The ringtone on my phone loudly serenades me, and I’m forced to abandon my dream. I blindly grab for the noisy device, refusing to open my eyes. After a couple of misplaced slaps against the cool wood of the side table, I finally find the phone underneath my grip and bring it to my ear.

“Hello?” I greet, my voice is deep and groggy with sleep. No one responds, and I listen to the silence a few seconds more before I finally open my eyes to see if the call disconnected. It’s still active, so I try again.

“Hello, anyone there?”

Silence.

An odd feeling trickles down my spine. “Talon, is that you?” I ask, and the call abruptly disconnects.

My head falls back onto the pillow and a few breaths later the phone rings again. I don’t check the caller ID just answer it quickly.

“Talon, are you okay?”

“Who’s Talon?” A smooth, melodic female voice asks me. I look at the caller ID and see it’s Mave.

“Just an old friend I’m trying to get ahold of," I croak, still not all the way awake.

“Gotcha, what are you up to today besides sleeping?” Mave teases.

“Hanging with you obviously," I supply.

“Excellent. You need a swimsuit, a towel, and a desire to walk on the wild side.”

“Check, check, and check. Where should I meet you?”

“I’ll text you directions, and you can come pick me up.”

“Sweet, I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.”

Mave hangs up. No goodbye or see you later and it makes me laugh. She’s definitely my people, straight to the point with no side of bullshit. I roll out of bed and get cleaned up. I open my swimsuit drawer and pick out a bikini. I throw on a loose tank top and some denim cutoff shorts. I use my magic to counteract my bed hair, and it’s shiny and voluminous in seconds. Man, I love magic.

The drive to the address Mave sent me is beautiful--not that there’s much ugliness in Solace in general. The trees are much more condensed where she lives, and I picture wolves and other shifters being right at home amidst this wilderness.

Mave and three other people are standing at the end of a dirt road that apparently leads up to where her pack lives. I pull over, and everyone climbs in.

“Vin this is Kaika, Tru and my little brother Macon.”

I say hello to all of them and throw in a friendly wave. They all grunt various versions of hello, and one semi-grumpy hey.

Kaika and Tru look like they’d fit right in with Jacob from Twilight’s wolf pack. They both have black hair, black eyes, and tan skin. Kaika’s hair is long and straight, and Tru’s is buzzed. Macon looks like a smaller version of Mave. He has the same lanky build and heart-shaped face. He’s missing the septum piercing, and instead of having magenta pink hair like his sister, his is a medium length, blue-black.

“Nice wheels,” Mave tells me, rubbing a hand over the interior of the door.

“Yeah, did daddy buy it for his little princess?” Kaika mocks from the back.

I find his eyes in the rearview mirror. “No, I bought it from all the money I made being a badass," I say, overly sweet and cryptic while fluttering my lashes at the presumptuous prick.

“Kaika, shut up.” Mave turns around and punches him in the thigh. “I told you she’s cool. Try to be at least ten percent less miserable, so you don’t scare her off."

She turns back around, and we smile at each other. I pull off on a dirt road that takes us to a bigger dirt clearing that Mave tells me to park in. We all unload, and I follow them through the trees to a lake that’s surrounded by a sandy shore. Solace is seriously the land of endless lakes.

Mave points out some layers of cliffs to our left. “That’s what we’re doing today. You ready for a cliff jumping good time?”

I laugh as I take in the rocky wall face. Macon doesn’t wait for anyone’s invitation. He strips off his shirt and sprints away, leaving a trail of hoots behind him. Mave cracks up.

“He’s the adrenaline junkie in the family. As soon as he caught wind that I was coming here, he was begging me to come. We probably won’t even see him again until it’s time to leave.”

I chuckle and watch him disappear around a huge boulder. Tru lays out a blanket, and we settle our stuff on it. We all strip down to our swimsuits, and I excitedly follow Mave to the second level of cliffs. The trail up to the different levels of rock is smooth, which shows just how often people trek up here to do this. There’s a light breeze that’s keeping the heat at bay, and the water below us is sparkling and inviting.

“Tru, you jump first to show Vinna the best way to do it," Mave instructs.

