“Samantha? Sammie? Are you all right?” Keller patted her cheeks anxiously and cursed himself for being a brute.

She’s tiny and you’re huge, he told himself angrily. You overloaded her . . . hurt her. What the fuck is wrong with you?

He should have been more careful with her—more gentle. But the way she’d been begging him to breed her had made him crazy. At least she’d finally come to the realization that they needed each other, Keller thought, still patting her cheeks. The breeding fever had done that much for her. Now if only she would wake up and be all right, they could start their life together.

“Please, baby,” he murmured, stroking her face. “Please be all right. I love you.”

It was the first time he had spoken the words aloud to any woman in years, and he felt a knife of emotion go through him as they passed his lips. God, how he loved her! And now she was his—his forever. He just wanted her to be well.

Keller didn’t know if it was his words or his touch, but to his intense relief, Samantha’s eyes finally fluttered open.

“What . . . who . . . ?” She focused on him and frowned. “Keller? I had the weirdest dream. That you and I . . .” She trailed off as she looked down at herself, at the copious amount of seed still leaking from between her thighs. “Oh my God,” she whispered, and her expression changed from confusion to horror. “Oh my God, it wasn’t a dream!”

“No, it wasn’t.” Keller said. This was hardly the reaction he had hoped for. Still, maybe she was just disoriented. “It was real, sweetheart,” he told her gently. “Everything that happened between us was real.”

“I . . . but this . . .” Samantha sat up and raked a hand through her hair. “This is terrible.”

“Why is it terrible?” Keller asked softly. Then he added, through their newly forged life-bond, “Why should you be upset that we finally came together, baby?”

“What the—” Samantha put a hand to her temple and looked at him with wide eyes. “Did you just . . . am I going crazy or did you just speak inside my head?”

“You’re not crazy,” Keller hastened to assure her. “Mental communication is something that many life-bonded mates share in the Shifter world. It usually only happens with the closest bonds though. I told you we were meant to be together.”

“But . . . but I . . .” Samantha was looking at him with clearly mounting anxiety.

“Sammie, it’s okay.” He took her in his arms, wanting to make it better, wanting to calm her down. “We’re right together—don’t you see?” he said. “The life-bond just proves it. And when the baby comes—”

“Baby?” She pushed away from him, leaving the circle of his arms.

“Yes, baby,” Keller said dryly. “What do you think the point of what we just did was, Samantha?”

“My God . . . because Rejuvenation induces a state of hyperfertility,” she whispered.

“Exactly,” Keller said. “Which means if you’re not pregnant yet, you will be soon.” He reached out to stroke her cheek. “Your body will keep craving mine until you have my baby planted firmly inside you,” he sent through their bond. “You might have him or her already growing in your womb. A new life that’s half of both of us.”

“Stop that! Stop talking inside my head—you make me feel like I’m going crazy!” she exclaimed. “I can’t do this, Keller.”

“Can’t do what?” He frowned.

“I can’t do any of this.” She waved a hand as though to indicate their whole situation. “I can’t have you inside my head, and I can’t marry you or mate you or whatever and settle down to have your babies. That’s not me—that’s not my life!”

“But that was exactly what you said you wanted—you begged me to breed you,” he pointed out.

“Because the breeding fever was on me! Because of a process my body was forced into without my consent or permission. I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask for any of this.” She gestured down at her naked body. “I didn’t ask to be injected with chemicals to make my Shifter Gene active, or to suddenly be twenty years younger, or to have weird fluids leaking out of me.”

“You’re not leaking anymore,” Keller said blandly. “The breeding seems to have stopped the flow of your nectar.”

“What does that mean?” She looked pointedly at her breasts, which were no longer engorged with the sweet fluid.

“Well . . .” Keller cleared his throat. “Actually, in the cases where the honey flow stops abruptly after breeding, it usually means that . . . the breeding was successful.”

“Meaning I’m pregnant? Already?” A look of horror and disbelief came over her face. “My God—I can’t be pregnant! I’m scheduled to do surgery next week.”

“Being pregnant won’t stop you from doing surgery,” Keller pointed out, frowning.

“Not this time, maybe. But what if I start having morning sickness? And what will my life look like after the baby’s born? I have surgeries that take hours sometimes—what am I going to do, leave in the middle of an emergency appendectomy to go pick the kid up for soccer practice?”

