a mate. And, now, one had appeared.

Alvin had been twenty when they'd left. The twins, Sylvia and Slater, newborns, Alison four. Alvin had struggled at first. Who wouldn't? But he'd soon figured it out. Elliot had watched, proud his mate was a good father and brother or a mix of them both.

Now, Alvin knew Elliot was his mate. Now, he knew Elliot didn't want him. No, it wasn't that Elliot didn't want Alvin. He'd been prepared for a long, lonely life with maybe the occasional hook-up, and now, that had changed.

Maybe he should be happy, but he wasn't. What did he have to offer a young man like him? He was old, scared, beat up, and too set in his ways. How did he go from a solitary life to waking up next to a mate and having kids?

He'd given up on all of that when Beth had died. Now, it was here, but he wasn't ready to accept it. He didn't think he would ever be ready. Beth had been his everything from the moment he'd known who she was to him, and now he had a man. How he had a second mate mystified Elliot.

The sex of his mate made little difference to Elliot. He'd slept with men and women. Shifters tended to be attracted to the person rather than the sex, and Elliot had enjoyed sex, but returning home and then running security had changed his plans. A mate. A team. People depending on him to keep them safe. And…a traitor to find.

A light came on upstairs, and Elliot realized he'd been standing outside for longer than he'd expected. He needed to go home and begin the search for their traitor. A task that seemed never ending, but he had narrowed it down. It could only be someone in their security team.

The team had grown over the past couple of years. It had had to with the growing threat and increasing population. The three stooges had performed background checks on all; somehow this person's information had been fabricated to such a degree that it had passed every security measure they had set up.

The three stooges—Viridian Dubois, Ishmael Dubois, and Euan McLeod—ran all checks with input from Hunter Blanchard and his mate, Carter Ducey. Hunter had exceptional IT skills, but as a vampire—and one of the fastest Elliot had ever seen—he was needed out on the field more than behind a desk.

Turning from the place he could call home, Elliot jogged back through the woods to his home. Once he'd disarmed all the security around the place, he entered and locked it up tight. Walking over to his security panel, he pulled up footage from the night before and ran a scan. Sure enough, one of those creatures appeared.

Every time they managed to grab an image of one, they were catalogued and so far, they had seen eight of them. Eight. That had Elliot concerned. He had fought one of them, had fired ammo at it that would knock and elephant on his ass, and the thing had laughed.

They'd lost a man, had others injured, and it had appeared as if they had caused the thing no injuries at all. How the hell were they meant to kill it? Maybe blow the fucker up?

When they'd gone to rescue Preston Fulwood, Manu Agarwal's mate, they'd encountered two of them. One inside the building and one outside. If Indigo Dubois' mate, Balor, hadn't arrived with back up, Elliot knew they would have lost men fighting the one outside. Elliot wasn't sure if the one inside had survived or not. Grenades had had an impact but how much of one, Elliot didn't know.

The demons had been able to take it on, but they hadn't killed it. Balor said the creature had run away like it had received a signal. It had been fighting them, suddenly stopped, then ran.

The thought of one of those creatures getting to his mate had Elliot's chest constricting, his breath quickening. Not Alvin and the kids. Elliot might not want to mate him, but he would ensure Alvin's and the children's safety.

Screen grabbing the images, he sent it to security. Minutes later his phone went off. "Preston."

"We're seen that one before. It's come up a few times now."

"Manu out in the field?"

"Yeah. Two more hours, then we're heading home unless we have a meeting."

Elliot scrubbed the stubble on his chin. "We should."

"We need to liaise with Salutem. We have a mole.

"Yeah. Thoughts?" He trusted Preston even though he'd come to Morefield to gather evidence about them for the group A.S. who were behind it all. Having worked together as SEALs, he knew he could depend on Preston to give him an honest assessment.

"There's a saying ‘if you kill a snake and you haven't cut its head off, then you haven't killed it at all' or words to that effect."

"Meaning?"

"What is the best way to beat the enemy? What would you do if you were this group and these pesky organized shifters kept getting in your way?"

"Take them out of commission?" Elliot knew where Preston was going with this. He had suspected it with the way incursions around his property had increased.

"And the quickest way?"

"Me."

"Right on the ball, and they've picked up their observations of you. When you're here, there is very little activity around your place. There was at first, but I think that was recon. Now they know you, your movements, patterns, they only come when you're home. I think they're testing you and your security."

"I would have thought they would be here more when I wasn't."

"True, but they don't think like you. You're beneath them. When they want you, they'll lay in wait and get you, and they'll know how to as well because they've watched you." Elliot heard a sigh. "We need to have one of the IT guys come up with a virus to fuck us up for a couple of days. One they can fix quickly but it would give us a reason to restrict access—temporarily—and make changes. Only give access to a handful of people."

"Flush whoever this person is out?"

"Yeah. They'll need access." Elliot heard Preston moving in the chair as it squeaked. "This person is likable, quiet, works hard, and someone who isn't part of the inner circle."

"How do you know that?"

"Timing."

"Explain?" Elliot grew intrigued the more Preston talked. He'd clearly been doing some thinking and monitoring while recovering from his kidnapping ordeal.

"When a decision is made, the inner circle knows first. Deac, you, Fabien…" Elliot winced. He knew Preston didn't mean to mention the dead vampire, but it hurt to think of Elliot's friend no longer with them. "Sorry. Manu, Albie, Costas. Nothing changes. No changes in their behavior, no changes that we notice in their pattern. It's only when the wider security team knows that there is a change. I noticed it when patrols were altered. It didn't take them long before they were matching us. Far quicker than it should of as if they already knew the changes and were waiting for us to implement them."

"Matching us?" They had CCTV everywhere, so they would have spotted something.

"You think you're the only ones out there, the only ones monitoring? They have a scent suppressor. You wouldn't know."

That pissed Elliot off. He thought they had the place completely covered. "Suggestions?"

"First the IT. Eliminate their access. Make a patrol change but roll out the information before implementing it. Inner circle first, obviously, then those who you would consider second in command, then implement."

"That's not going to be easy." Elliot was already going through how they could do that without everyone knowing.

"Make sure the change occurs when those working the shifts are those who know. It could be something as easy as changing personnel. See how quickly they change. This person will need access. This person feeds them their information, so if changes occur that they don't know about, he or she will face the music."

"I don't see how we can make that work."

"Then fall back on the virus, and once it's doing its job, have sudden meetings. Have people rushing around, making it look like something is happening." Preston chuckled. "You get paid for this shit. I'm just a grunt."

"And how are you and Manu getting along?" They had what could be described as a rocky relationship. They loved each other but could only stand to be around each other for a short amount of time.

"We fucked, then I left, so he's pissed at me."

Elliot snorted. "When is he not pissed off at you?"

"It seems to be his general feeling when we're together. It's fun keeping him on edge."

"You can be a bastard, you know that."

"Why, yes, I do, and thank you for the compliment."

Shaking his head, Elliot said his goodbyes, then hung up. Time for a shower, then meeting. And time to watch his back.