Tru nods his head and without any hesitation leaps silently from the safety of the cliff’s edge and plummets toward the water. My heart picks up its pace, and I quickly move to the rocky edge so I can see how he enters the water. Tru breaks the rippled surface feet first and starts paddling to shore.

“Do you want to watch again, make sure you’ve got it?” Mave asks me.

“Nope, I think I’m good,” I say enthusiastically. “Any rocks or other things down there I should be worried about?” I ask as I assess the cliff’s edge around me and the water below.

“No rocks and the lake monster only hunts at night, so we’re good.”

I stare at her, trying to figure out if she’s serious or not. My initial instinct is to laugh and blow off her obvious joke, but now that I know there’s this whole paranormal world out there, I’m not so sure she’s not completely serious.

Mave stares at me straight-faced before a smart-ass glint sneaks into her features.

“Vin, you’re making this too easy.”

Mave cracks up, and I flip her the bird before I join her. I give one final chuckle and step back a couple of paces. I put my fist out, and Mave bumps her knuckles against mine. I take a running leap off the cliff. Holy shit.

The weightless feel of falling is completely liberating. The wind aggressively caresses up my body, taking my excited shouts with it, before I’m enveloped by the cold water of the lake. It’s easy to see why Macon loves this so much. My head breaks the surface of the water and Mave hoots and hollers her approval of my first jump. I have a huge smile on my face. Oh, hell yeah, I’m doing that again.

We spend the next few hours climbing up to various heights in the cliff face and then hurling ourselves over. The highest I managed was a little over forty feet, but it stung going into the water, and I decided that was as high as I wanted to go. Mave stayed with me, but Kaika, Tru and Macon were all jumping from insane heights.

“Your friends are mental,” I tell Mave, as we watch a cannonball contest commencing from what has to be seventy-feet up from the water.

“Shifters have strong bones and a seriously high pain tolerance,” she offers in explanation of their crazy-ass shenanigans. “Come on let’s go eat; I’m starving.”

My mind jumps back to the arena and the sound of Torrez’s jaw breaking. I shake it off and follow Mave back down to the blanket. She hands me a sandwich from a stack inside the small cooler they brought, and I pull out the bag of drinks I stole from the kitchen. I hand over a water and a soda, and we dig in.

I savagely devour the sandwich in no time, and Mave tosses me another one. I inhale it and then lie back and soak up the sunshine.

“What’s your family like? Is Macon your only sibling?”

Mave snorts into her soda. “No, there are eleven kids in my family. Macon’s second to last.”

“Holy shit, that’s a lot of brothers and sisters,” I declare as if Mave wasn’t aware of this fact until I dumbly pointed it out.

“Mostly brothers. Only one little sister," she corrects.

“Where do you fall in the lineup?”

“Right smack dab in the middle," Mave chuckles. “I like it though. Maybe it’s the wolf in me or my own twisted nature, but I like the chaos and comradery that comes with growing up in a big wild family.”

“I could see that," I admit. “So, tell me about shifters.”

“Hmmm, where to begin...there’s a ton of different kinds of shifters. Solace pretty much only has wolves and cougars, but shifters live all over. We tend to be predatory animals: foxes, bears, wolves, big cats, eagles, etc. We can heal pretty much anything except for a missing head. What else do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. What’s it like? Do you like being a shifter?” I ask.

“Yeah I like it, I also don’t know any different. I’ve always been a wolf. The pack can sometimes be hard. You have to listen to wolves above you in the hierarchy, but that’s life anywhere you go. I like the wildness and power that I have as a wolf. I like being part of a pack, they belong to me, and I belong to them.”

I nod my head in understanding and try to picture Mave in her wolf form. I want to ask her what she looks like as a wolf, or what it feels like to shift but I don’t know if that’s considered rude. I don’t want her to feel like a spectacle. I give her a big smile and get up and wade into the lake and Mave follows me in.

“How do you like working at the bookstore?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Oh, I don’t really work there. Some members of the pack own it, and we all help each other out when needed. My day job is at the local tattoo shop.”

“You’re a tattoo artist?” I ask, obviously surprised and noting the complete lack of any tattoos anywhere on her body.

