Shifters were hard to kill. It was one reason the Shifter Fight League was so popular. The viewing public got all the thrills of a full-contact blood sport, but with fighters who could play chicken with a bus at Mach one and come out the other side. All the blood and aggression, but with less guilt since most shifters could knock seven bells out of each other and meet the next day for a few beers and a game of pool.

Most shifters.

“Will he be okay?” Zara asked with concern, her voice soft. They occupied one of the private rooms in the league’s medical center — all clean white walls and scrubbed floors. The scent of pine and bleach, smells that when combined screamed hospital, filled the air.

The league’s medic, Ethan Kingwood, bent at the waist to check the young man lying supine on the bed. His name was Johnson Black, a fighter with the league who’d been injured when working undercover to expose an illegal underground fight club run by Zara’s father. Fighting to free Zara and other captives being offered as fight prizes, he’d ended up with a slashed throat for his troubles.

All because of her.

Zara worried at her lower lip as she watched the medic work. Deep inside, her lioness rumbled in concern. The male had fought well, something the cat appreciated, and it didn’t like to see a strong man brought so low.

Eyes closed, Johnson lay flat on his back with his arms by his sides. His skin was so pale it was difficult to work out where the sheets ended and his skin began. The only color about him was the vivid scarlet slash across the front of his throat. Zara didn’t need any medical knowledge to understand it was a killing wound… and it wasn’t healing properly. Or at all. The wet edges glistened in the light with each breath he took. Breaths he shouldn’t have been able to take — not with a gash in his throat from ear to ear.

Ethan straightened up and ran his hand over his close-cropped hair with a sigh. His gaze didn’t leave his patient, expression frustrated. “If he was a shifter, I’d say no.”

“No?” Her heart dropped at his words. Johnson Black would die, all because he’d tried to save her. She looked up at the tall medic, confusion rolling through her. “Wait…what did you just say?”

He cut a glance sideways at her. “If he was a shifter, he’d already be dead. Even with our rate of healing, a wound like that is just too grievous.”

Her mouth fell open as his words sank in, and then she shut it with a click. “Let me get this right. You’re telling me he’s not a shifter?”

Ethan nodded slowly, holding her gaze. He was a werewolf. His scent wrapped around her, irritating her cat, which responded with a low growl, but she told the creature firmly to behave. He was no threat to them. A veteran, he was also a trained medic who had experience dealing with shifters. So he knew what he was talking about. If he said Johnson wasn’t a shifter, he wasn’t a shifter.

“But… He was… How did he…?” She shook her head, shutting her mouth as she tried to work through all the questions rolling through her head.

Only shifters could fight in the league. It was one of the rules… in fact, one of the main rules they had. Only shifters were hardy enough for the punishing fights staged every weekend. Even other paranormals would be badly injured or even killed outright in some of the bouts.

Johnson had been fighting in the league for months. If he wasn’t a shifter, how had he passed the tests to get in? Why had no one realized until now that he wasn’t actually a shifter? How the hell could a non-shifter have even managed the training and fights he had?

Crap, he was one of the fighters from her own club, the Scarlet Moon, which meant this was on her and her brother, Kylan. Letting non-shifters fight would normally mean that a manager lost their club, no questions asked.

Her cat chuffed in amusement as her hand drifted down to smooth over her still flat stomach. Emotion radiated out from the center of her chest. Normally any club manager would be shitting themselves right about now… but she wasn’t just any club manager. She was the one in love with the king of the Ring, Logan Reese, and the one carrying his child. Cub? Kitten… they were both lion shifters, so she guessed the correct term would be cub. Still, the thought of the child nestled in her womb filled her with warmth and love. She never thought she’d ever become a mom. Ever.

Dragging her mind back to the present, she focused on Ethan. One problem at a time. She’d work out what the hell was going on here, and then she would deal with Logan.

“Okay, so what exactly is he?”

Ethan’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m not entirely sure…”

She arched an eyebrow, not at all fooled by the evasive answer. “But you have a good idea, don’t you?”

