Page 23 of Protected By Her Mate

At Duncan’s nod, she turns to me. “It makes sense that they would send in a shifter.”

“Why a wolf shifter?” There’s a growl to my voice. Though I try not to be speciesist, it pisses me off that one of my own was sent into a dangerous situation in my city and I wasn’t consulted.

Duncan looks pained. “I didn’t want to trust a wolf, but what choice did I have? Look at me.” He spreads his arms wide, covering a six-foot span. “Males don’t come in anything less than six feet, five inches, three hundred pounds. Even our females are too large to fit in easily. We needed a shifter who was tough, wily, willing, and could blend better than a bear.”

“So you chose a wolf,” Charlie says softly.

I edge in front of her. “Why and how?”

Duncan presses his lips together, his glittering eyes assessing me. We’ve lived in the same city long enough he should have my measure by now. Even though we’ve not met, he makes it his business to know everyone else’s.

He nods, saying, “I’ve given you this much, I may as well give you everything.” He waves us toward a massive brown leather couch and chair set. “This latest bomb… fire… whatever it was in my own damn building… well… it’s clear I can no longer protect my people without help.”

The admission is a shot to his pride, which tells me a lot about his situation. He’s worried about ASHRA in a big way.

Charlie and I take the couch while the chair creaks under Duncan’s weight as he settles with a grunt.

“Why would the bears need protection?” I ask. “You’re a fierce lot. Able to hold your own in most situations.”

He looks at me with scorn. “We don’t have a lovely large plot of land to retreat to the way the wolves do when the going gets tough. During the Human-Shifter war, our kind was pushed out of our settlements and forced to scatter. We have since come together, hiding the best we can among the humans, but we’re often seen as inherently violent.”

Charlie gives him a sympathetic look. “It must’ve been difficult if, as you say, the majority of you are very large.”

He nods, his chest puffing with pride. “Even our children are much larger than the largest humans. Hiding has become an art for us. Now, we’re finally ready to come out of the shadows and this group, this… this…” Anger chokes off the rest of his sentence.

“ASHRA,” I confirm.

“Vermin!” he snarls.

“Which is why you sent Boulder-Wolf in.” Charlie’s voice is soft, understanding.

I want to yank her into my side and insist she only speak to me that way.

“Indeed.” Duncan nods at her, his gaze warm. “He came to see me shortly after moving to the city, wanting to sell me information on ASHRA.”

“And you trusted him?” I say in disbelief.

He gives me a look. “Of course not. Do I look stupider than your average bear?” Charlie giggles, earning a wink from him and sending my jealousy, a trait I didn’t even know existed inside me, into the stratosphere. “We worked together for a year before I trusted him enough to agree to send him in.”

“It was his plan to go in?” I’m surprised by this news. Boulder-Wolf was involved in some of my brother Fallon’s worst schemes when he was king. He disappeared after Lock took over.

Duncan stares at me thoughtfully. “It was his plan, though both of us and a few other shifters were involved. He was fully committed. Even got a tattoo to help ease his entry, to prove to them they needed him. I can see your skepticism, and I can’t speak to who Boulder-Wolf was before he came into our fold, but when he was here planning with us, he had a passion for protecting the shifter community.”

Perhaps he came to regret his time with Fallon, harming fellow members of the wolf community. We may never know the answer to what motivated him. “How did he get in with ASHRA?”

“There are a few humans on the inside sympathetic to our cause. He was introduced as the boyfriend of one. They pretended to be a couple while gathering information and sending it my way.”

That explains the human female scent I found in the apartment where Boulder-Wolf was staying. “They were more than pretending. They were sexual partners.”

Unfazed, he says, “I suspected as much, but what they did privately made no difference to our cause. We still needed information about the anti-shifter movement happening under our noses.”

“Where is the female?” I ask, leaning forward. “I’d like to speak to her.”

Charlie jabs me in the side. “Woman.” I stare at her and she stares back. Finally, she says, a huff to her tone, “Human women prefer to be called women, not females.”

Duncan draws our attention when he says, “Missing.”

“What?” We both say at the same time.

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