Shifter's Perception (Wolf Pack Special Ops Elite Book 5) Read online

  Shifter’s Perception

  Wolf Pack Special Ops Elite - Book 5

  Sammie Joyce

  Contents

  Shifter’s Perception

  Sammie Joyce

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Get the Prequel - Shifting Seasons Series

  About Sammie Joyce

  Copyright © 2021 by Sammie Joyce

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by JJ's Design & Creations

  Shifter’s Perception

  Wolf Pack Special Ops Elite - Book 5

  Sammie Joyce

  Chapter One

  Alder

  I never really liked the cold.

  Perhaps it was a constant reminder of the fact that my body was aging, whether or not I was aware. The fact that my face didn’t tell the tale of time did not change the reality of it. In fact, any stranger or passerby would never have guessed I was almost ancient with my unlined face and blond locks, but the truth weighed heavily within me. I was a wolf who had been turned half a century ago and had the internal scars to prove it, even if the physical ones had long since healed.

  But winter was upon us again, and while this season was destined to be better than the ones I’d spent stationed on the East Coast, I could already feel the chill affecting my bones. I told myself that winters in Georgia were bound to be easier on my body, but I knew there was underlying ice that wouldn’t easily melt, even when spring dawned upon us.

  It was just the way the others treated me that made it feel so damned frigid.

  There was nothing overt about the manner in which my teammates talked to me. For all intents and purposes, I was one of them. We fought in the same battles and did the same missions. If push came to shove, I knew they had my back, all of them—or rather, they probably wouldn’t see me killed. Yet I would had to have been blind not to notice the subtle way they alienated me, and it wasn’t a ringing endorsement of security.

  Not that I couldn’t and hadn’t always taken care of myself.

  I outranked them in years and experience, but I was the newest member of the team, and they never let me forget it. Even the newer-turned wolves gave me undue attitude.

  I had to wonder if perhaps they sensed my ulterior motives for being there. They were wolves after all. Their instincts were as keen as mine, even if they were younger and theirs less honed than mine.

  The transfer that had brought me to the Relief Division less than a year earlier had come after several months of soul-searching, and in retrospect, probably was none of my business. I say this because I had grown increasingly disheartened with the lack of progress I had made upon my arrival. If you had asked me then, I would have thought that I would have been done and gone by now, onto the next battle. But I was a patriot first and foremost. I knew that things did not always go as smoothly as planned. I had a job to do, and I would see it through, even if that meant grinning and bearing the meetings like the one I sat in at that moment.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Cobb?” General Slater asked, his eyes piercing into me in such a way that I felt he was trying to look into my soul.

  “Yes, sir,” I conceded, even though I hadn’t really been listening. I found that to be the case more and more these days. I considered tuning out Slater a matter of self-preservation. The truth was, I didn’t want to hear anything that came out of his lecherous mouth. Hearing him talk made my skin crawl.

  It didn’t surprise me that Stephen Slater was a general. He had certain qualifications and an arrogance that only those in the highest echelons of the Army could sustain. I had met many just like him with their iron fists and unflinching orders.

  Yet Slater was different than the others, and I was hellbent on proving all his criminal infractions if it was the last task I ever performed as a soldier.

  Of course he didn’t know that. I had come to the team confident that I could unravel the mess that he had created, but the more time I spent there, the more difficult I found dealing with him. At the present, I ground my teeth together so hard that I could hear them cracking in my jaw.

  “Are you sure, Cobb, because you have a blank look on your face.” It was clear that I wasn’t responding with the proper enthusiasm, but I found it hard to muster.

  I really am getting too old for this shit.

  “I’m processing, sir,” I replied, pulling from my stock answers for situations just like this. I hoped that one would suffice because he was right: I hadn’t been listening.

  “I’m calling the rest of the team in now,” Slater said slowly, his dark eyes narrowing as he studied my face. “We have other matters to discuss.”

  I made no comment as he rose from his seat and ambled toward the door to his office, leaving me to stare at the desk. A moment later, I was surrounded by my teammates. Almost instantly, the air in the room went from tense to suffocating. I didn’t have to look up to know that they were surprised to see me there alone. I wondered what they thought of that.

  “Cobb,” Zeus murmured, leaning against the wall. I nodded without responding, noting that his twin stood directly at his side. Darric’s expression was not much different than his brother’s. It was a cross between stoicism and open contempt. I had no doubt that it was directed at me.

  I guess those two worked out their differences for now, I thought. Now that they can double date, I guess.

