* * *
Washington, DC
Jake Huang cursed silently as he strode down yet another hallway on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building. How the hell was he going to find the conference room where he was supposed to meet with his new boss in this damn maze? He supposed he could ask one of the other FBI agents who zipped past him in their perfect professional clothes with their perfectly styled hair and perfectly shined shoes, but ultimately, he couldn’t bring himself to admit he didn’t know his way around the place yet. He was a federal agent now. Shouldn’t he know this kind of stuff?
Then again, maybe he should cut himself a break. He’d only been in DC for less than a week and had spent most of that time trying to find a place for him and the twins to live. His boss, Nathan McKay, had given him a quick whirlwind tour of the huge FBI headquarters, then told him to focus on getting settled before worrying about the job. Of course, that was before McKay had called this morning telling him he had thirty minutes to be at the office.
So much for getting settled in.
If it were just him, Jake would have grabbed the first apartment he could find close to work and called it a day, but he had other people in his life now, namely Zoe and Chloe Haynes, the eighteen-year-old beta werewolves he’d rescued from a vampire coven and recently become responsible for. Bringing teenage werewolves who’d gone through their first change barely two months ago to a city as big as Washington, DC was crazy to say the least, but that’s what it meant when an alpha stumbled across betas who needed him. They became a pack and a huge part of each other’s lives.
When McKay had offered him a position on the joint FBI/CIA Special Threat Assessment Team—aka STAT—the first thing he’d done was ask Zoe and Chloe what they thought. If they’d been against the idea, he would have walked away from the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even though it meant uprooting the life they’d just started in Dallas, the twins had urged him to take the job. The girls were thrilled at the idea of living in the nation’s capital, while he was excited to have a job that would let him openly reveal his werewolf nature and use the abilities that came with it.
Jake turned down another long hallway, sure he’d covered every square foot of the floor he was on, when he picked up a familiar scent—werewolves. One female alpha. One male omega. Doubting there could be many people like him wandering around the building, he let his nose lead him in the right direction.
He chided himself for not thinking of using his keen sense of smell before this. Then again, he’d only recently started embracing his werewolf side. Ever since he’d first turned four years ago, he’d done his best to forget what he’d become.
He half closed his eyes, letting his sense of smell take over and guide him in the right direction. That not only let him shut out a lot of the external distractions so he could focus on the two scents, instead of everything going on around him, but it also kept anyone from freaking out if they noticed his dark eyes were now bright golden yellow. Having someone see him walking the halls like he was stoned wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t as bad as them realizing his eyes were glowing like some sort of creature on Halloween.
Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice one way or the other.
A few moments later, he walked into a small conference room to find Harley Grant and Caleb Lynch waiting for him. McKay, thankfully, was nowhere in sight. At least Jake wasn’t late.
“Either of you have any idea what McKay wants to see us about?” Jake asked as he sat down across the table from the two werewolves he was somehow supposed to form a pack with even though they’d just met a few days ago.
As if all it took was shoving the three of them in a small room together and waiting for magic to happen.
Jake wasn’t an expert on the subject, but from what he’d heard, werewolves were normally drawn together naturally, finding each other without having to work at it. Kind of like him with Zoe and Chloe. But McKay had hired him and the other two werewolves with the expectation that they’d form a pack. Probably because McKay had recently worked with another pack of werewolves—namely the Dallas PD SWAT Team—and seen how impressive the results could be when people like them worked together.
“No clue.” Caleb leaned back in his chair, casually propping the sole of his boot on the edge of the table. Tall, with dark eyes and a perpetual smirk, his shaggy, dark blond hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a week. “McKay said it was something urgent, but it’s been an hour since he brought us in here, so I guess it can’t be that urgent.”
Jake winced. “That’s probably my fault. He called me forty-five minutes ago, but it took me a while to get here. All I know is that he’s got a mission for us.”
Caleb looked like he couldn’t care less about Jake’s excuse or the mission. Actually, he didn’t look like he gave a damn about anything.
That was par for the course with omega werewolves. And Caleb was a prototypical omega. Big, strong, and as fast as any alpha, he was barely able to keep his inherent werewolf nature under control, not to mention he was nearly incapable of caring about anybody but himself. Loners by choice, omegas rarely formed pack bonds. Jake could only imagine how much fun it was going to be trying to get the man integrated into the team.
To make matters worse, Caleb was a convicted criminal. The only reason he wasn’t in jail right now was because he’d agreed to work for STAT. One screwup and the man would go straight back to prison. Jake didn’t know exactly what the other werewolf had done to get him tossed in a cell or why the commander of the Dallas SWAT Team had vouched for him, but he had, and now, Caleb was Jake’s problem.
Jake glanced at the third member of their dysfunctional pack to see if she had anything to add to the discussion. From the disinterested look on the pretty blond werewolf’s face, Harley didn’t seem to care any more than Caleb did about the meeting.
He wished he could say he was surprised, but he wasn’t. While he’d only talked to the female alpha for a while the first day they’d met, Jake could already tell gaining her trust wasn’t going to be easy. From the little she’d said about her werewolf abilities, he got the feeling she’d yet to accept her inner wolf. He couldn’t shake the sensation that Harley didn’t like what she was. It made him wonder what the hell McKay had said to get her to agree to the job.
Jake opened his mouth to ask if either Caleb or Harley had found a place to live yet—because the silence was starting to get uncomfortable and it seemed like a safe thing to talk about—when the door to the conference room opened and their boss walked in. Brown hair sporting a touch of gray at the temples, McKay appeared every inch the federal agent, right down to the black suit and wire-rimmed glasses.
Harley sat up a little straighter.
Caleb didn’t even have the good sense to take his foot off the table—nice to confirm he did indeed have the social graces of a sea slug.