He’d accepted responsibility for what Abby had done to hide and protect Robyn from the council. Because Robyn had killed the men who’d infected her and murdered her friends, and in the process, had uncovered a ring of human hunters.
Robyn Sheffield, with her big, innocent eyes, had a higher kill count than most of my enforcers, and her targets had been actual, dangerous criminals, rather than strays who’d gone bad because no one was there to teach and assist them when they were newly infected, terrified, and confused.
Robyn was the most infuriating woman I’d ever met. Yet somehow she was also the most beautiful, fascinating stray I’d ever come across.
And she held the fate of my Pride—the trajectory of the rest of my life—in her graceful, deadly little hands…
A soft huffing sound wormed its way into my dream, and I woke up with my forehead resting on my arms, which were folded on the edge of the table. I blinked, and my bare feet came into focus on the concrete floor, between the legs of my chair. A soft beam of sunlight shone over them from the narrow window high on one wall.
Morning had come.
That sound came again—a deep huffing exhalation—and I sat straight up, my pulse rushing in anticipation.
Somehow, I’d slept through Corey Morris’s first shift. He sat on his haunches a few feet in front of the table, with his tail curled around his legs and his back to me. Glossy black fur covered a sleek but powerful feline musculature. He was slender in human form, but in cat form, he wasn’t much bigger than Abby.
Despite the groan of my chair when I sat up, he ignored me, his silent focus trained inside his cell at…Corey Morris?
Morris stood on two human legs in sweat-drenched clothes, staring through the open door of his cell at—
I sniffed the air, and her scent flooded my nostrils. I stood so fast my chair clattered to the floor.
The cat wasn’t Morris. It was Robyn.
She glanced over one shoulder at me, and the graceful arch of her neck gleamed in the florescent utility light hanging from the ceiling. Robyn blinked once, then dismissed me with a soft snort as she turned to Morris.
His eyes were wide, his forehead shiny with sweat. His cheeks practically glowed with fever. His gaze seemed to swim in and out of focus.
He probably thought he was dreaming. Or hallucinating.
“Robyn,” I whispered. “Come here.”
Instead, she stood and padded silently into his cell. Morris took a shaky step back. His chest hitched with deep, quick inhalations until his jaw snapped shut and he drew in a breath through his nose. Then he froze.
Recognition flickered across his expression, followed almost immediately by confusion. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he didn’t understand why. He recognized something about her scent, but he didn’t understand that either.
I remembered being where he was, but the first time I saw a fellow shifter was a week after my infection. I’d been stuck in cat form for days, and I was starting to wonder if I’d only imagined ever being human.
Robyn made a soft cooing sound deep in her throat, and Morris’s tense frame relaxed a little. He knew that sound—that gentle chorus of comfort and acceptance—though he’d likely never heard it before that moment. He reached out to her with one trembling hand.
She stepped forward and pressed the top of her fur-covered head against his palm, like a giant house cat demanding to be petted. He ran his hand over her head and as far down her spine as he could reach without moving. Wonder played across his flushed features.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
Robyn brushed the side of her face across the outside of his left thigh, marking him with a trace of her scent. Labeling him as a friend.
Irritation shot up my spine. “Robyn,” I snapped. She didn’t have permission to bond with my new tom. I was supposed to help him through the transition. I was the one he needed to trust and depend on.
I had to establish my authority over and responsibility for him from the very beginning.
Yet that wasn’t why I’d snapped at her.
She hadn’t marked me as a friend. She’d hardly even touched me, and I’d given her sanctuary. All Corey Morris had done was stare at her in a fevered haze.
I recognized the irrationality—the blatant envy—of my own thought even as Robyn turned to blink lazily at me. She seemed unmoved by my irritation, but I heard the spike in her heartbeat. Try as she might to hide it, her instincts responded to displeasure from an Alpha.
