The Wolf Marshal's Pack (U.S. Marshal Shifters 3)

But that didn’t mean her brain didn’t snap into gear the second he passed through the curtain of leaves.

She drew her gun automatically, keeping it at her side. She was straining so hard to hear anything that might be happening on the other side of the curtain that she thought, for a second, she was imagining things.

Then she definitely heard something. And, thankfully, it wasn’t a wolf snarl.

It wasn’t Colby’s voice either, and it wasn’t Eli’s.

It also wasn’t polite.

She was relieved to hear it followed up by Colby saying, loud and clear, “It’s okay. You can come through.”

Aria crashed through the barrier immediately, wincing as the slimy leaves brushed her face. She had to wipe some of their drippiness out of her eyes before she could clearly see Colby again.

She’d been right that he wasn’t alone. But it was hard to think that the skinny, sullen-looking teenager sitting on the fallen log was any threat to him. Aria could see why he’d known it was safe to tell her to join them.

She was sure he’d already seen Hebbert’s mug shot, but just in case, she said, “This isn’t him.”

The boy squinted at them. Aria, who wore contact lenses, knew that particular squint firsthand: the kid was nearsighted and doing his best to compensate for it.

He said, “You’re looking for Eli?”

“That’s right,” Colby said.

“He left me behind,” the kid said glumly. “I couldn’t keep up.”

He scratched at his left leg, and that was when Aria noticed that it was twisted somehow. He must have meant that he walked with a limp, and Eli had ditched him rather than have his flight from the law literally slowed down.

One of the wolves she’d seen that morning had had a lame leg.

Was this him? That wolf had had reddish-brown fur, and this kid’s tangle of hair was about the same color.

And he was slightly built and toothpick-skinny. She remembered that she’d been able to see the smaller wolf’s ribs.

Plus, she could smell that doggy odor again.

She looked around, taking in the full sight of the clearing that the green curtain had protected.

People had clearly been camping in this spot for a while. In addition to the wet-dog smell, there was the clinging scent of woodsmoke from a dozen old campfires. And there was a thick carpet of litter on the ground—candy bar wrappers, egg cartons, rotting banana peels, beer and soda cans.

They were lucky it hadn’t been windy lately, or a sudden flood of Almond Joy wrappers would have tipped someone off to their hiding

place.

Eli Hebbert was a murderer and a werewolf and eighteen different kinds of trouble, but apparently Aria could still spare some outrage for him littering a nature preserve.

Even aside from all the food wrappers, there was something about the campsite that struck her as subtly wrong. It took another slow look around for it to sink in.

There were signs of past campfires, but there weren’t any tents or sleeping bags. If Eli had cleared out of the place in such a hurry that he hadn’t even bothered to take his friend with him, would he really have bothered hauling out a ton of camping gear?

But he’d clearly been living here, judging by the mess he’d left behind.

And then Aria noticed three oval lumps of grass and leaves. They were gathered into roughly dog-bed-like shapes... assuming your dog was almost the size of a small horse.

If you knew what you were looking at—if you were Aria and knew about both the ordinary reality of camping and the shocking reality of werewolves—the clearing might as well have had a sign up: SUPERNATURAL CREATURES LIVE HERE.

They were standing in a werewolf home base. Talking to a werewolf.

And only she knew what was really going on. Which meant she’d have to be the one to pry the right information out of this kid, so she needed to start talking.