On Saturday at four p.m., Mir found herself sitting on a stool in the kitchen with her sister, who was busy preparing a batch of Alfredo sauce for that night’s dinner for some of the club members.

She hadn’t told Bry about her conversation with the shifters last night. Nothing about Barton’s lists, or about their promise to take the boss down. It would have stressed her out. Better to let her live her quiet basement life than to worry her needlessly over things that may never come to pass.

“You must get tempted now and then to spit in their food,” Mir said quietly, her gaze moving towards the door to make sure no one was listening.

“I’m tempted to put lighter fluid in it, truth be told. Not to mention arsenic and venomous snakes.”

Bry was standing in her usual position, angling herself away so that Mir could only see the right side of her face. The side that hadn’t been ravaged by searing liquid. From this angle she was so pretty, so delicate-looking, so innocent. She’d always had a perfect profile, ever since childhood. When they were younger, Mir had considered her the lovely one in the family, while she’d always claimed ugly duckling status for herself. Bry’s hair was strawberry blond, her skin freckled. She was a proper English beauty.

But the way she concealed her scars always broke Mir’s heart. It was as though her sister was afraid that she wouldn’t love her anymore if she saw them too often.

She wished she could convince Bry otherwise—that she could drill it into her beloved sibling’s head that she would always love her, no matter what. But even more than that, she wished she could rewind the clock to that horrible day and kill Bry’s assailant before he’d had a chance to hurt her sister.

The most crushing thing of all was the thought that Bry would never learn to like what she saw when she looked in the mirror. She’d never think she was worth anything.

It was so infuriating, so sodding pointless, all of it.

If she’d been a man she’d have worn her scars with pride.

Why women placed so much value in their looks had always baffled Mir; at least she liked to pretend it did. Deep down, she knew perfectly well why looks mattered. Girls were trained from birth to think that being good-looking was the most important asset for any female. They were taught to believe that an ugly woman would have a difficult life.

The saddest part was that it was true.

Not that Bry’s scars had ever made her look ugly; she could never be anything but the pretty girl Mir had always known. No, she was simply a little different.

Of course, if the recent war on shifters was any indication, different was enough to make people do horrible things. Different got shifters locked up without rights. Different got them killed.

The kitchen door swung open and Gunner, one of Barton’s men, walked in. He was large, though not nearly so big as Phair or Cad, and he wore a grey suit and tie, typical fare for Barton’s bodyguard-types.

“Boss wants you,” he grunted at Mir. “Right now.”

Fuck. Cad and Phair weren’t due to arrive for hours yet, so this couldn’t be good news. Barton hadn’t put the moves on Mir in days, not since the shifters had first walked into the club. If he wanted a quickie now, before they arrived…God, it was too awful to contemplate. But she’d have to bear it, just as she always did. It was the only way to protect Bry from the boss-man’s wrath.

The problem was, things felt different now that she belonged to someone. Two someones, in fact. To allow Barton to touch her would betray her own body, but it would also betray something inside herself—the realization that she was developing real feelings for the shifters.

Something had happened between the three of them. An unspoken, invisible bond had formed that had drawn them together in a way that she didn’t yet fully understand. She’d never seen them naked. Never done anything more than kiss them.

But it didn’t matter.

She was theirs, body and mind.

“Fine,” she said, “I’ll be right there.”

“I said now.” When Gunner growled the words, an impromptu fantasy flew through Mir’s mind of Phair and Cad tearing him limb from limb.

She grimaced at her sister, who returned the look before quickly turning back to her meal preparation. “I’ll see you later,” she blurted out.

Part of Mir wanted to walk fast, to get to Barton in mere seconds and deal with whatever unpleasantness he had planned for her as quickly as possible. But she found herself trudging along slowly, as if hoping that she could come up with a way to persuade him to just leave her alone. Maybe she could say she was having her period. But he’d know it not to be true. The bastard kept a log of her cycle, just as he did for every woman in the club.

Well, whatever this meeting was about, she could only hope it wouldn’t hurt too much.

“You wanted to see me?” she asked when she’d pushed open his office door. He was sitting behind his desk, staring at a monitor that reflected blue in his reading glasses.

“Yes,” he said, smiling. It was his attempt at a warm grin, but all it did was send chills threading down her spine.

“Come here, my pretty Miranda,” he said, the words all but sung. Someone was in a good mood today.

When she walked over to him he reached over and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her towards him. She glanced surreptitiously at the monitor on his desk, which displayed a series of names and other information: phone numbers, addresses. A jolt of adrenaline shot through Mir as she realized that it looked like the information the shifters were looking for.

“Do you know what this is, love?” he asked.

Trembling, she shook her head. “I don’t know. It looks like a list.” She didn’t want to look, though. Didn’t want to see her loved ones’ names in a database of potential victims.

“It is a list,” Barton said, smiling.

“A list of what?”

“Of the men out there who are under my command. The ones who will go out into this great land of ours and take down the shifter population, once and for all. The men who will protect people like you and me from their kind.”

So, he really did keep a detailed record of the bastards he hired.

Mir swallowed. She’d have to choose her next words carefully. If she betrayed to Barton how she felt about the shifters who’d been coming to see her in the evenings, things would not end well.

“Isn’t that illegal?” she asked casually. “I mean, can you really just send people out to kill shifters?”

“Not entirely illegal, actually,” Barton said. “Let’s just say that for the right price, one can get the higher-ups to look the other way. Human law enforcement isn’t so fond of shifters. Their kind is rather a nuisance, to put it mildly. Like large rats, tearing apart our house from the inside.”

“But…” Mir was about to speak, but stopped herself before she could say what she was really thinking.

But Barton seemed to read her thoughts. “Oh, don’t worry about your little friends,” he said. “For the right price, I can be bought, too—at least for a time. I’ll keep milking them for cash until it’s depleted, then we’ll see about their fates.”

With that he reached over and minimized the window on his computer. “Speaking of your friends, they’ve made a special request for tonight.” He turned to face her, still holding her by the waist. Still smiling like the pig that he was.

“What is it?” she asked, hoping he couldn’t feel her shaking under his touch.

“They want to take you out for a little night on the town.”

Out? Out of this place? If so, it would be the first time in months that she’d seen the world beyond the walls of the club. It would be heaven to escape, if only for a few hours.

She did her best to hide her excitement when she spoke. “Take me out? Where?” Better to look horrified—disgusted, even—at the idea than thrilled to escape this awful place.

Barton shrugged. “Who knows? Some dance club, I think. They’ll be by at seven, and I want you back by eleven. See to it that you make your curfew. You know what happens if you don’t.”

She nodded, hatred filling her soul as she looked into his lifeless eyes. “Yes. I know.”

“Good.” He turned her sideways and slapped her arse far too hard, sending a jolt of pain up her back. “Go find something sexy to wear. I want you looking good for the wealthy mutants. I plan to impoverish them as quickly as possible, then hurl them out into the street.”

Mir was glad she was turned away from him when he uttered those awful words. Don’t you dare call them mutants, she wanted to snarl. As if you’re the one who’s “normal.” As if you’re the one who’s human. They’re better people than you could ever dream of being.

She left the room silently and pulled the door shut behind her, torn to shreds inside.

Of course she was excited to see her men.

But she was also terrified of what might happen to their kind if Barton wasn’t stopped.

She knew now that she had no choice. She had to do everything she could to help them access the information on Barton’s computer. She needed to save them, as much as she needed to save herself and Bry.