Ryenne was torn about dinner with her mother. She and Mom had a great relationship and Ryenne had missed her while she was in Paris, but she would now have to give her mother the worst news either one of them had experienced since the loss of her brother and father. And there was a secondary piece of bad news—that her dad might be alive, had lied to them for fifteen years, and might work for the Fangs.

She didn’t even know where to start. How did a person tell any loved one they were now a wolf? A beast ruled by their urges.

Mom greeted them at the door of her Upper East Side brownstone.

“It’s so good to see you,” her mother said, throwing her thin arms around Ryenne.

“Hi, Willow.” Gavin gave her the special smile he reserved only for her.

“Gavin.” She threw her arms around him as well. “Come in, dinner is almost ready. Let me pour you each a glass of wine.”

Alcohol. Something Ryenne hadn’t considered. She hadn’t had any since she’d been turned. She didn’t know if alcohol would affect her differently now, lower her inhibitions and make it harder to keep control of herself.

Well, she’d have to tell her mom eventually she was a shifter, and this was as safe a place as any to test out if wine would have a negative effect on her. Gavin was pretty strong. And even though she had attacked Gavin when she shifted for the first time, she no longer craved people she knew and liked as a human. So, her mom should be safe since there was nobody in this world Ryenne liked more than her mom.

She sipped the wine carefully and didn’t immediately feel any different. Maybe alcohol wouldn’t bother her at all. Maybe shifters metabolized it differently than humans.

During a dinner of spinach lasagna—what Ryenne would have given for a bloody steak—Ryenne filled her mother in on the trip to France, keeping back some of the more dangerous and important details from the final battle with the French Fangs.

When she’d finished, Mom nodded and wiped her mouth on a cloth napkin. “Hmm, yes, that reminds me. Pascal and I have isolated all of the ingredients of the thick substance he sent me from Lucien’s stab wound.”

Pascal, a pharmacist, was Lucien’s brother-in-law. Although not a shifter, his help during the final battle had been invaluable. “That’s wonderful news. Can you recreate it?” Ryenne asked.

“I haven’t tried, but Pascal has been experimenting with it in his home laboratory. I’m sure he’s close.”

Ryenne nodded. Maybe Lucien would bring some with him. Or at least Pascal’s formula.

Later, during dessert, Ryenne reached deep inside herself for a modicum of courage. “Speaking of formulas, we need more of your vaccine.”

“Of course, darling.”

“As much as you can spare.”

Her mother put her fork down next to the half-eaten flourless chocolate cake—Ryenne’s favorite—and gave Ryenne her full attention. But Ryenne had turned to Gavin. “Every day, Gav. You have to take it every day because you just never know.”

She felt the burning of tears pricking her eyes. At least she could still feel normal human emotions. A small thing to be grateful for in the middle of this nightmare. But, more than anything, she didn’t want what had happened to her to happen to her best friend.

Gavin nodded, the last bite of his cake forgotten.

“What’s going on?” her mother asked.

“I—I just want him to be prepared,” Ryenne said. “In our business, we just never know.”

Her mom shook her head. “No. There’s more. Out with it.”

This was it. The moment she had dreaded since boarding the plane in Paris two days ago. Ryenne swallowed past the uncharacteristic lump of fear in her throat and met her mother’s cool gaze. “I was turned.” The tears gathering behind her eyes began to drip. “I’m a shifter.” The words came out in a strangled whisper and her lower lip trembled with the effort of trying not to cry.

Her mother pushed away from the table and was at Ryenne’s side in a flash. Strong, thin arms wrapped around her and Ryenne gave in to the comfort of being enveloped by her mother. Sobs wracked Ryenne’s body.

“Oh, my darling girl,” her mother said, smoothing her hair as she caressed Ryenne’s head. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. But it will be okay. I’ll help you get through it in any way I can.”

Days of fear, confusion, and disgust came out with the tears. Her mother was the last person she wanted to know about this because she and her mother had worked against rogue shifters every year since rogues had killed her brother and father. With that last thought, she sat up suddenly and wiped her eyes.

“There’s more,” she said.

Her mother’s brow furrowed.

“After I was turned, the man responsible for the Fangs in Paris told me Dad will be proud of me.”

Mom’s eyes narrowed. “Will be?”

Ryenne nodded her head vigorously. “Exactly. Will be. Not would have been. As if he were still alive. And if he’s alive, Mom, then he’s one of them.”

“No.” Her mom rose and walked to a painting on the wall. It was a landscape of the woods behind their old house, from before everything went wrong and they moved to the city. Her mother stood in front of it, staring into the reds and golds of the fall foliage scene. “Why would he join the very people who killed our son?”

“Then how else do we explain the French Fangs knowing who he is and claiming he’d be proud of me for being a shifter?”

Her mother crossed her arms and continued shaking her head.

“He said something else, Mom.”

Her mom didn’t turn to face her.

“They want you. They have some plan that involves you or your work. I don’t know what, exactly.”

Now her mother spun around to face her, horror etched into the lines of her face. “Me? What could they want with me?”

“I don’t know.” Ryenne remembered the conversation earlier with Scotty and Nick. Their case of shifter on shifter violence where the victim had sap in the wound. Maybe the Fangs were developing an anti-healing gunk to make other shifters vulnerable, to make it easier to kill them. Or as a torture method.

