The next day, my alarm rang as usual. I moaned, opening my eye just wide enough to discern a blaring line of sunlight streaming through the crack between the curtains. I jammed my eyes shut again and buried my face in the pillow. How could it be morning already?

Robbie reached across me and slammed his hand on my phone, hitting the sleep button and shutting the damn thing up for another fifteen minutes. I grinned, and rested my head back on his shoulder. Having a man in my bed was definitely good for some things.

Many things, actually. My legs ached from last night’s balcony romp. The things Robbie had done with his tongue … if he was trying to make a case for me agreeing to be his … his mate, then he was off to a roaring start.

The phone buzzed again. Robbie lifted the screen. “Elinor,” he mumbled.

“Ignore it,” I mumbled, running my fingers down his chest, as the ache between my legs pulsed for attention. “I’ll talk to her later.”

* * *

Robbie and I stayed in bed for another hour, alternating between dozing and languid, lazy shagging. The phone rang again while I was riding him like a cowgirl, but we both ignored it. Eventually, I hauled my ass out of bed, found some clothes that were only slightly rumpled, and stumbled out the door.

I was grinning from ear to ear as I pedalled hard down the village high street, my legs aching from their workout last night. My fingers drummed a merry tune against the handlebars as I pumped harder as the road sloped around toward the shop.

Robbie. Last night … I’d never had sex like that before. Sure, there had been tender sex, and orgasms that blew my head off, but this was something else. It felt like we’d ascended to another plane of existence.

Is this what he’s talking about? This … fated mates thing. When I thought about it, I’m sure I remembered Alex mentioning something about it. I tended to tune out when the other girls talked about their love stories. It was all too nauseatingly sappy for me, like the plot of some trashy romance book. But maybe I should’ve listened more carefully. I made a mental note to chat to Alex later.

As I rounded the corner next to Resurrection Ink, I was surprised to see Elinor standing on the footpath, her head bent low as she chatted to a policeman. She ran over to me as I pulled up.

“Where have you been?” she cried. “I’ve been calling you frantically since eight!”

“Sorry,” I said, my heart hammering against my chest as her tone registered. Something was seriously wrong. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Elinor’s face paled. She gestured toward the shop. My stomach twisted as I saw what had happened.

My beautiful shop window had been smashed in, scattering tiny shards of glittering glass across the waiting area. I dropped my bike and stepped closer, my heavy Docs crunching on more broken glass strewn across the footpath, and peered inside.

The place had been utterly trashed. The framed tattoo art we’d hung on the walls lay across the floor – the frames smashed and paintings shredded. The padded benches and seats had been torn open, leather and stuffing hanging from them like ribbons. All our supplies lay scattered across the debris – hundreds of once sterile needles ripped from their packages and stuck into the chaise lounge like hedgehog quills, pots of ink thrown at the walls – splatters of colour dribbling down the Victorian wallpaper and staining the black tiles in a rainbow of destruction.

“It looks like some wild animal did it,” the police officer said. “So far, we don’t have witnesses to the break-in, but we haven’t finished canvassing the village.”

My stomach twisted. A wild animal. I knew exactly what kind of animal would have done this. A wolf. A werewolf.

But why? It couldn’t be anyone in the Lowe pack. But if this was about pack politics, why attack me? I’m not exactly heavily involved in Caleb’s plots. I’m really only in the pack because I helped Elinor rescue Eric, and I’d seen too many weird things to be written off. But why would anyone want to do this to me?

My knees wobbled. I tore my eyes away from it, before I started to cry. Elinor gripped my hand and pulled me away from the window. “I’ve called the insurance company. They say we’re covered, but they won’t pay out until the police finish their investigation. Can you call your tattooist friend in Crooks Crossing, see if we can work out of his shop for a while?”

Her words flowed through my ears, but I couldn’t make any sense out of them. I kept staring at the ruined window of my precious shop.

“Bianca?”

“Call Caleb,” I said, my hands shaking. “Someone is trying to send us a message.”