Fucking hell. What had she gotten herself into? All because the damn sexy Alpha had hypnotized her with all his masculinity.

Aisling shook her head; if she was honest, she was lying to herself. She’d pledged to help because the barbarians needed killing. Badly. Going after an innocent child wasn’t flying with her - not at all.

But they were going against a gigantic, well-connected pack of wolves. That wasn’t going to be pretty.

Fuck.

Needing a reprieve from her own home - even upstairs she could smell the spicy, musky scent of the male who drove her mad - she ran out the window, landed on a nearby branch, and ran along the trees until she was deep within the forest.

Then, after leaving her clothes in a neat pile, she shifted…and the fucking cat immediately turned around, heading back towards the house.

Aisling had to laugh. The animal was impossible.

She could have shifted back, but there was no need to - caging her animal was never a good idea, and, contrary to just about any other shifter out there, Aisling could actually hang around others without alarming them.

Her soft paws expertly made it back inside the house and she went to perch on her favorite tree, where she liked to observe the newcomers.

Coveney, the tall, dark and handsome Head Enforcer, was fluent in grunts, but she didn’t think she’d heard him say much. Daunte, as per usual, was the life of the party, smiling when he wasn’t laughing. Ian spent most of his time behind his laptop, but never seemed to miss a word of the conversation going on around him. Christine - the woman who’d ridden on Rygan’s bike - was sassy and outspoken, although she was clearly submissive, while Tracy, a dominant, read quietly in a corner. Ola seemed to be the caretaker, focusing on the children; Aisling recognized Hsu as the Seer, because she occasionally spoke of the future as though it was set in stone. “Don’t worry when you pick Niamh up late tomorrow. She’ll make new friends at the grocery store.”

Niamh was the only one of their children who wasn’t a werecat; in fact, she wasn’t a shifter at all. If Aisling wasn’t mistaken, the kid was actually a witch. She knew plenty of witches with auras similar to hers, in any case. Then there was Lola, the youngest, who was often glued to Rygan; the reason behind all their trouble was an adorable little thing who still sucked her thumb.

Jasper, Clive, Victoria, Daniel, and Will were around the same age, and acted like siblings, although none of them had any features in common.

Her cat purred, soaking in the atmosphere, and Aisling felt a pang of regret. The loner life was better for her, but there was no denying that her cat missed the sense of belonging a pride could bring.

Although, frankly? She’d never known it. Aisling might have lived in a pride for a dozen years or so, but she had never been part of one.

---

Aisling and Daunte’s father wasn’t all there. Actually, scratch that. He was a pointblank lunatic and his nickname, The Butcher, was a euphemism. Nowadays, he was just a little unstable around the edges, but thirty years ago? That had been another story altogether.

Aisling knew other shifters often felt sick to their stomachs every time they heard the story, but, to her, it was just a fact. Just her life.

Her father had been feral - completely wild, never shifting back to his human form. As such, he mated with an actual animal. There was nothing wrong about it, as far as she was concerned because, well, he had been an animal, too.

She would have preferred if he’d picked a panther, a lynx, a margay - just about anything, really - but, somehow, The Butcher mated with a Savannah; a breed that was a mix between a serval and a domestic cat. They were pretty and delicate, so she supposed it meant the man had good taste.

Either way, like it or not, those were her parents. A shifter and a cat.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d lived in the wild, two, three years, maybe. But she hadn’t known better; she was smarter than her mother, and she questioned more – but, as far as she had known, Aisling had been a cat.

Eventually, the pretty Savannah died. Aisling mourned her without being able to express it, not understanding the feeling that wasn’t quite natural in the forest. Death was part of life and another cat - an adult cat - would have moved on. She hadn’t. She cried and stayed with the carcass for days. She still remembered the smell of the rotting corpse, and the way she’d had to fight against the predators who’d wanted to eat it.

But then he’d arrived. The smooth, big biped. She recognized his scent; he smelled exactly like the leopard who looked at her and her mother from afar sometimes, never attacking them. Safe, she thought. So, she let him approach, only scratching when he moved to touch the broken corpse.

The man ignored her hisses and warning claws, held her up by the scruff of her neck, and popped her on his shoulder.

“Stay there.”

It sounded like a weird growl to her, but, while she didn’t understand the words, she obeyed his dominant order.

He buried her mother deep, so that no other animal would harm her. The grave was unmarked, but she could still exactly pinpoint the place where it had happened.

Then, her father took her home.

It took two years for her to shift to human form, and she didn’t talk before she was ten. However, she could hunt, and kill, just about anything, completely at peace with her animal.

Aisling was a legend - everyone knew of The Butcher’s first child. Especially since she’d taken on some jobs as a bounty hunter after leaving her pride the minute she’d turned eighteen.

The pride members had been frightened of her - understandably - and that meant that the kids had bullied her, while the adults treated her like trash and blamed her for everything that ever happened.

Her pride did do one thing right. She’d left ten years ago, and ,still, no one knew she was a girl; The Butcher’s first child, as far as the world knew, was a gruff, illiterate, grunting hunter who never shifted to his human form - not a bookish baker. The Alpha might have given them all an order to keep it secret, frightened of what would happen to them if she was thrown under the bus.

