Nalah tugged on her leather jacket before she jerked her chin towards the street. She narrowed her eyes at the three figures in the shadows who continued to linger. As much as she loved the three of them, when they got it in their minds that someone needed to be protected, their brains for taking orders fell out their asses.

"If you don't get the fuck out of here, all of you will get an extra round on the mats with me." She hissed the words out, a low rumble filling her chest as she spoke.

There was some hesitation, she could see it, like they wanted to stay even with the threat of bruised and broken bodies waiting for them once they got back to HQ. However one by one they turned and walked away, Lastor being the last one to turn away. She inclined her head at him, letting him know that it was alright. That poor Salus vampire was a nervous wreck. Then again having to bring his teammates back from the brink of death time and time again would do that to a person.

Nalah resisted the urge to sigh as she turned and walked in the opposite direction, heading to the motel where the contact was. As much as she appreciated the worry her usual team gave her, she didn't like how it made her feel as though they didn't think she could handle shit by herself. She was over two hundred years old, she was older than most of them and she could make them hurt. So she didn't like the feeling of them getting protective. She could take care of herself. She had done so for years and years before the Order.

It wasn't like violence was new to her life. People liked to think the aristocracy was all limp wrists, fashion obsession, and jewels but she knew just how violent and cutthroat those bastards could be. There was a reason she walked away from her clan. She was sixteenth in line to the proverbial throne and for some aristocrats, that was just too close and after twenty three attempts on her life from birth to the age of forty, she had enough and renounced her title of Duchess Nalah Primrose of Grenwich, and walked away.

Best damn decision in her fucking life.

She shook the thoughts away and moved up the stairs to the motel room that she had been told to meet the contact at, before they had all left home base. Lucky number seven. Although she couldn't figure out why they numbered their rooms from top to bottom rather than from ground level upwards. She stopped in front of the door and knocked sharply. It was best to get this business done and over with so she could reassure her little soldiers that she was perfectly fine without them.

The door opened and the male who opened the door froze as he looked at her. Of fucking course he would. Her fingers tapped against her thigh and she bit off a curse. She wished she had a cigarette, she really fucking did. The last thing she needed to deal with was a fucking werewolf star struck by a fucking aristocrat. Although she couldn't lie, he was a well crafted male, but she wasn't down for the grovelling and chin scraping across floors bowing that would come after he realized just what she was.

However the pause did give her a chance to look him over and she damn near whistled. Well, well. The WC was putting out their best males forward, weren't they? The male was well muscled, dressed for trouble in a leather duster, tight black t-shirt, and cargo pants, all of which he filled out rather nicely... very nicely. She would never tell anyone in the Order but her type was just like what was standing in front of her, meat head.

She shook off her appreciation for him as she tilted her head. "Well? Are we going to stand here all night or is there something you want to report to me, contact?"

~~~~

Roike had pulled open the door and froze. The female standing in the rather shitty motel lighting was fucking stunning. Her nearly black hair was pulled back away from her elegant and graceful face and she blinked her nearly amber coloured eyes at him slowly, her dark lashes brushing her slightly tanned skin almost in slow motion. His mouth went dry and she spoke but it was like there was cotton in his ears as he looked at her. Drooled over her was more apt at the moment.

He clenched his teeth together and actually looked at her, scenting her out. His eyes went wide at the rich scent that came off of her. A goddamned aristocrat. He bowed his head low, pressing his fist over his chest. "My lady-" He kept his eyes on the floor as his face heated. Drooling over a fucking aristocrat. He was really winning professional of the year, wasn't he?

"Can it with the formalities." She brushed by him with a flippant wave he could see out of the corner of his eyes. "I'm here for information, not empty royal platitudes." Roike stood up slowly, trying his damnedest not to look at how fucking spectacularly her clothes clung to her graceful curves.

"Noted." He moved over to his duffle bag and pulled out a ziploc bag of Agent Anders' personal affects, the most important being her clothes she had worn recently. No tracker could find her without them. Not any of the great ones at least. "Our agent Margita Anders has disappeared while investigating a town named Sleepy Burrow. Humans were going missing and it was suspected that the residents there were resurrecting the old traditions. She reported that that was the case, ritualistic eating and killing." He fucking hated that one of their own had been taken. He hadn't been overly close with Anders, he knew of her and her slight penchant for using brute force to fix problems that was borderline suicidal at times, but she was still a WC agent and having her taken was a blow.

"She was caught." It was a statement of fact and he nodded before turning around to nod at the female.

"Yes. Taken mid phone call so we know her last point was the bar in Sleepy Barrow. That is our main point of interest. It is likely they wouldn't remove her from the area. It's a lower income, blue collar area so not a lot of traffic in and out but it's got a lot of forest coverage and two mountain sides. There is a lot of area they could lose her in." He clenched his teeth again. The entire situation was a fuck up, just one colossal fuck up that has been filled with smaller fuck ups along the way. A lot of people had failed to get to the point where Agent Anders had been taken.

"Something is bothering you. Spit it out." She crossed her arms over her chest and Roike exhaled slowly, wondering how the fuck she could have caught onto what was gnawing at him since he became aware of the assignment.

"She was out there alone. No agent should have been out there alone, especially that far away from back up but from what I heard, she insisted." Anders was starting to play fast and loose and it had gotten her up shit creek without a paddle. Now she had to be drug out of the sewage because of it.

"No clan?" The question was surprising but Roike just shrugged.

"I don't know much about her home life." It was the truth. Roike wasn't one to make many friends. His last good friend he had sent banished from the only home he had ever known. If that wasn't something to take the wind out of one's sails with having friends, he didn't know what the fuck would. It had been thirteen years and he still had no clue where Flint was. That was like an old ache that never went away. A lone wolf never survives, that is what Flint had told him before he had walked off into the dark, never to be seen again. Those words fucking haunted him.

"More than likely she doesn't. It tracks the profile. Suicidal tendencies tend to crop up when clans start to die out." There was a flippant edge to her before she focused all the intensity of those amber eyes onto him. "Do you think she will be a liability during her rescue? Will she put my team in danger?" The edge had turned damn near deadly and Roike shook his head.

"Moon no. She is reckless and might be a bit more brute force than smarts when it comes to decision making but she would never drag anyone down with her mess." That was one thing he did know about her. She never took anyone else down with her stupid decision making.

"Good." The aristocrat moved towards him and held out her hand. "My team and I will discuss details and then I will message you the location of the our meet point." He passed her the bag of items and she barely glanced at it before she turned on her heels and seemed to flow from the room with a sensual grace. Roike sat down hard at the end of the bed as the motel room door closed.

What a fucking mess this was. He knew it was a mess and he knew WC was keeping the lid on it to prevent it from being an even bigger mess. He knew he should have been thinking about that, about Agent Anders, and about how the fuck they were going to find her but a treacherous part of his brain could only focus on the idea of just what that Star Order contact looked like underneath her clothes.