Catriona collapses forward onto the bed, gasping. I catch her before she can fall too hard, rolling us both to the side so I can hold her while the transformation takes hold.
"I can smell everything," she whispers. Her voice is raw and awed. "The rain outside. The salt from the ocean. Your heartbeat—I can hear your heartbeat, Kian."
"You'll feel me now. Always." I press my lips to her shoulder. "Location, emotions. Everything."
"And you'll feel me?"
"Always."
She shivers, and I pull her closer, wrapping myself around her. Warmth pulses between us, steady and reassuring, and the restlessness finally settles into satisfaction.
But then Catriona gasps again, her body going rigid in my arms.
"What—" She twists, looking down at her hands. "What's happening?"
"Your first shift." I hold her steady, keeping my voice calm even as urgency pounds through me. "With tiger-shifters, the transformation is more violent and rapid. We've always been vulnerable when transitioning, so evolution made it fast. Don't fight it. Let it come."
The mist surges around her again, and her body begins to change. Bones crack and reform, muscles shifting beneath her skin—the one-time restructuring as human DNA gets rewritten into shifter. After this, shifting will be painless, just another part of who she is. But right now, her body is being remade at a fundamental level.
I hold her through it, anchoring her, letting her feel my presence.
When the mist clears, a tigress sits in the middle of my bed—sleek and powerful, her coat marked with black stripes over tawny gold. She's smaller than me in animal form but no less deadly. Her eyes are still sharp, still intelligent, and when she looks at me, I see Catriona staring back.
I watch her explore the room on silent paws, testing her new body, her new senses. Muscle and sinew move beneath her striped coat as she prowls past the mirror, stopping to stare at her reflection. She's built to hunt, to kill—a true predator.
Then she shifts back.
The mist swirls around her, but this time there's less pain and more control. When it clears, Catriona's standing naked in front of the mirror, her chest rising and falling but not heaving.
"A tiger," she says, wonder in her voice.
"A tigress." I cross to her, sliding my arms around her waist from behind. "Built for power and speed, a true hunter."
"Sounds about right." She leans back against me, warmth humming between us, steady and reassuring. Then her posture changes, tension creeping into her shoulders. "How long before I can control it properly?"
"Couple of days. Maybe a week." I press a kiss to the healing marks on her neck. "You can feel me now—use that as an anchor if you need to when you shift."
She's quiet for a long moment, thoughts churning. Then she turns in my arms, meeting my eyes. "We need to move fast. Set the trap before Mikhail regroups."
"What are you thinking?"
"I still have the evidence from the Cork case." Her expression hardens. "I make contact through official channels. Tell him I have proof linking him to the trafficking operation, and I want to make a deal before I send it to the mainland."
Approval stirs low in my gut. "He'll know it's a trap."
"Maybe. But he'll come anyway." She pulls away slightly, pacing. "At this point he thinks I'm just a human police chief who stumbled onto something she doesn't understand. And he can't afford to let that evidence exist. His entire operation depends on staying hidden."
"Where?"
"The old lighthouse on the northern cliffs." She stops pacing, turning to face me. "Isolated. No witnesses. Plenty of room for him to think he has the advantage."
"And the brotherhood?"
"Hidden but close enough to move when he shows." She crosses back to me, her certainty mixed with fear flowing between us. "This ends tomorrow night, Kian. One way or another."
I pull her close. "Then we'd better get some sleep. You'll need your strength."
She nods against my chest, and I guide her back to the bed. We have time yet before the trap springs—hours to let the connection settle, to let her body adjust to the transformation, hours before everything escalates again.
