When Jack re-entered the living room, he found Ellie sitting on the sofa staring out of the large window which faced the woods. Birds flitted about feeding stations. The bright flash of a cardinal caught his eye, followed by the brilliant yellow-and-black of swooping goldfinches, and he was momentarily captivated by the sheer number and variety of birds circling the small yard.

In his absence, Ellie had explored the contents of the backpack, which now sat open on the floor beside the couch. She’d exchanged the oversized shirt she’d been wearing for a deep red tank top. It was pointless to scold her now for grabbing clothes on their way out of a burning house the night before. Truth be told, it spoke of a resourcefulness under pressure which he admired.

A woman like that could be a great asset in our line of work.

Sure, he reminded his inner leopard. That is, if she didn’t happen to be a princess, and he wasn’t supposed to take her back to her kingdom to be officially crowned. To marry someone else.

He somehow doubted tank tops fell into the category of approved daywear for princesses. No matter. The contrast of the scarlet top with her black hair was striking, even with the clashing pink streak. Red was definitely her color.

Not to mention that the top showed off the muscles in her arms. Or that the tight fabric of the top accentuated her impressive cleavage. Between the cut of the tank top and how her jeans hugged every curve of her body, he could think of better ways to spend the day than at a sort of family reunion.

“Where’s my mom?”

“Getting dressed. Did you call your boss?”

“No.” As much as it hurt to think one of his team—one of his clan—might have betrayed them, he couldn’t dwell on that just now. His inner leopard bared its teeth at the thought of someone hurting Ellie. He had to keep her safe, no matter what. Even if that meant a complete split with his adoptive clan. “I called your grandfather.”

“You have his number?” Ellie sounded eerily calm. Didn’t she know she was in the eye of the hurricane, and the storm front was about to roll in?

“Yes.” His response was clipped; he hadn’t enjoyed the conversation he’d had with the Seiger. While de Winter had been thrilled his granddaughter Ariel had been found, he was unhappy she was being threatened, and Jack had been forced to get creative as to why he couldn’t involve his agency in her continued protection. He wasn’t sure de Winter had bought it, but that didn’t matter. What counted was that de Winter was on his way, and soon, Ellie would be completely safe. “I told him you refused to go to Coreldon without meeting him first. That’s more or less true. He’s coming to get you himself.”

“When will he arrive?” Ellie didn’t look at him but continued to gaze out at the tranquil view.

Her stillness was unnerving. He expected—he wasn’t sure what he expected—but this cool, almost serene version of Ellie wasn’t it.

“Tomorrow afternoon.” Too soon in Jack’s book, and yet not soon enough. He just had to keep her from harm until then. Which shouldn’t be that hard, as long as Seth stayed out hunting. No one would think to look for them here at the compound. Even Jack’s clan had no idea where he’d grown up or how to get in touch with his mother.

“He’s in the country then?” Ellie looked up at him then. There was a flash of something in those gold eyes. Anger, perhaps. He couldn’t really blame her. Ever since he entered her life, it had been turned completely upside down.

Not just her life. Mine too.

“I don’t know for sure. I was given a secure number to call as soon as I found you.” He should have called last night, damn it. Before they’d… gotten involved. Things had happened so quickly, but still, that was no excuse. Ryker would be justified in firing his ass over the way he’d handled this case so far—assuming Redclaw Security was still his pack when this was over.

“How do you know I’m really his granddaughter?” The mocking tone in Ellie’s voice was painful to hear. “Surely, he’s going to ask for proof.”

“I already told you—”

“I know. I know. The streak in my hair and my voice. But you’re assuming I’m the legitimate heir. I might not be, you know.”

For a brief moment hope flared. Realizing the unlikelihood of her statement was much like being shot last night. A moment of stunned shock before the flare of pain.

“I know you are.” Jack ran a hand through his hair and cursed under his breath. “We’ve been through this already. Jeezus, Ellie. Any shifter who’s half-awake can see you’re something special. Even my mom noticed, the moment you spoke.” Now that Ellie wasn’t wearing the necklace that is. Jack wondered if she still had it on her.

“Noticed what?” His mom spoke from the entrance of the living room, dressed in a pale yellow cotton shirt, blue jeans, and battered cowboy boots. Jack felt a moment of pride mixed with sorrow that his mother looked great for her age, but that so much time had passed without him being there.

“That Ellie here is a shifter.” Jack said lamely, uncomfortable with the glowing expression on his mother’s face.

“A special shifter.” The sarcasm in Ellie’s voice cut deep.

Damn it, he was doing his best here to get her back where she belonged. Why was Ellie fighting him so hard?

