Fated To The Soldier Fox (Special Ops Shifters: Dallas Force Book 3) Read online

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  Fated To The Soldier Fox

  Special Ops Shifters: Dallas Force

  Meg Ripley

  Shifter Nation

  Copyright © 2020 by Meg Ripley

  www.redlilypublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, with the exception of brief quoted passages left in an online review. This book is a fictional story. All characters, names, and situations are of the author’s creation. Any resemblances to actual situations or to persons who are alive or dead are purely coincidental.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; this copy is not available for resale or to give to another reader aside from any transaction through Amazon’s e-book lending program.

  Disclaimer

  This book is intended for readers age 18 and over. It contains mature situations and language that may be objectionable to some readers.

  Contents

  Fated To The Soldier Fox

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Vance

  Preview of Rescued By The Soldier Bear

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Fated To The Soldier Fox

  Special Ops Shifters: Dallas Force

  1

  Jack Denton’s motorcycle rumbled to a halt beneath him as he pulled through the alley and parked. He ran a hand through his dark hair as he took off his helmet and shook his head. Leave it up to Winston to pick someplace like this to meet up. The Basement was one of the seediest bars in Dallas, although that hadn’t stopped people from showing up, even on a Wednesday night. Jack watched as two women dressed in short dresses and tall boots held onto each other and giggled on their way down the damp concrete stairs toward the bar’s door. Two men followed them, waggling their eyebrows at each other and exchanging a few friendly punches. Jack sighed. It was going to be an interesting night, for sure. His inner fox was on alert, ready for trouble should it arise.

  The interior of the bar was just as dim as the alley he’d parked in, with only enough lights over the counter to make sure the drinks were mixed correctly—mostly. The tables were battered high-tops with mismatched wood, illuminated by old beer signs. Sawdust littered the dark floor, and a flatscreen on the back wall broadcasted a college game, even though no one was paying attention.

  Jack paused at the bar. “Guinness, please.”

  “I’ve only got that in a bottle, mac.” The dim light emphasized the deep scar that ran down the bartender’s cheek, and he had an odd hunch to his back that made his shrug look more like a spasm.

  “That’s fine.” He’d trust a bottle over a draft in a shithole like that anyway. Taking the last stool at the bar, where he could keep his back to the wall, Jack surveyed the room. The guys he’d followed inside had found the girls they were after, and the four of them now sat at a table near the back, talking and laughing. A scraggly man swayed drunkenly as he attempted a game of darts, but he only succeeded in adding more holes to the walls. Two old men drank in silence off to the right, killing time until The Basement closed and they’d have to find some other place to tie one on. Nowhere did he see the man he was looking for, but that didn’t surprise him.

  “You waitin’ for someone?”

  Jack turned to find the bartender watching him, and he quickly looked away again to avoid staring at that grisly scar. “Nah. Just having a beer.” He raised his bottle in the air and took a sip.

  “I don’t think so.” The man folded his arms on the dingy oak surface in front of him. “I see all sorts of people come in and out of here. They’re all looking for something. Maybe it’s sex, maybe it’s just a chance to forget the hard times. But you, you’re looking for someone.”

  Squinting, Jack dared to study the man’s face more closely. His eyes were the wrong color, as dim and dark as the bar itself, but there was a light behind them he should’ve recognized right away. All the prosthetics and makeup skills in the world couldn’t quite change him completely, though he’d done a damn good job. “Winston?”

  “The name’s Buzz,” he replied with a wink.

  “You son of a bitch!” Jack extended his hand to greet his old friend. “When you said you wanted to meet up, I somehow thought I’d get to see your real face. I should’ve known better.”

  “I like to make sure I stay in practice.” Winston allowed his true voice to come through, an even tenor that befitted the Shakespearean theater more than that dive bar. He was what the movie industry might call a master of disguise. He’d spied on more royalty and government officials than anyone could imagine, and he always got away with it. Winston was remarkably good with prosthetics and optical illusions to make himself look like someone else entirely, and he’d mastered the art of charm and appeal. He was the sort of man that everyone loved, yet no one really knew.

  “But you’re still working, aren’t you? I’d heard you still had some sort of gig after you left the Army.” Jack and Winston had worked together closely on the Grey Fox team, gathering intelligence by any means necessary. Those were the good old days, in many respects.

  “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Hang on.” Winston—or rather, Buzz—made his way to the other end of the bar to serve a couple of cranberry spritzers to the two women, who were waving flirtatiously over their shoulders to the men. He’d slipped right back into the character of the bartender, with his gruff voice and odd stature.

  “Only you could go from playing a prince to the Hunchback of Notre Dame in a matter of milliseconds,” Jack remarked when his friend returned. “I don’t think you have to worry about losing your touch anytime soon.”

