Primal Bonds - By Jennifer Ashley Page 0,115

Dylan’s pickup. Terry Gray saw Andrea in the window and stopped.

“Andrea,” he said. “My daughter.”

“Father,” Andrea choked out the word. “What are you doing here? No, wait, don’t move, I’m coming down.”

She spun from the window to find Sean behind her, dressed in jeans and nothing else, his Collar gleaming at his throat. Her libido took in what a delectable picture he made while she pointed at him with a shaking finger. “You did this. You brought him here.”

“That I did.” Sean gave her a quiet nod, a Shifter who didn’t need to shout for everyone to understand how powerful he was. “It’s all very well that you found Fionn, but I knew you’d be still be missing your dad.”

Andrea felt the tears coming, but she smiled at Sean with all her heart. “I love you, Sean Morrissey.”

He drew her into his arms and gave her a kiss that was at once gentle and full of fire. “I love you too, Fae-girl. Go on now.”

Andrea kissed him one more time, then she dashed out of the room, nearly flew down the stairs, and burst out the door to be swept into the arms of her stepfather.

Sean watched out of the window as Andrea hugged her stepfather, his heart at peace. He caught the gaze of his own father, who leaned against his truck. Sean and Dylan shared a look that was full of understanding. Damn, it was good to be a Shifter today.

Across the room, the Sword of the Guardian gleamed in the sunshine, softly singing its happiness.

Turn the page for a preview of the next Shifters Unbound novel by Jennifer Ashley

WILD CAT

Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

CHAPTER ONE

Heights. Damn it, why did it have to be heights?

Diego Escobar scanned the steel beams of the unfinished skyscraper against a gray morning sky, and acid seared his stomach.

Heights had never bothered him until two years ago, when five meth-head perps had hung him over the penthouse balcony of a thirty-story hotel and threatened to drop him. His partner, a damn good cop, had put his weapon on the balcony floor and raised his hands to save Diego’s life. The perps had pulled Diego to safety and then casually shot both of them. Diego had survived, but his partner hadn’t.

The incident had left Diego burning with rage and grief, which manifested itself from time to time into an obsessive fear of heights. Even rising three floors in a glass elevator could make him break into a cold sweat.

“Way the hell up there?” he asked Rogers, the uniform cop who’d made the call for backup.

“Yes, sir.”

Oh, just effing perfect.

“Hooper’s pretty sure it’s not human,” Rogers said. “He says it moves too fast, jumps too far. But he hasn’t got a visual yet.”

Not human meant Shifter. This was getting better and better. “He up there alone?”

“Jemez is with him. They think they have it cornered on the fifty-first level.”

The fifty-first level? “Tell me you’re fucking kidding.”

“No, sir.” Rogers gestured. “There’s an elevator. We got the electric company to turn on the power.”

Diego looked at the rusty doors then up through the grid of beams into empty space, and his mouth went dry.

This cluster of buildings had been under construction for years. An apartment complex, hotel, office tower, and shopping center in one, a little way from the Strip. The idea was to lure locals and rich out of towners from the more touristy hotels and casinos and have them spend their money here. The project had started to great fanfare, but so many investors had pulled out that building had ground to a halt, and the unfinished skyscraper sat like a rusting blot on the empty desert around it.

Tracking Shifters wasn’t his department. Diego was a detective in vice, and this call should have been a simple case of trespassing. He’d responded to the plea for backup because he’d been heading to work anyway, and his route took him right by the construction site. He figured he’d help Rogers chase down a miscreant and drive on in to the station.

Now Rogers wanted Diego to jaunt to the fifty-first level, where there weren’t even any floors, for crying out loud, and chase a perp who might be a Shifter. Rogers, rotund and near retirement, made it clear he had no intention of going up there himself.

A high-pitched scream rang down from on high. It was a woman’s scream—Maria Jemez—followed by a man’s bellow of surprise and pain. Then, silence.

“Damn it.” Diego sprinted for the elevator. Like

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