“Perhaps.” He stepped back from the bed, gathering up his medical equipment and putting it into his bag. “I need to check on something, make a few calls first.”

“Whoa, whoa… Not so fast.” She stepped in front of him, feeling her cat take a peek out of her eyes. Ethan’s flared amber with his wolf in response.

Backing off, her hands up to show she meant no harm, she smiled in apology. “Sorry, still getting used to having someone else on board.”

Taking a deep breath, she eased her cat back and looked at him again. “If you could give me some idea of what you’re thinking? Puts me in a better position when Logan wants answers.”

Ethan inclined his head, an acknowledgment of her apology. If she’d busted out the cat on his ass here and now, he was in a losing position and he knew it. Even though she was a newly “turned” shifter, she was an alpha lioness so she could more than kick ass if she needed to. But it was more than that. If he laid a finger on her, Logan would tear him a new one. Literally.

“I need to check with a friend… well, more like the friend of a friend… but I think he might be a reaper.”

“Reaper? You’ve got to be kidding me!” The laugh burst from her before she could stop it. “Don’t be ridiculous… they’re just a myth.”

And they were. Reapers were collectors, harvesting the souls of the dead to send them to the afterlife…sort of like mini Grim Reapers, but they were just an urban legend. A story retold over and over, embellished each time.

Ethan watched her levelly. “Not a myth. I’ve seen one.”

She blinked. The werewolf was possibly the most serious man she’d ever met. She didn’t think he was into fairy tales or that he’d joke about anything… much less a subject like this.

“Really? Where?”

He didn’t look away, honesty burning in his gaze. “Someplace I can’t admit to. We were behind enemy lines and pinned down. Ever seen a rabid werewolf? No? You don’t want to. But we were pinned down by an entire pack. No way out. One of the newbies, Cal, bought it pretty quick, and we had no idea what he was until he woke up again. He tore through the enemy like they weren’t even there… scary as fuck to watch, but I sure was glad he was on our side.”

Shit. She shook her head. Reapers couldn’t be real. That was just too weird. Next he’d be telling her the valkyrie were real as well.

“So this guy, Cal? Is he the one you’re ringing?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Lost touch with him a while back, but a friend of mine is the police captain in a small town a couple of hours away. One of his guys is seeing a reaper. She’s helped with a few demon issues.”

Zara shuddered despite herself. Demons were nasty as hell (no pun intended) and thankfully, the city had been clear of such problems for a while.

“Okay, so you’re going to get her take on the matter? See if that’s what he is?”

“Yeah. See if she knows why he hasn’t woken up yet. Because he’s not dead, but he’s not alive either… and the only other option is a revenant.”

“Crap.”

“Exactly.” Ethan smiled without humor. “So let’s keep this on the down low and hope like fuck he isn’t, or this city will look like something from a bad zombie horror film.”

His expression changed as he looked her up and down. She shivered, knowing exactly what he was going to say next.

“Okay, if you follow me next door, we’ll take a little look at you and junior. King’s orders.”

It took all of a few seconds for Ethan to lead her into an examination room a short way down the corridor. Apprehension had her dragging her heels a little, but at Ethan’s smile over his shoulder, she kicked herself in the ass and sped up. There was nothing to worry about. Just a normal prenatal check, she told herself.

Yeah, right. It would only be a normal check if she were still human. The instant the cat inside her had woken up, it added a whole new set of risks.

“Will you lie down for me?” Ethan nodded toward the examination couch in the center of the room as he busied himself at the desk.

Zara cast a look around the room. It was easy to see that this was Ethan’s office, from the picture of a forest on the walls—the Kingwood estate if she didn’t miss her guess—down to the “Trust me, I’m a medic” mug on the desk.

“Do I need to get undressed?” she asked, perching on the edge of the couch.

“Only if you want to get me killed.” Ethan flashed a smile as he approached. “Seriously, no. I just want to have a quick feel of your tummy, check your temperature and blood pressure.”

