Chapter 3

Ginny paced in the apartment that she'd been confined to. Her head was still spinning after so much had happened in the last few weeks.

First, she'd managed to escape her home territory, but she knew she couldn't stop until she was far away from her grandfather. She'd stayed in her shift and run for several days, stopping to rest only when she absolutely had to.

And then tragedy had struck when she'd gotten caught in an animal trap. She'd thought she was going to have to shift in front of humans to save herself, but the humans had shot her with a tranquilizer dart and stuffed her in a cage barely big enough for her to stand up in her shift.

She'd been trapped for weeks. She wasn't actually sure how long she'd been in the cage, but it had been too long. Someone had finally reported the humans hoarding animals, and thank fucking goodness, because they'd been trying to sell her as some kind of exotic dog.

And then, she'd been taken to an animal shelter where she'd overheard she was going to be put down because she was a wild animal and not native to the area.

Thankfully, miraculously, a shifter and his human mate were volunteering at the shelter and had taken pity on her, bringing her to the Amazing Adventures Safari Park. She was several states away from her pack in New Jersey, but that didn't really make her feel safe.

In fact, she could feel just how unsafe she was.

But the damn shifters wouldn't let her leave the park.

You have to understand that he's dangerous, she'd told Alistair, an alpha elephant who'd come with a few of the other alphas to talk to her earlier that morning. He won't stop until I'm dead. You need to let me leave so no one else gets hurt.

You're safer here with us, Alistair had said. We can keep you safe, I promise.

She wanted to trust him, but there wasn't safety for her. Not here, not anywhere.

She could feel a noose tightening around her neck, and it was even worse now, hours later. Something bad was going to happen, and she was definitely on the chopping block.

She paused her constant back-and-forth across the apartment, which had seemed spacious at first but now felt like a prison cell. Was that an alarm?

Moving to the front door, she leaned forward and rested her ear on it. If she opened the door, she'd see one of the lions placed as a guard to "keep her safe," but in reality she felt like the male was there to be sure she didn't skip out of there and run away.

Run away. Like she was a wayward child.

She was an adult and should be free to leave if she wanted. She felt ungrateful in some ways. Mercer had set her free from the animal shelter and stayed her death sentence at the hands of unwitting humans. But he hadn't set her truly free and neither had the other alphas. Their kindness had come with conditions, mainly that she stay the hell put and follow their orders.

Listening intently to the world outside the apartment door, she faintly heard an alarm.

"Yeah? This is Javan," the guard said, answering a walkie. The alarm stopped when he spoke, which told her the alarm was on his walkie. "I'm at the apartment. How many paddocks? Damn. No, everything's cool here. I'll run a quick perimeter check right now, though. Thanks."

There was a click as he put his walkie back in the holder and then the rush of his feet as he ran down the walkway.

Someone had triggered the paddock alarms?

Leaning away from the door, she sighed and rubbed the space between her eyes where a headache was blooming. She was stressed to the max, worry over her grandfather finding her plaguing her every thought.

Something clicked in her mind as she realized the reason the paddock alarms might be triggered was because someone was trying to get into the park. Or someone was already in the park and using the paddocks as a distraction for the security team.

As the sound of Javan's pounding feet came back to the space in front of the apartment, she listened to him speak into the walkie that all was clear.

A sinking feeling in her gut told her it was time for her to go. If someone was attacking the paddocks and using the alarms as a distraction, clearly they didn't have good intentions. She was the target, she was sure, and no matter how fierce Javan and the other park shifters were, they couldn't hope to stand up to her grandfather's best fighters.

Walking silently to the bathroom, she opened the single window slowly so it didn't creak and popped the screen out, bringing it to rest against the cabinet. She was on the second floor, so she couldn't just jump or she'd risk breaking something. Leaning out, she saw the ledge of the apartment below her, just over the window.

It took some maneuvering, but she managed to heft herself out of the window, swing around and lower herself to the bottom of the window, then very carefully make her way to the window ledge below her, which was just wide enough for the toes of her borrowed tennis shoes.

