Act of Mercy (PSI-Ops / Immortal Ops) (19 page)

PSI-Division B Headquarters—USA

Duke pul
led his woman into his arms, inhaling her scent, his body thrumming with pleasure. He couldn’t recall a time in his life when he’d been so happy. The men sat around the briefing room table, waiting for Boomer, who was late.

“
When do I get to meet Tut?” asked Mercy, now a staff member of PSI. She was head of Research and Development at the division. She loved the job and had only been at it a week.

Corbin cleared his throat.
“Malik hates to be called Tut. He’ll be in within a week. He checked in this morning. I, of course, am leaving all this news until he’s present.”

“
Oh,” said Mercy, glancing at Striker who had probably told her Malik loved being called Tut. She narrowed her gaze and Duke watched the Scotsman sink lower in his chair. He nearly laughed at the sight of Striker being nervous of Mercy, but then again, Duke held a healthy dose of fear of her.

He
’d seen what she could do when someone she loved was as risk.

She still denied it was her doing
, but all the men knew the truth. Mercy was powerful and Duke couldn’t have been happier to know as much.

Boomer entered and held up his phone.
“Sorry I’m late. One of the wildlife preserves and rehabilitation centers I fund just sent me updates.”

He was big on animal rights and supporting rehabilitation. All
the men were, but none to the extent of Boomer. Duke suspected the man had his personal demons and reasons for it all. He didn’t ask.

Mercy shot out of her chair.
“News on Lil’ Duke?”

Duke groaned.

Striker laughed.

Corbin even seemed amused.

Nodding, Boomer handed her his phone. “There is a picture of Lil’ Duke.”

Mercy took the phone and looked confused.
“He’s wearing a tutu.”

Boomer scratched the back of his head.
“Uh, yeah, he likes to play dress up and that is his favorite piece. Couldn’t talk him out of it.”

Sigh
ing, Duke lowered his head as the team began to laugh and look at him. He flipped them off. “Hey, let the monkey wear whatever he wants to wear.”

“
He’s not a monkey,” Boomer and Striker said back in unison, glancing at Mercy for her approval.

Kiss asses.

Mercy approached and hugged Duke, her breasts pushing against his cheek, making him forget what he was angry about. “Stop picking on my husband.”

“
Sorry,” said Boomer.

“
Och, I’m nae the least bit sorry. Will you dress up in pink frilly things too, wolf?”

“
Fuck off,” Duke said, pulling his woman onto his lap.

She snorted and then touched her stomach, her laughter fading fast. Her other hand went to her mouth and she paled.

Worry lanced his heart.

The door to the briefing room opened and James app
eared, using a cane to help steady himself. He was still far too thin for his frame and wasn’t healing anywhere near the rate he should, but he’d insisted on being reinstated on the team and being given his position as lead physician at the facility. He took one look at Mercy and nodded.

“
I was coming to find you to share the news on your current round of tests,” he said. He glanced around the room. “I give it five, maybe ten minutes before they all smell the truth.”

Duke inhaled deep
ly, wondering what the hell James was talking about. It was then he noticed the scent of his mate had changed. There was something different—new. She smelled even more like him.

Confused, he looked to James.

James smiled widely. “Looks as though you’ll have a new addition in about nine months.”

Mercy gasped.
“I’m pregnant?”

James nodded.

Duke paled and had to take several deep breaths. He was going to be a father? It took a moment to realize all eyes were on him. As the news sunk in, he shot up and out of the seat, Mercy held up and in his arms. He lifted her high, excitement racing through him. “Did you hear that?”

She looked a bit green.
“Down or I’ll vomit.”

He set her down gingerly.
“Did I hurt the baby?”

She groaned.
“You shook me up when I’m nauseous. You’re lucky I didn’t get sick on you.”

He laughed.
“I hate vomit.”

She smiled weakly.

“But I love you,
woman
.”

She touched his cheek.
“I love you too, man.”

THE END

Mandy M. Roth 
grew up fascinated by creatures that go bump in the night. From the very beginning, she showed signs of creativity—writing, painting, telling scary stories that left her little brother afraid to come out from under his bed. Combining her creativity with her passion for the paranormal has left her banging on the keyboard into the wee hours of the night.

She
’s a self-proclaimed Goonie, loves 80s music and movies and wishes leg warmers would come back into fashion. She also thinks the movie
The Breakfast Club
should be mandatory viewing for...okay, everyone. When she's not dancing around her office to the sounds of the 80s or writing books, she can be found designing book covers for New York publishers, small presses, and indie authors.

