“Hiding the truth from me,” Mica accused her. “Tell me what you saw.”
Cassie’s brow arched. “I didn’t see it, I smelled it,” she repeated. “But it’s not a scent you carry now, Mica. It’s one you could carry later.”
There was the panic again. It was making her sick. Her stomach felt weak, shaky.
“And it will be what?” Clenched teeth, frustration. She hated it when Cassie played with her like this.
“Contentment,” Cassie finally answered. “You know, Mica, as much as you may hate the thought of it, I smelled contentment.”
Cassie watched her friend, fighting to hold her expression, fighting to convince Mica everything was fine, to hold back the worry and the concern. She wasn’t lying to Mica, the “future” scent was one of contentment, but it was a potential contentment. A maybe thing. One of the many paths Mica could take. And beside that path was deceit and rage, to the other side was agony and heartache.
The path would depend on too many things.
It would depend on Mica and on a Breed . . .
And the Breed it would depend on wasn’t Navarro Blaine.
And that was the scary part. Because the other scent she detected was so slight, so subtle, that Cassie doubted it would even show on tests. That other scent was Navarro’s, and a hint of mating heat.
Mica was Navarro’s mate, but her friend’s happiness would lie in another Breed’s hands. A Breed other than her mate.
CHAPTER 1
Thunder crashed, lightning blazed and sheets of rain poured from the sky as though rage itself were given a physical presence. It slashed through the windswept streets and tore through the back alleys as most inhabitants of the city watched from indoors. There were few brave enough to venture into the streets and face the wrath of the storm pounding furiously outside their windows, but they were very few and very far between.
The streets were all but deserted at four in the morning. New York might never sleep, but it definitely rested for a while, especially during the furious, driving rains that descended on the city that night.
Pouring moisture that saturated hair and clothing, washing it into Mica’s eyes, mixing with the tears and washing away the blood that had eased from her scalp after the initial attack that had come earlier.
An attack she couldn’t have expected, that she’d had no warning was coming.
She stumbled through the alley, breath shuddering, chills wracking her body as she fought to find a haven, a business, an opened door, a cabdriver.
Anything. Anyone.
And there was nothing. There was no one. She was alone in a city that was sleeping when it wasn’t supposed to, amid a storm she should have been safe from, comfortable and warm in her own bed.
She wanted to be in her bed.
She wanted to pull the blankets over her head and dream those hot, erotic dreams she’d been having lately of a Breed she shouldn’t dream about.
She didn’t want to be here.
A sob tore from her chest, ripping through her ribs in agony as terror had tears mixing with the cold rivulets of rain pouring down her face.
She wanted to be home.
She should have never left her apartment, she should have never trusted that bastard little mouse of a waiter who claimed to be in trouble. After leaving the office, she should have just gone home and ignored the message on her phone that he had important information for her.
She was just an accountant; she wasn’t a reporter. But she often ate at the little café where he worked, and he called her, he said, because he didn’t know who else to call.
Bullshit.
He had drawn her right from the restaurant bar and into the grip of a damned Coyote.
The son of a bitch had tried to knock her out.
She touched the side of the head, biting her lip at the tenderness there.