Crackles Fish Market, near Green Cove Springs

The warehouse stank of fish and bad decisions.

Rhiannon Charles didn't have time to notice much beyond peeling paint on walls and giant tubs of ice before somebody shoved her. She stumbled and caught herself before she fell to the concrete, but she still didn't start fighting them until they turned a corner and she saw the cage. Then she stopped walking and started shaking her head.

No, no, no, no.

"Move,” the one she didn't know—dead eyes, deep brown skin, mahogany brown hair, shaped like a barrel--growled. "We don't have time for this.”

"No freaking way,” she said, whipping her head around, looking for a way out. Any way out, even though she knew their preternatural speed beat her pair of worn Keds, so running was a nonstarter. There wasn't much point in trying to fight off wolf shifters, anyway; they were far stronger than mere humans like herself, as they constantly, tediously, unceasingly liked to tell her. Even those who shifted into smaller creatures—birds or foxes or any of the smaller cats, like lynx or puma—carried superhuman strength in their human forms.

"You agreed to this,” Yardley growled, tightening his grip on her arm. Yardley--six feet tall and maybe three feet across, pasty white skin and horrifically bad breath--was a burly bear—literally—of a man. He was covered with thick, curly hair (even on his ass, or so his girlfriend had confided in a case of TMI) and had small, black, mean-looking eyes. "Remember what's at stake.”

She laughed wildly, almost hysterically, and he glared down at her.

Remember what's at stake.

As if she could ever forget. The thought of her precious daughter was the only thing keeping her sane right now. Stevie was only four years old and didn't know what was happening or why Mommy had to go "do some work for Uncle Yardley” instead of reading bedtime stories. Rhi gulped down a sob. At least Viola was at Rhi's apartment with Stevie. Viola was her one friend; the bond made almost against Rhi's wishes and certainly against her better judgment. But Viola had also watched and made no attempt to stop the shifters from taking Rhi away from her daughter.

Friendship was just another avenue of betrayal, and the closer the relationship, the deeper the hurt. Rhi had learned that lesson in such a hard, hard way.

But she was glad to have Viola now, or she would have been forced to trust one of the shifters with Stevie. She would have tried her best to kill them all before she'd have let that happen, and probably died in the attempt. Common sense didn't often win the battle against the ferocity of the mother instinct, though, so this was better.

Or so she tried to tell herself.

Except…the cage.

It was shining silver steel. Tiny blue sparks snapped and crackled in the far-left top corner. Electrified, then.

She froze. "What the actual hell? I said I'd help you; well, actually, you threatened my child, which forced me to help you, but nobody said anything about an electrified cage!”

Rhi was about a quarter-inch away from panic, and the roaring in her ears was the sound of her heart racing and her lungs serving notice that hyperventilation was next up on the evening's menu of horrors. "No. No, hell no, a thousand times no.”

"Now,” Yardley ordered, and he half-dragged, half-carried her to the cage and tossed her in. "You don't get a choice. Stay there. Your company will be here soon. Come on, Plusick. We need to go pick up the delivery.”

He snapped a heavy padlock into place, and they turned to go.

Rhiannon shouted at their backs as they left, but she might as well have been shouting at the fish. They never even looked back once. Still, she couldn't give up the...thought? Hope? Useless wish? that somebody might be around to hear her, so she kept shouting long after they left her alone in the cage. When her voice started to give out, she forced herself to think rationally and plot her escape.

That's how she'd managed to get away from Seattle, after all. Logic. Calm, logical planning, a small stash of emergency cash, and a jar of the peanut butter she'd craved so much during the early days of her pregnancy.

The corner of the cage was still sparking, so she stayed far away from the bars as she did a complete three-sixty turn and surveyed her surroundings for any possible help. The cage itself was a no-go. Steel bars were set deep into the concrete floor, and the bars would probably fry her eyeballs if she touched them. The battered warehouse still functioned as a working shop, clearly, though it was empty now. Late at night on a Wednesday, that made sense. After all, how many hours a day could you sell fish? Even on the east coast of Florida?

No convenient guns, knives, or baseball bats lying nearby. They'd taken the small backpack she used as a purse, which held her Swiss Army knife and her cell phone.

Viola! Maybe her friend was calling for help even now?

The brief flare of hope died a painful death. Viola was part of the shifter pack. She wouldn't—couldn't—disobey pack orders. Even for Rhi and Stevie, no matter how much V claimed to love them.

She heard conversation coming toward her and looked up to see Yardley and Plusick coming back, but this time they were carrying a man.

She moved closer to the cage door, trying to ignore her concern for the fate of the man they were carrying. It was easy to ignore uncomfortable twinges of conscience when the stakes were so high: Situational ethics at its finest.

She was disgusted with herself, but it wasn't going to change what she had to do. Stevie was all that mattered—all that could matter.

"Okay, you got him. Now let me out.”

Yardley laughed. "Not a chance. Now is when you earn your pay, so to speak. You need to find out who this Atlantean is working with and what their plans are. We don't have room for screw-ups with the H Prime job.”

"He's from Atlantis?”

"He's lucky he's alive, is what he is. The son of a bitch killed six of ours,” Yardley snarled. "Once we find out what he knows, he's a dead man."

Plusick unlocked the cage and they tossed the man in. He hit the floor hard, his head bouncing off the concrete with the boneless motion of someone who was well and truly out.

Or dead.

Hysteria climbed up the back of Rhi's throat. No way was she staying inside the cage with a dead body. She rushed the door, but Yardley pushed her back and closed and locked the cage.

"When he wakes up, find out everything he knows. Or else you're going to be in there a long time,” Plusick said, smirking.

A wave of fiery rage blasted through Rhi with a force that shook her body, and she screamed out her frustration and fury.

They laughed at her. They laughed.

"When I get out of this cage, I'm going to find a way to hurt you for this. Hurt both of you.”

And get the hell out of northeast Florida and try to find someplace—anyplace—in the world where there was no local shifter pack to take any interest in her daughter.

"Scream all you want. Nobody can hear you but the fish,” Yardley taunted.

The two men gave her one last, long smirk and then left the room. Rhi scrubbed angrily at her face to wipe away the tears she hadn't realized she was crying and then turned to look at the... Atlantean, so she could see if he was even alive or not.

Dead men couldn't tell her anything, after all.

Her first impression: He was covered with far too much blood to be alive.

Her second impression: He was huge.

If he survived, and he woke up, she'd be stuck in a cage with a very large, muscular, wounded, and almost certainly enraged man who looked like he was a bad-ass soldier. She studied his face, and her eyes slowly widened.

Correction: a stunningly gorgeous badass soldier. Damn, but those cheekbones were amazing. And he was built like an action hero crossed with an orgasm. He had to be half a foot taller than her five six, and most of that was pure muscle.

And why was she noticing his looks, when he was going to wake up any minute and kill her? When did she turn into a stupid bimbo in a B movie?

He groaned and rolled over onto his side, and terror seized her throat again. When he woke up, he was going to be massively pissed off.

And she was trapped in a cage with him.

She ran toward the front of the cage again and shouted for Yardley, but neither he nor his thug friend Plusick came back. She was on her own, in an electric cage, with a man who very well might be a killer. He groaned again, and the sound shattered her attempt at rational thinking.

There was no way out.

She was going to die.

Stevie would be left without a mother.

She was—

The man opened his startling gray eyes and his gaze snapped instantly to her.

He started to scowl.

She started to scream.