1. Chapter One

Someone who shouldn't have been outside my house woke me up when I had no need to be up at seven in the morning, only four short hours after I got to sleep. It was a warm June morning in East Texas, humid to the point sweat formed at just the thought of going outside. It wasn't unusual for the area. Muggy, hot days were common as spring gave way to the blistering summer to come. It didn't make me excited to go outside, knowing it would leave me gross and needing another shower.

But my werecat magic was telling me I had a visitor, so I got dressed in shorts and a tank, the most comfortable things I could find. Anything more would have been sweltering if I was going to be outside, and that wouldn't do.

Not that he's going to mind my state of dress.

I walked out the front door and smiled as I leaned against a column on my patio.

"Good morning, Heath," I said as he came into view. Walking in from the trail that connected my home to the rest of the world, he didn't say anything as he drew closer. I watched his every step, taking in how he was dressed. He'd been out for a run—a human run. His shorts only made it halfway down his muscular thighs, and the luxury running shoes probably cost him two to three hundred dollars, if not more. His expensive tastes were matched with an old concert tee, though I didn't know the band.

"Good morning, Jacky," he greeted, coming up the three steps in one small jump. There was something hot in his eyes, and I knew what was coming. This little discussion was only perfunctory. "I was out for a run and decided to stop by."

"Must have been a long run," I commented as he snaked an arm around my waist and brought our bodies together. He lived all the way in Tyler, toward the edge of my territory. If he ran it human, he was a fool.

Or a showoff, but considering the heat this morning, fool is definitely the one I'm going to go with.

Heath Everson, a werewolf Alpha, living in the territory of a werecat was the most unusual setup we could have possibly come up with. Werewolves and werecats didn't get along on the best of days, and they went to war with each other during the not-so-good times. There was an ancient and bitter rivalry between the two, which infested everything, creating deep-seated hatred between the two species. It came up in everything—how werewolves and werecats lived very different lives, how they Changed people using a different protocol. Werecats generally looked at werewolves as over-breeding, irresponsible nightmares who were dangerous to everyone around them and callous with human life. Werewolves thought werecats were pretentious hypocrites with no social skills and a power complex.

Heath and I had found something different from what our predecessors believed. We were brought together by his daughter. He'd never met me, but one day his daughter had shown up at the back door of my bar, calling on the old supernatural Law which called werecats to Duty. It was essentially bodyguard work, and its very existence was the solution to a particular problem from before my time when werecats and werewolves were at war.

Being called to Duty had driven me to lengths I hadn't realized I would go, sent me to places I never thought I would see—such as the den of a strong pack of werewolves in the middle of a civil war.

And into the life of a werewolf who just wanted to retire from a position that made being a father hard.

At the time, I was certain neither of us ever expected a tenuous bond through a precocious human girl to bring us here. Carey was his only daughter, and I could never get between them. She was something I needed in my life, and I was something she needed, and he could never get between us.

So here we were, an Alpha werewolf without a pack, living in my werecat territory.

That wasn't the only social convention we were tossing to the wayside, though. His arm held me in place, and I made no move to get away.

Maybe we're both fools.

He only chuckled at my comment about the long run, as he leaned in to capture my mouth in a passionate good morning kiss that betrayed emotions we both tried desperately to pretend we didn't have. The kiss felt like a reunion even though it had only been a few days since I last saw him. The full moon had passed over the weekend, and we never spent time together when it was near. It was too volatile, too dangerous for us and everyone within a twenty-mile radius. He stayed in his corner of my territory, and I stayed clear of him. It was the safest way.

I tried to step back, but he followed until my back was against my front door, and he was in every inch of my space. He propped an arm on the door over me, closing me in, while his other hand held me to him. I was strong enough to break free since I was the dominant predator here—one werecat could always handle one werewolf.

I just didn't want to. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I encouraged him to continue.

The kiss grew more possessive. He ran that hand down my back, over the curve of my hip to my thigh, lifting it to wrap around his waist.

Feeling the urge to reach for the door and invite him in, I knew it was time to stop. I pulled my head back as much as I could, letting it knock my front door, an obvious sign to him we needed to break this up.

