Chief Warden Loren Redthorne was parked in front of the building. The Wardens were only called in on very serious matters. They enforced the rules laid out in the Covenant, the ancient document which contained the rules for all wolf shifters. They dealt with matters which threatened the welfare of all wolf shifters, such as exposure to humans, out of control Alphas, and overseeing Death Challenges to make sure that they were carried out fairly.
They cooperated with the Council Pride and the Pride Patrol, who oversaw feline affairs, but in Timber Valley, there were mostly wolf shifters, so the Wardens would deal with any serious issues.
Isadora felt a jolt of alarm shoot through her body.
Her cell phone rang.
She glanced at the phone number. The prefix told her that she was getting a phone call from Pride Patrol headquarters.
Her blood ran cold. All of this activity…a call from the Pride Patrol…they didn’t want to talk to her about any old vandalism.
Had they found out? And exactly how much did they know?
Damn the timing. This was really, really bad timing.
She turned to go – and realized that Dash had strolled up behind her.
There were two wardens with him, and worse, two members of the Pride Patrol – a mountain lion and a bobcat. She could outrun wolves, and run straight up trees, but she couldn’t outrun or outclimb her fellow cats.
The look on Dash’s face was one she’d never seen before. He always looked annoyed at her – but right now his expression was a mixture of anger and disgust. It cut surprisingly deep.
They’d been laying in wait for her, obviously. They must have used noscentium, the herb which would have disguised their smell so she couldn’t scent their approach.
She took a step back. Did she have enough of a lead? Was there any hope of outrunning them?
“Don’t try to run,” Dash said, as if reading her mind. “Isadora Mosswood, you’re under arrest for high treason.”
Chapter Two
Dash sat at his desk, his fingers drumming a steady tattoo on the wood. One of the other deputies shot him an annoyed look, got up, and walked away.
He stopped and flattened his hands out on the desk top, scowling at the blank screen on his computer.
This whole thing made no sense to him. He’d really hoped Isadora would have some explanation, but she’d refused to say a word. She’d maintained her silence as they drove to the sheriff’s office, with her handcuffed and sitting in between two Wardens. That had been on Dash’s recommendation; he knew from experience that Isadora could pick a handcuff lock with her claws and break out from the back of a patrol car faster than he could blink. He’d picked her up on trespassing charges in the past, although the charges had never stuck.
Why wouldn’t Isadora defend herself? The only reason that he could think of was that she was guilty, which he found hard to believe. Isadora was a pain in the ass, but she wasn’t evil.
They’d know soon enough, of course. Isadora was sitting in a jail cell under guard, waiting for their local Shaman to show up. Cody would be able to use his powers to compel her to talk. Unfortunately, he was on a hunting trip, but they’d sent the fastest runners in the Battle pack out to fetch him. He’d be back in town in a couple more hours.
Dash’s desk phone rang, and he picked it up.
“Hello?” he said.
Immediately he wished he hadn’t. It was Karen Battle, his cousin Ty’s wife and Isadora’s best friend, and she spat out a string of curses. “You mangy mongrel son of a bitch dickhead! I should have you neutered!”
“Ah…hello, Karen,” he said, taken aback. “I’m glad to hear from you too. How’s married life? Are you enjoying North Dakota?”
“Isadora was going to take care of the vandalism! I can’t believe you freaking ambushed her, over a stupid cartoon on a wall! And you called in the Pride Patrol? Really, Dash? Life must be very boring in Timber Valley right now.”
Word travelled fast in the Shifter world. He wondered who had told her. Isadora hadn’t been allowed any phone calls; in a matter as serious as this, she didn’t have the right to a lawyer.
“We don’t care about the vandalism. That’s the least of her problems right now.”
“Oh, please.” Contempt dripped from Karen’s voice. “What are you charging her with? Getting into a catfight? Oh, I know - did she kill somebody?”
“Worse.”
There was a puzzled silence on the other end of the phone.