  “I’m hoping you haven’t lost your touch, either. You were quite the golden boy back in the day, Jack. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten, with all those medals hanging on your wall. That’s got to feel pretty good.”

  Jack frowned into his beer. Winston wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d joined the Army right after high school. He’d wanted to go into IT, but his parents’ income was too low to pay for tuition out of pocket, yet too high to qualify for most student loans and grants. That problem had been taken care of when a local recruiter showed up at the high school to administer the ASVAB test. Jack had done well enough that the recruiter specifically sought him out to talk about his options, and as soon as he’d dangled that college tuition carrot before him, Jack had been sold.

  There was no doubt that Jack had enjoyed his time in the military. He’d found a sort of camaraderie that he hadn’t experienced in high school. The training—both physical and mental—was stimulating and inspiriting. He’d been convinced he’d found his true calling in life when he’d begun working on antiterrorism with the department. Before he knew it, he was helping to lock away some of the world’s greatest enemies.

  “I don’t exactly keep them on display,” he answered. “It was nice to be acknowledged, but that’s not why I did it.”

  “Oh, of course not.” Winston waved a hand in the air. “You did it all because of that sweet, noble heart inside your chest. Blah, blah, blah. You’re so boring, Jack.”

  This was typical Winston, a
nd Jack refused to be offended by it. He knew the game. “All right. Just tell me what you want.”

  “Who says I want anything? Maybe I just called an old friend to catch up. The world is a lonely place these days, with everyone staring at their phones instead of actually talking to each other. People don’t have real relationships anymore, you know.” Winston poured himself a shot of whiskey and sipped it.

  Jack let out a short laugh. “And if someone has a relationship with you, how do they know who they’re actually with? I don’t think I’ve seen you look the same way twice.”

  “Don’t flatter me. You’ll make my head explode.” He took another sip and let out a sigh as it burned. “Tell me what you’re up to these days, Jack.”

  “A little of this, a little of that. I stay busy.” The truth was that Jack had been recruited to the Special Ops Shifter Force, an elite group of veteran Special Ops soldiers who also happened to be shifters. Their true animal instincts were a major factor in their successes as they tackled problems that the human world usually didn’t know about and the rest of the shifter world wasn’t able to handle. It’d been a good transition for him, one that had allowed him to use his natural talent for intelligence as well as belong to a group of men just like himself.

  “Well, that’s vague.” Winston frowned as he poured himself another glass of whiskey. “Does staying busy involve any real work? I have this dreary vision of you sitting behind some desk in a corporate cubicle somewhere, answering tech questions over the phone from housewives who just don’t understand how the internet works.”

  “I’m not just a knob turner,” Jack replied. “I know my way around plenty of gadgets, but I’ve got more of a life going on than that.”

  “A girl?”

  “Not exactly.” Life with the SOS Force didn’t give him much time for dating, or at least that was what he told himself. He simply didn’t have the chance to get out and meet anyone when he was busy taking down the rogues of the shifter community.

  Winston stuck out his bottom lip. “Poor little Jackie is all alone? That’s sad.”

  Jack gave him a punch in the arm. “You’ve always been a pain in the ass, Winston.”

  “But you love me for it. Seriously, Jack. I think it’s about time you settled down.” He put his glass on the bar with a gentle thunk and looked his former comrade in the eye. “After you help me out, that is.”

  “I knew there would be something,” Jack admitted. “There’s always a catch with you.” He said it good-humoredly, though. That was just the way Winston was, and Jack had come to accept it a long time ago.

  “I do have that favor to cash in, you know,” the bartender reminded him.

  “Damn. That must mean this is a doozy.” Jack instantly knew what he was talking about. The mission was supposed to be a straightforward one: a simple extraction of an ambassador that would have gone much more smoothly if they could have done it without a show of force. Things had gone sideways, though, and Jack had soon found himself stuck behind military lines. With the small contingent he had with him, their limited weapons, and the surrounding forces, there was little hope of getting stateside again. Winston had shown up as the sheik himself, ordering his troops to stand down and giving his blessing for the ambassador and his entourage—Jack included—to leave.

  “You could say that. Just a sec.” He skulked back to the other end of the bar, this time to serve a few cheap beers to the older men, taking his time and making Jack wait.

  “Before you go into too much detail, you should know that I’ve already got a job,” Jack said. He didn’t mind helping an old friend, but he couldn’t abandon the Force. They were a small unit, and even if they went on solo missions, they always relied on the others for backup.

  “Don’t turn me down before you’ve even heard me out.” Winston pushed another bottle of beer at him. “There are plenty of times I could’ve called in this favor, but I was waiting for something I really needed you for. Something that required your specific skills, not just any old intelligence officer.”

