Chapter One
The werewolf paid cash, sliding the change into the hip pocket of his jeans.
At the other end of the counter, Samantha pretended to study the flyers on the cork bulletin board—a high school production of Oklahoma, a ten percent discount on acupuncture, a tai chi class at the local Y. The scent of coffee and the whir of an espresso machine filled the air, suddenly stifling.
Samantha had time to grab coffee, but not for a were encounter. And if she was late for work again tonight, she’d lose this job, just like she had all the others.
Don’t see me. Don’t see what I am. I am normal. I am invisible. I am shielded by a protective light…
Too late.
Her heart roller coastered. He was striding toward her in the half-empty coffee shop.
She met his eyes, determined to show no fear. The werewolf almost looked human. His plain white tee stretched tight against washboard abs. There was a hint of a shadow about his chiseled jaw, and in her mind’s eye she caught a flash of rumpled sheets and sex. Like a photographic overlay, the spirit of the wolf shifted inside and around him. The wolf spirit snarled, baring its teeth.
Her spine stiffened, the skin on her arms tingling. There was no call for the were to be rude.
He stopped in front of her and leaned against the counter. His gaze took a leisurely stroll from her low-heeled boots to her blond hair and corkscrew curls. Petite and curvy, she was a twenty-something morsel in a lipstick-pink trench coat.
“What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” His voice was a husky growl.
“I think you’re supposed to say, ‘nice girl like you’.”
“No.” He grinned. “I meant what I said.”
Dammit. He did know what she was. And worse, her pulse was rising, warmth flooding her cheeks.
She hated this, because a part of her wanted to smile, to flirt. Sam was lonely and not proud of the fact. But once the were and his clan discovered she was broken…
Werewolves were all about survival of the fittest, and the broken were a danger to the pack. She’d be driven out at best and at worst… She pushed that memory aside, the beating from a pack of female weres that had left her for dead. The surgeries that had followed. The drugs. The confusion. She’d wanted to die then, had expected death.
God, how she wanted to be normal.
“Sam?” The barista, a pale teen with spiky black hair, slid a white paper cup across the metal counter.
Samantha snatched the coffee, heedless of the heat burning the ridge of the cup into her palm. She turned to leave.
The were moved to block her and pressed a broad hand to his chest. “Sam? That’s my favorite name. Now I know it’s love.”
She rolled her eyes and stepped around him.
He bent his head as she passed. “Don’t leave, wolf shaman.”
“Excuse me.” She wove through the coffee shop, and he followed her into the drizzly San Francisco night.
“Have dinner with me.”
“No.”
He grinned. “Breakfast then.”
She shot him a black-layered look. “No.”
“Why not? I’m charming, good-natured and I don’t bite. Much.”
“I’m sure. But trust me, it will only end in tears.” Her own.
He stopped beneath a streetlamp, the cone of light illuminating swirling droplets of fog. It sparkled in his hair like shards of glass. “What’s life without a little risk? Take a chance.”
She shook her head and hurried down the slick San Francisco street, the noise from the coffee shop fading behind her. He was wrong.
Well, he was half wrong. She was a shamanic witch. But unlike the other shamanic witches who identified with a certain were clan—wolf or bear, rabbit or snake—Samantha was a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. She connected to all the were-spirits.
And had no power over any of them.
The weres could sense her as easily as she could see the were-spirit inside them. They felt the connection, wanted to be near her, thought they could use her. But once they discovered her utter inability to do anything, it ended.
She attracted weres like nectar lured bees, so dating a normal guy was out of the question. The weres—especially of the wolf variety—could be violent, territorial. It was too dangerous.
The fog deepened the night and misted the darkened shop windows. It bloomed in liquid tendrils at the swirling passage of her trench coat.
Footsteps sounded on the street behind her, and irritation flared in her chest. Some wolves couldn’t take “no” for an answer.
She spun on her booted heel, her lips peeled back in a snarl.
A man stood watching her from half a block away, and the night stilled around him. Black blazer. Black button-up shirt. Black slacks. His face could have been chiseled by Leonardo—classically handsome and frozen in time—except for the scar that curved from his cheekbone to his left eye. And those eyes – deep-set, hooded, burning. His gaze locked on hers, and a shock rocked her, as if he could see to her soul.
Her mouth went dry, heart jamming her throat. For a moment she was unsure if fear or excitement pounded through her. Then her good sense took over and fear roared in. They were alone on the darkened street, the houses that lined it barricaded behind locked metal gates.
Gates that locked her out.
A car drove past, its tires swishing on the damp street.
She relaxed her vision.
Flames, roaring, demonic, blossomed about the stranger.
Her head refused to believe what her senses told her, rejected that familiar tingling, the rippling across her flesh that signaled a were’s presence. He couldn’t be a were. Animals didn’t burn.
His lips curved in a scimitar smile, cutting, cruel.
She turned and ran.
Her senses filled with the thunder of her heart, the beat of her footsteps on the sidewalk, her ragged breath.
Heat at her back. God, oh God, he was fast, faster than any were she’d encountered. She didn’t have time to wonder what the hell was chasing her. Run, run, run. She was close, so close to her employer, the professor’s apartment, to people, to safety.
Something slammed into her shoulder blades, and she was flying, engulfed in fire and darkness.
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