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“Let her breathe, honey,” Morgan said, wrapping them both in a hug for a moment before Emily let up her tight hold. He lifted her chin until her gaze met his, a long way up from her five-foot two-inch height to his six-foot-one height. “You had us worried, Elby.”
She couldn’t help but smile a bit more at the nickname. They rarely used it anymore. Ashton usually flushed still in embarrassment whenever he heard it. At five, he hadn’t quite been able to pronounce her name correctly and his parents honestly thought his new friend was named Elby, until they all met at a school event a few months into the year. They used it to tease Ashton as they got older, making her love them all even more.
“I’m fine, better than fine actually,” she said making Morgan’s brow lift a bit in question. “I found Ashton—and Dan,” she added seeing his mate take a step forward her eyes a hint red from tears. Her hand slid onto her stomach, her baby bump unmistakable now. “They don’t look physically hurt but they’re trapped.”
“How?” Jerimiah asked as the others stared at her in confusion.
She pulled out the binoculars, bringing up the tape they recorded and played it for them, letting them see for themselves, the wolf’s transformation. “I’ve never heard of anything that can force a shift like that.”
“Neither have I,” Emily agreed, her lips pressing together and Shelby knew she was worried about Ashton even more now, but she understood. Being stuck in wolf form for long periods of time was dangerous. It brought the animalistic side to the forefront, sent their human reasoning out the doors.
It was why they lived as humans rather than animals. Living as an animal for too long, made their human wild, risking all of their kind if caught.
“Not even locoweed would do it,” Jerimiah stated as he looked around the group there. “The only way to keep a wolf from shifting is with a curse.”
“So we either find the witch that put the curse on that cage or we storm the area to get them out,” Elliot suggested. The man was the pack’s gamma, always up for a fight, but Shelby knew that was dangerous. There was no telling what else was lingering in that area if they had a witch on their side.
“I only saw six men there but I didn’t go searching the rest of the area. I didn’t want them catching my scent, so we don’t know what’s really waiting for us out there,” she warned, and Jerimiah lifted his head, eyeing her a bit closer.
“You have a plan of attack?” he asked, thankfully willing to listen to her unlike Elliot who began to speak until Jerimiah cut him off. “No, I want to hear it. She’s earned her place here, her attack plans and security protocols have all been excellent additions to our protection strategies. She located them, it’s only fair to listen to her suggestion now.”
Shelby laid out her plan to the group, earning worried looks from Emily but approvals from both Morgan and Jerimiah, which calmed her. She gave her a mom a half smile, not backing down at her worry reminding her, “Trying to locate the witch or doing more surveillance is simply going to take too long. The longer they’re in there the more danger they’re in from not only the ones that put them in there, but the others in the cage that may have been in there longer, and themselves.”
“True,” Morgan agreed, giving Emily’s hand a squeeze when she began to argue. “We will have guards standing by, if anything looks to be going wrong, they’ll come in and fight.”
“What if they try to drug you?” Michael asked after sharing looks and nods with Morgan and Jerimiah. He was the head of the pack’s guards. She knew he’d be coming with them no matter what and she was honestly glad about it. He had more strength than even Ashton despite not being the child of or one of the highest ranks in the pack. He’d gained it through hard work and age and wasn’t nearly as attack oriented as Elliot was.
“Wolfsbane won’t do anything to me,” she reminded him. “They wouldn’t begin to try to use anything else on a shifter, so I’ll be fine.”
“No,” Emily said when the others looked to be in agreement with the plan. “They might buy you’re a young boy for a few minutes, but you said they drug the shifter for nearly a mile to the cage. They will figure out that not only are you not a boy but also a human girl before you’d reach it.”
“Not if we give her enough of a concentrated scent,” Morgan assured her. “Everything will need to be saturated with scent which means freshly worn clothes and scent transfers.”
“We’ll wear regular clothes to get there, the fast pace will drench them with scent, and then we’ll change into our gear while Shelby takes the items,” Michael suggested.
“Your things won’t fit her,” Jerimiah said and Shelby tried to hide the grin that popped up seeing the offended looks from a few of their guards. “She’s five-two, you’re mostly six feet something. She’ll drown in your clothes and won’t be able to move.”
“We can bring along some of the tracker trainees,” Morgan said and she nodded. “They can keep pace but since they’re still in their early teens, their clothes are more likely to fit her. We’ll go along with them, then once we’re a safe distance, they can change and I’ll bring them back home. My presence there would alert Ashton immediately, his wolf would begin to get agitated, knowing that I’m near or that we’re planning something, drawing their attention too much for us to easily do this.”
“I can’t talk you out of this, can I?” Emily asked her and Shelby shook her head no. “Promise me you’ll be careful and come straight home.”
“I promise, Mama,” she said, letting her coddle her while the others got ready. They were leaving just before first light and she needed some rest before then.
Chapter 2
The sun was heavy even through the trees as they stopped, and Shelby was thankful that her sense of smell wasn’t close to the rest of the group’s as the trainees began to change. From the look on Morgan’s face, she knew the clothes were ripe and she was thankful that she was wearing one of their special bodysuits that would keep her from feeling any of the wetness from them.
She wished she could say the same thing for her head as she pulled on the stocking type cap, bundling her dark curls up into it. Her head was already sweaty, but the cap was nearly soaked, and she let out a little grimace as it pressed against her skin.
She pulled on the clothes, making sure her curves were hidden. She was short for certain, but she honestly didn’t look like a boy. Sometimes she wished she didn’t have quite so many curves, especially in the bust. Her boobs got in the way when she was shooting sometimes. Mostly when she was using a gun and needed to lay on the ground for any length of time.
Ashton had teased her about it a couple years ago, digging out holes for her boobs, and she’d nearly brained him with her gun. She’d been pissed about it for certain but the joke was actually on him. Not that she told him that it actually made it easier to find her mark, that those holes had kept her boobs from being mushed into the ground making her uncomfortable.
She knew her body type was why Emily was so worried about the shifters having their hands on her for any amount of time. Thankfully, the bodysuit on top of her highest compression sports bra was keeping her boobs from looking like boobs. She looked thick in the chest which wasn’t unusual for early teenage boys. They tended to bulk up fast.
“You still look like a girl in the face,” Shawn said when she turned around to face the rest of the guard group that was continuing on with her. “No one is going to buy you’re a guy once they see your face.”
“You wearing makeup, Shelby? Want to look good for Ashton when you get him out?” Theo added with a teasing lit to his tone making her roll her eyes at him. The guy graduated with them and was now part of the guard, which was honestly impressive as the majority of the guards were at least in their late twenties when they started. He knew she didn’t have those type of feelings for Ashton anymore than Ashton having them for her so his words were all smack.