"You need to run home," I whispered, trying to control my breathing and my pulse. "It's a school day."

"School ended like two weeks ago," he said with a growl, leaning in further to kiss my jaw, then ducked down to kiss my neck. "I wanted to see you."

Shit.

"You can come in and have coffee, but the paws need to come off and kept to yourself. We've never even been on a date." I was looking for excuses, really. I wasn't ready to jump into bed with Heath Everson, no matter how good his mouth felt on my neck.

His heavy sigh was humorously overdone. Slowly releasing me, he made it apparent he didn't want to, but when his grey-blue eyes met mine, I knew he understood.

"I wish it wasn't like this," he murmured, leaning in. This time he just touched his forehead to mine and gave me a stare that threatened to send me to my knees. There was an intensity to Heath which had become stronger over the last few months—animal magnetism he had been holding back to appear to be a nice, normal human-like man. That pretense, though, was long gone between us.

"We're taking enough risks. Why add one more?" I asked, swallowing my own want. "This just…It puts everyone at risk, Heath."

"I know."

That was my logical excuse and a good reason not to crawl under the covers with the Alpha wolf who threatened to send me up in flames with just the simplest of touches.

I had several illogical excuses I was never stupid enough to tell him. I hadn't had sex in over a decade. Since before my fiancé died, a man who had loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I wasn't even sure I had moved on from Shane, and kissing another man made me think about it more. Beyond Shane, I wasn't sure if I wanted Heath because I wanted him, if it was the taboo that drew me in, or he was just the first man to show me any interest since I lost my human life.

I didn't know enough about myself to know how I felt about anything anymore. I knew I liked kissing Heath. I loved hanging out with him and his family. They filled a void in my life I didn't know I had until they strolled into it.

He finally left my personal bubble, and I was able to fumble my way into my own house. He didn't reach out to help, and the sexual tension was still thick on the air. Honestly, I was glad he didn't help.

"How did you end up running here this early in the morning?" I asked, looking over my shoulder as I walked into the kitchen. I started a pot of coffee while he looked at my things. I kept everything relatively clean, so I wasn't worried about anything embarrassing, and he'd already been this far into my house—no further, though. He never left the public spaces, and he had certainly never been in my house with me alone. We always had Carey around to keep us honest. I needed her to keep me honest. She had no idea I was kissing her father, and I didn't want to give that dangerous secret to a thirteen-year-old girl who already had enough pressure in her life.

I turned to him after I was done setting up the coffee and realized he never answered while I was lost in thought.

"Heath?"

"Hm?"

"How did you end up running all the way out here?" I asked again, frowning at him.

"I caught your scent on one of my running trails and just followed it…Well, the wolf followed it," he admitted softly. And it was a secret to admit. We were predators, werewolves and werecats. If we were wild and uncivilized, or if our animals took control for a minute—which happened more frequently than some would want to admit—there weren't many reasons to hunt a particular scent. Either his wolf wanted to hunt me, or his wolf wanted to mate me.

Six months ago, I would have assumed hunt. Now, I didn't. The only reason he had caught my scent on his human running trail was my cat had gone to sniff out his running trails over the last full moon—two sides of the same coin, Heath and I.

Normally, the divide between person and animal was clear for the moon-cursed species. Humans were always in control. Heath and I were human first. Personally, I only gave in to the instinctual urges of the cat on full moons. Most of the time, she and I were in complete agreement about everything happening around us, and it was a background idea we were two separate pieces of the same mind. It sounded like a second personality, but it was just a clear divide between the animalistic nature of the mind and the logical or rational human one. Sometimes, those two sides got into very real arguments. Hence why many spoke of the animal as ‘other.'

"Did the wolf get what he wanted?" I leaned on the counter, watching Heath. His eyes turned from soft grey-blue to hard ice-blue.

"Not particularly," he answered. I kept my eyes locked on his, refusing to look down. Seeing what I knew was there would only make this more awkward.

