PROLOGUE
“Fuck, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Michael McKillan stood in the doorway to his brother’s room, staring at the open window and a pile of discarded clothes on the floor, the silver band of his tracker amongst them.
The police officer next to him sighed and waved his hand around the room. “I’m sorry, Michael. We’re gonna have to go after him.”
A low growl threatened to build in his chest, but he swallowed it down, refusing to give them a reason to detain him too. Perceived threats to a human were punishable by shifter prison. Even though this particular human was one of his best friends, the others with him weren’t.
“I know.” Fucking idiot. Sam knew damn well he needed permission to go on a run, needed to inform the proper authorities so security was in place to protect the fucking public. Michael scoffed. “He’s sixteen and stupid, that’s all. He wouldn’t hurt a soul.”
“I know that.”
“Do they?” Michael gestured to the other officers milling about his mother’s house. A few of them looking far too eager to hunt down his little brother.
“I’ll make sure they do.”
THEY FOUND SAM in the park less than two miles away, running in and out the trees with two of his friends. “It was a hot night,” they’d said. “We just wanted to run.”
Michael understood far too well. Being denied their most basic instinct made him feel caged, shackled. But the law was the law, even if it was ridiculously unfair and inhumane.
Despite protests from some of the other officers, those who caught Sam used excessive force to take him down.
Because shifters healed.
They shot him multiple times, bound him in chains of silver and iron that burnt his skin and sapped his strength, knowing full well that in the morning, all evidence of their ill-treatment would be gone.
Shifters were dangerous monsters according to the nightly news. It was only fair that they were tagged like animals and that the police were afforded the right to use excessive force when apprehending them.
Michael and his friends, along with shifters across the country, put up with it because there was no other choice. But watching the broken body of his little brother dumped into the back of a police car sparked a rage in him he struggled to quell.
Didn’t want to.
Walking over to his best friend, he pulled him to one side and leant to whisper in his ear. “This needs to stop.”
“It does.”
“And we’re gonna stop it.”
Ten years later the Shifter Alliance Party were in power. The oppressed became the oppressors, embodying the very thing they fought to overthrow.
CHAPTER ONE
Cole sat on the bottom step of the stairs and eyed the letter lying on the doormat. He’d heard the post being shoved through the letterbox, knew what would be waiting for him, but seeing it there still came as a shock.
Or maybe more like a nasty surprise.
Normally he’d scoop up the post and go open it over breakfast, but today was June first and that letter held everything he’d been dreading for the last few years.
His mum appeared in the kitchen doorway. She looked at Cole, then at the post still sitting on the mat, and sighed. “It’s not going to disappear just because you refuse to acknowledge it.”
“I know.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and stood. “I enjoyed pretending for a moment, though.”
Pushing off the doorframe, she walked over to him and drew him into a hug. “Your dad’s already left for work, but I’ve saved you some bacon, eggs, and toast. Come sit down and eat something.” She didn’t mention the letter, but as she headed back into the kitchen, Cole bent to pick it up. His mum was right after all; it wasn’t going to go away.
“Here you go.” The food she set in front of him looked delicious, smelt it too, but Cole’s appetite disappeared as he placed the letter on the table, the emblem for the Shifter Alliance Party mocking him from the top left-hand corner.
“Thanks,” he muttered, not taking his eyes off it.
His mum sighed. “Oh for heaven’s sake, just open the thing.”
