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  For all of his wolfishness, Tank was surprisingly subtle when he wanted to be. Okay, so maybe “subtle” wasn’t quite the right word for it. But, whatever the proper adjective, Tank’s jibe effectively staved off Kira’s emotional retreat and tempted her to engage with her usual flourish.

  “Am not!” the child countered.

  “Are too!” came the lawyer’s skillful repartee.

  As our other companions cheerfully joined into the bickering, we all ambled together out to Gunner’s SUV then rode through rush hour traffic to Wildacres. And if an odd hole opened up in my stomach as I watched my sister’s easy camaraderie with the werewolves, it was worth it for the smile that ended up on her formerly grumpy face.

  WE STRIPPED AND SHIFTED outside the abandoned retreat center’s main building, in a parking lot surrounded by trees that reminded me for one split second of the setting of my nightmare. Perhaps that’s why I hesitated before transforming, stood for ten long seconds absolutely naked but with my panties still dangling from lax fingertips.

  “Mai?” Gunner’s warm presence pulled me out of my brown study, his eyes searing into my own. Unlike me, he and the guys were accustomed to shifting in company. In fact, the other three werewolves were already in lupine form, frolicking beside my sister who had thoroughly regained her usual good humor during the preceding ride.

  “Sorry.” I shook my head and dropped the scrap of fabric onto the pile of clothing between us, trying to keep my gaze as carefully face-oriented as Gunner’s was. I was a fox, though, not a werewolf. So perhaps it was merely vulpine curiosity that made my eyes drift south....

  Whatever the reason, I couldn’t stop myself from assessing the alpha’s corded muscles and sun-warmed angles. My gaze stroked skin that I would have liked to follow with my hands....

  Well, that’s not happening. Covering up my illicit daydream, I acted as I should have minutes earlier. I closed my eyes for one split second, then I exploded into the form of my fox.

  Fur itched as it pushed out of a human body. Fingernails yanked themselves forward into claw points. My tail grew lightning quickly into a fifth appendage, its fluffy bulk providing an acrobatic grace I could never muster on two legs.

  And as I gave in to the fox’s body, the preceding awkwardness faded in the face of the challenge of a slanted tree trunk. Rough bark on paw pads. The scrabble of claws against wood as I almost slipped but didn’t fall.

  Then I was laughing down at my companion from five feet above him...just as the low whir of the golf cart’s electric engine started the race.

  Immediately, every head turned toward Kira’s conveyance. This was why we came here. To hunt sometimes, but more often just to run. And with Kira zipping down the path already, every wolf was hard-wired to give chase.

  Foxes, on the other hand, have more choice in the matter. Yes, I craved a triumph...but I was more flexible about how I achieved that goal. Cutting down into a ravine then back up the other side might have been cheating by werewolf standards, but how can you cheat when there are no rules?

  Wind, fur, mud, rush. This was the best part of denning with werewolves—the opportunity and ability to race.

  Which is how I came to be diving out of the woods to rejoin the others as Kira sped toward the finish line. Behind her, a line of panting werewolves jockeyed for position, Gunner in the lead as his claws tore up the soft earth.

  Only nobody in our pack triumphed. Instead, the golf cart skidded sideways as it stopped prematurely, the wolves between me and Kira growling as they picked up on clues I was unable to see or smell from my spot on the other side of the ditch.

  Then a tall figure rose up beside my sister’s shoulder. A grimly smiling werewolf, but not a stranger unfortunately.

  “Well met, brother,” offered the pack leader who had sent Gunner into exile. Then his hand came down upon Kira’s unprotected neck.

  Chapter 7

  Mud squished between my toes and my sword tingled to life in abruptly human hands as I lunged toward the male threatening my sister. I half expected Gunner to get there first, frowned as I saw him instead shift and sink into the mud with human shoulders bent earthward. “Pack leader,” my former protector murmured. “I have done everything you requested. I ask that you do the same.”

