Page 6 of Hunted

Okay, that was a surprise. “You would be texted a location one minute before you were to jump in. You alone could come. No security detail. You would be scanned. Any tracers and the deal is off. Once there, you would have to agree to drop your mental shields and give a neural manipulator full access to your mind to make sure you weren’t planning to abduct Rowan or Vlad.”

“And grant them access to codes and security information?”

“You kidnapped your daughter and held her as a blood slave for two years. Vlad is the single largest threat to your power. Our best estimates show that a third of the lower caste vampires you formerly held as slaves in your covens are now living free of the Vampire Nation.” Vlad and Brody’s wife, London, had helped find the asylum seekers housing and jobs. Both of them had permanent targets on their backs as far as the Vampire Nation was concerned.

Zara’s mouth thinned. “Go on.”

“If you’re cleared, you would be jumped to a new location. This is all if Vlad and Rowan agree to the meet, by the way. I don’t speak for them. I just handle security.”

Cristof frowned at his phone. “We need to go. Another compound was just hit. We may have been compromised.”

Zara swore. “We’ll get back to you.”

As soon as they were gone, I rounded on Guillermo. “You sent a message to Brody without talking to me first?”

“Calm down.”

“I won’t fucking calm down.” I stalked across the field, pulse racing. “We’ve said from the start that Ellie is a target. You can’t pull her security.”

“The research team’s security, you mean.” Guillermo tilted his head. “Or are you making this personal because it’s Ellie Crowe?”

Enough of this. “Reassign me. Put someone else on Rossi. I’ll lead her protection detail myself.”

“No. And if you can’t keep a clear head where she’s concerned, I’m pulling you off her detail altogether. I get that you two have a,” he paused, “connection, but you answer to me and the rest of the Council. Not to some human girl.”

Because of course that was all she was to them, all she would ever be so long as she chose to remain human.

“I want to be in charge of the team. If it can’t be our people, I need to hand pick who’s going to be guarding her.”

He nodded. “Fine.”

“We can use Vlad’s people, and ask Brody and London for help from North Austin and Blood Moon’s packs.”

“And Zara’s offer?”

I growled under my breath.

“I have given you a lot of leeway over the past four years, nephew, but you do not refuse orders or come in here and make threats.”

“What do you expect me to do?” I exploded. “You’re pulling her protection detail. You know she’s as good as dead if you do that. If you want me to resign, I will. I don’t want to. I want to serve, but I’ll do what I have to if that’s the only way to keep her safe.”

My uncle’s gaze sharpened, eyes flashing gold, the wolf staring out at me. “You really think if you’re pulled off the hunt for Rossi, she’ll be any safer?”

I scraped a hand over my skull trim. Ellie would never be safe so long as Matteo Rossi was alive. And I was the best person to take him out.

“Don’t forget the terms of our deal,” Guillermo continued. “I’m allowing you to head up Ellie’s protection detail despite the personal connection you share because she’s being targeted by the black ops group and her presence may draw Rossi out. Your primary orders are still to hunt down and capture Rossi.”

“She’s fucking bait.”

“He chose her as a target, not us.” Guillermo turned to stare up at the moon. “You are not to kill Rossi. That’s a direct order.”

I turned to stare at my uncle’s profile, following a faint thread of memory as it flitted through his mind. A terrace overlooking an azure sea. A warm sunny day. A woman with long dark hair in a backless dress. It lasted for no more than a second, grains of sand falling between my fingers as I tried to hang on. Just like every other time, the memories were there one second, gone the next as his shields snapped back into place. I coaxed my magic to curl around the thread of memory, trying to find a way in, only to be hit with an impenetrable wall. I was strong. My uncle, leader of the Southern Territorial Council, was one of the most powerful werewolves born in the last two centuries. No way was I getting into his head if he wanted to keep me out.

“He’s the only doubly gifted shifter on record.”

“I’m aware.”

“From all the data we have, he’s an incredibly strong neural manipulator who’s been rewriting and controlling entire teams of werewolves against their will. I don’t know how he would stack up against someone like you or Mom as a projectionist, but when he attacked London last spring at the summit, she couldn’t break his mental hold.”

“We need to take him alive.”

“And if I can’t do it without putting myself or my people at risk?”

“You have your orders.”

Guillermo flicked a glance over his shoulder as the vampire who’d jumped us here, one of Vlad’s fighters, materialized in the field behind him, right on time. When he turned back to me, something in his expression had hardened, the walls surrounding his thoughts having taken on an almost flinty edge in his determination to keep me out.

He was hiding something. And I intended to find out what.