  Jack finished off the first beer and reached for the second one, suspicious but intrigued. “I might regret it, but I’m listening.”

  Winston smiled. “I knew you would. I’m working with the Department of Homeland Security now. Still the same sort of stuff, keeping track of all the would-be terrorists and knocking them out as soon as we have enough proof to justify it. You know the drill.”

  “Sure.” That didn’t sound any different than what he had done as a Grey Fox, but it was probably a bit safer if it was taking place on their own territory. Missions in the Middle East had a whole different element of danger to them.

  “There’s one we’ve been tracking in Illinois. He goes by the name of Ben Jones, but it’s just a cover. It’s the sort of situation we see all the time these days: he slowly recruits followers, builds his cell around him, brainwashes them into thinking there’s some common enemy they all have to fight against to preserve their freedom, even though they all have a lot more freedoms than most people everywhere else in the world… Same old dog and pony show.”

  “That doesn’t sound like anything too extraordinary,” Jack commented. He watched as the two women left with the two men.

  Winston watched them, too, waiting until they were out the door before he continued. “It’s not, except that I have reason to believe this Ben is a shifter.”

  Jack set his beer down with a thump, the liquid sloshing inside. “You’re shitting me. Does the DHS know?” He was more than interested now. Jack took it as a personal offense that anyone should try to harm innocent civilians, no matter what country they were from. Knowing that a shifter was committing such an atrocity—or preparing to—was that much more infuriating.

  “I shit you not, and no, they don’t know. It’s mostly my own suspicions, but I’ve seen a lot of animal traffic in the area when we’re looking for humans, if you know what I mean. Trouble is, I can’t exactly report it to upper management. I’m defying the very laws of our country by keeping this secret from the DHS, but I think you and I can both agree that the very last thing we need is for the government to find out about us.” Winston often tended toward theatrics, but at that moment, Jack could tell he was dead serious.

  And he couldn’t blame him. It was a subject that had come up more than once during his time with the Army. What would happen if the military found out who they really were; if the wrong person happened to stumble upon one of them as they morphed from human to animal and back again? Would they keep them captive for experiments? Rule them as abominations? Ban them from the country they’d been born in? It was all possible, considering everything history had taught them. All shifters, service people or not, had made an unspoken agreement that they would never reveal themselves to the wrong person.

  Jack rubbed his thumb down the side of his beer bottle, thinking. “That certainly complicates things.”

  “It does. Ben Jones, I believe, is not only a shifter himself, but is recruiting others. At this point, we don’t know exactly what he’s planning. My concern is that it will not only harm innocent people, but expose us.” He tapped the bar for emphasis.

  Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I still don’t quite see how this involves me.”

  Winston slapped the dark wood. “Ah, that’s the part you really want to know. Of course. The Department of Homeland Security is determined to take this guy down. We’re convinced he’s a threat, but like I said, we have to have reasonable cause. We can’t just barge into someone’s home because they were looking up the wrong things on the internet and splatter their guts on the wall. It’ll be a scandal. So we have to be incredibly careful. We’ve got excellent people on the team, but I’ve convinced my boss that we need one more.”

  “This is where I come in, I presume?”

  “Yes, sir. The department occasionally brings in specialists and consultants, people who have special skills. Your track record with the Army was more than enough for me to convince them
you were the man for the job.” Winston’s eyes, even with those dark contacts, were piercing.

  Jack took another swig of his beer and looked around the room. The man who’d been playing darts not long ago was now swaying back and forth in front of the jukebox, dancing drunkenly by himself. He and the others in the bar had no idea that their liberties were threatened on a daily basis because people like Jack were working behind the scenes to take them out. They went to work and spent time with their families and slept in their beds at night without ever being aware of what was actually happening in the world around them. Even those who closely followed the news were only being fed the parts the government wanted them to know. They had no clue how many undercover agents were working on their behalf.

  “I’ll feel a lot better knowing we’ve got a shifter on the inside,” Winston said when Jack hadn’t yet made a reply.

  “What do you mean?” Jack narrowed his eyes. He knew he was being coerced, and it wasn’t that he really minded considering it was Winston, but he wanted as much information as possible. Jack had learned over the years that it was all right to walk into a trap as long as you knew it was a trap. “The DHS already has you. What do you need me for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Your talent? Your skill? All those medals and commendations? You know I’m good behind the scenes, but I’ve already worked on this case too much. Even with my disguises, it’s time to change it up. I’ve been scouting this one out for a while, and we need to get someone different in there before we make a final move. A shifter is going to handle it a lot better than any human.” He tipped his head from side to side, as though considering all the options the future might hold. “And I think a shifter might stand a better chance of getting out again if I’m honest.”