"This is the first time your wolf has led you here," I whispered, letting the idea sink in. Attachments could be good things, but they could quickly spiral out of control. I was a werecat and had to be very careful. We were possessive and dangerous animals. I worked hard to not get too attached to Heath and failed every time. All the werecats I knew and spoke to called him my werewolf. It was a joke, playing on the fact he lived in my territory, but it freaked me out because I knew just how right they were.

"It won't be the last," he said carefully. "Hopefully, no one thinks too much about it if they come visit you or me. This is your territory, and I'm an Alpha wolf. We need to be able to talk to each other, and hopefully, that keeps them from getting curious."

"They'll smell what we can smell right now, Heath. There's no hiding we turn each other on. Well…you can hide it, I can't." I straightened up and yawned. His ability to mask his scent was remarkable. "And holy shit, it's early in the morning. How long have you been out running?"

"I woke up at five and needed to clear my head. Had some…" He chuckled. "You know…dreams."

That made my face warm. Heath was the type of man who was honest about this sort of thing. Once he'd freely revealed his attraction to me, there was no avoiding it, and he refused to let me avoid it, not that I had been trying that hard.

"Then you caught my scent," I said, seeing how easy it would have been for the wolf's instincts to override the man. It helped me understand the passion behind the kiss, too. Plus, it was easier to talk about the instinctual behavior than it was to talk about what his subconscious was showing him at night.

"Yeah. It wasn't just that, but you probably don't want the recent werewolf news," he said, pulling out his phone to check something. For a moment, I saw how bothered he was by something before it was forgotten, and his phone was put away again.

"I wouldn't mind hearing about it," I said softly. He seemed surprised. Normally, I didn't want to hear anything, but I just wanted to hear him talk. I wanted to know what would bother him. Something had to be if he was going on exhaustingly long runs, even for a werewolf.

"There's some tension with an old pack in Russia. Since that pack doesn't really talk to anyone, we can only watch the news and try to put it together. Recently, a young female was taken to Mygi Hospital with injuries that concerned a lot of us. She won't talk to anyone, though. Nothing we can do unless she speaks out."

"How old?" I asked softly.

"The girl or the pack?" Something dark flashed in Heath's eyes.

"Both."

"Our best guess? She"s in her early twenties. No idea how long she's been a werewolf. As for the pack? It's had the same Alpha for a thousand years, and most of his inner circle are just as old. I don't know his exact age. Somewhere around fifteen hundred, but I could be wrong."

My eyes went wide, then refocused on the coffee. At my expression, Heath must have realized that was all I needed or wanted to know.

We were quiet until the coffee finished, and I led us back onto my patio, trying to get back into the clear air. We sat together and looked over my woods.

"Work on Kick Shot is coming along nicely," he said, obviously trying to have a normal conversation after a very not-normal start to our day. "Remember, there's a meeting on Friday to finalize your design ideas. You'll be back up and running by the end of July if everything stays on schedule."

"That's wonderful. I miss it, and I'm paying two employees who don't work."

"Dirk and Oliver…" Heath let his head fall back. "Oliver keeps sending in new requests, and I've told him he needs to clear them with you."

"He's sending them to you because I keep telling him no," I whispered. Dirk and Oliver were a recent addition to my life and to the lives of those in my territory. Dirk was the adopted human son of my werecat brother, Nikolaus, Niko for short. Dirk was an enigma wrapped in a cloak of anger and refusal to meet the expectations of his father, not that Niko had many for him—get an education, a good job, and stay out of trouble. Dirk had turned down being Changed into a werecat, which felt right. He was in his mid-twenties and didn't feel like someone who should or could be a werecat, happily living a solitary lifestyle. Instead, he rebelled against his adoptive father in every way—he refused to go to college, became a bartender, and got into a fight that drove Niko to send him out of his territory to restart and get his head together.

So, now Dirk was the bartender for Kick Shot, which was funny because not long after he arrived, the bar burned down. Now he was just getting a paycheck. I had a sneaking suspicion he was moonlighting in a bar outside my territory without my permission. I had no intention of calling him out on it, though.

