She eyed the phone, wondering if she’d done the right thing in keeping Asher away. He didn’t need to get mixed up in this mess she’d gotten herself into any more than he already was. Drawing him into this wasn’t going to make that right. It would only make it worse.

It was better this way.

At least that was what she tried to tell herself as Jasper seized hold of her and pulled her from her office, down the hall and into the main club area.

“Bitch, you’ve been a bad, bad girl,” he hissed.

Colonel Asher Brooks stood in the shadows near the old warehouse on the pier. He tucked his phone back into his jacket pocket and patted it gently. He smiled despite himself. He lived for any moment he could speak with Jinx. The redheaded vixen held him enthralled when, in truth, she’d never used her succubus powers on him. He was powerful enough to have sensed it. No. Her lure was natural and his obsession with her was anything but. Asher had no intention of waiting until morning to see her. He’d pay her a visit as soon as he wrapped up matters on the dock.

Salty sea air and the odor of fish did not mask the smell of death that still coated the area. The warehouse had played host to an underground paranormal fighting ring backed by Walter Helmuth—a bigwig who controlled most of the paranormal underground in the Seattle area. Helmuth was a bottom feeder who had made it big. The man had been causing problems steadily for months.

As point person for the I-Ops team members, Asher was required to step in when called for, and the massive amount of bloodshed on the pier meant his presence was certainly called for. He already had the higher-ups breathing down his neck about it all, trying to say his men and the PSI boys were out of control and needed to be leashed.

To that, Asher had responded with a giant fuck you.

Lukian Vlakhusha, the captain of the I-Ops team, ran a hand through his shoulder-length dark brown, wavy hair and let out a long breath as he took in the scene around him.

“Eadan and Duke did this?” he asked, disbelief in his voice.

Eadan Daly, another I-Ops team member, stepped forward, shaking his head. “Not all of this. We did our fair share of damage, don’t get me wrong. But not to this extent. Nowhere near this.”

“You sure your faerie dust didn’t go bad and make everyone go nuts?” Roi Majors asked of Eadan as he pulled another t-shirt on. This made his third.

Asher gave him a questioning look.

Roi shrugged as if he wore three shirts daily. “Seattle is fucking cold.”

“You’re a shifter and your core body temperature runs hot. How can you possibly be cold?” asked Lukian, voicing what the others were thinking.

“Apparently, I need a thicker winter coat.” Roi flashed a wide smile, letting hair sprout up and over his forearms. Hair coated his face suddenly as well. He looked like a deranged teddy bear in his current state. “And no one told me to pack a jacket or even a long-sleeved shirt.”

“Seattle is northern. It’s colder the more north you go,” said Asher.

“Geography isn’t his strong suit,” mocked Eadan from the sidelines. His attention went to Roi. “How about I sprinkle some of my faerie dust on you, dickhead?”

“Don’t make me cut your hair,” snapped Roi, motioning to Eadan’s long blond hair.

“Do it. It just grows back by the next morning,” returned Eadan. He blew Roi a kiss and then gave him the finger when Roi growled at him.

“If pretty boy taunts me one more time, I’m gonna eat him,” warned Roi.

Taking the I-Ops anywhere was a lot like taking a preschool on a field trip. Though Asher thought the preschoolers would probably listen better.

Lukian nudged Asher. “They’ll be at it for hours. What have we learned about what went down here?”

Asher motioned to Eadan. “He was held captive here on a docked cargo ship. Duke was en route to help but was given a bogus location. Let the record state Duke is still pissed he had to fly as much as he did. He’s not a fan.”

“He doesn’t like anything,” murmured Eadan from his spot before he shoved Roi.

Growling, Lukian stared around, his eyes shifting to a brighter blue. “Do we know who steered Duke wrong? And do we know who the hell tipped off Helmuth and his men that Eadan would even be in this area to start with?”

“Rogues in PSI is my best guess,” responded Asher. Paranormal Security and Intelligence Agency had been hit with the same problems the I-Ops side of things had—traitors. Rumors had been spreading that more than one I-Ops team existed and Asher had his suspicions there was even more the higher-ups were keeping from them all. That was why he’d enlisted Jinx’s help. She had a way of getting information that others simply did not.

“Shit.” Lukian lowered his gaze. “Not another Parker.”

Benjamin Parker was the man Roi had replaced on the I-Ops team. They’d thought him dead and gone and had even mourned his passing. When he’d surfaced out of the blue and off his damn rocker, they’d realized he had gone rogue, letting his hurt and anger over having been a test subject loose on the men he’d once called brothers. His revenge and rage cost Lance, a team member, his life. He nearly cost Lukian’s mate’s life as well.

Having a traitor in your ranks wasn’t taken lightly.

“I’m guessing there is more than one,” Asher said. “And I think Parker isn’t our only blast from the past either.”

Lukian’s expression was guarded. “More Outcasts?”

The creation of the I-Ops team was still a controversial subject. The government had started working on them in the early 1900s—though Asher wouldn’t have been shocked to learn that too was a lie and that they’d actually started earlier. Eugenics wasn’t something any nation was proud of. The fact that America was steeped in various attempts with it seemed to get buried fairly easy in the history books as did so much of the country’s sordid background. It was that way just about anywhere, though. There was history, and history according to the guy telling it. Often they didn’t match.

America wasn’t the only country guilty of trying to make human-hybrids. Asher could still remember IIya Ivanov’s ape-army. The public had been told it was a failure. That was a lie. The sick bastard had succeeded to a degree. There had been more attempts by others, more commonly referred to as Nazi’s Eugenics.

The world was full of some fucked-up people.

From what Asher had been told, as he’d not been part of the organization at the time, the majority of the first attempts at creating super soldiers had failed miserably. Somehow the government managed to talk more young men into donating their bodies to science in the hopes of making a brighter future.

Politicians were devils in suits.

Always had been.

Always would be.

Some of the politicians were honest-to-god demons. Asher knew a few. Those guys were actually the better of the crop.

Go figure.

Asher knew Lukian had stepped in at some point in the program’s history to help try to minimize the deaths. As a full-blooded, born shifter who by rights was the King of the Lycans in the United States, his DNA was what was needed to help sort things out. Unfortunately, not all the test subjects took to the introduced DNA cocktails. Some died. Some went mad. Others had been left at the point they’d wished they were dead.

In the end, all the Outcasts, as the program heads had termed those unfortunates who couldn’t handle what the scientists put them through, were gathered and placed in holding facilities. Those in charge spoke of the places as if they were retirement communities. They were prisons, and more like insane asylums in their infancy stages than that of retirement homes.

Asher had seen one for himself and knew the truth of the matter.