You could be her Alpha, a traitorous voice whispered from deep inside me. Or you could just be hers…
I dislodged that thought with a single shake of my head. “Come out of there. What are you doing here?”
“Who is she?” Morris whispered as Robyn padded toward me. He knew she was female, and he knew she was a who, not a what. But he didn’t seem to know how he knew any of that.
“Corey Morris, this is Robyn Sheffield. She’s a stray. Like you.” Well, not entirely like him.
“Like me?” Morris frowned. “Is this a dream? This doesn’t feel real.”
In my experience, there were two types of newly infected strays. The first responded to their own transitional state with fear and aggression, snapping and hissing at anyone who came close. Even in human form. Even before they understood the nature of the infection.
The second kind reacted with disbelief, confusion, and—often—the fear that they were losing their minds. Morris, thankfully, seemed to be the second kind. He might be harder to convince, but he’d be easier to handle. At least physically.
“This is real. She has the same infection you have. So do I. This is what it does to you.” I nodded at Robyn. “What it turns you into. You can choose to accept that, along with both the advantages and disadvantages your new life brings. Or you can fight it, and live the rest of your life in misery.”
His focus slid from me to her. “I don’t understand. Why do you have a panther?”
“She’s not a panther. ‘Panther’ isn’t a species.” And I certainly don’t have her. Alas. “Robyn?” I said, and she turned to look up at me. “Would you like to demonstrate?”
At first, she only blinked at me silently. Then her head bobbed, and she made a soft purring sound, evidently pleased to have been asked.
“Holy shit.” Morris’s eyes widened until I worried that they might pop from his skull. “Did the cat answer you?”
“Yes, and that’s the most succinct answer I’ve ever gotten out of her,” I said.
Robyn snorted. Then she padded into the space in front of the stairs and stared at the floor.
“Wha…?” Morris’s question faded into nothing when he heard the first gristly pop.
A low groan rumbled from Robyn’s throat, and a ripple of popping sounds washed over her body as her joints began to dislocate. As her bones began to shorten and elongate, accommodating their individual transformation.
“What the hell?” Morris backed up until his legs hit the side of the bed, but his gaze stayed glued to Robyn as all over her body, fur began to recede into her skin, like grass growing in reverse. “Seriously, man, what the fuck? What did you put in my IV bag?”
“You’re not hallucinating, Corey,” I said as Robyn’s groaning reached a higher pitch. “This is real. What’s happening to her will happen to you soon. Maybe as early as a couple of hours from now, but definitely by tonight. It’s a natural transition, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Or comfortable.”
“What’s happening to her?”
Robyn lay on the floor on her side, writhing in pain as her skeleton broke itself apart and knitted itself back together. As her joints realigned and her muscles stretched and bunched to fit the new structure.
“This is the most vulnerable moment in a shifter’s life,” I said, keeping Morris in my focus and Robyn’s demonstration on the edge of my vision. “We’re defenseless while we shift, and the fact that she’s willing to do this in front of you should mean a great deal to you.”
&
nbsp; And to me. Instinctually speaking, she had no reason to trust either of us not to kill her while she lay helpless on the floor. Did that make her rash, or simply eager to help a stray she obviously identified with?
Or was she trusting me to protect her? Putting her life in my hands…
A proud, pleasant warmth settled into my chest with that thought.
“I don’t… I can’t…” Morris stammered, his wide-eyed gaze glued to Robyn as her facial features slowly attained a recognizably human structure. Cheekbones. Brow bones. A delicately pointed chin.
And all at once, after several minutes of a grotesque and obviously painful transformation, Robyn lay on the cold concrete floor, naked and breathing heavily as her body fought to recover from the self-induced trauma.
“Holy shit.” Morris swiped his left hand over his sweaty hair and sank onto the side of his bed. “How the…? Holy fuck.”
“Articulate, isn’t he?” Robyn smiled as she sat up slowly, and long dark hair fell over the graceful curve of her shoulder. But it covered very little else.