  The brothers’ compromise. Of course. Ransom had ignored the fact that I was a kitsune three months earlier in exchange for Gunner’s fealty. Now it appeared that the time had come for the latter to pay up.

  A rock dug into my left instep as I swerved sideways to steer clear of the alpha I’d thought was on my side but who might actually be forced to do Ransom’s bidding. No matter. I could trust Kira to roll sideways at the proper moment. So all I had to do was...

  ...twist away from the five wolves who had slid out of the trees and into my sight line while my attention was riveted upon Gunner and his brother. The newcomers reeked of Atwood ozone, their trajectory clearly intended to cut me off from their leader’s unprotected backside. And, based on the way they lunged forward without even glancing toward Ransom for permission, I had to guess they’d also caught a glimpse of my illicit fox-related shifting....

  Suddenly, I couldn’t spare a thought for Kira’s predicament or for Gunner’s precarious loyalty. Instead, it was all I could do to push off the mud-slick pathway and slip between two teeth-bared muzzles as sharp fangs grazed the skin of my unclad thigh.

  Now they growled, the sounds smug with imminent triumph. No wonder when I was entirely surrounded, five wolves spreading in a tight circle that pushed me toward a laughing enemy each time I backed away from one of his pack mates. My sword could only do so much in tight quarters and I was surprised the quintet hadn’t already leapt forward and taken me down into the muck.

  Their strange reluctance to finish what they’d started, however, couldn’t last forever. So I hacked desperately, the flurry of blows insufficient to break me free of the circle but enough to send my enemies back a single step.

  A whimper. The scent of Kira’s terror. I couldn’t spare a glance in her direction, but she was clearly in distress now.

  So I tried something I’d been pondering ever since Elle bested me with a scratch from her finger. I flicked my sword back instead of forward, seared a larger cut than I’d intended onto my left forearm.

  My own blood tasted nothing like a rabbit’s. Instead, it was sweet and at the same time peppery, full of magic I’d yet to learn how to tap.

  Necessity is the mother of invention, I decided, closing my eyes for one split second and pulling every burst of power down my spine and into my feet.

  Mud splattered around me, slipping through my parted lips and onto my tongue. The soil was gritty and vile, tasting strangely of iron even though the scarlet seeping from my leg and arm shouldn’t have made it all the way to the ground so quickly.

  Unfortunately, a mouthful of mud was all I got out of the endeavor. No shards of star ball pushed my enemies backwards. No wall of magic prevented their approach. Instead, the wolves pressed in closer, the fear in their eyes promising danger.

  Because frightened wolves tend to react predictably. They squash their terror, then they attack.

  “DON’T TOUCH ME!”

  Kira’s voice rang out as I tried—and failed—to rebuild my sword from a lax and diffuse star ball. Her silence up until this point had been carefully calculated, I knew, to prevent distraction. The fact she was now speaking, her voice more shriek than words, proved that the situation was growing worse outside my circle of werewolves even as I edged closer and closer to losing the current fight.

  Desperation hadn’t been enough to turn the tables in my favor, but worry over my sister pushed me forward where the impulse for self-preservation had been insufficient. Giving up on rematerializing a physical weapon, I instead slid into my fox skin as easily as a swimmer dives beneath the water. And, like a swimmer, I immediately felt gravity recede beneath my feet.

  Human, I’d been unable to escape the ring of werewolves. Vulpine, I
leapt over the closest wolf’s head and landed atop his well-padded rump light as an errant sunbeam.

  Unfortunately, my opponent wasn’t a fan of sunbeams on his butt. He whirled, teeth snapping shut a millimeter from my fox tail...or perhaps he did end up with a mouthful of white-tipped hairs after all. The small loss of bodily matter was irrelevant, however, when I was already ten feet distant, scampering toward a sister who I now saw was engaged in a struggle of her own with two familiar-scented Atwood males.

  Ah, the bridge watchers had made a reappearance. So Ransom had kept an eye on us after all. Hadn’t been as hands-off about Gunner’s exile as he’d initially appeared.

