Page 3 of Wolf Desired
Another growl, low and foreboding, echoed through the group.
Was Green Eyes—Rafe—threatening Graves? Damn, but she knew next to nothing about these shifters and their rules, and their hierarchy, but she was sure Rafe wouldn’t kowtow to anyone, even the DSA agent in charge.
The two days of orientation before she stepped into this facility suddenly seemed worthless. Her instincts told her what the instructors taught her and the other agents about shifters had all been guesswork. They didn’t have a clue. No human did. Except perhaps the anti-shifters they’d be fighting. They’d been capturing, experimenting, and killing shifters for decades. And no one had tried to stop them. Until now.
With anti-shifters as the common enemy, the DSA figured they could create joint teams of humans and shifters, and mesh talents and information to the benefit of both. Training and working together was a good idea, in theory. With the growing looks of contempt on the shifters and humans alike, Alyssa envisioned the training program imploding by the second day.
“Stow it, Rafe,” Graves bellowed. “Your growls don’t scare me.”
“Was that my intent?” Rafe replied with a raised brow, making light of Graves’s reaction.
Clearly, her green-eyed shifter wasn’t easily intimidated. Rafe exuded power, controlled and refined. That he could make everyone look away, including the other shifters, was rather impressive.
Slowly, those green eyes turned to her. His face held no other emotion, didn’t need it. His stare sent a shiver through her. It was as if the shifter saw straight through her and was figuring out her secrets. And she didn’t mind. Not one damned bit. It was odd, really. She’d never been attracted to power, but Rafe and those exceptionally beautiful green eyes pulled at her.
Graves stepped into her line of sight again. “This isn’t some high school dance, Artemis. Get your eyes off the shifter and on me.”
She’d rather look at Rafe, but Graves had a point. She had a job to do here, and that job didn’t include gawking at men, human or shifter.
Another growl filled the air, but this one was deeper, darker than before. More threatening. And yet it warmed her. Maybe because this one wasn’t aimed at her, but at Graves.
“Growl at me again, Rafe, and you’ll find yourself on garbage duty for the rest of your stay here.”
“Not much of a threat,” Alyssa dared, mostly because it wasn’t. It would take more than the threat of bagging garbage to threaten a male as powerful as Rafe.
Across from her, Tall, Blond, and Handsome smirked again, then waggled his eyebrows at her. Okay, now he was just flirting with her. She really needed to ignore these shifters. If she wanted to be seen as an agent, she couldn’t do anything to encourage them. Better yet, she needed to set them straight.
She gave Tall, Blond, and Handsome the finger.
He quirked a brow while casting the most playful grin. And then she laughed. Damn, he’d made her laugh, and in the middle of training!
“Oh, I’m going to have fun with this,” Graves said, his tone squashing all the lighthearted fun she’d had with Tall, Blond, and Handsome and sent her anxiety surging. “Start forming teams.”
When Alyssa stepped in Tall, Blond, and Handsome’s direction, Graves locked his hand around her upper arm. “Not you.”
“Are you kicking me out of the program for looking at a shifter?”
“Hardly.”
He turned around, pulling her with him to face the shifters and humans forming teams. Rafe hadn’t bothered forming a team yet, as his eyes remained glued to her and where Graves’s hand clamped around her upper arm.
“You have a ten-minute head start, Artemis,” Graves said.
“For what?” she asked.
“Trainees,” he called out loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “Meet your target. Artemis. The first team that takes her down gets ten points and doesn’t have to do the fifteen-mile hike after the drill.”
“Wait, what? How do you expect me to outrun twenty-seven humans and shifters?” It was the shifters she was worried about more than the humans. They had the tracking skills and stamina of wolves, literally.
“Nine and a half minutes. I suggest you get going, Artemis.”
“I’m doomed to get caught. That means I’ll automatically fail this test, doesn’t it?”
“With that attitude, you will. Don’t worry. I’ll give you a fair chance. You only have to last an hour to be declared the winner.”
An hour. That might as well be an eternity.
“Nine minutes,” Graves said, sending her brain into overdrive.
