The spys familiar shifte.., p.1
The Spy's Familiar: shifter fated mates mm romance (Familiar Mates Book 11), page 1
THE SPY’S FAMILIAR
FAMILIAR MATES
TJ NICHOLS
Copyright © 2023 by TJ Nichols
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Other books by TJ Nichols
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
As soon as someone called a job easy, it was as if they’d hexed the damn thing. Jacob Farrell glared at his partner, who should have known better.
Orion shrugged. “Don’t look at me like that. We’re acting as bodyguards for the prince of a pinprick country in Europe. It’s hardly crawling around a container ship and getting info on trafficked shifters… Oh, that’s right. You didn’t do that part.”
“Your skill set is better suited for that kind of thing,” Jacob retorted.
It was the truth. For a start, Orion could deliver enough poison to kill someone with a bite. Add in his strength, speed, and enhanced sense of smell, all because he was a shifter, and he was able to do things Jacob couldn’t.
“Besides that prince is a fire witch and Coven agent,” Jacob continued, “and the party will be filled with Shadow Board members.”
Orion stalked over and adjusted Jacob’s tie before he batted him away. “Baby agent. Baby prince. All we have to do is watch and wait for the Shadow Board to make a move.”
They had been doing that for a bloody long time.
Ethan Lumin’s defection and subsequent retreat to France with his fox familiar boyfriend had created a chance that Jacob had leaped on. It had taken time, but Ethan had finally given enough information on his father’s shipping business for the Coven to act. That, and Prince Everest joining the Coven as an agent. The Shadow Board would want to recruit him because of his magic and his title; the Coven needed him for the entry point into the Shadow Board.
Because of Ethan, they knew what the Board was up to. All they needed was enough evidence to bring them down, either through human or Coven channels.
Jacob wasn’t fussed. Orion wasn’t fussed.
But the Coven was. They wanted the board members to sink in the human courts because making too many wealthy people disappear tended to be noticed. Regular people, poor people, poor shifters—they went missing all the damn time, and no one ever gave a fuck.
“We’re back-up,” Orion said. “Everest has the hard work of proving to them he is a power-hungry witch.”
“And every power-hungry witch at the party is going to realize you’re a shifter in about three seconds.”
Orion swallowed and fixed Jacob with a hard glare. That was more like it. That was the expression he was used to seeing on the shifter’s face. They’d been working the job together for twelve months, and Orion, or Tooth, depending on what he was doing, usually wore one of two expressions: grim or scowling. A smile on his face was a cause for concern.
Orion patted Jacob’s lapels. “The party is the last easy bit of this job, and I intend to enjoy it while babysitting Everest—”
“That’s Your Royal Highness, Prince of Lac d’Aigle, or Sir, from here on in.”
“I know.” His hands fell away, and Jacob almost missed his touch. The Komodo dragon shifter was dangerously hot…and hot-tempered. He was the kind of man who was best avoided—not that Jacob had ever seen that side of him, but he’d heard the rumors.
Other agents had said he was difficult to work with.
He hadn’t found that to be the case, though he had no doubt Orion’s claws were as sharp as his tongue. Jacob had only ever seen him in his shifted form once, and that was only so Jacob wouldn’t freak out at the sight of him should he ever shift on the job.
Orion had never been anything but professional. Distant, except for those few times when he did something to show he didn’t want Jacob to die on the job. Jacob assumed fixing his tie fell into that category.
“Have you met him?” Jacob asked.
“The prince? No, but I read his file. He’s barely out of school and is allegedly studying law at university. Why a foreign prince wants to study in England is beyond me. His country has ski resorts you and I would never get into.”
“He’s probably sick of snow and mountain views and all the rest of it.”
“You’ve met him?”
Jacob nodded. “Just once, along with one of his regular bodyguards.”
“Where the fuck was I?”
“It was before this officially started. I was in France trying to make Ethan talk. The Prince of Lac d’Aigle”—he made sure to use Everest’s proper title, as the last thing he wanted to do was stumble over the French when it mattered—“requested a meeting as he was also in the country.”
“You didn’t think that was odd?”
“Of course I did. People at the top were moving pieces to make this job happen before we even knew it was a job. We had a lovely dinner under the watchful eyes of his security. He apologized that the king couldn’t be there but that he was well aware of the work the Coven did, which was why His Royal Highness was joining.” There was a lot not said, and a lot missing, but it was one of those things Jacob had rolled with because he was aware of the strings being pulled, and sometimes, it was easier not to resist.