  And as if my puzzle-piecing had caught the pack leader’s attention, Ransom’s eyes abruptly bored into me from only a few feet distant. Meanwhile, Tank, Allen, and Crow were all belly down in the mud in wolf form, resolutely peering the other way as one of the bridge watchers wrenched Kira’s right arm up behind her back.

  They aren’t going to help her. This sign of cowardice on the part of my supposed allies hit me strangely, deep and low like a punch in the gut. For the last three months, every one of our house mates had treated Kira like a beloved kid sister. But now, when push came to shove, they were just going to let her be manhandled without batting a lash?

  Well, I wasn’t so fickle with my loyalties. I bared my teeth, unsure what a single fox could do against masses of wolves but ready to make a stab at some sort of offensive anyway.

  Only, before I could act, Ransom growled out an order. “Rein in your woman,” he demanded, gaze turning now to his kneeling, naked sibling.

  And Gunner didn’t even attempt to disobey his brother. Didn’t jerk his chin and give his men the right to help us out of our predicament.

  Instead, he lifted his head from perusing the mud. Met my eyes. Used my debt against me.

  “Mai, stop,” Gunner said curtly. And, predictably, the kitsune necessity to repay all of the kindness Gunner had showed me and Kira froze my body mid-swivel. Wrenched me back to humanity. Knocked me into the mud so hard that I didn’t get back up.

  Chapter 8

  Despite dark glares from my former enemies, the wolves I landed amidst didn’t tear into me. Instead, they glanced once at Gunner, his verbal claim sufficient to mark me as ineligible for use as lunch meat. Then they shifted in tandem, revealing long scratches up their backs and shoulders that looked far more like the effects of human nails than like any wound I might have inflicted during the battle that came before.

  I didn’t have long to puzzle over that inconsistency however. Because the werewolves I’d spent the last three months sharing a house with had risen to human feet at the same moment, stepping forward to take up where Ransom’s underlings had left off. Allen, Crow, and Tank had always treated me and Kira with gentlemanly deference back at the Atwood mansion. Now, though, the first two grabbed hold of my arms while Tank took custody of my sister on the far side of the racetrack-turned-battlefield.

  “I have your word,” Gunner growled between us, his back still bent in deference to his brother even though I could taste the former’s frustration permeating the air. “The sisters are mine to manage. As ordered, I kept them far away from your pack.”

  Rather than replying, Ransom gazed at my unclad breasts in a very unshifter-like show of lasciviousness. Not that he seemed particularly interested in me as a sex object or even as a potential enemy. Instead, I got the distinct impression he was staring in an effort to draw his brother’s attention to himself.

  Gunner, however, kept his gaze carefully trained on the mud. So Ransom was forced to move on to words.

  “Are you still sniffing after unwilling tail, brother?” the pack leader asked after one long moment during which my skin prickled with the intensity of his perusal. “If she hasn’t put out by now, she’s just using you for your money. You’re no Casanova, but surely even you know that.”

  Gunner raised his head in response and I winced, surprised to find that this jab at the younger brother’s manhood—or perhaps at my honor—had succeeded where Ransom’s earlier efforts at breaking through his brother’s illusory show of submission had resoundingly failed. The already loaded air vibrated with electricity now as the younger brother leveraged himself upright, the mud caking his legs from knees to ankles doing nothing to diminish the power of his broad-shouldered stance.

  Gunner was magnificent, I noted. A pack leader in bearing if not by birth order. In contrast, Ransom looked like an upstart, no less dangerous but lacking the restraint and maturity his younger brother had in spades.

  No wonder Ransom flared his nostrils and continued with his verbal parries. “I’ve invited two dozen pack princesses to this year’s gathering,” he said, smirking so broadly his final word was distorted. “They’ve all accepted, of course, because I’m the world’s most eligible bachelor. I plan to try them on for size this week, in ones and twos and threes if you know what I mean.” He wiggled dark eyebrows before finishing. “I’m sure a few of the discards will give you the time of day, though, brother. It’s painfully obvious you can’t get laid on your own.”

