Free Disclosure by Thais Lopes Page A

tight to the life I had built. I couldn’t let anyone suspect
anything.
    Felipe was
already waiting when I left the bedroom.
Without a word, we went down to the garage. My car was a popular
model, dark gray, and with the darkest film allowed on the windows.
The less anyone could see inside, the better.
    There were
two ways to get to my work by car. The shorter one, through the
city, was an everyday bet. I never knew if I would get lucky and
arrive in twenty minutes, or if I would get stuck in traffic and
need two hours. The longer way was through the road just out of the
city, a huge detour, but there was almost no traffic. And the long
way was also near one of our properties.
    Felipe jumped to the back seat as soon as we
were out of the city traffic, and I heard when he started taking
off his clothes. A few seconds later the sounds of the
transformation started.
    In less than
five minutes a huge white wolf jumped to the passenger seat beside
me, facing me with Felipe’s hazel eyes. His stillness was the best
indication of how worried he was. He usually asked me to open the
window right away, and stuck his face out like an overdeveloped
dog. But not today.
    “I’ll leave half past five.” I told him.
“Call if you need a ride.”
    I swallowed
the words on my mind. I didn’t need to tell him to call if there
were new orders for me.
    The wolf gave
no sign of hearing me. I sighed while parking and stretched to open
the passenger door. Felipe jumped in the middle of the high bushes
by the road, and two seconds later I couldn’t see him anymore. I
closed the door and went to work.

2. Felipe
    The path
between the road and the farm was an old friend. We’d been in the area for so long that the small animals
already avoided that spot. A pity. But I wasn’t going hunting
anytime soon, anyway, I was too worried and knew that there was a
lot of work ahead. When the scientists studying the anomaly in
those samples figured out what they had… We all would have more
problems than we could imagine.
    Carefully, I
avoided all the traps – magical and mundane – that surrounded the
property, before running to the main house. In a couple of minutes
I could see the parked cars, and almost stopped when I recognized
the smells. What was the alpha of the cats doing there? And not
only him – it seemed that almost all the alphas were there, along
with a human servant of the Master of the vampires in the
city. Even more worried, I approached the
door.
    The door
opened just before I got there, and Dara came out. The tall woman was a half-breed – her mother was
a werewolf, from the same clan she now leaded, but her father was a
demon. Without saying anything, she threw me a pair of gray
sweatpants and a simple shirt. I bit the clothes, being careful not
to make any holes on them, and went to one of the cars, using it to
hide my body while I changed. Five minutes later I went back, in
human form and dressed.
    “ What’s going
on?” I asked, skipping the niceties. Only
an emergency would have brought all the alphas together.
    “ Inside.” Her
voice was cold, and her dark eyes seemed to shine in different colors. “Ivan is already waiting
for you.”
    Even more
worried, I nodded, going straight to the big meeting room. With effort, I hid my surprise when I saw who
was there. I had expected the local alphas, and they were there,
but taking secondary positions standing by the walls. The alphas
from the Clans’ Council, the ones who had territorial authority,
were sitting at the big table. The vampires’ servant was there,
too, an older man who seemed harmless but could probably survive a
fight against any shapeshifter. And beside him was an unknown woman
with bright red hair. The hair was enough to tell me what she was,
but I made sure to catch her smell. A witch.
    All the eyes turned to me, and I took a deep
breath, searching for my alpha. Ivan was standing by the table,
almost beside the wolf alpha from the Council.
    “Got