Free Laughing at Danger by Zenina Masters

Chapter One
     
     
    Lima felt the semi-hysterical giggle welling in her throat, and she throttled the inner hyena back with effort.
    Her beast was becoming more and more aggressive, and it was getting harder to hold her back. It made moments like this—when they were about to free some shifters from one of the last menageries—a little less than stealthy when she let out her roiling, laughing bark.
    She bit her lip and kept her beast quiet. It was always the hardest part of any operation.
    This particular mission was a little different. One of the targets to rescue was a fey diplomat. He had gone missing after a party at the White House, and seers had traced him to this particular hidey-hole.
    It was his presence that had tipped her team off to the location, and once they looked into it, missing shifters began to appear on the seers’ radar. It was like the diplomat was an antenna, calling attention to himself.
    Lima didn’t care what the fey was, if there were six or more missing shifters, this was all worth it. She would carry him to safety herself if it meant that some of her people survived.
    She waited for the signal, and when it came through a light buzzing on her belt, she moved in.
    Around the underground bunker, she heard the other members of her team go in. Her own door popped open when she used her half-form to wrench it wide. The metal screamed for a second and then surrendered to her strength. Her beast was smug that it could give her the tools to do her job.
    Lima told her beast to keep it zipped as she crept forward, using all her senses. It was cool, it was damp and the scent of confinement curled through the air. It was definitely some kind of holding pen. There was a distinctive scent to shifters in confinement, and despair was a large part of it, along with an overlay of fury.
    Lima lifted her head and scented the air. There was something else. It was fury and wild magic. It wasn’t with the others.
    Her ears told her that the others of her team were approaching the shifters, so she went in search of the other scent.
    The clink of chains drew her in. She wasn’t expecting what she saw when she slammed the door open.
    The blood-streaked being pinned to the wall by his hands and feet was definitely not what she had anticipated. Lima looked around and saw the etched designs on the floor. With her limited knowledge of how fey did things, she guessed that those marks were keeping the man on the wall.
    She couldn’t speak with her muzzle in place, so she kept her senses on alert while she clawed up the glyphs and symbols on the floor.
    The prisoner flexed in reaction to the removal of the glyphs. He opened swollen eyes and blinked rapidly. His bloody lips moved. “Who?”
    She brought up one clawed hand and tapped her shifter guild identification badge. With the knowledge of a lot of practice, she snapped his leg cuffs loose and then moved quickly to break the cuffs that held his wrists out to either side of his body. He was naked under all the blood, and she wasn’t sure how he felt about it, so she kept her hyena face on as she helped him take a few steps. She looked around and found a sheet across a medical table; she reached for it, snatched it and wrapped it around his hips. He gripped it with his swollen fingers.
    “Thank you.”
    She bobbed her head and watched to see if he could stand on his own. He couldn’t.
    She nodded again and put his free arm around her shoulders as she walked him out of the base.
    Damn. She had let her guard down. Another elf with the stench of aggression on him moved to block their escape. She hadn’t even heard him appear.
    Lima nudged her burden toward the wall, and as the elf in front of her started to mutter a spell, she clawed his throat out.
    She snapped at the hand that was still gesturing, and the bones crunched in her jaws. When he was dying on the ground, she turned back to her charge and put his arm over her again. He didn’t speak, but she could feel his