Page 1

CHAPTER ONE

ONE WEEK AGO.

With his hands pillowed behind his head and his body stretched out on an unpadded wooden slab, Allen Chase shut his eyes against the damp dark stone of the ceiling and listened to the water leaking in from the storm go drip-drip-drip somewhere in the corner of his cell. He inhaled deeply, murmuring a contented sigh on the exhale.

“Enjoying prison?” a voice snipped from the opposite side of the iron bars.

He hadn’t heard her approach, but the red-haired fox shifter was as wily in her human form as she was when she sported a red tail and black-tipped ears.

“This isn’t prison, Sionnach,” he replied, his eyes still closed. Prison was that hole in the Afghan desert where there had been nothing but dust and death and scorpions and an ever-persistent parchedness that had turned his throat drier than crisp autumn leaves. Just as scratchy too. “This is a day at the spa. I’m enjoying a moisturizing skincare treatment at the moment. Care to join, girlfriend? ”

He cracked open a golden eye as the cell door actually swung open. He sat up when Sionnach stepped foot inside, the puddles in the floor rippling with the passage of her leather boots. Her colleague, a bobcat shifter from the smell of him, waited outside with a brown-paper tote.

Sionnach looked just as sour as she normally did whenever she had to talk to him. Her burgundy-colored lips puckered like she’d just sucked down the juice from an entire lemon tree, not just one fruit. With her deep-red hair in a pixie cut and her lean whip of a body clad head-to-toe in leather, the middle-aged woman looked every inch the cool biker mom every kid wished they’d had growing up . . . until she disciplined your back-talking self with her belt.

Her matching red nails drummed on her belt buckle as if she was considering doing just that. Instead, she said, “As if I would ever willingly date a lone wolf, even one as pretty as you.”

Allen gestured to the damp of the cell misting on his face and bare chest. They’d only allowed him to keep his jeans before throwing him in here; even his feet were bare. “Moisturizing. It’s a game changer.”

She rolled her eyes and slapped a manilla folder against his chest. Allen caught it before it could drop and soak into the puddle below his cot. Sionnach took a step back and perched a hand on her outthrust hip. When he didn’t look at the folder right away, instead feeling the thickness and weight of what could only be a dossier, she gave him an impatient wave of her other hand. “Well? Go on.”

The Coalition insignia was inked on the folder’s front—a simple shield design encompassing a Tree of Life. It captured the Coalition’s purpose perfectly. They were a supernatural peace-keeping force, comprised almost entirely of shifters like himself, whose sole mission was to protect the weak from all who preyed upon them. To let every magical creature flourish, whether they were in an open magic town or not. It was very Arthurian. It was very Allen, despite the happenstance of his birth.

“What’s this?” The snark had vanished from his voice, replaced with quiet hope.

“Oh, so you’re going to be serious now? How refreshing.”

It was his turn to spear her with a glare. Hot and molten and golden, it had warned many before her that they were on dangerous ground. “I was serious the moment I stepped onto Coalition territory. It’s you people who didn’t believe my sincerity.”

“Hard to when you think an ‘audition’ is you challenging every Coalition member you could find to a bare-knuckle fight.”

“Well, I had to get your attention somehow. And it hardly would’ve been fair if I’d let the wolf out.”

She swallowed at that, knowing the truth of his words.

“I don’t think you’re giving me enough credit, Sionnach. It’s not like you Coalition folks go about town wearing name tags. You hide in plain sight. I had to make sure you were, well, you , so I didn’t go beating up random civilians and blowing all our covers.” He flashed her a wolfish grin. “You’re welcome. And maybe next time you’ll read my application letters instead of immediately trashing them.”

“How about you read the file so you can get out of my sight, Allen?”

He flipped it open, and his eyes went wide. “What is this? A protection detail? For the Hawthornes ?” He stood, bare feet splashing in the puddle beneath his cot. The freezing water soaked into the cuffs of his jeans, sending chills up his legs, but he barely felt them. “Are you out of your mind?”

The Hawthorne family was the most powerful coven on the East Coast, harnessing both green and hearth magic. They were expert nature-manipulators, potion masters, and their hatred for shifters was legendary. All supes or Fair Folk with any furry inclination had moved out of Annesley Valley long ago, and to his knowledge, none had set foot there in decades. Their matriarch, Iris Hawthorne, was militant in sniffing and routing them out. And she was very, very good at it. Honestly, if she weren’t otherwise employed, his superiors would’ve tried to recruit her to run their counterterrorism ops.

Ex-superiors , he reminded himself, wincing.

