Page 6 of The Hyena’s Guardian

“Congratulations on having a nose.”

Keene ignored that. “Most bitten shifters struggle underground.”

Matt leaned back against the elevator wall. “Most bitten shifters probably don’t already have a year of getting shot at in Iraq under their belt before somebody recruits them into supernatural black ops.”

A brief silence followed. Then, finally: “No,” Keene agreed. “They don’t.”

The elevator doors opened onto a corridor that felt older than the rest of the facility, with reinforced steel and fluorescent lights layered over stone walls that carried the weight of something ancient beneath the modernization.

Matt felt it immediately. The place felt old in a way human buildings never did.

The air carried traces of wolf, cat, witch, and other scents Matt could not identify, all threaded through with the restless awareness of predators who were far from relaxed. Keene walked forward without hesitation, and Matt followed with considerably more caution.

People moved through the corridors with quiet efficiency. Some looked fully human. Some absolutely did not. A woman passing them had slit-pupil eyes for half a second before they shifted human again. A broad-shouldered man standing near one of the secured doors smelled sharply feline beneath expensive cologne.

Nobody stared openly, but the quiet assessment followed him through the corridor anyway.

Matt had spent enough time in military units to recognize evaluation when he saw it.

“You’re popular already,” Matt murmured, more to himself than anyone else.

“Bitten shifters are uncommon,” Keene said. “Stable bitten shifters even more so.”

There was that word again, stable, and Matt hated the clinical way it reduced him to something that sounded more like an assessment than a person.

“You people always talk like psych evaluations?”

“Usually worse.”

“Comforting.”

Keene stopped outside a black door near the end of the corridor, its otherwise unmarked surface broken only by a small silver symbol pressed into the center, a downward-pointing blade crossed with a crescent moon that marked it unmistakably as Valker.

Matt recognized it from the briefing packet he had needed to sign three nondisclosure agreements just to receive.

The briefing packet had called Valker the Council’s enforcement branch, responsible for recovery operations, containment, and termination authorization if required, but the sanitized language had done little to hide what the organization really was: the kind of people monsters called when something worse showed up.

Keene looked at him for the first time since the elevator. “You can still walk away.”

Matt blinked at that, surprised despite himself.

“You saying that because it’s true,” Matt asked, “or because you’re required to?”

Keene considered the question. “Both.”

The corridor fell silent around them, and Matt found himself thinking about Mac standing in the meadow telling him he had a place there, Marcus warning him not to mistake usefulness for belonging, and Melvin reminding him to make sure this decision was his and nobody else’s.

The hyena settled beneath his skin, not calm exactly, but certain.

Matt adjusted the strap on his duffel. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m still going in.”

For the first time, Keene’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly as he keyed open the door, and Matt realized what he saw there was not approval so much as recognition. Cold air rolled out from the darkness beyond.

“Welcome to Valker,” Keene said.

Then Matt stepped inside.

***