Claiming Her Beasts (Claiming Her Beasts #1) - Dia Cole

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Hunter

The humans in the strip club had no idea their world was ending. I didn’t know whether to pity them or cheer on their impending doom.

The bleach-blonde cocktail waitress who was riding the hard edge of forty slopped a watered-down Jack and Coke on the table in front of me. “This is your fifth, Sly. You aren’t driving anywhere tonight, right?”

I peered at her through the dark sunglasses that hid my inhuman eyes. “Nah, Donna.” I slurred my words and swayed slightly in my seat.

“Good,” she said absently, as if she gave a damn. From what I’d observed the past few weeks, neither Donna nor her fat club owner husband cared much for anything other than cold hard cash.

As long as I paid for the copious amounts of shitty alcohol I drank, they overlooked my shaggy hair, hooded trench coat, and apparent alcoholism.

Tossing back the drink, I sprawled in my chair and played the part of a drunk. Sweat dotted my forehead from the strain of keeping the small human form, but it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to.

All my missions required me to suppress my natural scent and either make myself invisible—something I could only do for a short time—or shrink my normally massive body into an average human-sized one. As a result, bystanders never paid much attention to me.

Case in point. No one in the nearly empty strip club glanced twice at me. Not the beautiful dancer on the stage or the disabled vet that watched over her from the door. Not the former linebacker manning the bar or the jackass in a sweater vest seated at the table in front of me. And certainly not the mixture of human and shifter gang members speaking in low voices at the back of the club.

Those fuckers owed their lives to the chip implanted in my head. If freed from the oversight of my handler, I’d shift into the monstrous beast I was and shred them to pieces.

A magnificent vision of what that would look like had me hissing under my breath.

It’d been thirty-two days, six hours, and twenty-seven minutes since I’d been let off my leash, and bloodlust coiled inside me, dark and hungry.

My current handler often forgot killing was one of my biological imperatives, and she wasted my otherworldly abilities on tracking and spying.

But all work and no play makes Hunter a dull boy…

A low growl rumbled inside my chest. Thankfully, none of the humans could hear it over the sensual beat of the music pulsing through the club.

Javier Diaz, the Alpha I’d been sent to watch, might have detected the inhuman noise, if he’d bothered to tear his attention from the dark-haired female dancing on stage. He, like me, was a shifter with highly developed senses. By his scent, he was some kind of jungle cat. Jaguar. Leopard. Whatever the fuck he was, his slender bones would snap like kindling under my giant paws.

The beast inside me demanded I assert my dominance over him and his enforcers. None of them could come close to me in power and strength, and any territory I was in was mine by default. I ached to punish him and his enforcers for occupying the same space and daring to look at the female I desired.

I glanced briefly at the beautiful creature on the stage. The dancer’s long brown hair fanned over her exquisite face as she twirled around the silver pole.

She’ll be mine. Not his.

I bared my teeth, feeling my aggression rise. The bloodthirsty beast lurking under my skin didn’t care that I was a military operative sent here to gather intel on Javier and his faction. All it cared about was killing and—

An intoxicating odor wafted from the stage, shifting my bloodlust into something else. Heat pooled low in my body and my cock hardened. The dancer’s scent—creamy vanilla and female musk—fogged my mind and awoke long denied instincts.

Suddenly, it was impossible to focus on anything but the dancer. She undulated on stage wearing nothing but a G-string and white wings strapped to her back.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out one of the white feathers I’d found after a previous show. Keeping my face lowered, I brought it to my nose and inhaled deeply. My dancer's scent still clung to the downy fringe.

I groaned, my beast urging me to drop to the floor and roll around in the fragrance.

According to my sources, the owner of the feather was Heaven Lee Walker. Server by day. Exotic dancer by night. Human.

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