Page 1 of Eclipse of the Pack

1

IVY

The bite wound on Ivy's shoulder was still bleeding freely as she limped towards a more secure location. Tangling with a werewolf wasn't what she'd planned, but she'd managed. At least she wasn't dead in the streets of Los Angeles.

The riots were sustained and intense. The conflict was inevitable. When she rounded the corner to the temporary base camp PEACE had set up in the police station, a PEACE agent asked, "What direction were the werewolves moving in?"

"East," Ivy said. They'd been heading southwest, but Ivy needed to throw PEACE off the trail some. It wasn't like anyone would contradict her, and if there was intelligence later that didn't match up, she'd just been attacked by a werewolf and hadn't slept in the last 48 hours. Mistakes were bound to happen.

"I'd recommend you stay off active duty after this," said the field medic as he patched her up.

"I heal fast," she said, brushing off the concern.

"Yes, but werewolves heal faster."

The field medic finished bandaging her wound so she could get back to headquarters for a debrief. When she was cleared,she got up went into the little bathroom off to the side to clean up. Once she was alone, she was able to finally release the concentration on delaying her natural healing abilities.

When she signed on to be a sleeper agent within PEACE, she hadn't thought it would mean killing other werewolves, but it was necessary to complete her mission. Playing the PEACE agent while working for Malcolm and Lycan's Legacy was a lot to balance out. Lies within lies.

She adjusted her bandages and stared into her own blue eyes for a second, trying to remind herself of who she was and who she was supposed to be.

If not for the sheen of dirt, sweat, and blood, she'd look like a pretty, slender, tall woman in her low 30s with short, spiky blond hair. But there were lies in that image. She was blond, but she wasn't in her 30s. Twice that, in fact.

She took a deep breath and centered herself. The worst of the wound was healed by now, but she reminded herself to act as though the shoulder was still very painful, at least for a few days. She needed to get back to the main office for an official debrief.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, she could sense other wolves around, and it unsettled her. She didn't know who was an ally and who knew she was one. She got into the van that was heading to the main office and wondered who she could trust.

Being a double agent meant not knowing who was really on your side. So many secrets, and it wasn't like communication had been great when she went in. She just hoped like hell Malcolm knew what he was doing because, in the middle of the chaos, it felt like she barely knew what she was doing.

As the van was waived through a checkpoint, Ivy looked out the window and committed to memory all the lies she needed to keep straight.

2

JONATHAN

Jonathan watched from the shadows as the short-haired blond woman pointed the other PEACE agents in the wrong direction, away from the werewolves she'd tangled with. He'd seen her get attacked, and he'd actually planned on helping her, but it was over before he could. And while she was injured, she walked away under her own power, so he hung back, just observing.

And she didn't send them after her attackers. Something was up with that one, but he couldn't put his finger on it. That was odd, but he was already following her for a while before that even happened. He'd been looking for a way in, and she just seemed like as good a place to start as any other.

As odd as her behavior was, she didn't matter as much as what she might be able to get him. Information on Galen. He and Galen had worked together for years, and they'd become best friends.

As far as he knew, Jon was the only human who knew Galen was a werewolf. Jon had his suspicions, and it was a strange mix of pride and honor when Galen confirmed it. It showed a lot of trust in the increasingly distrusting world since the Veil fell.

And Galen had dropped off the face of the earth one day. And not long after, everything went to hell in a handbasket with riots in the streets. Jon thought there must be a connection somehow.

The problem was his sources of information were limited. Working in a warehouse didn't exactly plug Jon into the wide world of weird. So, he had to start somewhere.

But it wasn't like he could walk up and just ask a random PEACE agent, "Hey, have you seen my friend who was in hiding and laying low?"

Showing up at PEACE head offices and flashing a picture of his friend was similarly out of the question. Yes, he needed to find Galen, but he couldn't just out him as a shifter. While Jon didn't quite understand all the intricacies of werewolf hierarchies and politics, from what he was able to figure out, Galen had his reasons for being in hiding.

Even if Galen were a publicly known werewolf, Jon didn't know any other wolves he could question about the whereabouts of his friend. And in the middle of riots and subsequent martial law lockdown wasn't the time to start poking around for werewolves to interrogate.

But he had to start somewhere. He couldn't keep running around in circles and hopping the information about Galen just fell out of the sky. Maybe he could trust a PEACE agent who didn't trust other PEACE agents. The logic didn't make sense, but he felt drawn to her for some reason. He was running on gut instinct, a feeling he couldn’t describe.

3

IVY

---