Chas, 9:15 a.m.

So how had she made it to 22 with her virginity intact?

It helps to be a sheltered shape-shifting wildcat with an overprotective daddy in Baton Rouge. The DuChamps clan elders would probably still be arranging their children’s marriages to their second and third cousins once removed, if that kind of thing weren’t so frowned upon these days.

Theodore DuChamps and his brother Lionel, daddy of the bride-to-be Rosemary, when they weren’t monopolizing the shipping industry all over the Gulf Coast, spent most of their energy trying to use their daughters for the benefit of their businesses. Or so it seemed to their daughters.

Chas had to give her daddy the benefit of the doubt, though, when it came to her protection. A girl can’t just date anybody who doesn’t already know she is a shapeshifter. If the non-shifters don’t know the situation, all kinds of drama can unfold, resulting in unwanted attention from the community and then the media. All of that would be bad for their family, not just for business.

And there was another barrier entirely to her dating life: the purity ring. For that, she did not give her daddy the benefit of the doubt. Chastity and her daddy were basically the poster people for the city’s annual Purity Ball. Over the years, it had become as much a rite of passage for young girls as the coming-out parties. Much like the old-fashioned country club debutante balls, the Purity Ball involved fathers presenting their daughters to the public at a dance. However, instead of handing their daughters over to a suitable boy of good breeding, the Purity Balls involved no boys at all. Instead, daughters would receive a ring from their father. The ring served as a symbol of his protection and as a symbol of the girl’s promise to save herself for marriage.

Chastity had loved these daddy-daughter dates in the beginning. Besides new moons—on which the Baton Rouge DuChamps would gather in the woods to shapeshift into their wildcat form and hunt together—the Purity Ball was always a day she could count on her dad being there for her. Otherwise, Theodore was a very busy man.

In this way, Chastity was jealous of her cousin Rosemary. Uncle Lionel had no interest whatsoever in the more religious traditions of the family.

Over time, Chastity started to hate the Purity Ball. Especially as she grew older and desired nothing more than to raise hell with her friends and chase boys. But every year until she was 18, she put up with this promise to remain celibate, just to keep her daddy happy.

The rest of the year she did nothing but cause her mother heartache by staying out all night, drinking, dancing and not giving two licks about school. She still never dared to have actual sex, however. A glowering, judgmental daddy can still hold that power over a girl for a long, long time.

Instead, her outlet took the form of drawing and illustrating her own comics, which she secretly published on an anonymous blog. She had exactly 65 adoring fans and counting.

And now, here she was, doing a bona fide walk of shame. Except she wasn’t sure where she was walking from or walking to.

She was grateful for one thing right now about her strict debutante upbringing: learning to walk in high heels with ease. She may not have her sunglasses, she may not have a working phone. Chas may have been hungry, thirsty, and barely function under the weight of a raging hangover. But it was a gorgeous June morning, and no inaugural walk of shame was going to make this girl stumble down the streets of New Orleans like a drunk-ass hussy. She was a good girl, dammit.

Well, not really. But she had manners. On the way out of that apartment, she had come across this mysterious guy’s shirt and motorcycle boots on the stairs. She knew instantly they were his, they had his scent all over them. She had brought them back up and neatly placed them on the mat in front of his door.

She came to a street corner and looked up at the signs. She was at Freret and Upperline. Now she just needed a coffee and some juice for her phone, and she could call Rosemary’s driver for a ride back to the mansion.

“First, coffee,” she said aloud, spying a funky little storefront with an incredible aroma wafting out through the door, catching her at just the right moment.

She plopped down her daddy’s platinum on the counter with confidence. Theodore may be a prude and weirdly obsessed with protecting her virtue, but damn if his money didn’t come in handy whenever she was in a bind in New Orleans.

Chas glanced around the place. There were band posters on the walls, tattooed and pierced customers sipping small cups of very black coffee. The music playing over the speakers sounded to her not at all like the jazz and blues she would hear at any of her favorite spots in the French Quarter. Where in the hell was she? Was she even in New Orleans at all? Well, soon she’d be caffed up and juiced up enough to find out. And then, wafting in and out of the coffee aroma was something else. She could nearly taste the rejuvenating shot of caffeine already. And, there was something familiar among all of the unfamiliar things that surrounded her. A scent. A man’s scent.

Her breath caught in her throat and her heart rate picked up. This scent was triggering a memory. It was him. The same scent that was stuck to her skin.

Chas closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds. She saw tanned flesh, pressed against her bare breasts. She could almost feel her face nuzzling against a man’s neck. It was a brown-haired, bearded man. It was G. He felt so close and real when she closed her eyes, it overshadowed anything that had happened at Rosemary’s bachelorette party. Had there been a stripper? Maybe. Burlesque show? Likely. Comedy show? Bar hopping? Probably. It all seemed like an insignificant dream compared to the passionate hours that had followed, and not just because of the alcohol. She popped open her eyes and looked around but did not see anybody who resembled this G from her photos or her memory. But G was definitely here, or had been here recently.

Then she realized the barista, a female with dyed white hair and ice-blue eyeshadow, was staring at her quizzically. “Ma’am, this card has been declined.”

Chas blinked herself back to reality.

“Excuse me? What does that mean, declined?” Batting her eyelashes and playing dumb usually worked. Evidently, this did not work on college-age students with no interest in getting her coffee.

“Declined? It means I’m supposed to call…”

Chas snatched away the card and ran out. No fucking way was anybody calling the credit card company.

But now she was back on the street with no coffee and no money.

There was nothing for her to do but close her eyes and try to find that scent again. G’s scent.

Finishing school, beauty pageants and high teas will not teach a girl how to follow the scent of a man. So it was a good thing she had one other thing nobody could take away: the animal instincts of a wildcat that never really left her when she was in her human form.

Chas was going to find her man.

And then, she was gonna slap him upside the head for getting himself a coffee and not getting any for her.