Once she was on the ledge, she closed her eyes and listened for sounds of anyone coming, knowing that the park was crawling with security guards who were frequently passing by the complex.

Dropping silently to the pavement, she crouched against the wall and hustled to the corner, peeking carefully around the edge. She didn't see or hear anyone. She darted away from the complex, using the various small buildings, attractions, kiosks, and scenery to hide herself, not moving until she was sure no one had seen her.

She was watching for people she didn't know—the park shifters—and people she did know—other jackals.

The only reason she knew where she was going was because she'd seen a park map when she'd been sitting in what turned out to be the aviary clinic. The plastic-covered map showed the entire park with each building named and numbered, the numbers corresponding to buttons on a nearby wall-mounted phone.

She'd seen a parking lot that was smaller than the main lot where patrons stopped. The building by the small lot was marked security booth/employee lot.

There would be vehicles there, and she did have a little know-how on hot-wiring vehicles, but maybe, just maybe, someone would leave the keys behind in one of the vehicles and she could steal it.

It felt like ages before she finally reached the employee lot. She never saw jackals, but she sure as hell saw plenty of park shifters. They were running around like crazy, and she nearly got caught several times.

Once she moved into the employee lot, her jackal let out an excited yip in her mind and it almost spilled out of her mouth. She clamped her hand over her mouth and ducked behind a golf cart. What the hell was going on?

Her jackal was doing somersaults in her mind.

But why?

Her heart was racing, her palms were suddenly clammy, and her beast wanted to shift and run around.

Her pounding heart clenched hard suddenly and she thought she was going to pass out. But as stars lit up her vision and her heart resumed the pounding rhythm, a delicious scent reached her nose. It was wild and sweet, like some kind of fruit covered with caramel. Her mouth watered and her jackal stretched out in her mind, her skin aching with the need to shift.

She heard voices nearby and, peering around the corner of the golf cart, saw two males.

One was built like a swimmer with broad shoulders and a tapered waist, blond hair that was long on top and casually ruffled like he'd run his fingers through it multiple times. But the other? He was…drool-worthy. Panty-melting. Hotness-overload.

She'd never seen such a gorgeous male before.

Thick with muscles that strained the shirt he wore, like the seams were holding on for dear life. Dark hair cut short and shaved on the sides, a strong jaw, and kissable lips.

Her jackal was immediately and wholeheartedly in love with the dark-haired male.

Head over tails for someone she'd never seen before in her life.

One word flitted through her mind as she stared at the big male.

Mate.

Oh, hell no.

She didn't have time for a soulmate right now. Hell, probably not ever. Because if there was one thing she'd learned from her grandfather's murderous ways, it was that mates were not off-limits when it came to using them against the person he wanted to kill. Her grandfather had hurt her aunt to get her uncle to come to him, and then he'd killed them both. She suspected the same thing had happened between her parents, her mother being used to force her father into a position to be killed.

Who knows what her grandfather had done to lure her brother to his home?

Nope. No way. She was one female who was not going to take a mate, no matter how sexy he was or how much she wanted to run to him and ask for help.

Shaking the sexy images from her mind and telling her jackal to shut up, she moved silently away from the males to the farthest vehicles and peeked into each one. She checked seven vehicles before she finally found a set of keys sitting on the driver's seat.

Opening the door, she grimaced at the creak but didn't hear anyone coming toward her. She eased behind the wheel and put the keys in the ignition. As the engine turned over, she shut the door, put the vehicle into drive, and slammed her foot on the gas.

Racing down the aisle, she had only the briefest of moments to see her soulmate as he stood, slack-jawed and staring at her at the end of the aisle. She smashed through the guard shack's security bar, wood splintering across the windshield.

She didn't stop holding her breath until she was on the main road, the gas pedal on the floor and the Amazing Adventures Safari Park in the rearview mirror.

Her jackal let out a mournful howl in her head, but she ignored the ache that spread slowly from her heart and made her feel cold.

She was leaving her soulmate behind.

She didn't even know his name.

But it didn't matter. He'd be safe without her in his life, and even though she didn't know him, she wanted that for him. Wanted him to be safe and secure.

Without her.