Claiming Treasure
Shift

Nancy Clark’s POV

Outside Arrowhead Pack Entrance

I had bided my time during the drive, knowing that I’d only have one chance at this. Now that I was standing in the middle of the road, a madman’s fingers on the triggers that could blow my head off, I had to wait for the perfect moment.

I could see all the cops around me, but the ones with the pistols and the standard rifles weren’t the ones I was looking for. No, I needed the snipers. SWAT, FBI, I didn’t care as long as they would take the shot when it was there.

Coffey was playing to the cameras as he waited for his demands to be met by the Arrowhead people. Why he wanted Arrowhead, I didn’t know. I tried to keep still and calm, focusing on not getting myself killed while I waited for it all to play out. There was always that chance that he might let me go.

I saw a woman and her husband walking towards us, stopping just off the road. “We’re here, Coffey. Let her go.”

“Not yet.” Coffey turned to me, moving the sawed-off shotgun so it would only blow half my neck off. “Show the world what monsters you truly are, and then I’ll release the woman.”

“How do I know that will happen? You’re just going to give up?”

“If you haven’t done it in the next sixty seconds, you’ll be wearing her brains. She’s innocent, unlike you. Make your choice quickly, Rori. You have fifty seconds.”

Her husband moved in front of her. “Some of my people are pregnant, they can’t shift. You KNOW that!”

“ALL of you or she dies. Forty seconds.”

I looked away from him, towards where I hoped the sniper was watching. I mouthed the words slowly and silently, telling them to be ready to shoot him. I had no idea if they understood, but at this point, it was all I had.

The woman turned to her people. “ARROWHEAD! STRIP AND SHIFT!”

Fifty some people started pulling off clothes and dropping pants on live television. I could see Coffey was watching them and not me. I held up a hand behind my back where he couldn’t see it, fingers and thumb spread in a ‘five’ signal. Four. I heard screams and weird sounds. Three fingers. “WOLVES,” someone yelled. Two fingers. A howl. One finger.

“NOW,” I yelled as my hand reached up to the shotgun’s hammers. It was an antique shotgun, like one my father had used when he taught me to shoot. The double-barreled twelve-gauge had exposed hammers, and my hand grabbed at them. My index finger slid between the hammers and the primers just before he pulled the trigger.

CLICK.

BANG.

I was pulled in his direction, holding on to the shotgun with every ounce of energy I had left. Coffey’s dead body fell to the ground, his brains scattered on the road. I fell on top of him as his dead weight pulled at the shotgun he still gripped. I moved my other hand up, pushing the lever that broke the action and ejected the shells.

I’d barely rolled off when the officers reached me. Two men picked me up and carried me away as a third made sure the shotgun was no longer loaded. As I looked back, armed Deputies and Agents had surrounded Coffey’s body. The men had me to the ambulance in seconds, sitting me in the back with the doors shielding me from the cameras. “Are you all right, Ma’am?”

“I think so. Get this thing off of me.”

One EMT grabbed some shears and started cutting the duct tape that attached the shotgun to my neck, while the other did a quick check of my body for injuries. One of the officers took the firearm and placed it in an evidence bag.

“NANCY!”

“LARRY!” My husband was running through the crowd, and tears ran down my face as he reached me.

“Oh God, baby, are you all right?” I couldn’t talk, so I just nodded my head as I buried my face in his chest. The EMTs backed off as he picked me up, sat down, and set me in his lap. “I almost lost you,” he said as he held me tight.

“I love you, Larry,” I managed to say.

“Ma’am? We need to finish getting this stuff off you,” one of the EMTs said as he pointed at my neck. He started to pull it, and it was painful. “Let me get some rubbing alcohol,” he said as Larry pulled me away from him.

I was starting to shake. “It’s the adrenaline,” Larry said as he rocked me gently. “Relax and breathe.”

The FBI people approached to talk, but Larry’s look chased them away before they could even ask. It took them fifteen minutes to remove all the tape from my neck, and I lost some hair along the way too. I’d finally calmed down enough to think, and that brought up the next subject. “Honey?”

“Yes, love?”

“How did all those people turn into wolves?”

“They’re werewolves, baby.” My eyes got wide. “Don’t worry about it, most of them are good people.”

He wasn’t even shocked. “How long have you known?”

“Since yesterday. I saw Coffey shift into a wolf behind the Gander store. He was the one who injured my Deputy and Max. Mark is with them now, and he’s become a werewolf too.”