Because she knows she belongs with us.

His leopard had become decidedly opinionated in the last few days. Hard to believe that prior to meeting Ellie, he’d gone weeks without hearing his leopard speak.

“Well,” his mother began brightly. “Looks like we’ve got some time before Ellie has to leave. Might as well introduce her around.”

“I don’t see any call for that, Mama. It’s not like we’re going to be here all that long.”

Ellie, however, stood and patted her hair. Satisfied it was still neatly confined, she spoke. “I think that’s a marvelous idea, Helena. I’d love to meet everyone.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jack hissed at her when she passed him on her way toward the door.

“Meeting the neighbors. You have a better way to spend the time until my grandfather arrives?” She tossed her head, flipping the pink streak out of her eyes.

“You’re mad at me.” He frowned heavily, trying to determine what he’d done wrong.

“You think?” The glance she shot him boiled with a fierce anger before she joined his mother at the door. It had been simmering below the surface before, unrecognized until erupting now in a single short blast as she passed him.

“What did I do?” he complained as he followed them out onto the porch. Neither of the women bothered to respond.

It was cooler up in the mountains than in town, and though a shaded glance at the sun told him it would warm up soon enough, there was a hint of autumn in the air. For the first time, he could see the early changes of color in the leaves, a glimmer of red and gold that spoke of the season to come. His leopard stirred deep within him, smelling the fresh scent of deer ramping up for the rutting season. What he wouldn’t give to go out on a hunt, just like he’d done when he was a boy right up until the time he’d been forced to leave. It had been years since he’d run in leopard form in the forest.

He hunted a different kind of prey these days. Perhaps it didn’t satisfy his leopard self nearly as much as the thrill of an actual chase, but it would have to do.

“What is that fantastic smell?” Ellie lifted her head and sniffed the air blissfully as she leaned on her hands on the porch railing.

It wasn’t fair that she looked so fabulous, or that she herself smelled so good. The morning breeze wafted her scent back toward them, and he could pick out the delicate smell of her peaches and ginger perfume, as well as something that marked her as ‘Ellie’, a scent he would know anywhere, could track anywhere, be it in on a crowded street or an isolated forest. His cock strained at his fly when her fragrance struck him. God, he wanted her. Right now. He wanted nothing more than to take her down to the lake, to watch her strip bare and stride into the water. She would laugh and squeal as the cold water lapped her skin, and he would be there to warm her up, entering her under the shelter of the rippling lake. She would cling to him as he took her, claimed her, not just for a single night, but forever. He could feel her nails raking his back, the heat of her enveloping his dick as he rutted inside her. He glanced quickly at his mother, heat rising in his cheeks at his thoughts.

Good thing I’m not shifted or she’d know what I was thinking.

The look his mother shot him said she could read his mind regardless, and he felt his face burn. She answered Ellie’s question about the perfume wafting through the trees without acknowledging him further. “That must be Jessie Oldacre’s place. She’s two cabins down, and this is her soap making day.” His mom smiled at her before tucking Ellie’s arm in her own. She led the way down the stairs toward the other cabins, pointing out various things of interest and talking all the while.

Ellie seemed fascinated by her every word. Together they went around to the neighbors to say hello. Jack hung back, a bit embarrassed by the pleasure with which his old community greeted him. His mother radiated obvious pride as her neighbors exclaimed over how much Jack had changed, and yet how they would still know him anywhere.

Ellie waxed enthusiastic as each member of the community showed off their particular talent in turn. John Turner, a beaver shifter, had the only mud brick building in the compound. Sometime in Jack’s absence, he’d created a kiln out of clay, using high iron clay and ashes as natural glazes on his stoneware, as well as some commercial glazes purchased online. Ugly as his house was, his pottery was not only beautiful, but useful too. Almost everyone in the compound had at least one of his pots. Gus Miller came outside to show off his handmade dulcimers and fiddles with justifiable pride, and after listening to him play a lively tune, Ellie assured him she knew musicians that would clamor for his instruments. Hummingbird shifter Lucinda Waters owned the cabin festooned with stunning sun catchers she’d made herself, which caught the light as well as the eye. Billy Bob Caulder, who’d already been a fixture when Jack was a boy, still created magic with his whittling knife and a chunk of wood. He was another beaver shifter, who preened and puffed out his chest at Ellie’s admiration of his work. He presented her with breathtaking dragonfly carved from a stick, which looked so lifelike, Jack almost expected it to fly off.

Ellie almost didn’t accept it.

