This dream was taking a weird turn, even for me. Curling my hands up into my sleeves, I kept my expression serene and face forward as I allowed my eyes to flit around the room, taking everything in.

After a ride to the police station, we’d piled out of the truck and made our way inside. Normal, right? Uh, nope. Within two minutes of walking through the door, Nial had walled up a cop dressed in blues and growled at three more. It had taken five men to peel him off and talk him down.

And that’s how we’d ended up in this room, some sort of meeting room from the look of it, with a man who’d introduced himself as Nial’s chief and… I still wasn’t sure who the rest were, but I was giving my imagination an A+ for effort.

“Blue, is it?” The chief leaned back in his chair, flashing me a friendly smile that somehow managed to be both professional and kind at the same time.

I nodded, resisting the urge to shuffle in my seat as he continued to stare at me. Actually, they were all staring at me, even if not directly. All the eyes in the room kept coming back to me, then bouncing right back off again once they caught me looking.

Only Nial refused to look at me. I knew, I’d traced the hard lines of his face with my gaze every ten seconds since we’d arrived, had memorized the tight jut of his jaw and the rigid set to his brow. Even now, when he looked pissed as hell and obviously didn’t want anything to do with me, he called to me. Like a siren’s song, a whisper echoed in my mind.

He is right for you. He’ll take away the loneliness. Your mate needs you as much as you need him.

Yup. Mate. Imagination for the win, right?

Or insanity. I wasn’t sure which one I was rooting for right now.

Eventually, I snapped. “What is it? Do I have something on my face?” Not waiting for an answer, I scrubbed at my cheek with my sleeve.

Chief Wade Lombard, or just Wade as he’d informed me, shook his head with a low chuckle. “No, Blue, you’re fine.” At his nod, the room cleared, leaving just the three of us. Great. Lucky me.

“Then what is it?”

He tilted his head, as if listening to something, then nodded imperceptibly. “We’re just not sure how to convince you.”

You’d think, with me being the creator and author of this dream, I’d have a clue as to what he was talking about. “Of what?”

“That you’re not dreaming. We’ve never had this problem before.” He truly looked puzzled.

My lips curved up into a smug smile as I folded my arms, staring him down. Whatever my subconscious was trying to tell me, it was going to have to work a little harder. “But I am.”

“Ah, fuck it.” Nial pushed away from the wall and yanked off his shirt.

My arms dropped to my sides and I leaned forward in my seat, fingers digging into my thighs. This was fast turning into something a little more … risqué? Maybe Wade would disappear, like that other guy had, though he’d been a psycho and the chief was kind of cute, for an older guy. My gaze zigzagged between the two men, unable to focus on keeping an eye on the chief as the sight of Nial’s muscular torso stole the last of my inhibitions and I settled in to see what was in store for me next. As long as it involved a hell of a lot more of that, I was down.

Busy counting his abs, working my way down to the dark dusting of hair that formed his happy trail, I licked my lips, something suspiciously like a moan working its way up my throat. I clamped my teeth together, forcing it back. His brown eyes locked onto me, blazing with an intensity that felt like a promise, as he dropped to his knees.

Okay. A man on his knees was never a bad thing.

Then he changed.

My mind stuttered as bones grew and realigned, muscles flexing and changing shape, fur sprouting and … and… A wolf stood where Nial had been, shaking off the last of his clothes and pricking his ears. The large wolf—sorry, Nial—sat his furry ass down and cocked his head at me. He was huge, covered in black fur from his ears to the tip of his tail, the only marking on his gorgeous fur a white circle around his eye and a patch of white on his shoulder.

“Too much shifter romance I think,” I managed on a croak, unable to blink or look away. I took everything back. My imagination was awesome!

“Not shifter, shiften.”

At Wade’s gentle correction, I managed to blink. “Ex-squeeze me?”

“Actually, we’re called wolven.”

My eyes couldn’t move from Nial. He was gorgeous. My hands itched to stroke his fur, see how soft it was. “Big ass wolves, you mean?”

“You’re taking this very well.” He sounded surprised.

“Well, I don’t know what you…” My words drifted away as the wolf that was Nial stretched and fur flowed, bones cracking.

I winced and closed my eyes unable to watch. I’d always been queasy at the sound of a bone breaking. In my mind, it was closely related to vomit. “Does that hurt?”

“A bit. We’re used to it,” Nial replied.

