Tania was fucking exhausted.

She shouldn't complain. She was doing exactly what she'd always dreamed about: taking care of animals. Her uncle, Donald, had been a vet, and watching him save a sick mare when she was six years old had set her course. Fast forward two decades, she had a shiny new degree, and she was taking care of well-trimmed poodles and chihuahuas in an LA practice. It hadn't paid much, but she'd always loved the vibrant coast, full of distractions. 

That had been until six months ago, when Donald called her after a car accident. His practice, a few miles outside Hawthorne, was busy and successful, serving various towns in the area. He had a staff of three vets and five nurses. But one of his main vets was on maternity leave, and with him out of commission for a few months because of a broken wrist and a bad back, the practice was severely understaffed. 

Tania didn't even consider an alternative: she'd packed up her bag, sublet her apartment, and headed home. Donald deserved it. Her childhood wouldn't have been the same without the kind, patient, supportive man who'd never minded her crashing at his place when things were rough at home. 

She'd never planned to go back to her hometown after school, for various reasons. One of them was the building in front of her. A small two-story house that needed a fresh coat of paint, pebbles on the driveway, and a new roof. 

She parked her work truck in front of the house where she’d grown up, between a beat-up Jeep and her blue beetle. 

She took a moment to breathe, in and out. It was cold out, and dark, too. The Valley Vets truck's heating system needed replacing, but she hadn't had the time to take it to the shop yet. She should head home before she froze.

Tania winced at the prospect. Eventually, her icy fingers demanded she move her ass.

She did so reluctantly. 

Since she'd started at Valley Vets two months ago, Tania had practically spent every single day at work, on her feet—and her feet were protesting loudly against that treatment. That wasn't why she was tired, though. The problem was that after every long day, she returned home to a mess she didn't know how to deal with. 

The door had four locks. She had to unlock all of them before pushing it and walking in. At least it was warm inside.

The first thing she heard was the TV.

“After the events at the PIA in Boston last year, there has been much speculation and—”

“Speculation, my ass,” someone rudely interrupted.

Tania recognized the voice: it was her father’s hero, Nigel Martin, an activist who was very vocal against the very existence of paranormal creatures.

“The Paranormal Investigation Agency was in place to protect us—the human beings—from the freaks of nature you call sups. They didn’t like it, so they blew it up—and most of the city center with it. The end.”

Her father was watching an anti-sup interview. Again.

“There is no conclusive proof, and you know it.”

Tania also knew that voice: slightly bored, very well enunciated, with an English accent. It belonged to the face of sups, a clever, well-spoken businessman named Fen Knox.

“Dad? I’m home.”

Tania walked into the living room and looked up at the large plasma screen on the wall—the most expensive thing in their entire house. At least the blond, elegant sup in a tailcoat, with a long walking stick in his left hand, was worth looking at. 

She heard the endless activist rants every single day. Michael Harrison hadn’t used to be against sups at all, but after her mother, Laura, left him for a shifter ten years ago, he’d started to spew insults about sups, making it sound like their entire race had ruined their perfect life.

Tania knew better.

Michael and Laura had argued—a lot, and violently. She was happy for her mother, who now lived in Oregon with her step-father and two boisterous boys. 

"Look at him," Michael grumbled with a slur. 

His breath was whiskey and beer all at once; she could smell it from the door. 

"All fancy and smiling like he belongs here. Aberration of nature, the lot of them." 

Yeah, right. 

"I'm calling takeout. I'll leave you a burger in the kitchen." 

Hopefully, he'd eat it, but he probably wouldn't. 

Tania wished she could stay just about anywhere else, but her uncle had a family now and all his rooms were taken. She rebelled against renting a place in the area, because she didn't intend to stay longer than strictly necessary. 

"Hello, pretty girl," she cooed, smiling at the tall, slim cat that came to greet her with a long, demanding meow. 

Food time. Heading to the kitchen, her phone to her ear to order takeout, Tania unpacked some ridiculously expensive food for her Bengal, Princess. The cat rushed to devour it like she hadn't eaten for a year. Smiling, Tania found her mind traveling to another cat. 

She thought he was a cat, anyway. 

Ian Summers. Damn, the man was fine. As hot as the sup on TV, at the very least. Brown, just-fucked hair, dark smoldering eyes, a knowing smirk. He looked like he just knew his smile wet panties. 

Tania had been told that a pride of shifters had taken residence fifteen minutes away in Lakesides, as soon as she'd arrived. By her father, by her colleagues, and everyone else. It was all anyone talked about. Some ranted, others dreamed about meeting them, the most audacious planned trips to Lakesides specifically to see the members of the pack. 

Then there were people like her father. Those who whispered—drunken, stupid whispers. Dangerous things. 

She bit her lip. Her dad and his anti-shifter buddies were just sad, backward idiots. There was no way they'd actually try to do something against the shifters. 

But if they did, they were as good as dead. 

Tania wasn't an expert on sups, but she'd always been fascinated by shifters, so she knew a few things. That they generally were content to ignore and be ignored by regular humans. That the weakest one of them was stronger than a military-trained operative. That they didn't tend to attack...unless they were provoked. If the extremists really moved against the Wyverns, she'd bury a father.