I began unbuttoning my shirt, intending to offer it to her.
Robyn frowned. “What are you doing?”
My fingers paused three holes down. “Being a gentleman.”
She stood, both hands propped on her hips. Her curvy, bare hips… “You mean being a prude? If I’d wanted clothes, I would have brought some with me.”
My hands fell to my sides, and for the first time since I was thirteen years old, I had no idea what to do with them.
Look at her eyes.
Only her eyes…
Robyn laughed, as if she could hear what I was thinking. Or read it on my face. “It’s my understanding that nudity is par for the course for shifters, and that it doesn’t mean anything sexual unless it’s accompanied or preceded by some sort of overture. At least, that’s what the natural-born cats tell me. Is that different for strays? Are your men shy?”
“No. But they’re…men.” I hesitated, unsure how to proceed without sticking my foot in my mouth. “I assumed a woman who didn’t grow up in this lifestyle would be…hesitant.”
“Maybe you should stop expecting different things from me just because I use a stall rather than a urinal.”
“That’s not—” I bit off the explanation because I didn’t owe her one. But the truth was that I was making an educated guess, not a sexist assumption. Abby put her clothes on as soon as she was done shifting, which had led me to believe that Robyn would as well. That tabbies were more modest than toms.
“She turned from a cat into a woman, and the part you can’t understand is nudity?” Morris said, and we both turned to him in surprise. I’d almost forgotten he was even there. “I’m less worried about her clothes than about her fur. What the hell just happened?”
Robyn’s soft smile was part amusement, part…nostalgia? “I know, it looks weird. And it feels even weirder. Actually, it hurts like hell. And I wish I could say you get used to it, but you don’t. I haven’t, anyway.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts—look at her eyes, Titus!—and padded into Morris’s cell on two bare human feet. “But maybe it’ll be different for you.”
“You’re saying that’s going to happen to me?” Morris said, and I realized that now they’d forgotten about me.
“Yeah.” Robyn shrugged, and more hair fell over her shoulder. “You got scratched, right? I saw the wound last night. The cat that scratched you was a shapeshifter, and now so are you.” Another shrug. “But you’re way luckier than I was. Titus has a sweet setup here. I was totally incoherent by this phase, but you seem mostly okay.”
“We’ve kept him hydrated,” I said. “That makes all the difference.”
Morris laughed, but rather than joy, the sound held an edge of mania. From the fever.
“What’s funny?” Robyn asked.
“The IV.” Morris dragged one hand through his hair. “This whole thing is absurd. I got attacked by a fucking panther. I went to the ER for the infection, then got in a car with a stranger and woke up in a jail cell in a basement, surrounded by even more strangers who smell…weird. Yet weirdly familiar. Then there’s you.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her, and my hands clenched into fists because he did not look just at her face. “You were a panther, then I saw you turn into a woman, and now you’re naked. Yet somehow, the thing that feels most preposterous of all is this damn IV.” He raised his hand, and the tube coming from his arm rocked the bag hanging from a hook on the wall. “It’s so normal and logical that it shouldn’t have any place in this nightmare.”
“Again, this is not a dream,” I said.
Robyn laughed, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “For me, it was coffee.” She stepped into the cell and dropped into the bedside chair, then crossed her legs at the knees. “I got infected in this horrible cabin. There were cat heads mounted on the wall—I didn’t know they were dead shifters at the time—and there was blood everywhere. My friend Abby and I had to stay in the cabin, because I was too sick to hike out of the woods. I was in and out of consciousness with a raging fever, vomiting every hour or so, but through it all, I kept smelling coffee. The good kind. French Vanilla or chocolate biscotti, or something sweet like that. I thought I was hallucinating, but it turns out the asshole hunters who kidnapped me and dragged me to their shifter slaughterhouse had some fancy coffeemaker, and Abby drank cup after cup so she could stay awake and take care of me.”