The fox shifter turned smug. “It’s your audition. One sanctioned by the Coalition elders themselves. Complete the mission, and you’ve just secured your application a position on top of the pile instead of in the incinerator. Should be easy for you, Allen, ex-Green Beret and all.”

Infiltrating hostile territory and engraining himself in the culture so he could sabotage the corrupt regime du jour had been his bread and butter for over a decade. But there had never been witches or other supes involved, and certainly not ones who would be actively seeking a shifter in their midst.

He was about to protest why a coven of their strength and power even needed Coalition assistance when the answer leapt out from the dossier: the coven was away on business in some small town in the middle of the Midwest heartland for the foreseeable future. It was the rest of their family—the uninitiated witches—who needed protection, particularly a trio of siblings: Boar, Rose, and Lilac.

What is it with witches naming their kids after plants and animals?

“You can look at the rest of the file when you’re on the plane,” Sionnach told him briskly, goose flesh on the exposed skin of her neck betraying her discomfort. Allen had been so surprised by the mission that he hadn’t realized his feet had gone numb from standing in the puddle this long. “ If you accept,” she added. “If you don’t, well, you can work on your moisturizing skincare routine a little while longer. So are you in or you out?”

There was a catch, there always was. They weren’t going to simply let him go without the pound of flesh they deserved to take after he’d sent a dozen Coalition members to the infirmary just to get their attention. He closed the file and tapped it against his palm. “You’re giving me this because if I fail, the Coalition can’t be held responsible for meddling in Hawthorne affairs, isn’t that right? You’re banking on my status as a lone wolf to keep your hands clean.”

“Yep.” She didn’t even bother to sugarcoat it. “We’ll claim ignorance, disavow you, the whole kit and caboodle. That a deal-breaker?”

No, actually. This was the opportunity he’d been waiting for. After that last disastrous mission with his Green Beret brothers, he finally had another chance to belong. To find new acceptance, new brothers. He wouldn’t be alone like his Nemean heritage had always destined him to be. In the face of such hope, he forgot his training and allowed his heart to hammer against his ribs.

The fox shifter heard his elevated pulse and smiled. “Guess that’s a yes.” Leather creaked as she stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled out a small plastic case. “You’ll need these.”

Color contacts. To mask the gold of his eyes. A Nemean wolf dead giveaway.

He took them and slipped them into his own pocket. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Sionnach startled at the sincerity she heard in his voice. She didn’t understand what a gift she and the Coalition elders were giving him, but they didn’t need to know the why , only that he was grateful. So bone-deep grateful.

Sionnach cleared her throat as her gaze wandered around the prison cell. Allen had the impression that while Sionnach rarely projected any emotion other than aloof confidence, it was all a show to guard a sympathetic heart.

“Yes, well, it’s all in the file, but you’ll make contact with the local butcher and grocers, James and Kalina Root—they’re Coalition allies,” she informed him briskly. “You’ll be their delivery boy, so you’ll have access to most of the town and Hawthorne Hall. Don’t mess it up for them, okay? They’re good people and it took years to cultivate them in enemy territory.”

A sympathetic heart indeed.

She sniffed, stuffing both hands into her pockets and jerking her chin to the open cell door. “Well, come on, wolf.”

He followed, the implication that he was a dog obediently following after his master not lost on him in the slightest, but he’d let it pass. Just this once.

When they got to the cell door, Sionnach whipped around, her lean arm baring his path. He towered over the petite fox shifter, but she stood her ground. Had they been in their beast skins, she would’ve never dared. “I’ve never seen a Nemean wolf skinned before, but there’s always a first time, and you can bet it will be at the hands of a Hawthorne when it happens. So do this right, Allen. Don’t blow your cover and don’t let that pretty face of yours get you into trouble.”

As if he would let a woman or anyone else, including himself, jeopardize this for him. A spark of snark returned. “What do you want me to do, rub some dirt on it?”

“And add an exfoliant to your skincare routine? I don’t think so.” She turned to her bobcat shifter colleague and slipped her hand into the tote he held. “Wear this.”

Allen caught a nondescript green ball cap. Except it wasn’t just any green, it was Coalition green. The green of ancient pine trees in the depths of winter, a color that promised spring would return.

The lone wolf slipped the hat over his hair and pulled it down to shadow his face. A soft smile curved his lips. He was used to baby steps, small victories. It’s what wore the target down in time. What would ease the heartbreak of his last mission. This hat, this color, put him on the fringes of the acceptance and community he craved.

Fringes , he mused. Still counts.