Mandy writes for The Raven Books, Samhain Publishing, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Harlequin Spice, Pocket Books and Random House/Virgin/Black Lace. Mandy also writes under the pen names Reagan Hawk, Mandy Balde, Rory Michaels and Kennedy Kovit.

To learn more about Mandy, please visit
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or send an email to [email protected].

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The following material is free of charge. It will never affect the price of your book.

As Director of Operations for the Immortal Ops Organization, Colonel Asher Brooks has his hands full. When he’s not trying to keep six alpha males in line, he’s trying to help them defeat the enemy. Brooks isn’t the type to share about his personal life. When given the opportunity to have quality time with the one woman who rocks his world, he takes it, regardless of the cost.

Excerpt from Administrative Control (Immortal Ops)

Colonel Asher Brooks stepped out of the shadows near the old warehouse. The warehouse had been the scene of one hell of a throw-down. Brooks had seen worse.

Much worse.

Truth was, this was hardly a drop in the bucket for him.

The entire area smelled like a mix of death and fish. Neither were great on their own, but combined they were nauseating. He avoided deep breaths as he surveyed the situation.

Carnage.

No one had seen him arrive. They never did. That was how it should be. He needed to be someone the supernaturals he worked with trusted fully without fearing or questioning his loyalty.

His allegiances were his own and not up for debate with the group or the organization. When he’d been brought into the Immortal Ops program, it had not been lightly. The people who thought they had control of it were wrong.

Dead wrong.

Bad decisions had been made. Good people had lost their lives. Brooks was their answer to that. A one-man clean-up crew, if you will.

He checked his watch. The current crew should have already been done with the warehouse and the pier. The I-Ops and the PSI-Ops had left one hell of a mess. He couldn’t blame them. Helmuth had an army at the ready and had used a portion of it to attack the I-Ops. Sure, the dead were paranormal thugs hell bent on being part of the new wave of supernaturals, but still, a mess was a mess.

Your men all returned alive. You can’t ask for anything better.

He could ask that the violence stop, period, but that would never happen. Since the dawn of time, good had been pitted against evil. It would continue to be until the end. There was no changing it.

He knew. He’d tried.

He walked up behind the cleanup crew, who had yet to notice his arrival. He’d have a talk with them later about that. They should always be on the ready.

“
Speed it up,” he barked. The two nearest him almost jumped out of their skin.

They needed to get their shit together and clear out soon. He wouldn’t risk any of them learning personal information about him. He’d been alive too long and seen too many turncoats to trust anyone with what he held precious.

Or rather, who.

Book One in the Tempting Fate Series

Lindsay Willows craves a simple life. One where she can make a difference without drawing too much attention to herself. As the daughter of both a vampire and a fae, the cards were already stacked against her. Finding out she’s the supposed mate of a dark fae prince doesn’t help matters. Especially when there are those who will stop at nothing to prevent her from mating with a prince she’s never even met.

When Exavier Kedmen, the incredibly sexy front man for a world-famous band, shows up wanting her to go back to working in a field she left three years ago, she can’t explain the strong feelings that surface for a man she barely knows.

Lindsay finds herself confronting demons from her past, coming to terms with the ones in the present, and finally looking forward to a future with the man she was created for. And she discovers evil doesn’t care who it hurts to obtain its goals, but even the evilest of things fear something, or in the case of Exavier, someone.

WARNING: This book contains vampires, werewolves, sexy bedroom scenes and violence explained with contemporary, graphic language.

Excerpt from Loup Garou

“Tell me again who I’m meeting today,” I said, holding on to one of my closest friend’s shoulders while I stretched my leg high in the air. The need to work the kinks out of my sore muscles before daring to go on with a day filled with exercise seemed wise when I started. Now, as I stood there with visions of caffeine dancing through my head, I began to second-guess myself. Coffee was up next to sex on my list of things I’d rather be doing. So far, my caffeine intake was lower than it should be. I thought about wearing a button warning others to exercise extreme caution when dealing with me, but with the skimpy outfits I wore to work out in, there really weren’t a lot of places I could pin it to.

“
Exavier Kedmen, he’s the front man for the rock band Loup Garou,” Myra said, never missing a beat. She was a machine when it came to her quest to keep me on track and I loved her for it. At least one of us knew what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I was happy when I remembered what day of the week it was. I’d say it was an exaggeration, but I’d already thought it was the wrong day twice and had only been awake a little over an hour.

“
I love the name Exavier. I once knew a boy with that name.” Slight understatement if I’d ever heard myself voice one. I’d more than known that Exavier. He’d been my best friend, first love and greatest letdown. Too many years had passed to bother thinking hard about it now. I missed him and most likely always would. Since I hadn’t seen him since I was seven and he was ten, it was safe to say he’d had an impact on me. Sighing, I dipped my head down and pressed my forehead to Myra’s shoulder. Thankfully she was tall too. She made a wonderful mobile “post” for me to hang on to. I’m sure she’d rather I not do it, but since she hadn’t verbalized a concern, I went with it.

