The jaguar prowled on silent feet through the dense, misty forest. The moonless sky was covered in a haze of clouds, blocking out even the light from the stars. The jaguar sniffed the air as she approached the mansion grounds. She’d studied the security system and knew that there were no alarms that could detect her movements.

As she emerged from the forest and took her first delicate steps into the dew-covered lawn, her ears pricked at the sound of an owl hooting behind her from the wood. She paused, standing still as a statue in the inky darkness. Her feline eyes made out the back entrance of the mansion across the expansive lawn. Knowing she was undetected, she picked up the pace, trotting over at the damp grass until she came to the back porch of the mansion.

Examining the balcony above the back exit, the jaguar stopped again, opening her senses to any change in her environment. All was still and silent. It was safe to proceed. Her body tensed, her muscles coiling as she prepared to launch herself up the vine-covered lattice. With an explosive jump, she flew up the lattice and was soon on top of the balcony. She stopped again, her feline senses taking in every chirp of a grasshopper and vibrating leaf in the wind.

This rural mansion had very little security. Being so deep in the mountains, the owners believed they were safe from predators like her. But they couldn’t be more wrong. The jaguar tasted the air with her tongue, panting silently in the cool night air. She prowled around the balcony until she came to a side window that led into an empty room in the mansion.

Over the last six months, she had studied everything she could find about the owner, the grounds, and the security of the mansion. As much as the jaguar wanted out of her life as a thief, she knew she had to do this one last job. If she could pay back Dima for her mistake, she could finally be free of him and everything he represented.

She peered through the dark glass into the empty room, ensuring that it was safe to continue. When she was satisfied, she pressed her sharp claws against the windowpane and began to rotate her paw in a perfect circle. When she had scratched through the glass, she carefully extended her claws around the circle and pulled it silently out of the window. After setting it on the floor at her feet, she reached in through the window and flicked open the lock.

With the window unlocked and her route into the mansion clear, the jaguar sat back on her hind legs. In a silent scream of contorting muscles and ripping tendons, the jaguar shifted. Her body lost its fur. Her limbs lengthened and her skin grew smooth and tan. A mane of long black hair framed her curves. Her animal eyes and senses on high alert, she checked her surroundings. She was still alone and undetected.

Pressing her hands to the glass, making sure that the pads of her fingers were shifted so as not to leave any detectable fingerprints, she pushed the window open. The naked woman slipped into the dark room and took several long breaths to calm herself. She was so tired of doing this. Becoming a jewel thief had never been part of the plan. She had just wanted to feel the excitement of being with a man like him.

She knew he wasn’t her fated mate, but that didn’t mean anything to her young woman’s heart. All she had known was that Dima was the most powerful, sexy man she’d ever met. When he had asked her to join his entourage, she had gladly agreed. It hadn’t taken long for them to end up in bed together. But soon after that, he had started asking her to do things for him she never should have agreed to.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know he was a criminal. But she had been naïve enough to believe that his criminal activity wouldn’t affect her. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

And now, here she was, breaking into this house in the middle of the night like a dyed-in-the-wool criminal herself. She couldn’t allow her shame to get in the way of the job she had to do. It was the only way she could buy her freedom and move on with her life.

Once inside the empty room, she padded across the antique Oriental rug and came to the chest of drawers that was her target. She’d been studying this chest since she’d arrived on Fate Mountain. This chest was the entire reason she had come here in the first place. Or rather, its contents were.

Seven months ago, the owner of the mansion had bought this antique Louis the Fifteenth chest at a Sotheby’s auction in San Francisco. At that very same auction, Dima had overheard the mansion owner saying she would use the chest for her jewelry collection when she arrived in Oregon this month. That’s when he had sent her to Fate Mountain to study how to get into the secret compartment and steal the woman’s jewels.

Most people in this day and age put their valuables in safes. But Caitlin Somerset was not an ordinary billionaire heiress. She lived in a world of fantasy where it was still the 18th-century and she was some kind of European aristocrat.

However, Caitlin Somerset was actually a retired swimsuit model. She had inherited her money from her elderly oil tycoon husband who had passed away only three years ago. The mansion in the Oregon mountains was a vacation home for Caitlin, but it was also the place where the heiress stored most of her antiques. Namely the secret compartment Louis the Fifteenth chest of drawers.

The woman pulled the bottom drawer out of the chest and silently set it on the floor. It was pitch black inside the room so she had to shift her eyes into their feline form to allow her to see. Under the drawer was the metal-plated compartment. It looked like an ordinary shelf to an untrained eye, but the woman knew it was much more than that.

She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. This was what she had been studying and training to do for the last six months. The chest was the eighteenth century equivalent of a secured safe. The compartment had a keyhole that took an old fashioned key. Caitlin obviously had it hidden somewhere within the mansion. But the woman didn’t need the key, not with the knowledge she had acquired during her time on Fate Mountain. If she used her claw to bust the lock, it would just trigger a mechanism that made it impossible to get inside the chest.

She studied the angles and joints of the wood, looking for the exact groove she needed to begin opening the compartment. Once she had located the correct spot, she extended one claw and pressed it to the groove. Nothing happened. She cursed internally and pressed harder. Finally, she heard a faint pop and let out the breath she was holding. Once she had one side loosened, she was able to do the same thing on the three other corners.

Getting into the safe wasn’t that easy. Even with a jaguar’s sharp claws and superhuman strength, she still had more work to do. Extending her claws from both hands, she pressed them into the seam between the wood and the metal, slowly removing it from the chest. With the metal piece free, she pulled it out and set it on the floor beside her. Now all that was left was wood that her claws could easily scratch.

The woman pulled her hands out of the chest of drawers and slid one under the bottom, pressing up against the secret compartment from below. She heard another faint pop and the entire compartment was freed from the chest. She slowly pulled it out and tapped at the side that had once been against the back of the chest. It fell open and she was able to get inside. She reached in, not feeling anything. She cursed silently.

Dima had been so sure that Caitlin Somerset was storing jewels in this chest. She could not fail this mission. If she did, the consequences would be dire. She knew what Dima did to people who failed him, and he had already given her a second chance. She doubted he would give her a third.

Just when she was about to go into panic mode, she felt a soft velvety bag in the corner of the box. She pulled it out, not stopping to check the contents. Once she had what she’d come for, she hurried out the window, clutched the bag in her teeth, and silently shifted into her animal form.

Within seconds she was down to the ground level, trotting off through the misty, damp lawn and into the forest. The owl hooted again as she passed, the yellow light of dawn slowly turning the inky blackness into a hazy gray.

With her trophy in her mouth, the jaguar galloped through the brightening forest, praying that this one last job would be enough to buy her freedom.