Page 9 of Tempting the Tiger
We all give the eagle shifter a curious look except for Cal, who raises one eyebrow about a millimetre.
Skye grins. “To play your fake boyfriend.”
That’s actually not a bad idea. Our pilot and sniper is model-pretty, with blonde hair and fair skin that holds a hint of a tan which he’s never quite lost since our last desert mission. The wicked scar down the left side of his face only seems to enhance his good looks, giving him an edge that men in bars and clubs are often drawn to.
“Yes!” Jet wiggles in his chair. “Let’s do that.”
“You think you can pull it off, little one?” Cal asks Skye, a hint of concern in his voice.
Cal is our resident vampire and close-quarters combat specialist, and he’s Skye’s opposite—long and lean, with dark features. The pair have always been extremely protective of one another.
Skye puffs himself up. “Of course!”
Jet puts his palms together and turns pleading eyes on Ethan. “Please, Alpha?”
Ethan rubs his beard and gives Jet a sharp nod. “Fine. You get one try. If that doesn’t work, we tell her she’s no longer our customer. Ayo?”
Ayo is still grinning at Skye and Jet, so it takes him a second to get his brain in gear. “Me? Right. Well, adding a lower tier to the ward pricing structure has definitely made a difference. I’m getting a lot of bookings from people who can’t afford more than a basic alarm-style ward. Kit and I also think we’re closer to getting an undetectable tracker working.”
“We’re definitely close,” Kit says. “I’m convinced itjust needs a couple more tweaks, then we can get to work on the hidden camera design.”
“So the tracker will be ready by the end of the week?” Laying down a challenge is a guaranteed way to engage Kit’s competitive streak.
They narrow their dark eyes at me. “I’ll let you know.”
“Just don’t neglect the Langley case,” Ethan says to Kit. “I still need your assistance on that. Cal and Skye?”
“Nothing unusual on patrol,” Cal says.
“What he means is that we were bored out of our tiny wee minds,” Skye says. “The cats and wolves haven’t had a fight in ages. I honestly think it would be better for the safety of the supernatural population of Birchester if I go back to following the sexy detective.”
Jet sniggers. “I bet you do.”
Back when everything went down with Nyoka, a human detective inspector named Idris Gough interrupted an attack on Ayo. Between that and him showing up at several supernatural incidents in the months since, Ethan wanted him under surveillance for a while in case he suspected the existence of the supernatural world. When nothing else happened, Ethan gave Skye a new assignment, but not before Skye developed a crush on the man.
Ethan snorts. “Nice try. Be grateful I’m letting you be Jet’s fake boyfriend for a day. Raj?”
The shift in mood is palpable as I lean forward and rest my forearms on the table. “Dante was here because one of his pack has disappeared without warning. Same situation as the fox, lynx, and leopard shifters—she was on the Far Out Freight mandatory work programme, kind of a loner, and no one knew she was moving away until after the fact. Nothing to prove she’s actually missing, but he insists something doesn’t feel right.”
Every face around the table is now one hundred percent serious. After Nyoka’s arrest, we began a deep dive into his accountsand discovered several concerning transactions that we’ve been looking into. One of the companies this led us to is Far Out Freight. I made that investigation less of a priority when we started getting these missing shifter reports, but the potential link can’t be ignored.
“I still haven’t gotten any closer to finding out what the company were paying Nyoka for, either. My emails go unanswered and I get a standard response every time I call, citing data protection law.”
“Can we get a search warrant to access their records?” Skye asks.
I shake my head. “There’s no evidence of illegal activity.”
“A judge won’t issue a warrant based on nothing but speculation,” Ethan agrees. “We don’t know for sure that Nyoka actually supplied illicit magical items to them.”
Nyoka was a mage-level magic-user with an affinity for metal. Ayo destroyed a large amount of jewellery that Nyoka had imbued with magic, and we’re concerned he might have sold potentially dangerous items that we haven’t tracked down yet.
Kit brings the Far Out Freight website up on the screen, navigating to the part where it says they supply books and clothing sourced from the fae realm to fae around the world. “Something doesn’t add up. Why would they be dealing with Nyoka if their key selling point is that this is all fae merchandise?”
Ayo frowns. “That’s what I don’t get. Fae magic and earth magic are incompatible. Say Nyoka made a pendant that carries a spell, for example. No fae would use it or even wear it, would they?”
“It would likely interfere with their own magic,” Cal says.
“And on top of that, we’ve got four shifters who worked there and might be missing? That’s dodgy as fuck,” Jet says.
