AMIDST THE CATS CRADLE

C H A P T E R T W O - - - J O R D A N

Jordan gave a small headshake and noted how the young lady opposite from him was flushing as a result of Mitch and his taunting. The intercom was humming with nonstop conversation about flight safety, but he had heard it so many times before that he hardly even perked his ears. You've taken one commercial flight, so you must have taken them all, right?

However, this was obviously not a commercial flight.

About 10 rows in front of him, Jordan could see the top of Jerome's head seated beside the aisle. Tim was to the left and in front, and he was aware that Tom and Shaun were further back while he and Mitch were essentially in the center of everything. The manifest didn't list him. In actuality, only six football players from unimpressive teams were, not any of the members of Squad Six.

Jordan smirked, looking across at the woman by his side. "Someone's going to discover those chumps in there restroom soon enough and be real astonished," he said. She probably doesn't belong here, either, so why is she there? Despite the blonde hair, he doesn't appear to be an Arctic terrorist. Interesting. He instinctively loosened his hands after sensing their tension. He must not lose his calm now. The jet was tearing up into the sky, the teams' hoots and hollers thickening the air. Jordan wanted to glance around and gain a better understanding of the individuals around him, but he knew he had to keep it casual and unnoticeable, just like the rest of the team. They weren't sure what The Arctics were up to, but the information they'd gotten suggested it was something significant.

Jordan didn't mind; he enjoyed a good challenge.

"So, do you come here frequently?" he asked, reaching across the aisle to shake the hand of the flustered-looking young woman he and Mitch had selected to tease a little. "My name is Jordan. We apologize if we woke you up. First and foremost, safety! ”

"Gwen," she replied, placing her smaller hand in his with a ghost of a grin.

Jordan immediately felt a continuous buzz hum through him, as if someone had given him a low-level Taser charge. Instead of pulling his hand away, he prolonged the handshake, hanging on tighter as his eyes widened with astonishment.

What the heck…

She appeared to be experiencing it too, for as they let go, she looked at him strangely, her full lips parted. They were completely kissable. He'd observed that even before they'd clasped hands. Mitch moved forward in his seat as Gwen turned away from him, raising his brows in query to Jordan. Apparently, the second Allen brother had succumbed to her powerful charms as well. Odd.

"And, yeah, I do visit Cebu on occasion. What about you? You're Mitch, correct? " she questioned, leaning slightly toward Mitch and allowing Jordan to enjoy her long neck and the gorgeous way her hair draped over her shoulders.

For a brief minute, his palm clenched into a fist, his heart accelerating. Reminding himself why he was there, he took another quick look around, concluding that there wasn't much going on at the moment. They reasoned that whatever was going wrong would occur while the jet was at cruising altitude and on autopilot.

Arctics are the worst. He thought as he let go of his fist, "You can't let me have a decent chat without fouling things up."

"That's right, Mitch. We were only here to play a game. We also triumphed. Were we not, Jordan? ”

"We did. What does it feel like to be in the presence of winners? " Jordan inquired, raising his brows and putting on a faux swagger.

Jordan felt a wonderful thrill run through him as she broke out laughing, and it was a darn seductive sound. She was sexy as hell. And that was saying a lot coming from a man who'd been on every continent fighting some form of war or another, finding ladies who flocked to him wherever he went. But she was harder and more unique. He enjoyed it.

"I think the 'winners' here are full of nonsense, but I'm pleased you two had a wonderful time," she replied, wide-eyed.

Both Allen twins had served as SEALs in the Navy. Both of them received honorable discharges, but depending on who you ask, the circumstances that preceded them may not have been quite so honorable. Mitch entered the room just as two men from another team were putting pressure on a female member of their squad. He quickly stopped it and got her out of there, but Jordan was the one who went looking for the boys again and had Mitch with her.

Two adult werecougar shifters who were stronger than even the toughest Navy SEALs had shattered their legs. When Jordan last heard about them, two of them were essentially paralyzed, while the third constantly walked with a limp. He had no regrets about what he had done. Not at all.

As soon as the task was over, the military had quickly granted them honorable discharges, a practice that was common among recruits who were shifters. Even the US military was too intelligent to deal with an irate shapeshifter commando. While the military believed it could contain and employ them, they were welcomed and wanted. However, as soon as a shifter went rogue, all bets were off.

The Firm entered the picture at that point. Jordan and Mitch belonged to Shifter Squad Six, an elite special operations unit directed by Jerome Nicolas, a werebear with his own gruesome tales to tell. Every member of the team had served as a SEAL in the past and had good and poor reasons for leaving the organization. Although their boss didn't always act in accordance with their conscience, the squad did since they had come together as a brotherhood and were now blood brothers.

Squad Six hadn't lost a single soldier since it was founded, and it didn't have any plans to now. They were therefore always allowed back into the fold despite occasionally slipping under the radar and acting in ways that were wholly incompatible with The Firm's policies in favor of money and greed, even though occasionally their direct supervisor Colonel Hemingway spent a long time making them wish they had never stepped out of line in the first place.

Squad Six consistently received the most difficult tasks. The most fun while also being the most lethal and harmful. All indications were that this was going to be one of them. Gwen undoubtedly contributed to the enjoyable part of it.

