Page 8 of The Alpha Grizzly's Mate

Levi

I had no idea about how vast their resources were. About how close to a vigilante mafia-type group they were.

No fucking clue how badass this team was that now included my brother.

Sure, I suspected the team was packing in terms of weapons, but they were packing in a ton of other ways as well.

Beginning with the dragon named Maverick.

All I had to say was that I hoped the other guys didn’t have one like him. He scared me, and my bear wasn’t scared of much. His wingspan was wider than some of the mountains I’d seen.

“Everyone clear on what’s happening here?” The dragon didn’t wait for us to answer. “Levi and Sutton are taking the lead since they know their uncle. His name is Raphael. You’ve got the picture of him on your phone. We’re also getting a lay of the land while we’re nosing around. If they have kids or omegas here against their will, they come first.” Mav turned around to face me. “That’s good with you two, right?”

Sutton nodded. “Of course it is. Omegas and babies over my uncle. Hands down. He might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he’s not squeaky clean by any stretch of the imagination.”

Mav nodded, turning back around. I stretched my toes in the black leather boots loaned to me. The pants I had on had more pockets than a thief in Italy. Leather holsters strapped guns at my sides and more knives than I could count. Of course those were supplemental to my real strength, that gnarly grizzly inside me.

He wasn’t pleased about going to save our uncle. Bears were usually solo creatures, aside from their mates. Shifters packedtogether for safety, for the omegas, the females, and the babies, mostly, but once someone betrayed us as much as Raph had, well, my bear wanted to cut him loose. See how it was to survive on his own.

“How much longer?” I asked, uneasy about this whole thing. We had little idea what my uncle was into or if he was being held, or perhaps they had already ended him.

I didn’t want to be the one to tell Aunt Patty that news. Raphael already broke her heart enough for three lifetimes.

“About fifteen minutes.” King nailed me with a stare. He was the other scary one, as far as my bear was concerned. Lots of predators around here. Of course, I wasn’t going to tell them that. I had some pride.

Not enough pride to stop myself from taking a deep breath from that damned chair before we left, but some.

“You’re not getting green on us, are you?” Mav teased from the front seat. His shoulders shook with his chuckle.

“Green?” I asked.

“He means, you’re not gonna blow chunks.”

“Nah, I haven’t done that in years. And certainly not over my uncle.”

We pulled alongside the road and cut the engine. I heard the other car’s engine stop as well. Sutton opened the door, and I took a big gulp of air. I would kill someone if I had to but not if I didn’t.

Honestly, I hoped I didn’t have to.

“We’ll walk the rest of the way.” One moment, we were walking with little hurry, and the next, I was kicking down a door, prompted by the cries from the other side.

It was there that I found out what kind of place we had infiltrated. A house of horrors. The word horror didn’t cover what I saw.

There were five children in the yellow-painted room. Three cubs and two pups if my nose was right, and it usually was. And an underfed kitten of all things. Come to think of it, the kids weren’t that healthy looking either.

One of the omegas, Maverick’s mate, slowly walked in, pushing me aside in the process. “Hi, little ones. My name is Hutch. Do you know where your papas are? Are they close?”

That’s when I noticed. The kids were all shackled by the ankle to the floor. Children Shackled To. The. Floor. One of the pups shrugged his little shoulders. I took him in. Dark circles marred the space under his eyes. His shirt was clean but had seen better days. And his pants were at least a size too small. No socks.

Now, I was ready to kill.

“Do you know who your papa is?” Hutch prompted, crouching down to their level.

“We never met our papas. Mean peoples come in and give us bread.”

Mean peoples.

Dead peoples if you asked me. I heard shouting outside and gunfire. The rest of the crew was handling business.

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