CHAPTER 59

I wasn't ready. Not in the least. Guilt hammered at me as one of Aiden's people drove us to a point ten miles out from the ranch. I still felt like I should walk through the front door and just sit down with Anthony and explain everything. I knew these people, we'd lived in close confines, we'd fought together. And now I was sneaking into their midst and planting bugging devices from another pack. Was I even doing the right thing?

Aiden sat next to me in the back of the unremarkable SUV. His posture tense. He hadn't expected to lose the vampire, I realized, and it was shaking up his perfect little version of reality. Personally, I didn't see what the big deal was. The vampire was obviously a liability, all you had to do was look at the extreme measures it took to keep it contained. Eventually someone would have made a mistake and it would have gotten loose.

Then what? Would it tear through Aiden's people in an act of revenge? Run and find the others of its kind and return with knowledge of Hoventech's structure? So many things could have gone wrong that I couldn't be upset that the threat neutralized itself.

The vampire's words had stuck with me though.

*'we will make you beg to let you tell us where the rest of them are.'*

The rest of them.

Who? Exactly? More vampires?

It just wasn't adding up. When I'd run into the vampire at the shipping facility I'd thought I'd figured out what the vampires were doing in Boston. Thought they had ties to Thostchild, but the ones after me hadn't even known where that woman was, was possible they didn't know anything about Thostchild? That they were simply here, looking for their missing people?

Hadn't Aiden said something similar? That Defence Medical possessed records of many different were-species? That our people had been going missing?
What if it wasn't just our people?

I didn't have time to think about it farther because the vehicle pulled to a stop and I was looking at an expanse of settled farms and old dirt roads that would lead closer to the ranch. We'd decided on ten miles because it was far enough away that even I couldn't sense an intrusion. The last thing we needed was for Anthony to get a hint of scent of another alpha. Even in the mildest packs an outside alpha trespassing on your territory was considered a challenge.

"I'll wait here," Aiden tapped on the communication device we both wore and opened his laptop. I'd refused to wear the cameras he offered so three of the panels he had up were blank. The rest connected to my communication device and the tiny little bugging devices.

I rattled the little pill bottle in my hand. About a dozen little black grains of rice rolled around within. They almost looked like mouse turds.

"You're sure about these?"

Aiden looked up from what he was doing, he had settled into work mode and no longer looked like he was going to spring right out of his seat.

"Take one out," he told me.

I opened the canister and pinched one of the little grains. It even felt like rice. Slightly rough and the kind of black that ate the light, it was dark against my skin.

"Joseph, let me borrow your bandana."

Joseph, who must have been the man driving the SUV nodded and pulled a red and orange bandana from his back pocket. Aiden took it and laid it on the seat between us.

"It attaches automatically when you push it into any material. You've got to be intentional, don't just drop it."

I set the grain of rice on the bandana and pushed it down a little. For a moment it didn't look like anything happened, and then, slowly, so that it was nearly undetectable, the colors and the texture changed so that it matched the bandana perfectly. I ran a finger over where I knew I'd just set it. I could still feel a lump, but instead of a grain of rice, it felt more like a little knot in the fabric.

"How?" I demanded.

Aiden chuckled. We took the idea from the octopus, which uses cells called chromatophores to change colors and camouflage in their environment. Developing synthetic cells was difficult."

"But..."

"It also has hook filliments that will keep it attached where you placed it. Try to take it off."

I pinched the device , but it was so fitted with the bandana it felt like part of it, indistinguishable.

Aiden pushed a button on his laptop and one of his panels began showing information.

"It is designed to capture speech only and eliminate background noise, so you can put it anywhere, even a piece of clothing without the data being ruined."

The SUV echoed as Aiden spoke twice, once to me and seamlessly at the same time through the recording on Aiden's laptop.

"Does it have cameras too?" I kept my voice neutral.

Aiden laughed, harder this time.

"I admire your loyalty. No, optics would be too difficult in something this size, so I won't be scanning out the organization's base. It records speech only."

I nodded, relieved. "What happens if they get suspicious of it?"

"If it detects suspicion or if I signal it do the device will dissolve into a harmless, untraceable powder. "Go ahead, try to pick it off, you know it's there."

I did, I pinched the little knot, held the bandana in the other hand and pulled. My fingers came away dusted with a fine gray powder and the laptop tab went flat.

"You've got thirteen left. When we get the information we need you can personally shut each of them down yourself."

That made me feel better, but not by much. Of the many things I'd done, not once had I gone against the well being of the organization. Nor had I ever tried to decide what the well being of the organization was. That was the alpha's job. And now I'd gone behind his back and made this decision for him.

I took a deep breath. All I could do was hope that I was making the right one. Hope that Aiden was trustworthy, and hope that I wouldn't come to regret this.

I opened my door with shaking hands and glanced once back at the man I was trusting with more than my life.

And then I ran.