“How could it be worse?” Karen finally asked, the fire gone from her voice.
Dash forced himself to say the words, which were like lead on his tongue. “She’s accused of collaborating with humans to commit treason against the shifter nation. We think she’s working with the surviving mercenaries from the lab, giving them information about shifters.”
He heard Karen’s sharp intake of breath. Now her tone turned frantic and pleading. “Dash. Seriously. This is Isadora we’re talking about here. She has risked her life to save kidnapped shifters. She is not guilty of treason.”
Only a month earlier, Isadora had been one of many shifters who’d rushed to a secret underground laboratory to help free more than a dozen kidnapped shifters. Dash had been there too, and he’d seen her fight – she’d been vicious, slashing and snarling at the humans, taking down the mercenaries fearlessly. She’d rushed into the labs where the shifters were strapped down, frantically ripping their bonds off, helping them stagger out of the underground lab where they’d been held for so long…
She’d seemed as furious as everyone else at the torture that the shifters had experienced. Had that all been an act? Had she really been there to help – or had she been there to spy? Dash was questioning everything that he knew about Isadora.
“I can’t tell you too much…” he glanced around to make sure that nobody was watching him, and lowered his voice. “But I do need to tell you this, Karen. Whatever she’s up to, you’re part of it. You and your family could be in danger.”
“How?” Her tone sharpened. Karen was as fierce as a lion when it came to her family.
“This information was discovered during an undercover operation. What I’m telling you could get me fired, or worse.”
“Fine. It’s just between us. Dash, if my family might be in danger, I need to know.”
“A couple of weeks ago, I was on patrol and I saw Isadora breaking into the medical clinic. I followed her when she left. She headed out of town, and she was checking behind her in her rearview mirror, so I had to hang back. I called up patrol officers from other shifter jurisdictions, and they helped track her. She drove hundreds of miles west, and ended up meeting a couple of humans and handing over some boxes to them. They watched her from a distance through telescopes. When we contacted the clinic, they found out that a dozen vials of blood were missing. They were just normal vials of blood that were being sent to a lab for routine tests. Annual checkup, cholesterol tests, all kinds of different things. One thing that they had in common, though, was that they were all from shifters who had some kind of mutation.”
Some shifters had special mutations which gifted them with unusual powers. The most common mutations were healers and Shamans. However, there were shifters who could levitate objects, or, like Karen’s sister, communicate psychically and read minds. Then there were anomalies like Karen’s brother. He was a male healer, the only one known in the world. All other healers were female.
This was an especially touchy subject for Karen, because the human mercenaries had tried to kidnap her and her family because of their mutations. Apparently, the human army Colonel who’d run the secret laboratory had been obsessed with mutations.
Somehow, Colonel Clinton Bradwell had also found that Timber Valley had an unusually high level of mutations. A few months earlier, a gang of human mercenaries had attempted to kidnap shifter children from a summer camp, and had almost gotten away with it. Karen’s brother and sister had been among them.
The thought made Dash ill. The human mercenaries looked on their kind as animals. Who knows what they would have done to them? They might have dissected the children the same way that they did the adults. Tortured them…his claws shot out, and he forced them back in again.
“Who were the humans?” Karen’s voice sounded faint now.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to identify them. I reported it to the Wardens, and they set up a tap on her phone. She had several conversations with unknown parties, and you were referenced in one of them. She said that she was talking to you every day and you and your family were safe – so far.”
“Did she say anything else about us?”
“No.”
“I see.” Karen’s voice had turned grim.
“We were going to keep monitoring the situation, try to get her to lead us to whoever she was talking to, but this morning we overheard her talking about kidnapping another shifter, some time very soon. We had to move in today; we couldn’t take that risk.”
“You’re sure?”
“She specifically said that they needed to have plenty of men on hand in case he wolfs out.”
“I’m having a very hard time believing that. I’ve known Isadora for years. What did she say when you took her into custody?”