“This is too generous,” she exclaimed, when Billy Bob refused to take any money for the exquisite carving. “I should pay you for this.” She turned to Jack’s mother. “All of this is simply amazing, you know that, right?” She indicated the compound with a sweep of her hand. “With all these lovely crafts, as well as the honeybee colonies, the instrument-maker, and the ladies who weave on the loom—you have a real artist’s community here. You should be selling your works.”

Billy Bob exchanged a guarded look with Jack’s mom.

“Oh we do, honey,” she said calmly. “We go into town to the farmer’s market once a month and sell some things there.”

“You need a website.” Ellie was adamant. “You have so much to offer here. If everyone put their products up on the same site, you could draw a huge market for your wares.”

His mother laughed. “Even if we could get a signal up here, which I doubt, how would we pay for it?”

“It would pay for itself.” Ellie frowned. She looked around, as though assessing the compound again for its presentation and offerings.

Jack also glanced around the community in which he’d grown up. Ellie might find it an endless source of picturesque dwellings and old-timey crafts, but he saw it for what it really was: a hard-scrabble existence to make ends meet without a steady income. Neat and clean though most of the cabins might be, they were patched and cobbled together from the available wood around them. The only visible truck was at least thirty years old, and sported more rust than paint. It was probably just as well it was a community of shifters, who had learned to live without the luxuries of modern living and could feed themselves off the land if necessary.

“I should have been here.”

Jack had only muttered the words to himself, but his mother’s sharp hearing picked them up.

“Nothing you could have done.” His mother’s voice was pitched for his ears alone. “Except maybe get yourself hurt, or worse. It hasn’t been all bad. Most of the time, Seth leaves us alone, and we get by.”

“Barely.”

As if to prove his point, Missy Belcher, a raven shifter, came walking up with a trash bag over one shoulder.

“Good pickings?” Billy Bob asked as she went past them toward her cabin.

The bag rattled as it shifted on her shoulder. “Not too bad.” Missy shrugged, then swung the bag down and gave it a good shake. “Add this to what I’ve collected so far, and I’ll have enough for a tank of gas.” When she smiled at them, she was missing a front tooth. “Aluminum’s up to forty cents a pound right now and Lord knows, there’s plenty of beer cans around here. I also found some copper pipe, and that’s at least a buck eighty-seven. Weighs more, too.” She nodded and continued on to her home.

Jack’s mother broke the heavy silence that fell when Missy left. “Most of us grow our own vegetables. Mac Thompson keeps chickens, and trades us for eggs when he doesn’t take them to market. Many of us worked in the coal mine when it was open, even though working underground was poison to most of us, especially the bird shifters. When it closed, hard times fell. Most of the mills have shut down. They sent their business overseas. Not many jobs around here now.”

“What about the logging? Jack said something about cutting trees?” Ellie looked around, as though she might see a mill somewhere.

Helena shot her son a guarded glance. “I’m afraid the land we had rights to has been clear-cut.”

“What?” Jack exploded. “Properly managed, that land should have provided trees for years to come.”

Helena shrugged, deliberately unconcerned. “A decision was made to clear the property for the profits it could bring in now.”

Billy Bob puffed hard on his pipe in the face of Jack’s obvious anger, and gave him an unreadable look Guilt at not being there to prevent Seth’s gross mismanagement of the clan’s resources twisted at Jack’s gut. Where had the money gone? Certainly not back into the clan’s funds. Not by the look of things. More than likely, it had gone straight to Seth and his buddies in the form of drugs, alcohol, or a new bass boat, for all Jack knew.

“I’m sure there was a good reason to clear-cut the land like that.” Ellie rushed in with soothing words, as though from long practice. “But if you sold your wares online, you’d have a much bigger market and a steady source of income.”

Billy Bob snorted. “Takes money to make money. Just how do you think we’d ship our crafts? I don’t see UPS coming all the way up here.” With a sudden change of topic, Billy Bob turned on Jack. “Not that anything will change as long as Seth’s in charge. Or are you here to challenge him at last?”

Jack raised his hands, palms up, forcing his resentment at Seth’s leadership failures back underground where it belonged. “Whoa now. I’m just visiting my mom. Scout’s honor.”

“More’s the pity,” Billy Bob grumbled.

“Best not let Seth hear you say that.” His mother turned away from Billy Bob to gaze coolly at Jack. “Come along now. We still have people to meet. I think a little cookout is in order this afternoon, don’t you? We should go invite everyone.”

A cookout. Right. Why not? His murderous uncle might be back any minute now, and there were assassins after him and the woman who was Not His Mate, but hey—a cookout sounded fun. He couldn’t wait. He fell in behind Ellie and his mother and let them lead the way.