I'm going to have to keep an eye on her. Jordan mused casually, "Make sure she doesn't get wounded when stuff goes down," the notion catching him off guard.

"Aw, I'm sure you two will survive," Gwen taunted, her eyes twinkling.

She'd been seconds from from fainting out when she walked onto the plane, but she appeared OK now.

"I suppose we'll try. Perhaps you can make it up to us later," Jordan remarked, expressing a statement rather than a question.

He winked at her, and she blushed again, this time a gorgeous crimson that looked great on her. He had to halt and think after giving her another glance. She didn't resemble any of the other women he anticipated to meet. Yes, she was curved, wonderfully curvy, yet her figure appeared to hold itself rigidly in place, revealing years of discipline and training. Perhaps an athlete?

"So, what's going on in Laguna?" Mitch inquired, dragging the topic along and, mercifully, diverting Gwen before she realized Jordan was staring at her a little too intently.

"Work," she answered, smiling. "And I'm assuming you two are going to have another magnificent game, one that you will undoubtedly dominate?" ”

"She's teasing us again," Mitch stated with a smile, clearly enjoying the conversation.

"Allow her. "Perhaps she'll feel so guilty that she'll insist on making it up to us afterwards," Jordan shrugged.

"How precisely will you make it up to me?" Gwen inquired, her teeth brushing over her soft bottom lip, making Jordan's cock quiver in his trousers uncomfortably.

“I’m sure we can think of a few ways,” Mitch said, his words trailing off.

Gwen gave him a look and for a moment, Jordan wondered if they’d overplayed their hand. But then she rolled her eyes good-naturedly and he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. For some reason, making her annoyed at them—and not in the fun way—struck him as something he wanted desperately to avoid.

“Sure, I’ll buy you two drinks at the airport bar if you continue hamming it up like this.”

“Deal,” Jordan said, smirking.

It was then that the seatbelt light flickered out of existence and the pilot’s voice came over the intercom.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain Farley speaking. I welcome you all on our flight and I’m letting you know that we have reached cruising altitude. Out of the windows, you can enjoy a lovely view, with clear skies for as far as we can see. The flight should be uneventful though—”

And that was all that Jordan could pay attention to. Next thing he knew, he heard a loud hissing sound and thick, whitish gas started rolling into the airplane, as if gobbling up the oxygen.

“Shit,” Jordan said softly, his body already throwing itself into action.

He reached down under the seat in front of him, grabbing a black mask out of his carry-on bag. It was the first item in the bag, left on top. To an uneducated onlooker, it might have looked like some sort of odd gadget, but when he snapped it over his nose and mouth, its use became immediately clear. It was a gas mask.

When Jordan looked up, he saw Mitch adjusting his and looking around. Jordan whipped himself around in his seat just in time to see Shaun tackling a tall, blond-haired man with distinctive blue eyes, tearing at the mask on his face. Several others popped up in various seats now and when Jordan saw the familiar glint of a muzzle of a gun, his stomach churned.

“What the fuck’s going on!” Gwen called, coughing already because of the gas.

There was mayhem in the plane, the big jocks disoriented and confused, standing up and shifting around in their seats and making it harder to find the attackers. Jordan heard heavy footsteps behind him and timing himself just right, he whipped his body in that direction, catching an Arctic barreling down the aisle, gun drawn and a similar mask as the one Jordan was wearing pulled over his face.

So they’re testing something… on fucking humans! The bastards, he thought with a snarl, pounding his fist into the face of the man, catching a few hits to his ribs in the process.

One of them almost kicked the wind out of him. Jordan grabbed the tall man by the lapels of his jacket and slammed him against the ground once, heavily. His head bounced once, twice, and he was out cold.

“Werewolf scum,” he growled, ripping the mask off of the man’s face.

He looked over to Gwen’s seat and found her out of it, on the ground, a rag covering her mouth. He tossed her the mask, making a split-second decision. She didn’t look like a terrorist any longer, though she certainly had the right instincts. So maybe not an athlete but a soldier?

“Put that on,” he said, but his words weren’t needed. She was already pulling it over her face.

Her vision seemed to clear as Jordan scrambled up to his feet, kicking the gun far under the seats and away from the Arctic. The Arctics were one of the most dangerous, and certainly the most fanatical shifter terrorist organizations in the world. Made up of entirely werewolves, they seemed to have a penchant for creating the one “true” shifter, a super soldier stronger than anything the world had ever seen.

Over the past few years, Squad Six had had several run-ins with them, from small to big, and every occurrence left Jordan sick to his stomach. The Arctics were well-funded, and while it had originally seemed they were only interested in bettering werewolves, it soon turned out that they weren’t opposed to taking out other shifters or humans if it served their purpose. Genetic engineering, chemical warfare, and mutations were all tricks that The Arctics liked to play with and Jordan knew well that their madness didn’t stop them from trying.

They’d succeeded before and the outcomes were fucking terrifying.

The fog was making it harder to see, and when Jordan got back on his feet, he could hear scuffles breaking loose in the plane but he couldn’t see them.

“Mitch, you okay?” he called lowly, glancing at Gwen and motioning for her to stay down.

Right then, something or someone piled into him from behind, knocking him down on top of the unconscious body of the man he had taken out. And then, the fog changed from white to a sickly tone of purple, wafting through the body of the airplane.

This can’t be good.