1
Hunter
The humans in the strip club had no idea their world was ending. I didn’t know whether to pity them or cheer on their impending doom.
The bleach-blonde cocktail waitress who was riding the hard edge of forty slopped a watered-down Jack and Coke on the table in front of me. “This is your fifth, Sly. You aren’t driving anywhere tonight, right?”
I peered at her through the dark sunglasses that hid my inhuman eyes. “Nah, Donna.” I slurred my words and swayed slightly in my seat.
“Good,” she said absently, as if she gave a damn. From what I’d observed the past few weeks, neither Donna nor her fat club owner husband cared much for anything other than cold hard cash.
As long as I paid for the copious amounts of shitty alcohol I drank, they overlooked my shaggy hair, hooded trench coat, and apparent alcoholism.
Tossing back the drink, I sprawled in my chair and played the part of a drunk. Sweat dotted my forehead from the strain of keeping the small human form, but it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to.
All my missions required me to suppress my natural scent and either make myself invisible—something I could only do for a short time—or shrink my normally massive body into an average human-sized one. As a result, bystanders never paid much attention to me.
Case in point. No one in the nearly empty strip club glanced twice at me. Not the beautiful dancer on the stage or the disabled vet that watched over her from the door. Not the former linebacker manning the bar or the jackass in a sweater vest seated at the table in front of me. And certainly not the mixture of human and shifter gang members speaking in low voices at the back of the club.
Those fuckers owed their lives to the chip implanted in my head. If freed from the oversight of my handler, I’d shift into the monstrous beast I was and shred them to pieces.
A magnificent vision of what that would look like had me hissing under my breath.
It’d been thirty-two days, six hours, and twenty-seven minutes since I’d been let off my leash, and bloodlust coiled inside me, dark and hungry.
My current handler often forgot killing was one of my biological imperatives, and she wasted my otherworldly abilities on tracking and spying.
But all work and no play makes Hunter a dull boy…
A low growl rumbled inside my chest. Thankfully, none of the humans could hear it over the sensual beat of the music pulsing through the club.
Javier Diaz, the Alpha I’d been sent to watch, might have detected the inhuman noise, if he’d bothered to tear his attention from the dark-haired female dancing on stage. He, like me, was a shifter with highly developed senses. By his scent, he was some kind of jungle cat. Jaguar. Leopard. Whatever the fuck he was, his slender bones would snap like kindling under my giant paws.
The beast inside me demanded I assert my dominance over him and his enforcers. None of them could come close to me in power and strength, and any territory I was in was mine by default. I ached to punish him and his enforcers for occupying the same space and daring to look at the female I desired.
I glanced briefly at the beautiful creature on the stage. The dancer’s long brown hair fanned over her exquisite face as she twirled around the silver pole.
She’ll be mine. Not his.
I bared my teeth, feeling my aggression rise. The bloodthirsty beast lurking under my skin didn’t care that I was a military operative sent here to gather intel on Javier and his faction. All it cared about was killing and—
An intoxicating odor wafted from the stage, shifting my bloodlust into something else. Heat pooled low in my body and my cock hardened. The dancer’s scent—creamy vanilla and female musk—fogged my mind and awoke long denied instincts.
Suddenly, it was impossible to focus on anything but the dancer. She undulated on stage wearing nothing but a G-string and white wings strapped to her back.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the white feathers I’d found after a previous show. Keeping my face lowered, I brought it to my nose and inhaled deeply. My dancer's scent still clung to the downy fringe.
I groaned, my beast urging me to drop to the floor and roll around in the fragrance.
According to my sources, the owner of the feather was Heaven Lee Walker. Server by day. Exotic dancer by night. Human.
I inhaled deeply, branding her alluring scent into my mind and body. My sources were wrong.
She couldn’t be entirely human if her scent called to me on this level.
What is she?
My highly acute senses detected no shifter blood. Nor was she any of the other abominations genetically engineered by the military. And yet, her scent called to me on a level nothing ever had before.
For the first time in my miserable existence, I wanted to claim a female. This female.
Weeks of inhaling her pheromones and watching her seductive dance night after night had aroused me to a dangerous level.
Venom pooled in my mouth as I tracked every one of her sinuous movements. Pretty. So very pretty.
Fuck. Pretty was an understatement.
Her curvaceous body was perfection by the standards of any species. Round hips. Heart-shaped ass. Breasts large enough to fill even my enormous hands.
Like me, Javier seemed unable to tear his gaze from her smooth golden skin and long toned legs that wrapped around the pole. The Alpha leaned forward, looking ready to pounce.
A warning growl escaped my lips.
If the other shifter made any move toward my dancer, it would be his last.
My dancer? Fuck. When did I start thinking of her as mine?
I shook my head as if to clear it. This assignment was getting the best of me. Maybe it was a good thing it would soon end.
With the coming apocalypse, the military would have more important things to worry about than the clandestine activities of a rogue shifter’s faction. And they would reassign me to doing what I did best—killing.
But what will happen to my dancer when shit hits the fan?
I clenched the feather tighter in my fist before realizing I was crushing it. Fuck. I gently put the delicate plume back in my pocket.
I’d drawn out this mission for weeks so I could watch over my dancer as long as I could. She had grit, but not the fighting skills she’d need to survive what was coming.
The crippled old man who drove her home each night wasn’t strong enough to protect her. Nor could that cocksucker roommate of hers, unless he grew a pair overnight.
When the end of humanity came, she’d die, like everyone else in this fucking town.
Unless I save her…
My twin brother, Ghost, used to say that opportunity came from chaos. Perhaps I could leverage the upcoming panic and mayhem to break free from my handler.
And maybe pigs can fly.
Sighing, I rubbed the back of my head. Until I figured out a way to remove my implant without killing myself, I was nothing more than a highly trained pet. One wrong move and my handler wouldn’t hesitate to put me down.
But my dancer might be worth dying for…
Visions of my hands and mouth on her delectable body made my cock throb against the suddenly too-tight fabric of my pants.
“Hunter, your vitals are going haywire. What’s going on?” a deep feminine voice asked through the tiny electronic device implanted in my inner ear.
I cursed under my breath. For a moment, I’d forgotten that my handler could sense my emotions and monitor my biometric readings. Jen could also give me orders I was compelled to follow and punish me if I displeased her. It was the military’s way of leashing their most lethal weapon.