her.
“This is a whole new world for you, Zé. You need someone to guide you.”
“And,” Zé said on a startled laugh, “you want it to be her?”
Charlie covered her mouth with her free hand to hide her own laugh and Max yanked the other forearm off her throat. “What does that mean?”
“I know,” Stevie cut in, adorably sitting on Shen’s lap, “that my sister may seem like a waste of space—”
“Hey!”
“—but she actually did help me when I started shifting.”
“And she knows more than I do,” Charlie admitted, grabbing one of the croissants off the plate. “I was so busy trying to keep everyone alive that I didn’t really have time to figure out the different scents of bears and cats and . . . whatever. And that sort of thing actually can help. Especially during a firefight.”
Zé glanced at Shen. “Lot of firefights among your kind?”
He was only being sarcastic but the “yes” he got from all three sisters was off-putting.
“Okay,” Zé agreed, not knowing what else to do. “Where do we start?”
“Our ancient blood rituals!” Max announced.
“No,” Charlie said immediately.
“Then let’s learn all the different poop smells!”
“No,” Stevie said, her lip curled in disgust.
“Answering the ancient question, does rat really taste like chicken?”
“Max!” both sisters barked.
The evil woman laughed. “I’m kidding! Everyone knows that the first lesson for any new shifter is how to lick their own ass.”
Zé thought for sure one of Max’s sisters was about to hit her, and he was going to let it happen. But out of the corner of his eye he saw the largest of the sisters’ dogs ease up to the table and take all the bacon in his giant maw.
“Put that bacon back, mister,” he softly ordered, without facing the animal.
The dog growled at him, but Zé was really hungry. He wasn’t giving up bacon without a fight.
“Put. It. Back.”
Another growl. So Zé snarled back.
The dog finally leaned forward and dropped the bacon back onto the plate before stepping away from the table and leaving the kitchen.
Now Zé glared down at the bacon, annoyed. “Ech. It has dog drool on it.” He looked at the three sisters. “Can one of you make me more? This time without the dog drool?”
Max slammed her hands on the table and brought her face close to Zé’s. “How, in all this time, did you not know you were a cat? How?”
chapter SEVEN
Imani found a comfortable seat against the wall, near the window. That’s where she sat and watched. It was her nature. Lions didn’t run around, chasing everything that moved. They simply waited and watched until something tasty and weak came along. It was what had made her very good at her job back in the day.
A job she had thought she’d left behind long ago. But she’d realized that she had to get involved this time. The de Medicis were ridiculously dangerous and would blow up the world before they’d let any of their direct bloodline be taken down. Even worse, they were naturally paranoid and inherently mean. The de Medici Pride was ruled by three brothers who seemed to love money more than they loved anything else, but even their love of money didn’t explain why they would involve themselves in human trafficking.
No, their motivation was a simple one: They had no respect for full-humans. True, all shifters tended to look down on full-humans, but they also understood that they were all intertwined. That down deep, they were all human beings. Shifters were just better.
But the de Medicis saw full-humans as nothing more than prey. No different from gazelles or wild boars.
Still . . . human trafficking seemed beneath even them.
But when the Alpha male of the Van Holtz Pack and head of the protective organization The Group laid out the evidence that proved the de Medici involvement, that was enough for Imani. The de Medicis were out of control.
Still, the idea of involving herself with the Group—a protection organization that was run by wolves—and the Bear Preservation Council made her almost sick to her stomach. She’d been raised since birth to worry only about other cats, and even among them there was a hierarchy. But here she sat . . . surrounded by wolves and bears and a few cats. Walking into the room, she’d been ready for a fight. Ready to put the drooling dogs and idiot bears in their place so she could take over this situation and manage it.
But it wasn’t the rich Niles Van Holtz and his