“Uh… okay.” Exhaling, she eased onto the couch and lay down, trying not to think as Ethan lifted her top a little and carefully felt her stomach. Her cat grumbled in dislike. It didn’t like any man apart from their mate touching them. Thankfully though, it quietened down, realizing it wasn’t that kind of touch and the male was only interested in making sure their cub was growing correctly.

“Feels perfectly normal,” he reassured her with a smile. “Were pregnancies advance a little quicker than human ones, so we’re looking at a due date in around six months.”

“Okay.” She nodded. The answer was no more than she’d expected. Those women in her family with cats always came to term quicker than those without. “And everything feels okay? You’re sure?”

That was the crux of the matter. Sometimes lion pregnancies went wrong…the baby wasn’t born human but in some strange kind of half form, one full of rage as it ripped its way clear of its mother’s body. It wasn’t a case of a normal shift, that the baby was a lionwere—the opposite of a werelion—shifting the other way, but a true halfling whose form was somewhere between the two.

Halfling pregnancies were always fatal for the mother.

“Absolutely normal.” He wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm. “I’ll take some blood to double check, but so far everything looks good.”

“Okay.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re the doc. I trust you.”

“Good.” He paused for a second and started inflating the cuff before looking at her again. His hand patted hers reassuringly, his expression earnest. “You and your baby will be fine, Zara, I promise you.”

Zara bit her lip and closed her eyes as the cuff tightened around her arm.

She just hoped to all that was holy he was right.

* * *

The noise in the room hovered somewhere between a death metal concert and the average shuttle launch. Logan sighed and rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair in frustration. Get more than one alpha in a room and the result was more like a kindergarten than a conversation between sensible adults.

“I don’t care what the lord says,” Alex Kingwood, the representative from the city’s financial district sneered, his eyes hard with his wolf. “The pixies have to be helping Hunter.”

“James.”

The room was silent, all the occupants surprised into silence by Alex’s uncharacteristic show of aggression. Although he was an alpha werewolf, he rarely showed his more primal side in these meetings, instead presenting his business acumen and control of the corporate side of the city’s paranormal culture. Right now though, he was every bit the alpha as he stared down the man on the other side of the table.

The man his ire was directed at simply smiled. “I can assure you, Mr. Kingwood, that none of my clan are dealing with Hunter.”

“James.”

The pixie shrugged. “He has to be getting his supply elsewhere.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex growled. The sudden tingle in the room was a warning that he’d pulled his wolf to just under the surface of his skin. A warning that didn’t go unnoticed by anyone in the room—much less the pixie Alex faced down.

“Go ahead, wolf,” he said quietly, the pink eyes that matched his crew cut hair cold and hard. “Make my day.”

Logan had to give the guy credit. Not only had he arrived unexpectedly at their meeting and announced himself as the new warlord of the city’s pixies, but he was facing down Alex Kingwood without batting an eyelid. And Alex wasn’t just any werewolf—he was a stone wolf, a lethally dangerous cross between a gargoyle and a werewolf. Even Logan would have to think twice before taking one on. Especially one with the knowledge and experience Alex had.

“Tell me…is this going to turn into a pissing contest?” a bored voice interjected from the other side of the room. Zane, earl of the city’s vampires, looked as bored as he normally did. “Or should we all slap our dicks out on the table, measure up and be done with it?”

Logan hid his grin. Zane was a crazy bastard at the best of times, but no one could deny that he had a sense of humor. It was just a pity it went hand in hand with homicidal rage.

“Alex…” Another, deeper, voice added a measure of calm to the escalating situation. The single word, Alex’s name, was laden with so much compulsion that even Logan felt the pull despite the fact he was a cat, not a werewolf.

Alex slid a glance sideways to the man who sat next to him. Veyr, the master of the city’s werewolves. The hierarchy of power in the city was a complex one, and even though Alex was alpha of his own pack, he owed fealty to Veyr. As did Logan, but that was because Veyr had been King of the Ring before him, and was Logan’s business partner in the league, not because he was Logan’s alpha.

