Chapter 1

• She never should have stopped back home. Gia cursed at herself, “what possessed you to do that?” She did not have a choice if she wanted more of her belongings. After spending the last week and a half with Amari, she realized this job, the new world that the Clan co-ordinator job showed her that was it for her, she wasn’t turning back.
• Smirking, she looked around the van. “I guess this is home now.” Things had not gone well with her parents, at all. They hadn’t told her not to come back, well, not outright, but it had been implied that she either straightened up and worked with them and their beliefs of what the daughter of an Alpha was or not being part of the family.
• Closing the tote, she assessed if she’d done everything Amari had suggested. All personal ‘shit’ in a small tote, with a lock, backpack with a change of clothes, hygiene items, and your run pack. All the rest of the gear was secured under the two bench seats that ran along the sides of the van. Shutting the door, she turned around and looked down the road. Freedom. This was new and something she’d wanted for most of her twenty-four years of life.
• Riding with Amari Hughes had both been educational and enlightening. She was also the daughter of an Alpha, they’d connected on so many levels, and Gia was still shocked by it. Her entire life she’d thought she was alone, and it was just her that wasn’t all gaga with being part of the Alpha family, Amari set that straight right off.
• “Okay,” she patted the side of the van and then went and got in the driver’s seat. “I’m going to nail this first assignment and show them all that this is what I am meant to do.” Pulling out of the parking lot, she tapped the GPS to double-check her own route. She had a day of driving ahead of her before she reached this ‘safe house’ many of them were going to be at. The details of what they were all doing were sketchy, but according to Amari that was for her own safety. Gia didn’t care about the details right now. She was just happy to be on the road and driving in the opposite direction of her family.
• Her phone lit up and started playing circus music. Her favorite of her four brothers. She grinned and answered the phone. “Hey, bro.”
• “Sister, my heart.” Walker chuckled.
• She glanced at the time on the radio’s clock. “I expected you to call a few hours ago.”
• “I had to get out of the house before I could call, you know that.” She heard a door close and knew he was probably hiding in his office at the clan’s community building. “I can’t believe you did that.”
• “You heard?”
• Walker snorted, “the whole clan probably heard.”
• She blew out a breath, “I just couldn’t…”
• “I know, I know. I’m not saying you were wrong, just—you’ve got balls, Gia, to go toe to toe with Dad like that.”
• Gia searched inside to see if she felt bad for yelling at their father, when she couldn’t find a trace of remorse, she shrugged. “I have no purpose there. None. Why can’t he see that?”
• “I know, babes, Mom does too, but she’d never speak out against him, you know that.” There was a quiet pause, “you will come back sometimes though, right?”
• “I don’t know, Walker, I don’t know right now. The Co-ord team doesn’t get a lot of downtime lately…”
• “Which is fucking amazing if you ask me, that the Alliance is finally closing in on that Tomas dick and getting our kind out of there.”
• Gia nodded, “and I get to be a part of it. I have purpose and I am going to nail this job and make Dad see.”
• “Well, don’t hold your breath there. Shit, I better go, Vance and Nash are coming this way and they have that look.”
• “What look?”
• “Oh, the one that says, what-the-hell-did-our-sister-do-this-time, look.”
• She grinned, “good luck with that. Tell them I’m on my way to meet a team on the other side of the border.”
• “Shh, no discussing things over open lines, Dad drilled that into all of us before you made him go red in the face.”
• “I know. Love you bro.”
• “Be careful, babes.”
• The line clicked and then was silent. She blew out a breath, feeling bad that Walker was going to have to go face to face with two of their brothers. Brothers. She had more than enough of those. Gia was the youngest and only female of five children. Worse than that, she was a surprise and born later than the ‘planned’ Alpha family. She always figured it couldn’t have been too much of a surprise, as shifters knew when they could or couldn’t conceive. It made her feel better most times, that her mother had wanted her. It also proved her father was clueless about some things. So her birth was a win-win. She felt like a heel though, that she couldn’t be the perfect only daughter to an Alpha wife.
• Picturing Walker and his wordiness all up in Nash and Vance’s faces made her grin. Nash was the oldest sibling and very much fit the Alpha’s expectations of the son to take over, Vance was the third son and almost a carbon copy of him. They both had perfect little petite, complacent mates, and she was sure would soon have perfectly behaved Alpha family children. “You’ve got this, bro.” Walker was the only brother she got along with, the only one that silently backed her up. He would never say so in front of their father, but they’d spent many hours hidden somewhere talking about everything. His support, regardless of whether it was masked most of the time, meant everything to her.