My eyes flashed open and were met with his bare ass, my hand flying to my mouth. “Oh, my.” I’d dug my nails into that ass, had traced patterns over each cheek while laughing at the goosebumps that had followed my finger. I knew that ass, yet I still gasped. Yep, I was an ass girl. Shoulders, too. Heck, on Nial, I was an everything goes just give me more girl. Dragging my eyes up from where he’d very rudely covered his very fine ass in a pair of jeans, they landed on his shoulder. “That tattoo, it’s in the same place as the white patch on your wolf.” Like that sentence sounded like something a sane person would say. The tattoo was a dark circle, completely filled in with black. Around the edges danced tiny lines, reaching out like sparks. The top edge of the circle looked more faded than the bottom, almost as if his shirt had worn part of it away.

Nial nodded, pulling on his shirt.

“Wait, your hair!” The pure white patch at the back of his head, it was a circle with a black circle of normal colored hair inside. I’d always wondered about it, figuring it was some kind of birthmark, or something. “Your wolf had a white circle around its eye.” I felt like I was Sherlock Holmes.

Nial turned around, taking up his position against the wall again. Folding his arms across his chest, I took a brief moment to admire the way his shirt pulled tight across his muscular chest and his biceps bunched, before tuning into what he was actually saying. “It’s called a renqua, all shiften have them.”

“Except the foxen," Wade interjected.

Foxen—got it. I felt like I should be taking notes, or something.

Nial nodded, then continued, “The goddess who created the original shiften gave a part of herself to them and this became a mark on their shoulder, visible as human and beast, each one unique.”

Goddess—got it. I nodded, pulling my legs up under my ass and getting comfy, waving at him to carry on with this little fairytale.

But Nial fell silent, and eventually the chief took over. “Sometimes the renqua helps identify a particular shiften.”

“In what way?”

He paused, searching for the right words. “Matching them with a prophecy.”

Inclining my head, I pursed my lips, thinking on his words. That sounded deep. Ominous. “And you have a lot of those lying around?”

“The One True Mate prophecy is a good example.”

Nial flinched, but stayed silent. I wished I knew what was going on in that head of his. Best guess? A lot of brooding. Maybe if I concentrated hard enough, I could make my dream man lighten up a bit? Scrunching my nose up, I stared at him. And stared at him. I squinted, putting my all into it. Feel my mental woo-woo powers…

The corner of his mouth inched up, laughter dancing in his eyes. “Are you feeling okay, sweetheart?”

I allowed myself a mental fist pump. It had worked! Shushing him, I waved at the chief to carry on. “You were saying something about mates?”

Wade gathered himself, then began to speak, his voice taking on an ominous tone,

“In twenty-five years, half-angel, half-human mates will be discovered living among you.

This is how you will rebuild.

Warriors, all, with names like flora.

Save them from themselves, for they will not know their foreordination.

They will not be bound by shiften law, but their destinies entwine so strongly with their fated mates, that any not mated by their 30th year will be moonstruck. Those who are lost may be dangerous.

A pledged female will have free will that shiften know not. Never forget this or it will cause grave trouble.

Her body may respond to any, until she is mated in a ceremony of her choosing, then she will acknowledge only one male, as he becomes her one true mate, and she, his one true mate. He shall be sworn to her in her life’s purpose, to rebuild the shiften race, so that they may fight the evil Matchitehew and protect the humans from him, until the day he draws his last breath.”

“And you’ve found some of these half-angel babies?” Never saw that twist coming!

“Women now. They’ll be twenty-five years old.”

“And their father is an angel. Same baby daddy?”

The chief’s mouth twisted into a huge grin as he laughed, slapping his knee with his hand. “Yep, he was a very busy angel that night.”

“Got it—lots of angel baby making.” Oops! From Nial’s snort, I was pretty sure I’d said that out loud. Whatever. “So, you’re looking for twenty-five year old women who don’t know who their father is and … what else exactly?” Unease stirred in my stomach, but I was blaming it on trapped wind. No way was I one of these half-angel mate women.

“They’re warriors.”

I flashed a smile, pretending to wipe my brow. “Phew! Had me going there a second.”

“They apparently have some kind of power, unique to each woman so far.”

My smile faltered, the memory of the air resting heavy on my shoulder flooding back to me. But this is just a dream, remember? So why were my palms sweating?

“They can smell Khain.”

I wracked my brain. Khain, Khain, Khain… “Nope, don’t know the guy.”

“He’s, for lack of a better description, a demon. He’s the one who killed all our women twenty-five years ago, and wants to wipe shiften from the face of the earth.”