Her Wild Hero

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Layla assured her. “I’m looking for a job and was hoping you might be able to get me an interview at the DCO.”


Kendra stopped mid-step. Crap. If there was one thing Ivy was dead set against, it was her little sister working at the Department of Covert Operations. They might call shifters like Ivy and Layla extremely valuable assets—EVAs for short—but they also gave their human counterparts permission to kill them if they ever got compromised on a mission rather than let them fall into enemy hands. Ivy had been lucky enough to be paired with a partner who would die himself before hurting her; Layla might not be so fortunate. Why couldn’t Layla be like Kendra’s other friends and call asking to borrow money or something?

“You know, I’d love to, but the DCO isn’t really hiring right now,” Kendra said slowly.

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Ivy told you to say that, didn’t she?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“Yes, she did. Damn her.” Layla growled in exasperation. “She thinks I want to be a field agent like her, which is ridiculous. I don’t know the first thing about guns and spies and covert operations. I’m a psychologist. All I want is to work with other shifters like me. I don’t understand why she’s so against that.”

Kendra felt for Layla, she really did. Being told that someone knew better than you what was good for you and what you should or shouldn’t do was tough to handle. It was even tougher for Layla. Knowing there was a whole world of shifters like her out there and being told she couldn’t associate with them? Ivy was wrong to do that.

Besides, the DCO could use a person with Layla’s education and personal familiarity with the shifter mind. The psychologists the DCO had on staff—both of whom were human—were overwhelmed with the workload and not all that great when it came to helping shifters anyway.

“Kendra, please,” Layla begged. “Ivy won’t even know you set up the interview.”

Right. And how else would Layla get a job with a super-secret organization like the DCO? It wasn’t as if Layla could just walk into the personnel office and fill out an application.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get you an interview with the director.”

Silence. Then, “Seriously?”

“Seriously. I’ll text you the directions to the main office in DC.”

“Thanks,” Layla said. “I owe you big for this, Kendra.”

“It’s only an interview,” Kendra said. “You have to get the job.”

Though something told Kendra that wouldn’t be a problem. She stifled a groan as she hung up. Ivy was going to kill her.

She dropped her phone back in her purse and walked into John’s office. As she’d suspected, he was more than willing to talk to Layla.

“Just because she’s a shifter doesn’t mean she’s a field operative, John,” Kendra reminded him.

He peered at her over his reading glasses, his mouth quirking. “I heard you the first two times you told me. Don’t worry. I won’t ask her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Now go before you miss your flight.”

Actually, Kendra still had an hour before she had to meet Tate and his team at the airfield, but she could take a hint. Telling John she’d see him in two weeks, she left and headed over to the lab. The facility had gotten a complete makeover, thanks to the DCO’s new fascination with hybrids.

Six months ago, nobody knew what a hybrid was. There were the DCO’s natural-born shifters and that was it. Kendra’s very best friend in the whole world, Ivy Donovan, was a feline shifter, but no one would know it just from looking at her. Sure, when Ivy wanted to, the claws and fangs came out and she could be deadly as hell. But most of the time she was a normal woman. The other DCO shifters were like that, too—Clayne Buchanan and his wolf traits, Trevor Maxwell with his coyote abilities, Declan MacBride and his massive physique to match his bear DNA.

Then Ivy and her husband, Landon Donovan, had investigated Keegan Stutmeir, the former East German intelligence officer turned arms dealer. Everyone had thought he’d been kidnapping scientists and doctors to make a new bioweapon. They’d been wrong. He’d been creating man-made shifters, using science to shove animal DNA into humans. Everyone called them hybrids.

While they might share animal traits, hybrids were nothing like shifters. Shifters blended perfectly into normal society. You’d never notice them if they didn’t want you to. Hybrids, on the other hand, were bloodthirsty, violent, enraged creatures almost all the time. It had taken a small army of DCO agents along with a group of completely unauthorized Special Forces soldiers from Landon’s former team to take down Stutmeir and the pack of hybrids he’d created out in Washington State.