• Gia pictured her second oldest brother’s reaction if he’d been at the house. Nox wouldn’t have quietly stood on the sidelines. He never did. He wasn’t training for Alpha leadership, but he was a big macho man on the incursion team. Gia had every confidence that he was good at his job, he was great with hand-to-hand and weapons, it was his personality that she found so flawed she would leave the room anytime he visited. She didn’t know the first thing about what he did. She imagined his whole team was comprised of large, opinionated he-man types though.
• Life with four older brothers was not something she would wish on anyone. Your every waking moment, every decision, and every step you took was overridden by their opinion of what they thought you should be doing.
• Her shoulders tensed, just thinking about her brothers did that to her. Except for Walker, she really did adore him. If it hadn’t been for him setting her up for secret self-defense training, she would have died a slow and boring death as she grinned and bowed her head as the Alpha’s ‘showpiece’ daughter. Of course, she could never tell anyone else in her family he’d done that, or he’d be an outcast too. She’d excelled at the training and kept going with as much as she could come up with excuses as to what she told others she was doing.
• Her phone lit up with a text message, she tapped it to read. It was from her brother Nox, Keep your head on a swivel.
• She looked back at the road, what did that even mean? With her teeth clenched in a huge fake smile, she tapped it and sent him back a thumb’s up emoji.
• “Head on a swivel.” She snorted, “what am I, an owl?” Picking up her worn baseball cap off the dash, she jammed it on her head. If she’d been born a male, none of this would have been a problem. Turning up the radio, she settled back and focused on the road.
• ~
• Gia was impressed with how far she’d gotten so far. Traffic had been good, but then again, she was doing what Amari suggested and always taking the less obvious route. Amari had told her in confidence what was going on inside the Alliance and Gia had been shocked by it. What kind of shifter would rat out their own kind to someone like Aiden Tomas or any of his associates? It had cemented things in her mind, she was going to do this job and help as many as she could.
• Her phone lit up and she was startled to see it was Jesse, the leader of the co-ord team. Muting the music, she hit speaker on the phone. “Jesse, hi.”
• “Gia, how are you doing?”
• “I’m making good time. I crossed the,” she stopped, not sure what she should or shouldn’t say over the phone.
• “All the team phones are secure.” He said quietly.
• “Okay, uh, I crossed the border about twenty minutes ago. The location Amari said she used.”
• “Good. Several of ours work at that location.”
• She pushed her hat up, a little surprised by that. She was learning so much about the Alliance, things she could never have dreamed.
• “Listen, I wanted to give you a heads up, your father called the Alliance.”
• Gia’s heart stuttered. Was this where he told her she was off the team and being sent back home? “Oh.”
• “Too bad the king was busy, and the call was sent to his son, Devin.”
• She watched the road, afraid to look at the phone. “I’m sorry if my dad…”
• “Devin told him that you were an integral part of the co-ord team.” He sounded like he was grinning.
• “Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say.
• “What was he going to do, argue with the prince?”
• The prince had stood up for her with her father for her to stay on the team? “I don’t know what to say.”
• “Hey, you’re now one of us and the king is behind my decision to have you on the team, so Alpha or not, your father is just going to have to accept that.”
• “Thank you. Uh, I don’t even know if I’m allowed to go home again.”
• “You’re going to be on the road a lot for the next while, so we’ll deal with that later, okay?”
• She nodded, feeling weepy and grateful. “Yes.”
• “The reason I called is, a decision was just made to change things up a bit, after some recent events, it’s for everyone’s safety.”
• She sat straighter, “Okay.”
• “From now on when you’re transporting or heading into unknown clan territory a member of the incursion team will be traveling with you.”
• “Oh.” Her heart felt like it was running out of steam as it slowed in her chest. “Um, do we get to pick or…”
• “It was going to be randomly assigned by who is closest and if any ops are running, why?”
• She cleared her throat. “My brother, Nox, is part of that team.”
• Jesse sounded like he laughed, “you’d prefer not to have him ride with you?”
• “If at all possible, yes.” She said quietly, afraid to breathe.
• “Okay, I’ll tell Zain of your wishes.” This time he did chuckle.
• “Thank you.” The breath she hadn’t realized she was holding whooshed out of her lungs.
• “When you’re closer to Chicago, shoot Zain a text and he’ll give you the exact location. We’re not sending anything out in advance from now on.”
• “Okay, I can do that.”
• “And Gia?”
• “Yes?”
• “Welcome to the team. I’ll see you when you reach the safe house.”
• She smiled. “Thank you, Jesse.”
• Gia swatted at the tear rolling down her cheek. Now was not the time to turn all ‘sappy female’. Sucking in a deep breath, she blew it out. She had the prince and the King of the Alliance backing her up, that kind of support she could get used to.