Page 79 of Rogue Wolf Hunter

Damon frowned. “You’ve gotta be joking.”

“Hey man, video games are their own art form,” Trent said, defensively.

“Says the man with a collection of comic books longer than my—” Jace’s jab was cut short as Trent, unsurprisingly, cut him off with the push of a finger to his lips.

Jace growled.

“Leave my comics out of this.” Trent’s face went from joking to lethal in an instant. “You don’t think you could have used that little hearing ability of yours during that shifter raid last month?” Trent had nearly broken an arm during that, and from the harsh look in his eyes, he was no longer amused. The hunter may have specialized in shifters as strange and diverse as he was wild, but that didn’t mean he approached his position with anything less than deadly seriousness.

“No,” Jace said, flatly. “You all would have lost your shit then, remember?” He glanced between the three of them pointedly. They may be by his side now, but he hadn’t known whether they would have stood with him then, considering what he was. All the more reason he couldn’t have stayed mad at Frankie. He understood, really. “Not to mention that would have taken away my chance to piss Damon off.” He grinned as Trent smiled again.

The division lead had taken issue with the way he and Trent had rushed into the situation then, but what else was new?

This time, it was Damon’s turn to growl.

Trent shot their division lead a questioning look. “Yousureyou’re not a wolf shifter like Jace or something?” Trent lifted a dark brow.

From the spark of iced fury in Damon’s eye, Trent had no doubt asked the same thing more than once before.

Damon’s growl turned closer to a snarl. Nearly feral.

“What?” Trent made a face like he couldn’t believe Damon found him irritating—Jace and Damon both. “Vampire hunter or not you can’t blame me for asking when you keep snarling like that. Not to mention all this new shit with Jace.”

“Shane and I are tired of listening to you four already,” David’s voice came over their earpieces.

Thanks to his now bum-leg, at Damon’s orders, David had begrudgingly stayed behind in the van to help Shane man the CompHunt maps and the van’s computers and satellite controller, while meanwhile Frankie had returned to her pack to give them a lead on what was happening, and to prepare should shit go down, which left Jace alone with their vampire hunter division lead, alongside a disgruntled Ash and a far too enthusiastic, Trent.

“Roger that,” Shane added, clearly having wrestled the mic away from the exorcist again. Jace could practically hear the razor-sharp focus in the kid’s voice, as he imagined Shane’s gaze locked onto the computer screen, where he’d no doubt tapped into Headquarters security cams by now. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that he already had a doctorate, but he had to go and be a literal genius when it came to computers and tech shit. It was disgusting, really.

“There’s about to be a shift change in two minutes. Be ready,” Shane warned over the comms.

Trent rubbed his hands together like Shane had announced he was getting him a new Star Wars t-shirt for his birthday. “Showtime.”

“Ash, you’re the look out,” Jace said, not hesitating to take the lead.

It washislife they were dealing with after all. His name they needed to clear.

Damon cast Jace an annoyed glance, but didn’t protest. The vampire hunter knew when to pick his battles, and as a leader, he played his cards closely. Damon wasn’t in it for the glory or the power.

“You think you can handle it?” Jace asked Ash then.

Ash nodded, slow and steady. “I might not be able to tell you whether who I’m seeing is dead or living, but either way, I’ll keep the eye out for you.” He tapped the center of his forehead as if to indicate his sixth sense, the one that gave him his abilities as a ghost hunter.

Jace knew for a fact the Ragin’ Cajun, as Ash’s old division had nicknamed him, was more than a little... haunted by his own abilities. No pun intended. The native Louisianan was hardly ever without a drink in hand to keep the voices of the dead at bay, and coming from Jace, who knew by his own estimate that he drank like a fish, that was saying something.

“Just get us in there while Trent gets them stirred up a bit,” Jace said.

Trent’s grin was filled with unnecessary glee. “Distraction is my specialty.”

“The amount of joy you take in that is concerning,” Damon dead-panned.

“Says the man who keeps growling like a frigging cougar shifter,” Trent quipped.

Damon’s lip curled like he planned to address that, but Jace cut him short.

“Quiet,” he hissed. “They’re listening now.”

The guards’ conversation had fallen silent.

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