“No, a piercer," Mave grins and flicks her septum ring. “You should come by sometime. I’ll give you the friends and family discount," she tells me, with an enticing singsong voice.“You could definitely pull off a nose ring with that cute little nose you’ve been blessed with.”

I chuckle at her enthusiasm.

“No face piercings for me. They can be used against you too easily.”

Thoughts of a nose ring or belly button ring getting pulled out in a fight, makes me shudder. I don’t even have my ears pierced for this reason. Mave looks at me curiously.

“Hmm something more discreet then,” she smirks. “A couple nipple rings, maybe?”

I laugh. “I don’t think I’m wild enough to pull that off.”

“Oh, I doubt that," Mave chuckles. “You were raised as a non, with monogamy and all that, but how many days were you here before your coven lust kicked in?" She winks at me, and I laugh even harder. “There’s no way you’d abandon the non-mentality you grew up with for the polyandrous ways of the casters unless you had some kink inside of you." Mave’s smart-ass grin grows wider and then she bursts into laughter and splashes me.

“Come on, Vin, your secret’s safe with me.”

She squeals when I pelt her with water.

“Admit it. You know you own a very used copy of Fifty Shades of Grey!”

I start laughing so hard I can’t breathe. “I own the whole series,” I admit through bursts of laughter as splashes rain down on me. Mave loses it with my admission, and we’re both holding our sides as we laugh our asses off.

“Let your freak flag fly, you kinky witch.”

Voices on the beach draw our attention. I look over expecting to find Mave’s friends, but it’s a different group laying out blankets right next to ours. Mave stiffens beside me.

“Shit,” she mumbles quietly.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, and my adrenaline rises in response to her sudden distress.

She looks away from the newcomers and back to me. “Do you care if we leave?”

I study her for a beat. It’s obvious she feels bad for asking. “No, that’s cool, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll explain in the car.”

Mave hesitantly swims towards the shore, and I follow. Her demeanor visibly changes, she’s hardening and fortifying, but I don’t know why. Every ounce of laughter and happiness that was just in her eyes has been shuttered away, replaced by a cold ferocity.

My senses are on alert as we wade out of the water towards our things. I feel eyes on me, but I don’t look around for the source. Neither of us bothers to get dressed, as we start to pack everything up. I’m shoving my clothes in my bag when Mave’s head snaps up. I follow her gaze and spot Kaika, Macon, and Tru rounding a corner and walking towards us.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Mave harshly whispers.

I look from her to her friends and then finally to the group of newcomers. A couple of guys from the new group hone in on the male shifters. Kaika and Tru slow, almost imperceptibly, as they register the new arrivals.

“Tru,” a male voice shouts from the new group.

“Here Tru, come here boy.”

A burst of laughter follows the obvious insult. I look back at the newcomers, completely disgusted with the taunt. Mave mentioned that shifters aren’t always on good terms with casters. With the tension now radiating from Mave and her packmates, it’s clear I’m about to get a front row seat as to why.

The group of new arrivals is big. There are eight guys and two girls, but only four guys in the group seem to be outwardly amused by the taunting of the shifters. The other guys are merely watching with various looks of boredom or disinterest on their faces.

I pause at the set of gray-blue eyes that are trained on me. The eyes belong to a tall blond guy. His hair is short, and an unruly curl gives it a hot bed head look. The contrast of his dark eyebrows and tan skin against the lightness of his eyes and hair gives him a striking and drool-worthy visage. His stormy-blue gaze tracks me with shrewd intensity, and I match his stare for a minute before looking back towards the shifters.

Macon, Kaika, and Tru almost reach us when a stocky guy grips Tru’s arm and yanks him toward the offensive group. I expect Kaika or Mave to react to the manhandling, but Kaika is staring at the ground and Mave is watching, but she’s not doing anything about it. Kaika and Macon stop in front of us, and Mave starts handing them the things we brought.

Tru is forcefully guided over to the group of troublemakers. I only catch phrases here and there, but I hear something about a game and to tell them when. I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on when out of nowhere, a guy punches Tru in the stomach. He crumples over from the blow.

The assholes laugh, and the kid that threw the punch looks toward the bored faces of the other six people he came with like he’s seeking their approval. I step away from Mave and calmly walk into the ring of assholes. I step in front of Tru to face off with the group of bullies.