I stared at the dark grey Berber carpeting in Myra’s office as I continued to stretch. I’d rather be staring at a latte. The carpet would do nothing to chase away my bitchiness or help me stay awake. Though it did have a rather odd and nearly impossible pattern in it.

I shook my head. If I was to the point I was willing to stare at carpet, the day was going to be a long one. At least I was in Myra’s office and not at the police station in my friend Jay’s office. He was a detective and seemed to be able to locate everything but his desk with the mess he had in his office. I spent more time wondering if I saw a stack of papers move with the help of rodents and trying to figure out what the mystery odor was than I did visiting Jay.

Probably why I stopped visiting him there.

Myra’s neat-freak tendencies never left me concerned about things crawling up my leg. Her office was done in shades of grey with black and white accents. To me, it was depressing. To Myra, it was perfect. Whatever made her happy worked for me. She’d given up a life in corporate America to help me with the center and had never once complained.

“
Why exactly is a front man of a rock band meeting with me? I’m not in the business of choreographing anymore. I’m sure the word is out by now. If not, I’m happy to spread it.”

Myra held her day planner up behind my head and ignored me. The planner was her version of a bible. I learned very quickly that touching it was begging for the death penalty. I was also informed, in the event of a fire I was to save the day planner first, small puppies and endangered species second. Strangely, small children were not on her list. I also did not point out that her plan had a flaw. In order to rescue the day planner I’d have to touch the book, so I was a bit confused on what Myra wanted.
“You have a ten o’clock appointment with the Ferris family. They want us to protect their great-grandfather who is convinced the reaper, I kid you not, is coming for him.”

Strange, but truth be told we’d had weirder.
“How old is he?”

“
One hundred and two,” she said, somehow managing to keep a straight face. You had to hand it to her. I wanted to burst into laughter. I resisted.

Grinning, I switched legs.
“Would it be wrong for me to confirm his suspicions? I think he’s right. The reaper is after him.”

“
Lindsay, pretend to have a heart. It makes us all feel better about being near you.”

“
Fine.” I rolled my eyes and let out a soft laugh. The man was one hundred and two. Of course the reaper was on his heels. Unless he was immortal. Somehow, I doubted it. “I still don’t know why word keeps spreading about us. It’s not like we’ve got a mystery machine parked out front with our own talking dog. Why come to us for the paranormal?”

She snorted but didn’t give me an answer.

“Anything else I need to know about? There aren’t any more surprises this week are there? I’ve had no coffee yet today and have already taken an abnormal interest in your carpeting. Please tell me my week’s looking up.”

She murmured something I couldn’t quite catch. Never a good sign.
“Umm, try that again, this time in English.”

Myra rolled eyes and gave me a wry grin.
“You are supposed to have dinner with your parents tomorrow night.”

“
Sun sets around eight lately so I have a while to come up with a good excuse as to why I’m not going to be able to make it.”

“
Lindsay!”

Grinning, I kissed her cheek quickly.
“You know you love me.”

Myra snickered as she thumped her hip to mine.
“God help me, I do.”

“
The idea of my mother trying to set me up with someone else makes my stomach tight. You go in my place. She always picks men who are right up your alley.” It was true. Myra’s idea of the perfect man was my idea of a boring one. She seemed drawn to the executives. My idea of the perfect guy generally swayed more towards bad boys with big toys. Basically, everything she hated in a man. It made for a great friendship. It wasn’t like we ever had to worry we would try to steal each other’s’ boyfriend.

“
Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“
Suit yourself.” I dropped my leg down and walked towards Myra’s black desk. The oversized unit had a raised glass top with silver feet. A matching wall unit sat against the wall behind her and went to the ceiling. Every tiny paperclip had a home in Myra’s office. I moved things around once and she spent a week complaining. The temptation to do it again was great. I held back. It was hard.

“
Want to fill me in on this Loup Garou guy?”

She arched a well-defined brow and gave me a questioning look.
“I thought you weren’t entertaining going back into the business again.”

“
I’m not.” I didn’t want to admit the second she told me the band’s name I had actually considered taking the job. “I’m curious as to why they’d name themselves after the French word for werewolves. That’s all. Are they supernaturals?”

So many supernaturals gravitated towards careers in the entertainment industry. What better way to hide from humans than right under their noses. Plus, I’m fairly sure god complexes came into play, but since I too had worked in the field, I thought it best not to dwell on the topic.