The Wolf is Mine


 
 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Paige Tyler
 Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks
 Cover design by Patrick Kang
 Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
 The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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 Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
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 Contents
 Front Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Excerpt from Loving the Wolf
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Back Cover
 
 
 With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband. Without your help and support, I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant a girl could ask for. Love you!
 
 
 Chapter 1
 San Antonio
 “Why the hell would Zane and Alyssa come all the way out here to the middle of nowhere?” Officer Connor Malone, Dallas PD SWAT, asked as he looked around the abandoned condo complex he and his teammates were searching. “It doesn’t look like anyone has been here in months.”
 “And we’re nowhere close to the place where the actual murder happened,” Officer Hale Delaney, his blond, blue-eyed teammate, added, leaning over to show Connor the screen of his cell phone. Hale had pulled up a map of San Antonio, and the two dots displayed there were a good fifteen miles apart.
 “That detective from San Antonio PD said Zane mentioned something about meeting a possible witness out here, but that was two weeks ago,” dark-haired Senior Corporal Trevor McCall answered from the far side of the parking lot, where he and Officer Diego Martinez were sniffing around. As in literally sniffing around, hoping their enhanced werewolf sense of smell might pick up something to suggest Zane and Alyssa had been here.
 “Seems more like a place a cop goes to get ambushed than to meet a witness,” the other member of their team, Senior Corporal Mike Taylor, murmured as he tugged on the chain wrapped around the handles of the building’s main doors. “If Zane came out here, it was because he and Alyssa were desperate for a lead. Or thought they were onto one worth the risk.”
 Officer Zane Kendrick and his mate, Alyssa Carson, had come to San Antonio more than three weeks ago to investigate what had been described as “a murder with supernatural and ritualistic indicators,” but they hadn’t been heard from since.
 While Zane was an alpha werewolf like all the members of the Dallas SWAT team, Alyssa was a human who worked for the Special Threat Assessment Team, an agency that specialized in dealing with supernatural creatures regular law enforcement would never be able to admit existed, much less deal with. Connor’s werewolf pack had originally run across STAT when they’d worked together to take down vampires in Los Angeles, but this was the first time one of the Pack’s werewolves had gone on a mission without more of the Pack for backup.
 The trip to San Antonio was supposed to have been little more than a reconnaissance mission. Zane and Alyssa were here to look at the body of the murder victim and see if there was enough to warrant a more detailed investigation. Considering Zane was an alpha werewolf and Alyssa an experienced field agent, it should have been a piece of cake. Nothing should have gone wrong.
 But something had gone wrong.
 And now both of them were missing.
 In the three days since Connor and his pack mates had been down here, they hadn’t found a single clue telling them where Zane and Alyssa were. They’d gotten a look at the autopsy report and confirmed that the knife wounds definitely looked ritualistic, but other than that, they had nothing. Hell, they weren’t even sure if anything supernatural was involved.
 “Everybody spread out,” Mike said, cupping his hands to look inside the glass doors of the building. “See if you can pick up a scent or find anything that looks out of place.”
 While Diego and Trevor continued around the right side of the complex, Connor headed for the left, Hale following. Connor breathed deeply through his nose, trying to pick up the familiar scents he associated with Zane and Alyssa, while at the same time remaining attentive to other smells that might suggest something unusual had happened there. Like smokeless powder or blood. Even the desiccated stench of vampire.
 As for Hale, he didn’t bother trying to find anything with his nose. He’d broken it so badly in a fight when he was younger that it had damaged the olfactory nerves and receptors. For some reason, the damage hadn’t been repaired when Hale went through his werewolf change. Now, he couldn’t smell anything. Sniffing for leads was a waste of time, so he depended on his keen eyesight instead.
 Connor and Hale were fighting through chest-high brush and thickets along the side of the building when his phone vibrated in his pocket. Connor didn’t even consider letting it go to