One True Mate 1: Shifter's Sacrifice by Lisa Ladew Page A

stoplight, glad for the extra time to think before he arrived at the station. Maybe she was a half-breed. He’d heard of wolven being attracted to half-breeds almost like full shiften . Rarely could the half-breeds shift, but he’d heard stories that their children with shiften frequently could. Too bad there were no sort of databases of half-breeds that he could look up to figure out if she was. Wade would have been able to tell, maybe even Crew. But Trevor did not have their touch, and as sensitive as his nose was, he’d never been able to sniff them out either. He wondered if Troy would have known. Troy and Trent both seemed to have abilities and insights that Trevor did not, possibly because they had never shifted into human form. It kept them wilder.
    The light changed and Trevor drove on, his mind spinning. He had a few things he wanted to do before his team came back to him with the results of their investigation. When he got to the station, he parked quickly and ran inside.
    As he walked in the door, Trent hailed him mentally. We heard Khain crossed over again. What’s going on?
    Not sure yet, he sent back. He was gone when I got there. The human involved was unharmed.
    Poodle-fucker is up to something.
    Trevor laughed in spite of himself. Agreed. Maybe you and Troy should find a handler. Patrol the two areas he’s shown up at the last two days.
    On it.
    Trevor hurried to his office, glad not to meet anyone on the way. He hurried to his black office chair and pulled his laptop close, opening a browser. Meaning of Gabriela , he typed in.
    God’s able-bodied one.
    Huh. He accessed the police department’s criminal database and looked up the last name Carmi. A Frederico Carmi had been arrested for terroristic threatening in 1972, and that was all he found. Not helpful.
    His phone rang and he snatched it up. “Burbank,” he snarled, harsher than he wanted, but when he heard Mac’s voice, he wasn’t sorry.
    “Nothing. He left no trace. Didn’t force the door. Just crossed over inside the front door, walked around a bit, then crossed back over from in front of the window. The felen said he was on our side for exactly ninety-six seconds. They said he’s still tracking differently, and it’s harder to get him but not impossible,” Mac said, his voice surprisingly free of hostility for once.
    “Interesting,” Trevor said, wishing they had a way to track him when he left their world and went into his own. A way to reach him there. A way to go on the offensive and not always be on the defensive. “I’m sick to fuck of being on the clean-up crew,” he said into the phone. “Get with Harlan, maybe some of the sub-rosa team. Tell them we need a new strategy. Entertain any suggestions, no matter how crazy. Something big is about to happen and we can’t sit around and wait for it.”
    “Good plan,” Mac growled and hung up.
    Trevor stared at the phone before hanging it up. That couldn’t have been approval he heard from Macalister Niles.
    His mind went back to Ella Carmi. He snatched up his phone again and dialed Wade.
    “Chief Lombard.”
    “Wade, can prophecies ever be wrong?”
    “Trevor,” Wade growled. “Is this about this morning’s visit by our favorite asshole?”
    Trevor ground his teeth. “Yeah.”
    Wade sighed. “You tell me about it when you get a spare moment. As for your question, no, I don’t believe a prophecy has ever been proven wrong, but yes, theoretically, they could be. When we go under, language is different. We aren’t reciting something someone has told us in a conversation. We are interpreting messages that could be coming in any form.”
    “Like what kind of form?”
    “They could be images. Scents. Sounds. Intentions. Ideas. Thoughts. Almost never words.”
    Trevor grunted. “That sounds to me like you could very easily get them wrong.”
    “Yet I don’t believe I ever have.”
    Trevor thought about that, hard. “And my dad?”
    “Your dad was a Citlali with great