Feral Heat

“Deni Rowe.” Deni handed the female cop her ID card, which each Shifter had to update every year. “Same as last time,” she couldn’t help adding. Both these officers had been in the group that had come to Deni’s and Ellison’s house.

“Hmm.” The female officer peered at Deni’s ID, shining a black light on it, pretending she wasn’t nervous. Dylan stood behind Deni, not wanting her to face the cops alone. Dylan said nothing and didn’t try to interfere, but Dylan could unnerve most humans—not to mention most Shifters—simply by standing there. Both the male and female officer were sweating under his scrutiny.

“Seems okay.” The female officer handed the card back to Deni. “Nice bracelet,” she said, glancing at the gold chain on Deni’s wrist.

“It was my mother’s,” Deni said. She tucked the ID into the back pocket of her shorts.

“Looks expensive.” Shifters weren’t allowed to wear costly jewelry, and shouldn’t be able to afford to buy it.

“Handed down through the family,” Deni answered. “I have photos of my mother and my grandmother wearing it, if you want to see them.”

“Hmm.” Another skeptical sound. “Where’s the other guy? The one I saw you with before?”

Deni prayed these two weren’t good at reading body language as she answered nonchalantly, “Ellison? He’s my brother. He’s at the bar with his mate.”

“I mean the other one. The drunk one you were with at the . . . ceremony.”

Damn it. “I don’t know,” Deni said. She took a step back to Dylan, putting herself into the radius of his warmth. “I’m with Dylan tonight.”

Deni smiled at the female cop, as though willing her to understand. If humans liked to believe Shifter women were promiscuous, Deni would use it to her advantage. The female officer’s look turned to disgust, but Deni didn’t care what this woman thought of her as long as Jace was safe.

Both cops looked Dylan and Deni over and exchanged knowing smirks. They’d seen Dylan with Glory at the fight club. They must think Shiftertown was one big sex fest.

Dylan put his arm around Deni and dared them to say anything. The cops all but snickered as they moved off toward another set of Shifters walking on the dark street.

“Sorry,” Deni said in a low voice to Dylan.

Dylan squeezed her shoulder. “You’re good at thinking on your feet. Nothing to be sorry about.” Another squeeze of reassurance, then he let her go. “But let’s don’t mention this to Glory.”

Deni smiled. “No fear.”

“She would understand eventually, but it’s the ‘eventually’ that would be uncomfortable.” Dylan sent her one of his rare smiles. “Let’s go have some barbeque.”

They had to, to keep up the verisimilitude. Deni only hoped Jace was safe, and that the half-crazed wolf inside her wouldn’t make her break away from Dylan and race around Shiftertown until she could find and protect him again.

* * *

“So this is Faerie?” Jace wrinkled his nose at the smell. “I don’t like it.”

“As my daughter would say . . . Suck it up.”

Shifters had left Faerie forever seven hundred years ago, not that they’d ever embraced it as home. Though they’d been created here, Shifters had cultivated a healthy loathing of the place.

Jace had followed Fionn to a grove of trees between the backyards of Shifter houses. In the glow of the few streetlights, he’d seen police officers walking from house to house, and patrol cars and vans creeping along the streets.

The darkness in the grove of trees had been deep, inky. A mist rose from nowhere in the middle of the ring of trees, one that smelled acrid to Jace. A tingling had begun in Jace’s brain that had him snarling, his claws coming out, before Fionn had grabbed him and shoved him into the middle of the mist.

Jace had blinked, the tingling dying, and found himself in another ring of trees, these old, towering, and damp. His boots squished in mud covered with gray green weeds and dead leaves. The thick trees ran as far as Jace could see, the land wet, dank, and muddy.

“Boring,” Jace said. “No wonder my ancestors chose to live in the human world.”

Fionn made an impatient noise. “This is only one tiny corner of one woods in Faerie. I live miles from here in a valley that would put anything found in your world to shame. Mountains reaching to the skies, snowcaps burnished by the sun, meadows of grass so green it makes you weep, and packed with wildflowers in every color. My garden is designed to run right into the meadows, so it’s as though I step into paradise every time I walk out my door. My manor house has marble floors, and walls veined with Fae gold, which humans have never seen—and never will. Fae gold is rare even for the Fae. Humans would kill each other—and Fae—over it.”

“Walls veined with gold,” Jace said. “No overkill there.”

Fionn started walking into the trees, ignoring him. “When I come to this area, however, I live rough in a tent. This way.”

“Wait a minute.” Jace jogged to catch up with him. The Fae-man was fast. “How do you know where the gateway, or whatever that was, is? All these trees look alike—and smell alike—to me.”

Fionn didn’t look back. “Then you’d better stick with me, hadn’t you?”

Great. “How do I know you’re not leading me to Fae warriors with big swords who’d love a Shifter snow leopard head decorating their fireplace?”