The music pounded up Ryenne’s legs and pulsed uncomfortably in her stomach.

Gavin, her best friend, grinned and showed off his perfect, white teeth. “Come on, Ryenne, loosen up.”

She took another sip of her beer and turned a bored face toward him. “This place isn’t for relaxing,” she shouted over the music. “It’s torture.”

Gavin smirked and stared out over the writhing crowd on the dance floor, the bodies made grotesque under the flashing neon lights.

Next to him at the bar, several women stared at Gavin. One bit her lip, smearing her gloss.

Ryenne rolled her eyes. Women always stared at Gavin. He looked like he’d walked off the pages of a magazine. But they could stare or throw themselves or prance half naked all they wanted. His eyes were on a slim guy on the fringe of the dance floor.

She watched the guy until a couple on the far side of the dance floor caught her eye. The young woman looked enthralled by the tall, dark man at her side. He gave off a dangerous vibe and Ryenne’s inner radar, honed by years of experience hunting predators, immediately pinged.

“What’s wrong?” Gavin asked, perfect eyebrows drawing down over his blue eyes.

Instead of answering, she pushed off the bar and started to follow the path of the couple on the other side of the club.

“It’s your night off,” Gavin said.

“Rogue shifters don’t take a night off.”

The couple went out an emergency exit door, the man throwing a glance over his shoulder.

Ryenne’s gaze narrowed on the door as it closed, faintly lit by the emergency exit sign above it, and she strode across the club, heedless of everything and everyone in her path.

“Hey,” a girl squealed when Ryenne knocked into her elbow.

Ryenne kept walking, throwing her long, blond hair over her shoulder.

“Watch where you’re going,” a guy shouted into her face. He looked like he survived on steroids.

Without breaking her stride, Ryenne glared at him and elbowed his solar plexus. He went down with an oof of expelled air, and she reached the emergency exit door without further incident.

Outside, the alley was dark and quiet. Cars whooshed past on Houston Street, the occasional honk or squealing brakes or shouts and laughs the only sounds. One measly light over the club’s door kept the alley from total blackness.

The dark-haired man had the woman pinned against the stone wall of the club, to the right of the door, his arm against her throat. He towered over her.

“Step away from her,” Ryenne said.

He glanced at Ryenne and back to the woman against the wall. She had red hair cut in a severe chin-length bob and brown eyes shining with the light over the club’s rear door. She stared at him as if in a trance.

“For your own safety,” Ryenne said, “step away from the woman.”

“My own safety?” he said. “Mind your own business and run along, Barbie.”

Ryenne pursed her lips. She was used to being judged by her looks, but Barbie was just unfair. There was nothing fake about her. “Tempting. Asshole.” She turned to the woman and tilted her head. “I warned him.”

Claws erupted from the woman’s fingers and the man jumped back in alarm.

“Don’t do it, Tess,” Ryenne said. “If you kill him, I kill you. If you turn him into a shifter, I’ll have to kill you both.”

Tess reached her hand toward the man, index finger extended, one corner of her mouth quirked up. She cocked her head to the side and licked her lips. Her finger touched his cheek and he gasped and ran away.

Laughing, Tess faced Ryenne, pouted, and licked the claw that had slowly scraped down the guy’s cheek. “Why must you always ruin my fun?”

“Because murder is illegal.” Ryenne slipped a stun gun into her right hand from its hiding place inside the sleeve of her leather jacket. It was one of her mother’s stunners, smaller than what the police used, easily hidden.

She stepped forward, legs apart, ready for a fight.

Tess kicked out, lightning fast, connecting with Ryenne’s right wrist and sending the stun gun flying. “I told Lord you weren’t so tough.”

Ryenne ignored the pain in her wrist and Tess’s cryptic comment. Instead, she shot forward, touching Tess’s shoulder with a second, smaller stun gun she’d hidden in her left hand. The victorious expression on Tess’s pixie-like face turned to shock. She crumpled to the ground, strands of red hair falling across her pale face.

Ryenne shoved the second stun gun back into a holster along her tight jeans, partially hidden by her leather jacket, and pushed her long blond hair out of her face.

Standing over the shifter’s body, Ryenne pondered whether or not to kill her as promised. She sighed and kicked Tess’s ankle with her boot. The shifter didn’t rouse. But red drops on Tess’s ankle, above the strap of her black spike heels, caught Ryenne’s eye.

“What the hell? I didn’t kick her that hard.”

“Talking to yourself again?” Gavin asked from the rear door.

Ryenne didn’t answer, instead crouching over Tess’s ankle. It was a tattoo. A fang dripping blood.

A strange feeling came over Ryenne. “Have you seen a tattoo like this before?”

Gavin crouched next to her and peered at the tat. “I don’t know. Maybe. It seems familiar. Why?”

She sighed and stood. “I don’t know either.”

“What are you going to do about her?”

Ryenne glanced at the unconscious woman and pulled cuffs from her back pocket. She cuffed Tess’s hands behind her back and around a drainpipe. “Call Scotty at the precinct and have him pick her up. The detective owes us a favor, but she’s a police problem now anyway.”

Gavin nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“Thanks, Gav. Enjoy the rest of your night. I’m going home for a relaxing bath. The hormones swirling around this club are intense.” She shuddered.