In the Company of Wolves (SWAT, #3)(10)

The man’s heavily accented words were softly spoken, but he might as well have thrown a hand grenade into the room. The Albanians and omegas who’d been hanging around the edges of the atrium melted away without another word. Her pack members and Brandon were still there, but Jayna could almost taste their desire to be anywhere else. She couldn’t blame them. She wanted to be someplace else too.

Even though Kostandin wasn’t a werewolf, he still scared the hell out of everyone, and that seemed to include the other Albanians as well. The man was Frasheri’s nephew, but the two couldn’t have been more different. While Frasheri’s every action seemed to be driven by a clinically detached desire to make the family richer and more powerful, Kos seemed to only care about one thing—hurting people.

She tried not to flinch when Kos walked over and put a hand on her shoulder, letting the tips of his long fingers graze her neck slightly as he squeezed possessively. “Good to see you back, she-wolf. I would have been very upset if you had died in that warehouse.” He turned to eye Brandon. “More upset than I am at the loss of all those platinum medallions. If Jayna had died, I would have likely been forced to kill those I thought were at fault.”

Brandon dropped his eyes to stare at the floor. Around Jayna, her pack was gazing at the marble floor just as intently. Good. That meant no one saw the shudder that passed through her body as Kostandin’s hand slowly slid down her back and dropped away. The way he looked at her sometimes reminded her of her stepfather.

Jayna had known Kos was a sick bastard the first time she’d looked in those cold, dark eyes of his. Since then, she’d seen him go out of his way to inflict pain on people before he killed them—shooting them in the knees, cutting off fingers, slashing faces with the wicked-looking knife he always carried—all so he could see the fear in his victim’s eyes before the end.

She wasn’t naive enough to believe that any of the people Kos killed were innocent, not by a long shot. They’d been the worst kind of drug dealers, pimps, and gangbangers, and the Albanian mobster hadn’t done anything to them that they probably hadn’t done to others. But that knowledge didn’t keep her from seeing those dead people every time she closed her eyes. It didn’t stop the involuntary shiver that passed through her when she remembered the gleam Kos got in his eyes as he toyed with his prey either.

Beside her, Kostandin regarded her appraisingly, as if he could somehow hear what she was thinking. She frequently caught him looking at her like that. Sometimes it made her think he’d have happily put a collar around her neck so he could keep her as a pet.

Liam chose that moment to come into the lobby, and for the first time in a while, Jayna was glad for his presence, if for no other reason than it momentarily distracted Kos enough for her to put some distance between them. While not quite as tall or muscled as the SWAT werewolf, Liam was bigger than any of the Albanians and a couple of the omegas.

She gently nudged Megan and the guys toward Liam, falling into step with them.

“Jayna, you’re back!”

The concern in Liam’s voice seemed genuine, but the smile on his face didn’t quite reach his hazel eyes. He seemed more concerned with reading the situation, probably trying to see if her disappearance last night would reflect poorly on him.

“Liam.” Kostandin’s tone stopped her pack leader in his tracks. “I thought you said there weren’t any other alpha werewolves in this country.”

Liam looked shocked for a moment, but he quickly recovered. “There aren’t. I told you, Brandon made a mistake. Those SWAT cops might have been werewolves, but they sure as hell weren’t alphas.”

Kos didn’t answer for a long time, and the silence started to become uncomfortable. Finally, he turned and speared Jayna with a look. “You just said they were alphas. Were you mistaken?”

Liam grumbled something under his breath she couldn’t make out. But what was she supposed to do, lie and say that the werewolves who’d taken out the pack omegas had just been big boned?

She lifted her chin. “They were alphas.”

Liam opened his mouth to say something, but Kostandin cut him off. “How many alphas?”

Jayna didn’t answer right away. She had no idea how many werewolves they’d faced. She tried to remember how many different scents she’d smelled. She’d picked up at least five of them, including the woman. Not that she was even considering saying anything about her. If Liam had a cow about there being other alphas in Dallas, he’d lose his mind if she told him there was a female alpha too.

She opened her mouth to tell Kostandin how many alphas she’d seen when a sudden unexplainable impulse to drop the number by one hit her. Was she actually feeling protective about the SWAT guy who’d saved her life? Did she really think she’d be helping him if the Albanian thought there were less of them than there really were?

That was stupid. If the Albanians thought they were facing an overwhelming number of these SWAT werewolves, maybe they’d say the hell with Dallas, and she and the rest of the pack could be done with them.

“Well?” Kos prompted.

“Seven at least,” she said. “Maybe eight.”

Her answer earned a gasp from Liam and the rest of her pack. She couldn’t blame them. She was having a hard time imagining that many alphas all living together, much less functioning as a team.