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Spying on the Alpha

Goosebumps rose along my arms and I tensed, feeling the freezing night air brush against the back of my neck. I rolled my shoulders and rotated my neck before pulling the compact binoculars back to my eyes. A little chill had never stopped me before and it sure wasn't going to now.

The smell of rotting fish and saltwater wafted through the air. Darkness surrounded me, aiding my stealth suit with blending me further into the shadows, as if I wasn't really there. Unfortunately, I was.

Spying on the filthy ports in the middle of the night was less than ideal. But this is where my current intel led me with the night lights of New York reaching me past this dock across an expanse of calm, dark water.

If I was going to do more reconnaissance on an Alpha Werewolf, I needed as much information on him as I could get. The files could only tell me so much.

Doing a simple online search for Apollo Mathison would show that he's a very rich man who inherited his family company that was passed down from father to son for generations. He donated to multiple charities and took part in humanitarian projects all over the world throughout the year.

If he was a gang leader, this was a very great cover up, but hardly any different from shady human politicians.

There wasn't a single negative thing about him to be found online. However, that never stopped us before. It was easy to hide what you did in the shadows if you had even half of a brain. Still, I'd taken down targets with seemingly perfect records. Even people or supernaturals with the potential to become a problem could be next on the list.

My eyes locked onto the figures attempting to blend into the darkness of night as they pushed cargo into a rusty red storage container on the back of a truck. Only five men so far had been moving totes from the dingy boat to the waiting truck.

It appeared the boat was nothing more than a simple fishing boat, but if that were the case, why was it being unloaded at night by men working in almost utter silence?

I could hear only the sound of shuffling boots and creaking crates through the whispering wind blowing in the ocean air. These men were unloading something more than simple fish.

Catch of the day? Drugs.

A mark on one tote the men were carrying caught my eyes, and I zoomed in the binoculars to get a better view of what I was seeing. Just there, on the front of the black tote, was a small silver lyre exactly like the one Lucky had shown me.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. Who puts their family crest on a container full of magically enhanced drugs?

Apollo was the alpha, and this was his family crest. For some of my fellow agents, this might be enough to condemn him and he'd be out of the picture in the next twenty-four hours. However, I liked to get as much evidence as I could before pulling the trigger.

Although we were taught from birth how to kill without mercy, there was something in me that held back every so often. Call it intuition or mercy... I didn't know. And I definitely didn't need to think about it. Not right now.

A breeze came in from the opposite direction this time, blowing at my hair and throwing the few strands hanging loose from my hat to tickle my face. I crinkled my nose at the itch from my hair and in that second; I heard one man drop the container he was carrying with a loud thunk on the pavement.

My body froze as if I'd suddenly been turned into stone as my heart rate increased. Looking through the binoculars again at the man who dropped his load, I saw his head turned in my direction and he was sniffing the air.

Gods damned fucking werewolves. Had that breeze carried my scent down to them? Although I was on the second floor of a warehouse across the lot from the dock, there was always that chance those dogs could smell me in the wind.

And then when I saw him point in my direction at one of the other men loading the truck, my heart skipped a beat. Both men turned their noses up and sniffed at the air while slightly shifting around to catch the unfamiliar scent again.

This was my queue to leave. My binoculars should have recorded enough of what I had seen to review later, and I wouldn't wait around for them to follow their nose and find me.

As I was about to rise from my hiding spot on the warehouse roof, the sound of crunching gravel reached my ears and I turned my head from the men near the boat to see a sleek black car pulling into the lot. It parked next to the truck they were loading and after a few second two men in dark suits got out of the vehicle.

I settled back into my hiding spot for the moment. I'd be a fool if I left without attempting to get a glimpse of the two new arrivals. Anyone pulling up in a nice car and fancy suits as casually as they had must be involved. What if Apollo was one of them?

My body became aware of the weight of the gun at my hip and I tensed while bringing the newcomers into focus. The man who stepped out of the driver's side was massive and bald, with a small earpiece wrapped around his ear. Sliding out from the passenger's side was the second man, who appeared surprisingly short and out of shape, assuming he was also a werewolf. But neither of them was Apollo.

I'd studied his photos so much at this point I could see him clearly every time I closed my eyes....

Their backs were to me as they approached and spoke to the five men loading up the truck. As they spoke to the man who had dropped his tote and sniffed the air gestured in my direction, goosebumps rose on my arms. My gut lurched as he pointed in my general direction once more and the larger man in a suit whipped his head to glare at the warehouse. All I needed to see through the binoculars was a flash of yellow in his eyes.

Definitely time to go now.

I waited just a moment for the bald man to turn his head and talk to the shorter man. In the seconds he was facing away, I pushed myself down from the ledge of the roof I had been peering over and started to army crawl in the opposite direction. With the slope of the building, they shouldn't be able to see me even if they moved in for a closer look.

Despite thinking I was in the clear, my heart was hammering in my chest as endorphins rushed through me. I sucked in a slow breath to steady myself before leaping onto the next warehouse rooftop. After landing with a silent thud, I turned my head to look back for a second.

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