That, and he was curious. Fire witches were as rare as dragon shifters.
His kind were as common as weeds. Well, not quite that common, but compared to some of the others, there were more than a handful of electro-mages running around. There’d be more if they didn’t so often accidentally kill themselves with their magic when it first appeared.
Orion shook his head, all traces of his previous smile gone. “Fire witch and royalty. We’d better hope he doesn’t get lured in because I do not want to die to give the Shadow Board any more power.”
“I won’t let you die.” And Everest wasn’t going to betray them. Jacob didn’t need magic to know there was something else going on. When the young prince had spoken of joining the Coven, there had been an edge in his voice, as though the Shadow Board had personally wronged him.
Maybe it wanted to take over the prince’s tiny country because it sat on a pile of gold. The gold made it an attractive target, but the way the kingdom was perched in the mountains made attacking it a lost war before it ever began. Despite their wealth, though, the country was often completely forgotten by the rest of the world. The one thing he had found out, from Coven sources not human ones, was the Mont de Leucoy had a high proportion of witches and shifters living there. Jacob was sure that being forgotten about wasn’t a coincidence.
And if the royal family had enough magic to ensure the country was forgotten, it would not be hard to make two agents disappear if they fucked up and let something happen to Prince Everest, heir to the throne.
CHAPTER TWO
Orion gave Jacob a sharp glare. He didn’t need Jacob to stay alive. He’d been taking care of himself for half his life and had only almost got himself killed once. The rest had all been accidental.
“Let’s concentrate on keeping the prince alive. I can take care of myself.”
“Orion…” Jacob reached out, but Orion stepped back as if he hadn’t noticed.
The witch was a temptation he couldn’t have. That he allowed himself the occasional contact was both too little and too much. He ran his tongue over his lower lip and put in his earpiece before double-checking his pistol was hidden beneath his jacket. He looked like a bodyguard. And he preferred not being noticed at all.
But half of the plan was that the witches would realize he was a shifter.
In the mirror, he glanced at Jacob, who was bending over and checking the knife he always carried. The few silver strands that traced through his dark hair did nothing to diminish his looks or the way his almost golden eyes created a ripple of interest that shouldn’t exist, and not only because they were working together on this case.
It had taken him about a month of working with Jacob to realize that the attraction wasn’t just lust. Well, it was that too. A man would have to be dead not to take a second and third glance at Jacob, and now he was in a suit…
Orion bit his lower lip and dragged his gaze away.
Torture.
That’s what this was going to be.
One kiss
Now that they were going to be staying in the prince’s London townhouse, they were going to be spending a lot more time together. At least they had separate rooms. They needed separate continents.
Or he needed to get laid or something.
He knew enough about mates that sex with anyone else was not going to scratch the itch. There’d be no harm in trying, though. Would the prince bone his bodyguard…or want to be boned? It might be worth a shot.
Everest might be a real prince, but he wasn’t a real bodyguard, despite the recent crash course. He shook his head. Everest was too young and too green to be on a job as an agent. Orion didn’t remember ever being that green, but then, after his first shift, his life had gotten rather shit.
His hand brushed over the tooth that he wore around his neck. The lump beneath his shirt was reassuring and as much a part of him as his own teeth.
He’d been younger than Everest when he’d joined the Coven, and their reasons were very different, of that he was sure.
“You all right?” Jacob strolled over, looking more like a secret agent than bodyguard.
If you could be less hot, that would be great. “Fine. Just running through bodyguard 101 so I don’t fuck up in front of the rest of the nobs.”
Jacob rubbed his forehead the way Orion knew he would, then he flicked his hair back. “We don’t swear.”
“Of course not. We are invisible and—”
A knock on the door made him glance over. All he could smell was Jacob’s aftershave, the scent of soap, and his freshly ironed shirt. The scents were imprinted on his brain, and all he wanted to do was lick his skin and find out what the witch tasted like.
Jacob opened the door.
“His Royal Highness is ready,” one of the regular bodyguards said. There were two of them. Neither of them had been particularly friendly when they’d turned up. The excuse was that they had been ordered by the Leucovian King to attend official functions with the young prince.
And that was mostly true, except for the King part. The order hadn’t come from him.
Jacob tossed a glance over his shoulder, and Orion nodded. He was as ready as he was ever going to be. A party where he couldn’t drink. He wasn’t even allowed to eat. All he could do was stand there and listen to rich fucks talk about the size of their yacht. What he wanted to discover was where they hid the bodies of the shifters they killed.