  And that was almost the last straw. Around us, werewolf shoulders bent down beneath the force of Gunner’s displeasure, the concept of Ransom running through virginal innocents like kleenexes hitting the alpha where it hurt. Any second now, Gunner’s already stretched nerves would snap and he’d say something that neither he nor his brother were capable of forgetting.

  Which was a shame since I was beginning to understand the point of the preceding banter. Ransom was attempting, in the least efficient way possible, to rewind the brothers’ relationship into the past.

  After all, Gunner and Ransom had been a solid team when I first met them. The elder brother led the pair on wild goose chases while the younger brother propped up his sibling at all costs.

  Which made Ransom’s choice to assert his independence three months ago nonsensical. Apparently now the pack leader had returned to his right mind.

  Unfortunately, an alpha werewolf can’t just ask for assistance. So I sighed, pulled free of my supposed jailers, then took one step toward Ransom with diplomatic words waiting on my lips.

  The male I faced, though, was nothing like his brother. He didn’t raise brows in question and treat me like an equal when I inserted myself into a conversation that didn’t apply to me.

  Instead, the pack leader’s eyes skimmed over my mud-covered body, a smirk rising onto his lips. “Can’t resist a real man, can you, baby?”

  Baby, really? And, to my eternal regret, the words I pushed into the ensuing silence came out cockeyed, less like a fox’s smooth sidestep and more like a sally led by a werewolf’s bared teeth. “My favors aren’t for sale,” I started. “But you think your brother’s are, don’t you? What do you need Gunner to do for you now?”

  Five minutes ago, I’d thought the situation had already hit rock bottom. But, yep, I’d managed to make it significantly worse. Because Gunner’s arm twitched as if he wanted to press between me and his brother...or possibly to wring my ornery neck.

  For his part, Ransom did turn his attention away from needling Gunner. But as the pack leader’s shoulders expanded with alpha aggression, I felt far less capable than Gunner had been of standing up beneath his brother’s discontent.

  Only...the pack leader didn’t eviscerate me, either verbally or otherwise. Instead, his eyes slid sideways to land on the male guarding my back. “Actually, Crow, I came to talk about my cousin. Since when do you let Elle cross into Claremont territory and train kitsunes on the sly?”

  Chapter 9

  The mention of kitsunes startled a growl from my former assailants, but none of the five moved to act on their ire. So I took a deep breath and accepted that it was time to live up to the promise I’d made Elle when we first started getting together just beyond the edge of Atwood land.

  “Are you going to get into trouble for meeting me here?” I’d asked tentatively the first time we’d slipped our minde
rs and visited Claremont territory on the down low. I didn’t want to lose my teacher before lessons even started...but I also didn’t want to be responsible for a werewolf getting tossed out of her pack if she wanted to stay.

  “I’m Ransom’s favorite cousin. He wouldn’t do anything to me,” Elle had promised with a soothing smile. “But Gunner and Crow aren’t currently in his good graces. We have to play this carefully to protect the guys.”

  So we’d met in secret, Elle passing along coded messages through her mate that Crow pretended not to understand the meaning of. For my part, I’d evaded Gunner’s questions with far less agility, but the plausible deniability was still very much there.

  And now the time had finally come to deny the males’ involvement. After everything Elle had done for me, I refused to let my mentor down.

  “Crow had no idea what was happening,” I proclaimed, striding past far too many narrow-eyed shifters as I forced myself to approach the angry Atwood pack leader one step at a time. “No one here knew where I was going. The fault was entirely mine.”

  “Mai...” Kira started, her voice suddenly young and scared as the reality of our predicament broke through her youthful belief that no harm could come to those she cared about. I hated to worry her, but I trusted Gunner to protect my sister. And I didn’t want Ransom’s attention focused on Kira for any longer than it already had.

  So I pulled out a metaphorical red cape and waved it in front of the bull—or is that bully? “If you want to punish someone for training me,” I continued, standing tall at my full five foot zero inches, “surely you’re not afraid to tackle a kitsune on your own.”