“What happened to the assholes?” Morris asked, and I stared at Robyn in astonishment. He should either have been backing into a corner of the room, sweating terror from every pore, or convinced that he was either dreaming or hallucinating the whole thing. Yet Robyn had him talking coherently. Asking questions, in spite of a fever that should have knocked him on his ass.
“Abby killed them while I was unconscious, then Jace swooped in and cleaned the whole thing up.” She made a swooshing gesture with both hands, and my gaze snagged on the swell of her left breast, where her elbow grazed it.
Eyes, Titus.
“But at that point, neither of them knew I was infected.”
“So you really were kidnapped?” Morris asked, leaning on his pillow.
“Yeah.” Robyn’s expression seemed distant for a moment, and I could tell from the set of her jaw that there was more to it. Some part she didn’t want to talk about. Then she shook that off and reached over to give the new stray’s shoulder a little shove. “Let’s just say that your origin story isn’t half as traumatic as mine, so if I can get through this, so can you.”
I couldn’t take my gaze off her.
It’s not like I’d never seen a beautiful woman naked. But I’d never met a woman as comfortable in her own skin as Robyn clearly was. I’d never seen anyone bond so easily with a newly scratch-fevered stray, even though that was my job.
Robyn was as fascinating as she was irritating, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure at all that I could give her back.
SEVEN
Robyn
A knock echoed against my bedroom door, and my breath caught in my chest. “Robyn? I need to talk to you for a minute,” Abby called out from the hallway as I wrapped my wet hair in a towel.
I swallowed an unexpected twinge of disappointment—I’d hoped it was Titus—then shoved my arms into the borrowed robe. “It’s unlocked!”
Abby opened the door and stepped into the room. Holding a duffel bag.
Hair stood up all over my body.
For a human, that means goose bumps, but for a shifter, body hair rising away from the skin is an actual physical reaction to a perceived threat. Physical or emotional. Like a kitten whose fur puffs up every time she’s startled, I hadn’t quite learned to control it yet.
“Why are you packed?” Suspicion echoed in my voice.
“Isaac called.” Abby set her bag on the floor and tugged me down on the bed next to her. “The council has temporarily lifted Jace’s travel ban. So he can go to the ceremony.”
The wedding. Jace’s sister, Melo
dy, was marrying Abby’s brother Isaac, the new Alpha of her territory and father of her unborn child. That scandal was the only thing anyone in the Southeast Pride was talking about, other than the unprecedented discovery of a female stray.
You’d think notoriety would’ve given Melody and me something to bond over. But you’d be wrong.
I swallowed my nerves. Surely it only looked like Abby was about to abandon me in a house full of strange toms. “So, when is this shotgun wedding?”
“There’s no shotgun,” she insisted. “They want to get married.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“No.” Abby pushed a poof of red curls from her face. “I’m avoiding the answer. The ceremony’s on Thursday. If they wait any longer, she won’t fit into her dress.”
I fiddled with the sash around my robe, to have something to do with my hands. “That’s five days from now, and it’s, like, an eight-hour drive. Why are you already packed?”
Abby shrugged, but the gesture tried too hard to be nonchalant. “Isaac wants Jace to be one of his groomsmen, so he has to get fitted for a tux, and Melody seems to think she can get a dress altered for me in a couple of days, so I’m going to be in the ceremony too. And there’s the bachelor party and the bridesmaid’s brunch. And the rehearsal dinner. And I think they’re going to squeeze in a baby shower too. This isn’t a one-day event.”
“So you’re just going to leave me here?” Panic echoed in my voice, loud and clear.
“No!” She grabbed my hand and held it so tightly my fingers began to tingle. “I want you to come with us! We’ll only be gone for six days, then we’ll come back here. You’ll still have a week of…vacation.”
“You know damn well this is no vacation!” I snapped. But anger was a poor disguise for my fear and frustration. I’d come here to be with Abby—my best friend and the person most able to convince her father, the council chairman, to let me off for time served.