I spent a few minutes just thinking about it. “I should have known when they walked out there was something different about them,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Fifty-some people walk out here, spanning from teen to retired, but all of them have great bodies and look like models. How can we compete with that?”

He just laughed. “For starters, don’t go to their pool parties.”

Chase Nygaard’s POV

Arrowhead Pack Entrance

“ARROWHEAD! STRIP AND SHIFT!”

My heart stopped as my mate pulled off her shirt and kicked off her shoes before dropping her jeans to the ground. “Don’t do this, baby,” I begged as I pulled my clothes off.

“I have to,” she said, and then she shifted.

I could hear the gasps and comments as the sound of bones changing rolled like thunder over the road. There was no hiding what we were anymore.

I stared at Coffey, waiting for the time when I could get his neck in my teeth. The woman he was holding yelled ‘NOW’ and reached for the gun. A moment later, a shot rang out. Coffey’s brains splattered on the asphalt. “Shift back and dress,” I ordered everyone. “NOT YOU, RORI,” I said as I shifted back.

“Chase? I’m so sorry, baby,” she said as she lowered herself to the ground. I smelled blood; looking down, I could see it at the top of her hind legs. She was losing the baby. “CLEAR THE WAY TO THE CLINIC,” I yelled to everyone over the link as I picked her up in my arms. I slid my feet into my shoes and took off running, buck naked on national television, back up the road towards it.

“FREEZE,” one of the lawmen yelled.

“She’s losing her baby,” Vic said from behind me. “He’s a doctor.”

“Vic, you’re in charge. Do what you can to limit the damage.”

“I’ve got it, Alphas. Doc and Possum will meet you there.”

Doors were held open, and I set Rori down on the bed in the surgical suite. Donna already had three bags of blood out on the warmer. I went to the cabinet to pull on scrubs, then to the sink to wash up. Doc Olson took over the initial assessment. He’d been staying at our Pack to help with all our guests.

“Start an IV, then a large-bore line for blood,” he told Possum as he pulled over the portable ultrasound.

“How many others are coming,” I asked. We had seven pregnant females in our Pack.

“None,” Rori told me. “I told the pregnant women to stay behind, and volunteers took their places. I wasn’t about to risk them out there.”

“YOU RISKED YOURSELF, RORI,” I growled.

“I had to be there. Coffey wanted to look in my eyes as I lost my baby. He wanted to watch my pain and suffering before he died. He knew EXACTLY what he was doing to me, Chase.”

She was right. Jack wanted the public spectacle. He was out to destroy Rori, and all she had created. He didn’t know our Pack members well enough to recognize the swaps, and the numbers looked right. “Thank you,” I told her.

I had my gloves and gown on as I went to help Doc. “Fetal activity?”

“Stressed but not critical,” he said as he moved the probe around. “The majority of the placenta remains intact. See here?” He pointed at the screen, showing the source of the bleeding. “It’s about a twenty percent abruption, caused by the change in the uterus when she shifted forms. We replace the blood she’s losing, monitor the fetus, and pray that her healing can fix this before it’s too late.”

“Will I need to stay this way,” Rori asked me.

“Yes, you’ll need to stay in wolf form for the rest of your pregnancy,” I said.

“Shifting too early and your baby might not survive. Too late, it would complicate delivery,” Doc Olson said. “You and Heather are in the same boat. You’ll have to deliver a human fetus in wolf form.”

“Or we can do a Caesarean section,” I said. “I need you to rest and relax as much as you can, love. There’s nothing you can do but pray and heal.”

“Alpha, Agent Black insists on seeing you,” Vic sent me.

“How is it going out there?”

“It’s a circus. I’ve been to six county fairs and three prison rodeos, and I’ve never seen anything like it! The press is going nuts, most of the cops don’t know whether to thank us or shoot us, and the FBI isn’t helping much. The hostage is safe, and Coffey is quite dead.”

I thought about what we could do. “Allison and Lana still have full access, let them through. Our secret is out, and now we have to deal with it. Talk to the press, answer questions openly, and stress how we are still their friends and neighbors. If they ask, Rori is resting comfortably, and ask for prayers that her baby survives. It’s something we can all agree on.”

“Will do, boss.”

Rori moved her head and looked at me. “We need a buffer, Chase. The crazies are going to start showing up, and we can’t have our people in danger.”

“What should we do, baby?”

“Start evacuating our guests to the airport out the back entrance, the fewer people in danger the better." That made sense. "Have Roadkill call the National President. It’s time for the Brotherhood to protect us for a change.”