She didn’t know how much of this she should tell her mom. Maybe the Fangs needed Mom to perfect the formula or to figure out the best way to mass produce the gunk. This would be a formidable weapon in Fang hands and Ryenne realized she couldn’t let it happen. She looked into her mother’s cool blue eyes, so much like her own. She couldn’t let them get her mother.

Ryenne wrapped her arms around her mom. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, Mom, I promise.” She could feel her mother nodding against her shoulder. Ever since Ryenne had grown taller than her mom, she had felt an overwhelming need to protect her mother. It had been just the two of them now for so long.

She would not let the Fangs get her mom.

An odd feeling came over Ryenne. She sensed a shifter nearby. Sounds from the front stoop reached her along with the smell of shifter.

Letting go of her mother, she pulled her phone from her back pocket and tapped on the keyboard. She didn’t want to alarm her mother or give away to the shifter at the front door that she had heard him, so she texted Gavin.

RYENNE: Run upstairs, quietly, look out front and back windows.

Gavin looked a question at her but she put her finger to her lips and made a shooing motion.

“What’s going—?” her mother began.

“Nothing.” Ryenne shook her head.

Gavin ran upstairs.

RYENNE: Anyone outside?

GAVIN: Someone across the street. I can’t see the front door from here

RYENNE: Anyone at the back?

She heard the creaks of his footsteps as he went from her mother’s bedroom at the front to her old bedroom at the back. Her phone buzzed.

GAVIN: I can’t tell

Right, Ryenne thought. They were being watched. Probably by the Fangs. The Fangs wanted her mother. Well, they would have to go through Ryenne first.

RYENNE: Come down

He came down and looked a question at her. She gestured to his phone.

GAVIN: What’s going on?

RYENNE: Fangs watching Mom

GAVIN: Do they know you’re here?

She shrugged. If there was a shifter at the door and she could sense him, then he could sense her. She didn’t have enough experience in the shifter world yet to know what kind of animal was out there, but she knew it wasn’t a wolf.

A scuffling noise came from the front door, loud enough for even Gavin and Mom to hear.

“What’s going on?” her mom asked, her voice strident and annoyed.

Ryenne strode to the front door and pulled it open but no one was there. She listened past the usual night-time city noises of far-off sirens and car alarms, crying babies, too-loud televisions, and heard dragging noises but couldn’t see anyone.

She closed the door and faced her mother. “I thought I heard something but there’s nobody there. I was wrong. Hope I didn’t scare you.”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed but she didn’t say anything.

“You know, Mom, it’s getting kind of late. Do you mind if we sleep over?”

Mom’s eyebrows jumped toward her hairline. “You want to sleep over, rather than being in your own space? Now I know something is up.”

“This is the first time I’ve had alcohol since being turned, and the two glasses of wine have affected me more than usual, and I don’t want to make Gavin have to deal with me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself while we’re outside. So I think it’s safest for the residents of New York City for me to stay here.”

Her mother crossed her arms in front of her chest again. “Okay, darling, that’s fine.”

Ryenne could hear the disbelief in her mother’s tone but it didn’t matter. As long as Ryenne was here, no one would harm her mother.

No one.

***

The next morning, Ryenne woke in her old room, which had not changed much since she had moved out of it ten years ago. It was still very pink but with lots of black accents from those later teen years when she’d had enough of pink but her mom wouldn’t let her redo her room.

Mom had never wanted to believe how hardened Ryenne had become after Cody’s death and her father’s disappearance. Her mom thought for a long time that she would get her little girl back. The little girl who loved dance classes and gymnastics and everything pink. But it hadn’t happened. Instead, Ryenne had channeled her energies into martial arts and fighting and kicking shifter ass.

Ryenne had thought her mother had come to terms with it, but looking around her old room, she now had her doubts.

Her mother couldn’t possibly think Ryenne would go back to the way she used to be. To the little girl she was before Cody and Dad.

She shook her head to clear away the thoughts. Then she quickly showered and dressed, and followed the scent of coffee down the stairs.

“Good morning,” her mother said brightly. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” she lied. She didn’t want her mother to know she hadn’t slept much at all. Instead, she had sat against the pillows and the headboard, listening for the sounds beyond the brownstone, in an effort to protect her mother from shifters. When dawn had showed its first fingers of light in the sky, she had allowed herself to sleep.

Gavin smirked at her as if he knew the truth. But he wouldn’t tell. After years of Ryenne only having her mom, Gavin had come into their lives. Then it had been the three of them against the world. Now there was Lucien, too, and the whole Malraux clan. Ryenne’s heart expanded.

She poured herself a cup of coffee and brought it to the kitchen table in front of the windows. While Gavin and her mom talked about their favorite TV show, which involved fashion designers, Ryenne pulled out her phone and sent a quick email to Lucien, letting him know of the carnal pleasures that awaited him and asking when he was coming to New York.

During her long sleepless night, she had thought about how to track down her father and how to figure out if he really was alive. She hoped she would hear soon from Scotty, but in the meantime, she couldn’t just sit still and wait.

So, she’d prowl the neighborhood and keep her mother safe. It was all she could do. It was the most important thing she could do.