Free Shifter's Claim (The Shadow Shifters) by A. C. Arthur Page A

lower than it had been seconds ago.
    Jacques nodded. “The adrenaline is high. They’re ready to hunt in whatever form you command.”
    Bas shook his head. “I don’t want any shifting,” he told Jacques adamantly.
    It was nothing new that Bas preferred his soldiers to fight as humans. Outside the canyon and the resort there was a small town of about two thousand residents. The last thing they needed was to believe that among all the other legends and folklore that went with the canyon’s history, that there were also cat people living in the mountains.
    But that had not been the scent Bas was referring to. And since it had been Jacques’s first response that meant he likely had not picked up the scent Bas had. In all actuality Bas wasn’t sure he’d actually picked up a scent. It was more like a feeling, a presence that brought with it the taste of a yearning he’d always dreaded.

 
    Chapter 8
    Nogales, Arizona
    They were late, Palermo Greer swore as he waited at the base of the tunnel. It was almost ten forty-five and they were supposed to do the pickup at ten a.m. sharp. He didn’t pace, like Black, the six-foot-five-inch-tall shifter who was built like a running back and had the personality of the feral cat that he was.
    “We wait ten more minutes,” Palermo said solemnly. The hair along the base of his neck stood straight up, his cat pressing like a giant boulder against his spine, ready to break free for any reason. They were alone out here, standing in a building looking down a hole that went more than fifty feet down. The tunnels had taken two years to build and were perfected with a state-of-the-art ventilation system, beamed walls, and six-foot-high ceilings. It began at the back of a building at the border checkpoint in Mexico and ran the length of two football fields to this abandoned strip mall in Nogales. This was Palermo’s first time being near one, but he’d seen the blueprints and knew exactly where the rogues bringing the shipment in would meet him and how they would use the rope and pulley to lift the drugs up into the building.
    That’s where they stood right now, at the top, waiting for the signal that the shipment was ready for transport.
    “If they don’t show we’re fucking screwed,” Black mumbled on another pass by the spot where Palermo was leaning against a wall.
    “They’ll show,” Palermo stated, his eyes glued to the opening in the floor. Watching. Waiting.
    “What if they don’t?”
    “They will,” he grumbled.
    Black slapped a beefy fist into the palm of his other hand. “They’re late.”
    “I know,” Palermo said with a nod.
    “And you’re not fucking pissed off? I am! They’re wasting our time. We should be back in D.C. working with Darel to build our base.”
    The shifter was talking about Darel Charles, the rogue shifter who now thought he was running things after the cold-blooded way in which he’d cut Sabar out of the picture. Black was afraid of Darel. Palermo wasn’t, because he knew that despite Darel’s posturing and grandstanding he couldn’t run this operation by himself. That had never been the plan. Unfortunately, Darel had no clue what was actually going on around him, and Palermo planned to keep it that way.
    “They’re here,” he said finally, pushing from the wall he’d been leaning against and going to stand right over the hole in the floor.
    Black joined him, breathing harder than was necessary but Palermo knew that wasn’t from any type of exertion. Instead it was the rogue’s adrenaline pumping. He was ready for anything and so was Palermo. Reaching behind his back he slipped out the UK semiautomatic rifle. The rifles were designed by Robert Slakeman at Slakeman Enterprises and were intended for use by the US military, or the military of some other country. Instead, for whatever reason, Slakeman had sold them to the highest bidder. And now they were in the hands of the rogues, an army of such warriors the humans could never