Chapter One
Krista
“Don’t look now, but your SHS is back,” Josie said, nudging Krista as she set down her frothy coffee. Then she kicked her under the table. “I said don’t look!” She took a notepad out of her waitress’ apron and pretended to write on it as she peered over the top at the three big shifters sitting on a bench across the street.
Krista yelped and scowled at Josie, scooting her chair so her leg was out of reach. “The service here sucks. I’m going to complain to the manager. Anyway, how can I not look when you tell me something like that?”
Krista and her Great-Aunt Hattie were sitting in the outdoor section of Coffee Mugging, ten blocks from the clinic where Krista worked as a nurse practitioner. Josie had a rock the size of a robin’s egg on her left ring finger courtesy of her fiancé, the coffee shop’s besotted manager. Krista would never really complain about her, but it wouldn’t matter if she did. Josie could shift into panther form and gulp down a table full of customers raw, and her fiancé wouldn’t even dock her pay.
“What’s an SHS?” Hattie asked, grabbing a handful of fries from Krista’s plate. Her wrinkled cheeks bulged like a hamster’s as she munched on the crispy golden goodness. She’d made a rare visit to the city to visit Krista. They came from the rural area known as the Zoo outside Crystal Bay, Virginia, and like most country shifters, viewed the big city with suspicion. Too many humans, too much noise and traffic, too many rules and laws that weren’t meant for a being with an animal nature.
Hattie was eighty years old, and these days, her hair was only fire-engine red because she colored it that way. Her face was round and wreathed in wrinkles, and she looked like the kind of grandmotherly old shifter who’d bake you cookies and say “bless your heart”.
But looks can be deceiving. Anyone who got on Hattie’s bad side found that out quickly enough.
Hattie made an annual pilgrimage to Crystal Bay right before the Ellis Family Gathering, nagging her great-niece to do the right thing and come home to Flowering Dogwood, the little dot on the map where Krista had grown up.
Krista slapped at Hattie’s hand as she reached for another fry but missed because she was also trying to check her reflection in the street-facing window of Coffee Muggings. Red hair spilling out of her hair elastic in uneven tendrils—bleh. Makeup doing the midday sweat-fade so her freckles stood out in sharp relief, and she had faint mascara circles under her eyes—of course.
She quickly tucked the straying strands of hair behind her ears and decided that the smudged eye-makeup could definitely possibly maybe be a smoky-eye look.
“I said, what’s an SHS?” Hattie repeated, making another grab for Krista’s fries. “Is that some kind of new-fangled city thing? Is it a drug? It’s drugs, isn’t it, Krista?” She clasped one hand to her wrinkled chest while simultaneously sliding half a dozen fries off the plate. “I never should have let you come here! On, you were such a sweet little kit…”
“It is not drugs! Why does your mind always go to the worst-case scenario?” Krista flicked an annoyed glance at her great-aunt, then let her gaze casually wander across the street.
The big, handsome wolf shifter sat on a bench with two other hot guys, eating a sandwich. He wore a white t-shirt and jeans and what looked like hiking books. Krista wanted to trade places with that t-shirt, which hugged his biceps and broad back and shoulders. She’d never been jealous of a garment before.
She’d devoured every detail about him, her mind snapping pictures of his clothes, his dark curly hair, and the tanned skin of his arms, but he hadn’t even noticed Krista yet. Had he? Every time he was within a few blocks of Krista, she became instantly aware of him—he set off an intense tingling in her pink bits and made her heart thud against her ribcage like she’d just run a marathon. But she didn’t seem to have the same effect on him, because when they crossed paths, he barely glanced her way, and when he did, he never acknowledged her with more than a grunt and an abrupt jerk of his head.
Oh well. His loss. On the bright side, he didn’t seem to notice any of the many women who were strolling by and molesting him with their eyeballs, either.
Hattie nudged Krista under the table with her foot, wanting an answer to her question. “If it’s not drugs, what is an SHS?” she said with her mouth full of pilfered fries. Krista gave her great-aunt a dirty look and turned her attention to Josie, who was still leaning against Krista’s chair and staring raptly at the big wolf shifter.
“What do you think the penalty should be for people who say ‘Just a salad for me’ and then steal half your fries?” she asked Josie. She pulled her plate closer to her and put her hand over the fries.
“Death,” Josie pronounced solemnly.
“I’m just a weak, malnourished old lady,” Hattie said in a hurt, feeble voice. “I need to keep up my strength.” Then she swiped at the fries again and demanded, “What’s an SHS?”
“Sexy Hot Stalker.” Josie looked dreamily across at the wolf shifter.
Krista struggled to keep her fangs from thrusting from her gums. “Hey,” she protested, “keep your eyes to yourself. You’re a practically-married woman.”
She was being silly, and she knew it; Josie was absolutely devoted to her a fiancé, and in any case, she was a panther shifter—in a fight between a panther and a fox, Josie would end up flossing her fangs with Krista. That didn’t stop Krista’s vixen from objecting to the way her friend was drooling in his general direction, though.
“Hey, did you just growl at me?” Josie asked. “I thought you didn’t like him!”
“I didn’t! I mean, I don’t! I don’tdislike him, I just…” Krista shrugged and forced herself to look away. “I’m not interested in him in that way.” She wasn’t interested inanyman after her cheating ex-boyfriend, Dr. God’s-gift-to-shifter-chicks Jerome Long, had dumped her for a hotter, or at least more gullible model. She was on a break. Even if her Sexy Hot Stalker had asked her out, she would have said no.
Yeah, right. And the moon is made of camembert.
Josie was staring at her skeptically, so she suddenly became very interested in what was left of her French fries, staring down at her plate as she shoveled them into her mouth, one after another.
Two weeks ago, the nameless Sexy Hot Stalker had saved Krista from being mugged as she’d walked to her car at the end of a late shift.
It was the weirdest thing—when she’d realized she was being followed, instead of turning on her attacker and handing him his ass, she’d found herself overcome by a wave of almost pleasant weakness, as if every fiber of her being were flooded with sweet, slow molasses, making it difficult to move or think.
Even a small shifter like a fox ought to be able to make a human lowlife wish he’d stayed home arranging his personality disorders in alphabetical order. But when the guy had lunged, she’d found she felt too slow and stupid to do anything other than stand there. There was an unfamiliar fluttering in her chest and her pulse thrummed dreamily in her veins.