"Oliver…he's a sneaky one." I shook my head a little at the ingenuity of my manager, the young man from London. He was also optimistic, bright, youthful, intelligent, and had the self-esteem of a small child who was told he was stupid all the time. He'd shown up the same day as Dirk, all smiles and not a drop of fear or distrust in him. He had been, and still was, a people pleaser to the nth degree. He would do anything to prove his worth, and sometimes, that grated on the people around him. He constantly went behind my back to Heath to try to get upgrades to Kick Shot's new building, so he could expand my business and prove his worth as a successful restaurant and bar manager. It all boiled down to what he most craved in life, something I gleaned from discussions with Zuri and Davor—his father's approval.

"Carey tries the same thing, you know," Heath finally said, giving me a chagrined smile.

"Oh, I know. I normally let her do something since I know it wasn't what you wanted." I grinned. "It's always harmless."

"Undermining my authority," he mumbled, but I saw a hint of a smile. "She loves you."

"I love her. That's why she gets everything she wants out of me." I was half-joking. Carey could ask for the moon, and I would buy her a moon rock. I wasn't too gullible.

"So, that's the secret," he said with a pondering nature, giving me a side-eye glance. "I just need to steal your heart, and suddenly, I'll get everything I want."

"Heath…"

"Don't worry, it'll always be harmless."

My chair wasn't far enough away from him, and I certainly didn't react in time. His lips found mine, the slow kiss tasting like bad coffee and worse decisions, need, flirtation, and forgotten boundaries.

It tasted wonderful. He always did.

It was interrupted by his phone going off, and the groan he gave was comical.

"Never get a break," he muttered as he pulled it out. "This son of mine never gives me a real moment to do anything by myself anymore." It went to his ear, and I heard the growl on the other end. "Yes, Landon?"

"You know you have a meeting in thirty minutes, right? You've been out running for nearly two-and-a-half hours. They're going to be here soon, and you know they won't like it if it's only Carey and me. Are you trying to get us in trouble?"

I watched Heath pale, not a sight I believed I had ever seen before.

"I'll be right home. I'm sorry. If they show up, tell them I had a meeting conflict, and it won't happen again." Heath hung up on his son and jumped up, shoving his cell phone back into his pocket. "Sorry, Jacky. I need to go—"

"What's wrong? What's this meeting?" I straightened but didn't stand. "Are other supernaturals coming into my territory? I'll need to know—"

"No, they're humans," he said softly, looking away. "This is just about something…"

"About what?" I frowned, watching my werewolf pull off his shirt. If he had to get back in less than thirty minutes, he was going to have to run—not on two feet but four.

"It's…" He sighed, sagging for a moment. "It's nothing, Jacky. Don't worry too much about it. Your secret is safe, and there are no supernaturals coming into your territory."

He finished throwing the rest of his clothes into my yard and Changed. His wolf form looked huge when I was human, downright massive. He cast me a glance and picked up his shorts, leaving the rest.

"I'll run everything through the wash and bring them over later," I said, waving. I knew how much of a pain it was to carry so much clothing. He was only taking the shorts because his cell phone and wallet were in them. It looked somewhat comical, seeing the shorts dangle from his mouth.

He nodded his big head and took off into the trees. Once he was gone, I sighed heavily.

"What a way for the morning to go," I mumbled, going out to get his sweaty clothes. As I picked them up, I got curious. What meeting with humans could possibly give Heath a cold sweat?

I threw the clothes into my washing machine, pondering it. I knew better than to go to the house if I got curious. For all I knew, this was werewolf business, and the humans would know of me. The last thing I needed was to draw attention to myself.

It was just another way Heath and I were so different. He'd come to my small corner of the world, but it wasn't his entire world like it was mine. I didn't need to deal with humans knowing who or what I was. I didn't need to deal with higher powers outside of Hasan, my werecat father. Heath was a recognized face of the werewolves who once dealt with human governments about werewolf rights and businesses. He was more than a little famous, or used to be.

Once I sat down in the kitchen, I realized there was no getting back to sleep, but I had options.