Oh, she wouldn’t bother them - as far as she was concerned, they were nothing more than a bad memory. But her father, who still lived with them in Maryland, might have seen things differently. The Alpha wasn’t stupid. He knew The Butcher could, and would, kill him, if he ever felt like it.

She was snapped back from memory lane and her cat lifted its pretty head when someone cooed at her; she was flattered by the words and soothed by the tone. Of course it had to be the damn Alpha she wanted to jump.

Rygan.

Rygan Wayland. She’d googled him the minute she’d been alone after her brother had given her his name.

Second son of the Ruler of all feline shifters in the US, Rygan had formed his own pride after his current Head Enforcer, Coveney, had been wrongfully accused of raping some important guy’s daughter. Rye probably hadn’t wanted the man to become a loner - a hated loner, at that. Coveney had been a close friend of his, and, going against most of his pride and all his family, Rye supported him. He was followed by another few of his friends, Ian, Ola, an apprentice healer, and Christine, a submissive. Ace wasn’t sure how or when the others had joined, but she knew Daunte had turned eighteen a couple of years after the whole drama; he immediately asked to be transferred to Rye’s pride.

About six years ago, the woman who’d started the whole mess had come forward to retract her accusation, but, by then, the Wyvern Pride had been fully formed and completely independent.

Rygan wasn’t all heart and flowers. His lineage, and the size of his pride, made him a prime target for any idiot wanting to make a name for himself by killing a werecat prince, so he’d been attacked numerous times, and, each time, he and his small pride had left dozens of corpses - wolves, hyenas, crows - anything that had come at them. The Vergas pack was a different kind of enemy, though - they were large, resourceful, and determined. Worse yet: they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing, and that made them dangerous.

Still, Ace thought the pride had a good chance of making it. Honestly, when she’d first learned about the small pride Daunte had joined, she’d assumed that they survived attacks thanks to her brother, but now she wasn’t so sure. Rye looked like he’d enjoy a bloodbath almost as much as the next psycho.

He was broad, tall, lean but muscular, and his dark gray eyes could be cold, when he wasn’t cooing and calling her “pretty kitty.”

And what did her damn slutty pussy do? It jumped down and rubbed against his leg.

Rygan scratched its fur, making it purr like its life depended on it; then he actually scooped her cat up in his arms.

Now was the time to be a badass and scratch the heck out of him. Any minute. Aisling scowled at her cat, who stretched in his arms, baring its belly as if to say “Scratch me theeeeere.”

And the damn Alpha did.

She was infuriated. But, as she was also getting a tummy rub, she was infuriated while daydreaming of freaking rainbows and pink unicorns.

---

“Rye, are you going to take over from Coveney? He hasn’t eaten yet.”

The Alpha sighed, and gently dropped her down on the floor, telling her, “See you later, kitty cat. It appears I have some work to do,” with one last scratch between her ears.

He walked out of the house, which didn’t please her cat - the damn hussy pussy just followed him, softly, silently.

She found his clothes on the back door’s steps and felt a jolt of excitement at the prospect of meeting his cat.

Oh, no, no, no. No way, no how.

Rygan wasn’t an idiot, or a weirdo like her father, but there was no doubt in her mind that her damn cat was going to do its best to get mounted, which would be so fucking embarrassing she might die on the spot, so she started to force the shift, but, before her cat had relented, she found herself face to face with a goddamn sabertooth tiger.

She was pretty certain those things were supposed to be extinct. Was he wearing some kind of fake kitty fangs?

Aisling tilted her head, intrigued and cautious, but her cat didn’t give a damn. She wanted to plaaaaaay. The animal, which was comparatively tiny, had decided that the humongous beast in front of her was an appropriate playmate. Idiot.

However, as she was relatively confident her cat currently was more interested in playing hide and seek than getting fucked, she let it do its routine, trotting around and rubbing against the banisters.

You’re not afraid.

Her cat wasn’t, but Aisling, however, was freaked out. Big time.

They weren’t part of the same pride, and they’d never exchanged blood, so she was not supposed to hear Rygan in her damn head! But she let it slide, preventing herself from responding. If she did, he’d know she was a shifter.

Aisling had one advantage over others of her kind: there was more animal than human in her, which meant that when she did shift into her animal form, her human scent was almost negligible. Shifters who didn’t know better never realized she was one of them in that form. That had been a tremendous help, back when she’d been a bounty hunter.

The tiger in front of her lowered his head, back end lifted, and pounced at her - delighted, her stupid cat ran around, and Aisling must have been totally stupid, too, because she was smiling like a crazy person. Having fun. It had been a while since she’d played with a cat - Daunte visited, but they rarely shifted.

Regretfully, Rygan’s tiger stopped after a while and slowly walked towards the border of her territory, where they met another tiger - a normal one, this time. No weird fangs.

Aisling didn’t hear their mental conversation, which was a relief; although it didn’t explain how she’d heard Rygan in the first place. They conversed while her cat stayed close by, cleaning its claws. Coveney - she recognized his scent - asked about her, she could feel it. He seemed open to play, too, because that was what cats did, when they didn’t fuck, or sleep - but her cat just looked at him with utter contempt.

Her cat was such an ass. Aisling was silently laughing and shaking her head. But what could she say? The girl had standards.