Page 1 of Thrown into the Mob

ONE

MADD

The first sign my cover was blown was the silence.

The bar had emptied and my wolf sensed what was happening seconds before my brain caught up. His hackles rose, but by then, a guy was aiming a gun at me and I was calculating the distance between us.

His colleagues swarmed inside. Three were in the doorway and they were all armed, not that I expected them to come with water guns. There was another one behind the bar where he must have been since I arrived. Damn, how was it I hadn’t scented him?

Faced with five opponents who knew how to handle a weapon and only two exits, one of which was blocked by three men, my chances of getting away weren’t great.

Run now. My wolf was tempted to shift, but these guys were dragon shifters, and being turned into a pile of charred cinders wasn’t on my to-do list. Even my butt getting singed would stall my escape while those five surrounded me.

But I had to do something, and I was already moving when the first shot took out the light above my head. It wasn’t aimed at me, but was a warning.

“Don’t,” said the one closest to me. He spoke calmly, suggesting he’d done this before.

It was the same tone my cousin and Alpha, Flint, used in similar situations, and he was practiced in the art of getting people to surrender. And if they didn’t, he’d put a bullet in them. I was under no illusion that this guy wouldn’t do the same.

He was big, not as big as Ranger, Flint’s brother, but his size alone, coupled with years of probable experience suggested he didn’t need to perform tricks or threaten anyone by slamming his fist on their jaw.

I froze and my wolf howled inside me. He urged me to keep running, but I liked my head attached to the rest of me.

The others fanned out, and I counted them again. I’d allowed myself to be cornered which Flint and my Grandpa Arnie would say was careless and that would be them being polite. The establishment’s few patrons had vanished just prior to me being ambushed, so I was far from being at the top of my game.

Yep, there were still five of them, so the odds were stacked against me.

“Madden Durand.”

So much for my cover. Three weeks of being Marsh Holland, a rare-spirits supplier with contacts on the east coast, and someone had exposed me. I had no idea who, but even if I wasn’t around to figure it out, I was certain Flint and his brothers would.

It wasn’t often people called me Madden. Treyton, my brother, used to make jokes about my name when we were kids and say how mad I was.

Not now. My wolf wasn’t impressed with how my brain was working.

“Guys, you’ve got the wrong man. My name’s Marsh, and I’m not into whatever this is.”

Pfft. They’re not taken in by your pretense.

The one who was doing all the talking didn’t falter. “Don’t bother. We know who you are.” He sniffed and made a face. “Besides, you smell like a wet dog.”

What? Now it was my beast who was indignant instead of planning how to get out of our predicament. We do not.

Hands at my hips removed my phone and the gun. They patted me down and discovered the second weapon at my ankle. My wolf was snarling, and though these guys couldn’t hear him, their beasts were probably begging to torch me.

I was dragged out to a car and expected them to put a hood over my head. That they didn’t showed they didn’t care that I knew where I was going.

It’s humiliating being kidnapped. My wolf was peering through my eyes at the changing scenery.

Treyton was too. It was weird that my cousins all kidnapped their mates and yet my brother’s mate did the same to him. But none of these bozos accompanying me were my mate, so maybe I’d broken the pattern.

I concentrated on what I was seeing outside the window. The road went from tarmac to gravel, and the light changed through the tinted windows from busy and bright to something more calm. We were in the countryside and trees leaned over both sides of the road as if they wanted to know who I was.

But plenty of trees was good because there was space around them, and that gave me options.

Though I’d never been here previously, I knew where we were going because being undercover meant I had studied this dragon organization. We were going to the Solari flight’s patriarch’s home.

Flint would never have taken a captive to his home.