“Rachel Mallory is my doctor, not my friend. I haven’t seen her in two weeks. And the last time I saw her, I left her clinic upset because she was spewing anti-shifter garbage at me because of my growing relationship with Bash. She gave you wrong information. I’m here because this is exactly where I want to be.”
“Drop your weapons,” Georgia gritted out.
The redheaded officer shook his head and held his ground. “If we drop them, what will stop you from murdering us? What will keep you from disposing of us just like you did with all those IESA agents?”
“Look around you,” Clinton said.
The officers cast their glances to a commotion on the other side of the riverbank. A dark-furred titan grizzly slipped from the woods, and behind him several pairs of eyes glowed and reflected through the trees. Creed was battle ready and so was his crew, which meant Georgia must’ve sounded the alarm.
“Your little pea shooters won’t save you,” Clinton said, coming to stand right beside Emerson and Audrey. “Pull that trigger one time, and you’ll have every Boarlander and every Gray Back fighting for your jugulars. But we aren’t the ones you’re really worried about, are we?”
Something huge blocked the sky like an eclipse, and hurricane winds blew the sand around them into tornadoes. Clinton held Emerson up when her legs failed, and then it was gone and the wind settled.
Bash placed himself in front of her, so close she could smell the richness of his fur. His muscular hump stood high above her head, and she was intimidated to stillness with how big he really was.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Holman said soothingly, holding her hands out, gun gone limp. “Call the dragon off. We aren’t here to hurt you. We thought we were saving a civilian. We were just supposed to come in quiet—”
“In woods full of shifters,” Mason said from behind them. “You thought you would be quieter than us? Too quiet for us to hear or sense? Who are you, and I swear to God, if we hear a lie, you’re dead.”
“We’ve been sent here as the point of contact between the rest of the world and these mountains.” Holman holstered her gun. “Brackeen, put it away!” she demanded with a quick, fierce glance at her partner. When he did, she continued. “We have two cabins down the hill where humans will have to check in before they come up here from now on.”
“That’s not right,” Emerson argued. “There are human mates up here. Fuck that. We aren’t checking in any time we want to come back from a grocery run.”
“Not registered mates, but humans who aren’t already paired up.”
“Why?” Clinton asked. His lips turned up in a cruel smile. “I already know the answer, but I want to hear you tell the rest of my crew.”
Officer Holman swallowed hard and murmured, “Our objective is to keep peace between humans and the shifters of Damon’s mountains as changes to the laws surrounding your existence are reviewed and—”
“Tell them!” Clinton yelled.
The blond dropped her gaze to the sand and angled her face away from the anger in Clinton’s voice. “We’re here to slow the spread of shifters in these mountains.”
“I don’t understand,” Emerson said, shaking her head.
“They’re here for population control,” a deep, gravelly voice said from the shadows. “They’re here to make sure the shifters in my mountains know their lives aren’t their own.” Damon Daye, the dragon himself, stepped from the shadows, fastening the last button of a crisp white shirt. She’d seen him from a distance in town once, but standing this close to him, the air was too thick to breath. “We registered, just like they wanted us to. We gave them information about ourselves and our whereabouts, and they’ve been watching us grow. They’re here to undermine everything I’ve built because our happiness threatens the weak-minded.”
“Effective immediately,” Officer Holman said in a shaking voice, her neck exposed like a smart little human, “no one else will be allowed to register to the crews of your mountains. No more pairings will be recognized in the eyes of the law.”
Bash shrank back into his human skin with a grunt. “But, Emerson is mine,” he rasped out, his eyes glowing like the Gray Backs’ on the other bank. “I love her. She marked me.” He gestured to the scar on his chest.
“I’m sorry.” At least Holman sounded regretful. “You can’t claim her because she’s human. If you Turn her now, they’ll cage you.”
“I wouldn’t Turn her unless she asked.”