“Samantha, calm down—no one said you had to do it on your own. I’ll be there to help care for the child. In fact, I’ll take care of him or her myself if you don’t feel that you can.” Keller tried to make his voice soothing, but he seemed to have said the exact wrong thing.

Samantha rounded on him, glaring.

“That’s all you wanted—right from the very start,” she accused him. “Just a Juvie to have your baby—an heir for the Keller fortune. Isn’t that right?”

“Of course I want a baby,” he said evenly. “It’s what I’ve always wanted—I was very up-front about that with you. But that doesn’t mean—”

“First you went after my sister, but when you couldn’t get her, you came for me.”

“Don’t you mean I came in you?” he snapped, beginning to lose his temper. “But I only did it because you begged me to. You wanted this as much as I did, sweetheart. You asked me to—and I quote, ‘breed me hard.’ Or don’t you remember?”

“You bastard, of course I remember. I’ll never be able to freaking forget.”

Her cheeks were flaming with shame or anger or a mixture of the two, Keller couldn’t tell exactly. He felt a surge of regret for his biting words.

“Samantha—”

“No.” She pointed a finger at him. “You own a biochem corporation, Keller. How do I know you weren’t working with Lounds in the first place? How do I know you didn’t pay him to kidnap me and inject me with the compound to activate my latent Gene? Then you could ride to my rescue at just the right time—the right time being when I was ready to be bred. To be impregnated.”

“Samantha, would you listen to yourself?” Keller heard the coldness creeping into his voice, but he couldn’t help it. “You sound delusional.”

“No, you’re the one who’s delusional, Keller. If you think I’m going to have your baby, you’re completely wrong.”

Her words struck him like a blow to the heart, and he couldn’t help hearing an echo of the past . . .

“I’ll never have your baby! You’re a freak and so is this thing you put in me!”

Keller closed his eyes briefly. Rachel . . . oh God . . .

“Fine,” he heard himself saying as a cloak of ice fell over his emotions. “If that’s the way you want it. Maybe I should take you to a drugstore right now to get the morning-after pill.”

“Keller, I—Ahh!”

Her last words ended in an agonized scream. Keller’s eyes flew open and he saw that Samantha had opened the door of the little cabin, presumably to go out and get some fresh air. But once out on the rickety front porch, the light of the waning moon had touched her . . . and in so doing, brought on her first change.

* * *

Oh my God—what’s happening to me?

Samantha screamed again as her body contorted, her muscles writhing under her skin while her bones shifted places and her joints insisted on bending in ways they shouldn’t be able to bend.

This seems to be my week for having my body betray me, thought a dry little part of her mind—the only part that wasn’t freaking out. First I get twenty years younger, then I start leaking sticky stuff all over, then I have to beg Keller to breed me so I don’t die of terminal horniness, and now I’m changing into something else entirely. Yup—total betrayal.

Then Keller was beside her, trying to calm her down. Saying things that only partially made sense.

“It’s just your first Shift,” Samantha heard him say. “It’s all right—it might be a little difficult because the moon isn’t full, but you can do it—you’ll be all right. You’re just becoming a Cougar for the first time.”

A Cougar? I’m turning into a Cougar, just like him?

The thought held only passing significance to her. By this time she was down on all fours, thrashing in the moonlight that insisted on molding her into something else, into an animal form that had been locked inside her for years and now couldn’t wait to get out. The change didn’t hurt exactly but it felt alien—frightening.

Samantha lifted her head to scream and heard a roar come out instead—the sound of a big cat hunting prey or warning someone away from its territory.

Me, I’m its territory, she thought wildly. I’ve been taken over completely. I’m not human anymore!

The thought made her crazy, especially when she felt the new animal side of her that the moonlight had unlocked trying to take over her thought process. Her night vision was suddenly incredibly sharp, and her sense of smell told her so many things about the marshlands they were in—there’s a mouse over there, in those weeds . . . and an owl just flew over . . . alligators about a mile from here—that Samantha suddenly felt inundated with information.

No—you might have my body but you can’t have my mind! She screamed in pure frustration and heard it come out as a roar again. Then she leaped off the porch—a soaring, graceful glide that would have been impossible for her human body—and ran into the marshlands, trying desperately to get away from the new thing inside her. The new creature she had become.