“Want to explain to me what you’re doing?” I ask evenly.

“It’s a game, right Tru? As soon as he says when, we stop," the asshole to my left explains with a laugh.

I’ve only known Tru for a handful of hours, but I’ve noticed that he hasn’t spoken a word the whole time. Maybe he’s the strong, silent type or maybe it’s something else, but it’s clear these assholes know that no matter what they do to him, he’s not going to tell them to stop.

I turn to look at Tru, narrowing my eyes at the stocky asshat who still has his arm around Tru’s shoulders. He wisely drops it. I hand my keys to Tru, hoping he’ll take the hint and get Mave and the others in the Jeep. Tru’s eyes are filled with fire, but his body language is surprisingly submissive.

It bothers the shit out of me to see that he’s tempering the fight in him with inaction. I turn around and start backing up into Tru’s body, forcing him to step out from the group in order to make room for me.

“Sounds fun. I want to play, but I go first," I say sweetly.

He snickers uncomfortably and looks around at his friends. When no one steps in to tell him this is a bad idea, he agrees with a shrug and a smirk. I step up to him and give him the most demure smile I can muster.

I call on the runes on my arm, wanting a little extra kick in my punch, and I hit the guy hard on the side. I feel the distinct crunch of broken ribs, and he crumbles in on himself, immediately screaming in pain. I step back to give him room to writhe and look at the other three assholes in challenge.

The stocky one looks furious. “What the fuck did you do?” he rages at me, trying to get in my face. I grab him by the neck, lift him off the ground, and then slam his body down flat into the sand. I use enough force to knock the wind out of him but not enough to break anything. I lean over the asshole while he gasps for air and I wait until his eyes focus on me.

“Tell me when," I mock.

I stand up and silently dare anyone else to play. When no one else approaches me, I look each and every one of them in the eyes. Not just the bullies, but the rest of the group who just stood by and watched. I shake my head in disgust at them. I look at the two guys on the ground then back up at their group.

“This bullshit stops now. Don’t touch any of the shifters again.”

I look over to find the guy with the overcast blue eyes and stare at him until he gives me the slightest of nods. I take that as agreement and walk away, snatching my bag from where I dropped it and head toward where the Jeep is parked.

Mave and her friends are grouped by the beach entrance instead of in the car where they should be. I approach them, and Tru hands me back my keys. We all climb into the Jeep, and I drive towards where I picked them up. I give them and myself about ten minutes to process things before I break the silence.

“Anyone care to fill me in?” I pose to no one in particular.

It’s silent for a minute longer before Mave speaks.

“We’ve had trouble with that group before," she offers vaguely.

I patiently wait for her to elaborate.

“They know our pack is easy prey because we won’t fight back.”

I look at her with confusion.

“Our alpha works with the caster’s Elders Council. Two of the guys in that group are the sons of elders. If we fight back, we could jeopardize our alpha’s working relationship with the council, which would be really bad for the pack. We’ve been ordered not to engage any of them for any reason.”

I nod my head absently. “Is that whole group a coven?” I ask, trying to piece things together.

“No, only four of them are a registered coven. The extra guys seem to think they’re going to be brought into the fold, and the girls are probably auditioning for a place too," Mave informs me. “The actual coven never lifts a finger towards us, but they also don’t stop their cronies from doing anything either," she adds. “Now your turn."

“My turn to what?”

“Explain what in the name of terminator happened back there?”

I chuckle at the wide-eyed, excited look on her face. “I used to fight for a living. It’s what I did before I found out I was a caster and my uncle found me and brought me here.”

“Thank you, Vin. It means more than I can say that you stood up for us. Tru doesn’t talk unless it’s in the pack link, but he says thank you, too.” Mave is quiet for a minute, and then she suddenly starts giggling. “Holy shit. I had to stop myself from laughing when you picked Harris up by the neck. It was beautiful," Mave tells me, and she closes her eyes like she’s happily reminiscing.

A grumbling laugh starts in the back seat, and we both look back to discover it’s grumpy Kaika laughing his ass off. Mave and I look at each other, completely stunned, before breaking down and joining him in fits of hysterical laughter.