  Unexpectedly, a pang of bitterness touched me, although I couldn’t be sure from where it stemmed. Over the past months, the Shadows had been pairing off, one by one. I wasn’t jealous of their happiness. It made no difference to me who was dating whom. In fact, I didn’t think of their happiness much at all. They weren’t my friends, not really, but I didn’t wish them ill either. All that mattered was that they showed up for training and more or less stayed out of my way.

  Yet with their newfound partnerships, my mind travelled back to someone that I had left behind on the east coast, despite my best efforts to stifle the image of her face. I thought I’d put her out of my mind for the greater good. It had taken months to forget about the disappointment I had left her with.

  Even then, in Slater’s office, I could hear her voice in my mind’s ear, that last conversation we’d had.

  “When will you be back?” she asked helplessly. “Why are you transferring out?”

  “This is something I have to do,” I had replied, trying to keep the emotion from my voice. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  I had been so cocky then, so sure that I would wrap this up and return in weeks. Little did I know…

  If I had known it would take so long, would I have still come here?

  This was an ugly, winless game.

  I shoved the thought of her out of my head and tried to refocus on Slater, but that proved to be a bad decision also. He had already started talking about the next mission, and it made my stomach churn in a disturbingly familiar fashion.

  “So we’ll have to
do a recon and pen,” Slater explained. “Move the locals out.”

  Again? Why? Who says? Where are you getting these orders?

  A thousand familiar questions threatened to spring from my lips, but somehow, I managed to choke them back. Slater was not a man to be questioned, and I couldn’t afford to give him the idea that I was suspicious.

  I was vaguely aware of how stiff my shoulders had become, my clavicles almost at my ears. Every minute I spent in Slater’s presence took ten minutes off my life, I was sure. The mere sound of his voice raised my anxiety.

  I cast a sidelong look at the others, and to my utter dismay, they were staring at me, the contempt in their collective faces unmistakable. I blinked several times, stunned by their open anger.

  Woah. Why are you looking at me like that? I didn’t order this!

  I could feel the tension mounting around us, each one of the Shadows clearly feeling something of my own emotions, but I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t close enough to any of them to ask. They didn’t see me as an ally. They saw me as another solider.

  A dispensable soldier?

  Gauging by the way they were looking at me in that moment, I felt like they might sacrifice me if they were forced to make a decision.

  For the first time, I realized that perhaps they considered me Slater’s confidant, and the thought made me shudder fully.

  You idiots could not be more wrong.

  “Why are you all so quiet?” Slater growled. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, sir,” the team chorused, me among them, but I noticed that not one of them looked directly at the general.

  “If there’s something you want to say, I suggest you say it,” Slater growled, the threat in his voice almost tangible. He looked about deliberately, locking eyes with each one of us. When he came to me, I somehow managed to hold his gaze evenly.

  “No?” he asked sardonically, the bemusement dripping from his voice.

  “No, sir!” we again responded in unison.

  “Then you’re dismissed.”

  I stood from my chair and saluted Slater, an action that only fueled my apprehension. In my mind, there was no one less deserving of a salute than Stephen Slater. He was a domestic terrorist, using the US Army as his shield. In my opinion, he should have been charged with war crimes long ago. How he had managed to slip under the radar for so long still baffled me, but I was going to put an end to it.

  As I followed my counterparts into the compound, I thought back to the first time I had ever heard about Slater and his elusive Special Ops team.

  Until then, my Army service had been broad and fairly uneventful for the most part. I had been stationed in various parts of Europe and the Middle East but without seeing any real action. Not that I was complaining. I never wanted to be shot at, but I did want to serve my country, which was why what happened that fateful day still haunted me.

  A human soldier in my unit had warned me that we were approaching an enemy zone in Iraq but not for the usual reasons.

  “It’s a wolf village,” Patterson told me. “Or rather, it was.”

  He leered when he said it, and it made my skin crawl to even think about it. There was an animus between wolves and humans, mostly instigated from the mortals. Humans had a long history of hating what they didn’t understand, and shifters were no exception.

  “What does that mean?” I asked, innocently and obliviously. I really had no idea what we were about to stumble upon.

  “It means that Shadows came and took care of them.”

  “The Shadows?” I echoed. “Who are they?”

  Patterson scoffed at my ignorance.

  “General Slater’s Special Ops team. The Relief Division.”

  “Relief Division? What do they relieve?”

  I knew I sounded terribly gullible, but it had been shocking that after such a long career in the Army, I had never heard of this team. Patterson’s grin widened.

  “You’ll see.”

  I had blinked uncomprehendingly, but when we arrived, I was almost sick to my stomach. Contrary to what Patterson had said, there were still souls wandering aimlessly about the village, mostly in tears as they searched for their loved ones.