Logan was the most powerful werelion in the city… the prime. Or he would be, if they had anything as cohesive as a pride. Instead, most cats were in the league, which served in place of the pride.

“That’s right, little doggie,” the pixie chuckled. “Do what your master says.”

Logan sighed again. Sometimes pixies were as scary as fuck and sometimes they acted like complete children. “Unless you plan on pissing off all the shifters in the room, Lord Jai—” He gave the guy his title out of courtesy. “I suggest you play nice.”

Jai turned that weird pink gaze on Logan for a long moment and then nodded. “Point taken, Your Majesty. Shall we continue? I for one would like to know where Hunter—”

“James.”

The pixie paused at the correction and looked directly at the man sitting to Logan’s right. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“Hunter. His name is James. I’d prefer we call him that.” Kylan, Logan’s soon-to-be brother-in-law didn’t bat an eyelid as he looked back. Unlike the rest of the occupants in the room, he didn’t have a title or a position of power. He was there because he was one of two people in the world who knew their current thorn in the side, James Hunter, inside out. “In fact, I’d rather he not use the Hunter name at all. I don’t want to be associated with the bastard—not after what he’s done to my sister and me.”

Silence stretched out in the room for a second. By now the story of how James Hunter had fucked off with a boatload of cash, left his children at the king’s—Logan’s—mercy, and then kidnapped the same daughter to sell off as the prize in an illegal fight had gone around the city like wildfire.

Jai inclined his head. “Understandable. Families, huh?” He grinned. “Can’t live with them, and it’s frowned upon to slaughter them in cold blood…unless you’re a pixie of course.”

His grin got wider and Logan kept his face carefully blank. He suspected that’s exactly what had happened to allow Jai to rise to the position of warlord. Pixies were vicious bastards; assassination was a viable method of social advancement within their clans.

“Back to the problem at hand.” Logan pitched his voice to get the attention of everyone in the room. “What, exactly, do we know about James’ organization? Anything new?”

Several head-shakes around the table gave him his answer. He suppressed the urge to curse like a sailor.

“How about the werebear? The one from the Scarlet Moon who defected?” Veyr asked. “Did we manage to get anything from him?”

“Unfortunately not.” Logan sat back in his seat, shaking his head. “The shock of having his bear stripped from him shattered his mind. We have him under observation in the league’s medical unit but so far, nothing doing.”

“How about the other one? Oh, mention the devil and he shall appear,” Veyr commented with a chuckle as, at that moment, the door opened and the league’s chief medic, Ethan, walked into the room.

“I’ve been called many things,” the tall werewolf smiled. “Devil’s a new one though. You were taking my name in vain?”

“Something like that.” Logan motioned to an empty seat next to Jai. Given the dislike Alex had for pixies, which was totally understandable since a group of them had tried to kill his mate only last year, seating the level-headed Ethan next to the warlord was the most sensible option. “We were looking to get an update on Johnson’s condition…”

He trailed off, holding Ethan’s gaze meaningfully. He wasn’t just interested in an update on the fighter who had been injured in the illegal fight club, but on an update for his newly pregnant mate as well. Just the thought of Zara and the cub she carried filled him with warmth. He was going to be a father and he had a beautiful mate… or he would have, just as soon as he could get his fangs into her and leave his mark on her shoulder.

But to do that, he needed to be sure Zara and the cub were okay. Werelion pregnancies were often fraught with problems, and he refused to do anything that would put either his mate or their child at risk. If he had to wait to make Zara his in every sense of the word, he would—even if it killed him. The ache in his cock and balls said it probably would. Death by sexual frustration… that’d be a new one for Ethan to write up on a death cert.

Ethan held his gaze meaningfully and nodded before looking around the room. “I’m afraid there’s no change in Johnson’s condition. I’m keeping him in an induced coma because of his injuries, so he won’t be talking anytime soon. We’ll need to find another source of information.”

Zane spoke up from the back of the room. “Leave it with me. I’ll rattle some cages in my network, see if we can’t shake a few rotten apples loose.”