Jacob sat in the front and drove the three of them, while Orion sat in the back with the prince. He appeared very calm for someone who was about to be headhunted by the Shadow Board.
He’d been at the Coven training for a few months. Most agents spent those first six months in the café alongside someone with more experience, acting as the first point of contact and triage for cases when they walked through the door.
Orion had hated it. He’d wanted to be in the field doing something useful. It was only now he’d been in the field for years that he was able to look back and realize how valuable that time was and how important those people who worked in the café were.
Everest had skipped all of that.
He glanced at him again. Could he become a human-shaped candle?
Everest lifted one eyebrow. “Is there something you’d like to ask, Templeton?”
“No.” Only about one hundred questions. Everest didn’t look away. Orion smiled; he might as well be honest. “I’ve never met a fire witch before.”
Or a prince.
“Fire is no more exciting than any other kind of magic. I’ve never met a Komodo dragon before. Is it true you have a venomous bite?”
Orion's smile widened. “Yes.”
How much of his file had this kid read? What kind of strings had been pulled because this was their best and only chance to take down the Shadow Board? He swallowed hard, knowing that while pieces had been moved for this job and that its intentions were noble and would save lives, power was power, and everyone was aware of the witch who’d used the Coven as his own magic store, stealing other witches’ magic.
Everyone had gotten their mind dug through after that incident.
It never got any easier. And the witches who had the misfortune of reading him never liked what they saw. He hoped they didn’t suffer from any of the nightmares that had once plagued him.
Everest studied him for a few more seconds. Long enough that Orion began to worry about how much information was in his file. “You’ve been doing this a while.”
Ten years. He got to travel the world and help people. He nodded. “I have.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“I wouldn’t still be doing it.” Not that he was qualified for anything else. When the Shadow Board was gone and the people locked up, his whole reason for joining would be over. “Having doubts?”
Because if the kid got cold feet now, he’d be putting them all in danger. He felt Jacob’s eyes on him and met his gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Because if you do, say so now because we put our asses on the line.” Oops. Did ass count as swearing?
Everest turned away and stared out at the busy London street.
Something wasn’t right, and Orion didn’t know Everest well enough to say what. His gut tightened. While he’d worked with new agents before, this was a big operation, one he’d been waiting most of his life for. He was not going to die on it because the prince-turned-wanna-be-agent didn’t want to dirty his hands. “If this is some kind of family obligation, and you are doing it out of duty—”
Everest’s gaze snapped back to him. “Everything I do is duty. That’s what being a prince is.” He sighed. “I know what I’m doing with diplomats and nobility and such. I’ve been dealing with them since I was old enough to talk.”
“Then what?”
“Then what, Sir,” Everest corrected him.
Orion nodded. “Apologies, Sir, for treating you as an agent, not a prince.”
Everest’s lips twisted into a grin. “In public, I am the prince. You can correct my agenting afterwards, in private, where my other bodyguards won’t hear.”
The admission that Everest understood he was going to make mistakes was both reassuring and troubling. He was under-prepared, and he knew it, but he wasn’t going to stop the operation.
“We are approaching the building, Sir,” Jacob said.
Everest lifted his chin and smoothed the worry from his face. “Proceed.”
Jacob lifted an eyebrow. “With respect, Sir, I’m the one who gets to call this off, not you.”
Orion bit back on the smirk. Jacob was the senior agent; even Orion would drop everything if he gave the order.
“I am aware.” Everest rubbed his chin. “I feel like bait.”
That was the wrong mindset to go in with. “You aren’t bait. You’re one of them. A rich and powerful witch. They will woo you with the offer of more power.”
“I know all of that. I read all the briefings. I researched both of you. That doesn’t mean I’m comfortable being around people who see shifters as expendable.”
“Look, they aren’t my favorite kind of people, either. But we can make sure they don’t hurt anyone else, so put your best ass-kissing lips on and climb into bed with the creeps…Sir.”
It didn’t feel right to be calling the kid ‘sir.’ He hadn’t earned the title; he’d been born to the right parents with a crown jammed up his ass.
Jacob parked the vehicle by the entrance that was for use by royalty only. Security was on the door, expecting their arrival. There were several other vehicles parked nearby.
Orion got out first. While his night vision and hearing were within human range, according to Coven testing, his sense of smell was good enough that he could smell a dead body a mile away, even in the city. Which was disconcerting at the best of times, as there was always a body waiting to be discovered.
