Buried and Shadowed (Branded Packs #3)

No big surprise, she refused to back down. Mira could be kind and sweet and astoundingly generous.

But when she decided to dig in her heels, she had the temperament of an angry mule.

“Either I’m your partner you trust to be at your side, or I’m a burden that you need to keep tucked in your private lair,” she warned.

Feeling the noose tighten around his neck, Sinclair made one last effort to make her concede to his urgings that she travel to his lair.

“This is my battle,” he reminded her. “The shifters are the ones who have made an enemy of the SAU.”

She arched her brows. “I thought it was our battle. Wasn’t that why you sought me out in the first place? So we could work together to reveal the truth?”

He released his breath with a loud hiss. “Don’t use logic on me.”

Tossing aside the telephone book, she moved to stand directly in front of him.

“I deserve this, Sinclair,” she said in soft, but determined tones. “I was the one to discover the emails that led to Dr. Lowman. And the one to find his possible location.”

He reached to grasp her upper arms, breathing deeply of her floral scent.

“If something happened to you…”

She reached up to lightly touch his face as his words trailed away. He couldn’t bear to think about a world without this woman in it.

“You can’t protect me every second of every day,” she said.

His muscles clenched, a dark fear settling in the pit of his gut.

“Yeah, but I don’t have to deliberately take you into the line of fire.”

Her fingers trailed down the rough curve of his jaw. He still needed to shave. Not that Mira had seemed to mind the rasp of his whiskers when they were in bed.

“There’s not going to be a line of fire.” She intruded into his much more pleasant thoughts. “No one knows where we’re going.”

Sinclair was momentarily caught between his fierce need to tuck this female away in a safe location, and the knowledge that she would never fully give herself to him if he tried steal her free will.

She’d made her point. She’d earned this. And if she decided she wanted see her efforts through to the end, then what right did he have to tell her no?

Even if his wolf was going nuts.

“I’m going to regret this,” he said, reaching into his pocket to pull out his cellphone.

Punching in Rios’s number, he waited for the jaguar to answer.

“Hey, Rios, there’s been a change of plans,” he grudgingly told his friend, turning to pace across the carpet. “No. We’re fine. But we’re heading straight to Nebraska. Mira’s coming with me.” He grimaced at Rios’s predictable response. “It doesn’t seem to matter if its smart or not.” He could feel Mira’s gaze burning a hole in his back. Time to change the subject. “Tell Bree that I want her to start getting the press conference arranged, but don’t actually start it until you hear from me. I hope to have some proof that will ensure no one can doubt we’re telling the truth.”

Rios agreed, clearly struggling to contain his very cat-like curiosity. He was smart enough to sense that Sinclair wasn’t in the mood to explain why he was allowing his soon-to-be mate to put herself in danger.

Replacing the phone in his pocket, he turned to meet Mira’s watchful gaze.

“Did you say something about a press conference?” she demanded.

“Yes.” He moved back toward the door. Now that she was firmly stuck in the middle of his plans, there was no reason to keep them a secret. “While you were at the air base, our people started to assert our independence. We’ve announced that we will no longer be prisoners.”

Her lips parted, a strange expression rippling over her lovely face.

“I thought Donaldson and Markham were becoming more and more on edge,” she said. “I assumed that it was frustration because I wasn’t finding the doctor.”

He felt a sharp surge of satisfaction at the thought of Markham sweating.

The bastard had treated his people like animals, not only caging them but also forcing them to fight in pits. And worse, he’d been trying to discover how to create his own shifters by doing unspeakable medical testing on them.

“They’re losing their hold over my people,” he explained. “Which means that this is the most dangerous time for all of us. Soon, they will decide the only way to control us is through death.”

She gasped in horror. “No.”

His expression hardened. “Before they can arrange a genocide, we intend to expose the truth.”

A shiver shook her body. “It’s no wonder they were so anxious to find the doctor. If he knows what happened in the Verona Clinic…”

Her words trailed away as they silently considered the stakes of what they were doing.

If they could find Dr. Lowman and have him stand before the cameras to admit that the humans were responsible for the virus, then the SAU would lose all credibility. They would, essentially, be destroyed.

“We have to get to him first,” he rasped.

With a firm nod of her head, Mira was moving to pull open the door.