“Same here,” Jai added, rubbing a hand over his stubbled chin. “I’ll get my guys out on the street, see if they can’t get a sniff of where the next fight’s going down, pass the info back if you guys wanted to put another shifter undercover?”

Logan nodded, a growl in the back of his throat. Even though James was Zara’s father, Logan had more than a few bones to pick (and break) with the guy.

“Yeah. Do that. Because we will be.”

* * *

The rest of the meeting had been short and sweet. Each member resolved to see what they could find out about James Hunter’s illegal fight clubs and then they’d all gone their separate ways. Without bloodshed, which given the bad feeling between Alex Kingwood and the pixies was nothing short of a minor miracle. Yeah, so they’d had to make sure Jai left first, and that both Ethan and he had kept Alex occupied, but Logan was taking that as a win.

Hell, he should be taking the meeting itself as a damn win. He couldn’t recall an instance where all the faction leaders in the city had actually sat down in the same room and talked, but they’d managed it. From shifters to vampires to pixies… the only ones they’d been missing were the warlocks… and if there were more than a handful in the city, he’d eat his hat. There certainly weren’t enough to count as a true faction, and he couldn’t see the presence of an illegal fight group bothering them, so to his mind, it made no difference if they hadn’t been invited.

But he sure was glad it was over. Tiredness tugged at his body, seeping down to his very bones as he pulled the car to a stop outside his apartment building. A quick glance upward confirmed all the lights were still on. Zara was still up then. He hadn’t expected otherwise. His little kitten moaned that she couldn’t sleep without him now.

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. He intended to make her moan in a different sort of way when he got up there.

Turning the engine off, he slid from behind the wheel and strode toward the building, triggering the locks as he went. For a moment, the parking lot around him was lit up in orange, but almost before it had faded, he was through the door and nodding at the guard at reception.

Brax nodded back, the big shifter one of Logan’s most trusted men. He’d have to be, to be here looking after the two most important things in Logan’s life, both wrapped up in the curvy form of the woman in the penthouse apartment upstairs.

The elevator took far too long. One shoulder against the wall, he counted as the number above the doors rose, already moving before the thing pinged to a stop and the doors slid open. Long strides took him down the corridor, his key card already out to swipe him into the suite.

The door banged shut behind him, the click telling him it was locked again. Not that security bothered him, not with Brax guarding the door downstairs and the other penthouse currently empty. No one would sneak up on him in his “den”… they were safe and secure, and his mate was within reach.

Her scent drew him like a moth to a flame. He stalked through the apartment, tracking her. Given the lateness of the hour, he wasn’t surprised to find the large screen TV in the main room off. Not that Zara actually watched it much. Instead, she kept it on in the background as she read, curled up in the corner of the large sofa. Of course, when he was there, she preferred to lean against him, which meant she didn’t end up reading for long…

Soft music from the direction of the bedroom welcomed him. Zara was in the bathroom, humming softly to the music as she poured bubble bath under the running water. He loitered in the doorway for a moment, his gaze greedy as it swept over her luscious figure. Clad in a silky wrap, her feet were bare, the nails painted pink. The sight made him smile. She was so alpha when dealing with club matters that the baby pink on her toes had surprised him at first. It hinted at the softer woman under her hard-nosed manner.

She put the bottle back on the shelf behind the taps, and the wrap pulled taut over the curve of her breast and waist. He sucked a hard breath in. She’d always been curvy, but with her pregnancy her figure was even more voluptuous. Bending over, she swirled her hand through the water, distributing the bubbles, and his cock hardened in response. He moved without thinking, across the room in a heartbeat.

“Oh!” Zara jumped as his hands slid over her hips, and she laughed. “Logan, don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I’m a cat. What do you expect?” He snagged her around the waist, pulling her back against him. Her ass ground against his crotch and she gasped as she felt his rock hard erection. The scent of her arousal flooded the air around them. The groan escaped him before he could stop it. “Fucking hell, kitten. You know how to get a guy going.”