  I couldn’t determine what had ruined the village, but it was gone, heartbreakingly so. Whatever had once been of the buildings was now a pile of molten ash, but when I demanded to know what had happened, I was met with a wall of stony silence. Unfortunately for me, that was only the first of dozens of neighborhoods that Slater and his team had wiped out.

  My confusion turned to anger, and when I began to ask why innocent civilians were being targeted, I was told to mind my place and was issued warnings.

  That had been the start of the disturbing realization that something uncouth was happening in the Army, particularly with the Special Ops team known as the Relief Division.

  It took two years, but through hard work and tireless nagging, I finally managed to score a transfer to the elusive division. Mostly, I had to learn how to hold my tongue and innermost feelings about Slater. After all, the General was not going to allow me on his team if he suspected that I had more respect for a housefly.

  The team had not been happy to see me, but I didn’t care. I had never infiltrated a group before, but how hard could it be? At that time, I had as much disdain for them as I did for their leader, who seemed to have no problem at all displacing wolves for what seemed to be no other reason than his sadistic pleasure. I was furious with them for not questioning his orders, for following through with genocide of our own species.

  How could the Army put a human in charge of a werewolf division? Don’t they realize that he must have strong biases against us? And the Shadows! How can they do this to their own kind?

  Over time, I came to realize that my team was just following orders, turning a blind eye to Slater’s nefarious ways. I wanted to despise them as much as I did him, but I couldn’t. I knew the way the Army worked, and they were in no position to challenge authority.

  Not without proof anyway.

  Which is why I was there.

  The months had dragged on, however, and I was no closer to finding out what I needed to know about Slater and his intentions so that I could go over his head and present my evidence to his superiors. The process was wearing me down, and I no longer felt like I was making a difference. Instead, I felt like I was chasing my own tail in every sense.

  Up ahead, I saw my team huddled closer together, and I realized that they were making plans for the rest of the day. We had already had an intensive training session that morning, and my muscles were still sore from the climb. I hadn’t given much thought to what I was going to do with the rest of my day before Slater had called me into his office to discuss…what was it? Oh, yes, my elusive attitude. I wasn’t being a team player.

  It’s hard to be a team player when the team doesn’t want you to play the game, I thought grimly, quickening my stride to overpass the Shadows where they had stopped to talk. I half expected them to stop conversing when I walked by, but to my utter amazement, Darric called out to me.

  “Hey.”

  Startled, I paused and looked at him. For a second, I thought that someone else might have been walking behind me.

  “What?” I growled with more surliness than I had intended. Darric didn’t seem to notice.

  “We’re going to the Raven. You want to come?”

  Surprise stole my voice, and I blinked. I had been invited before to go with them but only out of a sense of obligation. In those early days, I had always thought that Slater had forced them to ask me, but I know now that they had been trying to feel me out, learn my weaknesses, see if I was an enemy among them.

  And back then, I had thought of myself as exactly that.

  But this, asking me out of the blue for no good reason? Well, this was new and somewhat daunting.

  Why? What do you want? What’s your plan? Half a dozen paranoid questions popped into my mind, and I almost laughed aloud at my reaction.
They’re asking you to join them for a drink, not go on a hunting trip.

  “We have some things to discuss,” Darric continued, his brow furrowing as he tried to read the expression on my face. “But if you’re busy or have plans, it can wait. It’s waited this long.”

  I heard the grumble in his voice and wracked my mind to figure out what the team could possibly want from me. If it were going to be another lecture, I’d reached capacity on listening to grievances that day.

  “Dice is coming too,” Trevor added as if that were going to make any kind of difference. Donovan was not a blip on my radar. As the human com officer, he was very low on my list of those to investigate. That said, Dice was also a decent enough guy, which made me believe that perhaps this was not going to be a lecture after all.

  “I…” I hesitated, unsure what the answer truly was. Did I want to go? A part of me wanted to retreat to my trailer and watch t.v, but when I thought about it, I wondered what good that was going to do. I would only lose myself in my own head like I always did when I was alone. On the other hand, without knowing what I was walking into…

  “We’re not going to stay long,” Mason volunteered as though that was my concern. I was leaning toward going now. The outward spite that had been oozing off them earlier seemed to have dissipated, but that could just be good acting. Gods knew I did enough of that myself.

  This might be a good idea to pick their brains and find out if I’m really sensing unrest among them, or if it’s wishful thinking.

  “It’s not a career change, Cobb,” Zeus barked with annoyance. “It’s a drink.”

  “Sure,” I agreed, nodding despite Zeus’ surly words. “That sounds good.”