Chapter 2 Chapter 02
The longer I watched them, the more the picture filled itself in.
Their eyes wouldn't settle anywhere, darting from shadow to shadow, but every time they landed on the shifters there was a hunger in them I could practically taste in the air, thick even through the reek of garbage. Torn clothes, filthy at the cuffs these weren't people who had anyone left to look after them. Then a shifter pressed a little plastic baggie into waiting hands, and the whole scene clicked into place. Addicts. Every one of them.
The man who'd handed over the cash grabbed his baggie like it might vanish if he blinked, and the relief pouring off him hit me all the way from my hiding spot. The shifters laughed at that, low and mean, and something in my gut twisted hard. How low had a pack sunk to let this happen? Not my old pack necessarily I had no proof either way but still. What kind of leadership let its own members run drugs in a public alley like it was nothing? Like it wasn't happening at all?
None of it sat right. A pack's whole purpose was supposed to be protecting its people, building quiet trust with the human world without ever showing its teeth, lifting the community up instead of gutting it from the inside. These men weren't doing any of that. They were feeding off the very humans they were meant to shelter, and it was obvious they felt nothing for them beyond profit. Whatever pack had raised these four, something in it had rotted clean through.
Small mercy I wasn't part of that anymore. I'd bought my freedom the hard way, and I intended to keep it, provided nobody ever found me. Keep quiet, keep saving, get out of this city eventually. Simple in theory. In practice, scraping together enough money to leave and actually survive somewhere new had turned out to be a far steeper climb than I'd ever imagined. Years clear of the pack, and I still didn't have close to what I needed.
Then the alley lit up red and blue splashing off brick.
"Freeze! Nobody moved! The shout rolled down toward us from the mouth of the alley.
The humans bolted the second their hands were full, the cops' warnings trailing behind them with all the urgency of a formality nobody meant to enforce. Feet pounded past my dumpster, close enough that the filthy runoff pooling on the concrete nearly splashed my boots, before the addicts scattered out into the wider city and vanished.
Flashlight beams swept the length of the alley, hunting for stragglers. One nearly caught me, and I folded myself deeper into the dark, angling my head so only a sliver of my vision stayed on the scene which had the added benefit of leaving almost nothing of me visible from where they stood.
It didn't take much to guess why the cops let the runners go. Two addicts on a possession charge were pocket change. Four dealers, though that was distribution, intent to sell, paraphernalia stacked on top. A far better trophy for whoever was filling out the report tonight.
"Hands where I can see them, gentlemen. Let's not make this messy." One of the officers' voices rang out, bouncing hard off the brick on either side of the alley.
"That you, Sheridan?" one of the shifters called back, easy as anything.
They knew each other. My stomach dropped another inch.
"Garret, my man, how many times do we gotta have this conversation about dealing out in the open?" Sheridan said, more tired than angry.
"Who's the new guy?" Garret asked, nodding at the second officer.
"Hayes. My partner these days."
"Where'd Edwards go?"
"Edwards stopped playing along with policy." Something about the way Sheridan said it left no room for a happy ending. I got the distinct, cold feeling that Edwards wasn't just off the beat he was gone for good. "Hayes here, though, he understands how things work. As long as he gets paid the same as me."
"You're joking. You want double now?" Garret's voice sharpened.
"You want us looking the other way, that's the price. Otherwise we haul you in right now. Hayes, what do you figure we'd find on him tonight?"
"Coke, crack, oxy, dope, weed, jaguar, probably a full pharmacy in his pockets," Hayes said, giving Garret a slow once-over. "That's not even counting what his friends are carrying."
"I don't touch crack or heroin, and you damn well know it," Garret snapped. "Jaguar, oxy, weed, that's the whole list."
Jaguar. My skin crawled just hearing the word. The one drug built specifically to hook a shifter lets the user shift into an entirely different animal if their body could survive the change, which not all of them could. Most shifters wouldn't touch it. The ones who tried it once rarely walked away again.
"Wouldn't take much to find your prints on a couple baggies anyway," Sheridan said, quiet enough that the threat landed harder than if he'd shouted it.
"Fuck you," Garret growled, and I felt the shift in the air before I saw it his wolf rising just under his skin. "Take the damn money and get out of our faces."
"Oh, I'll take it," Sheridan said, and Garret slapped a fold of bills into his palm, then another into Hayes's. The way he said it told me the payment wasn't only cash and a cold ripple went through me at the thought that these two cops had no clue what they'd actually bought into.
"Always a pleasure," Sheridan said, touching two fingers to his hat before he and Hayes turned and strolled off like they hadn't just shaken down a dealer in the middle of the street.
Garret lunged a step after them before his friends grabbed his arms and hauled him back. Good. I did not want a front-row seat to a murder tonight. The rage and bloodlust rolling off him was thick enough to choke on, and I knew with total certainty that somebody was catching the fallout before the night was through. I just prayed it wouldn't be me, tucked behind a dumpster like the world's least dignified hiding place.
Someone braver might've told me to stand my ground, to fight if it came to that. But one lone female wolf against four grown males wasn't bravery, it was a death wish with extra steps. Staying alive mattered more than my pride.
If staying alive meant getting cozy with a dumpster for a little while longer, I could live with that.
