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CHAPTER ONE

ELENA

The warehouse is already packed when we arrive, and the scent of sweat coats the back of my throat.

The low roar of the crowd presses in on all sides, and I try to take deep breaths.

The electric charge in the air is almost palpable, but whether that’s in anticipation of the match or the fights that will break out afterward, I can’t be sure.

It looks as though every shifter in the state has turned out for this bout. Shifters from other packs — and other species — don’t mix well, so this type of match has always struck me as a recipe for disaster.

Glowing lupine eyes follow me through the crowd, though it isn’t the sort of attention a girl wants. They can tell that I’m human by my scent — probably the only one here.

A few of the wolf shifters recognize me as Rafael Cabrera Garcia’s little sister, and they quickly avert their eyes. Others glare openly as I pass. I jerk my chin up higher.

To her credit, Carmen keeps a firm grip on my hand as she elbows her way through the crowd. She seems oblivious to the looks we’re getting, but she’s more astute than she looks. My best friend since childhood is a she-wolf — and a ballsy one at that.

I can’t tell if it’s fear or resentment that makes the other shifters look at me that way. Maybe it’s the implicit threat that surrounds me like a halo whenever I touch down in my brother’s territory. I’ve been away so long, I almost forgot what that felt like.

I might be defenseless against the wolves, bears, and mountain lions packed into this place, but if any one of them touched a hair on my head, they’d be dead before they could find an exit.

It should make me feel invincible, but it only highlights my weakness.

Loud noise has been a trigger for me since the accident, and I can already feel the migraine coming on.

My palm is sweaty in Carmen’s grip, but I don’t say anything.

She’s my one friend who hasn’t treated me differently since it happened, and I don’t want her to start now.

Finally, the huge chain-link panels of the cage come into view, gleaming under the spotlights. An enormous octagonal ring looms over the crowd.

Two male shifters are pacing the cage — a wolf and a black bear, by the look of them. They’re in human form, shirtless and sweaty. The rules of the match stipulate that they’re not allowed to shift in the cage, which makes this a test of self-control as much as fighting prowess.

As I watch, the wolf shifter pounces, cutting in with a jab-hook so fast that I don’t even see the strikes until the bear stumbles back. The wolf follows up with a kick that catches his opponent in the ribs, and the crack that echoes through the arena makes me cringe.

The crowd cheers and boos, stomping their feet, and my unease intensifies. There’s nothing like violence to whip up a crowd, and when that crowd is made up of apex predators, things can escalate quickly.

Carmen catches my eye, and I wrinkle my nose.

“Why did you drag me here?” I yell.

I just flew in for Carmen’s wedding. This match was an unplanned detour on our way home from the airport.

“I love watching sweaty men duke it out. Don’t you?”

I scrunch my eyebrows and shake my head. As Carmen’s maid of honor, I made sure to plan an outrageous bachelorette party, but a bunch of shifters slinging blood aren’t on the menu.

I look back in time to see another kick connect with the bear’s jaw. The wolf continues his punishing sequence of strikes until he has his opponent pressed against the cage wall.

The wolf’s limbs move in a blur of violence — so fast I can’t follow their trajectory. I can only understand what happened by the bear’s reactions. A ferocious growl rends the air, and then things take a turn.

The bear catches the wolf around the neck and yanks the man’s head to his chest. Once they’re in the clinch, the bear pivots until they’ve traded places. He delivers blow after bone-cracking blow. He’s not as fast as the wolf, but he’s stronger.

Watching them go at it, it’s easy to see why shifters need a league of their own. They’d demolish any human in a UFC fight and expose their kind on live TV.

Blood sprays the cage floor as the bear lands one nasty blow, and the metal panels groan against the weight of the shifters. The roar of the crowd is deafening.

The wolf hits the mat in a bloody heap, and the screams and shouts rattle my eardrums. The ref shoots forward to call the knockout, and the crowd gets even louder. My temples throb, and colors blur in my vision.

Someone thrusts the bear shifter’s fist into the air, and he glares out at the spectators, chest heaving. A look of power and pride burns in his eyes. It’s not just a victory for him or his family. It’s a victory for all the bears in attendance.

There’s some shifting and grumbling as the spectators find their friends or leave to get drinks, and when I look over, I see a familiar face in the crowd. Raf .

My brother turns his head at the exact same moment, and our eyes lock across the room. Surprise flashes through his eyes just before his brow creases with worry. That concern morphs into disapproval as he turns and stalks toward me.

Shit . I know that look. It means I’m about to be in trouble.

What was I thinking, letting Carmen drag me here?

Of course Raf would be at the fights. This is his territory.

“Elena?” My brother’s voice booms over the crowd as he cuts through the horde of shifters to reach me.

If we were at home and it was just the two of us, I’d be ready with the sass. But here, surrounded by multiple species of shifters, Raf’s asshole-alpha mask is firmly in place, and dominant energy oozes off him.

“What are you doing here?” he demands as soon as he’s close enough not to shout .

“Hey, Raf. Good to see you, too!” I gush, only half sarcastically. It is good to see my brother — even if he is an overbearing ass.

Raf’s scowl flickers as though I short-circuited his alpha-ness, and he rolls his eyes before tugging me into a rough embrace. I smash my face into his chest and breathe in the scent of home. I’m barely five foot five, and Raf towers over me.

He plants a quick peck on the top of my head before pulling back to look at me. I blink at him in defiance, hoping he can’t tell that I’m on the verge of one of my “episodes.”

Raf slides an accusatory gaze to Carmen. “You know she shouldn’t be here,” he says in a low, dangerous tone. “The noise alone —”

“Oh, take a trip to the ladies’ room and untwist your panties, Raf. I’ve got her.”

I swallow. The long history between my best friend and my brother is the only reason Carmen can talk to her alpha that way. Judging by the way my brother’s jaw twitches, it’s taking all his self-restraint not to ream Carmen for dragging me to the fights.

“No offense, Car, but you’re no match for these people.” His eyes dart around to encompass the room. “This place is a powder keg ready to explode, and I don’t want her anywhere near it.”

“Chill out, big bro,” says Carmen with an eye roll. “We’ll sneak out before the last fight.”

“I didn’t even know you were coming home,” says Raf, directing this at me. His tone is accusatory, and I catch the flicker of hurt in his eyes.

Guilt twists my stomach, and I pray that Carmen can read the room. “Yeah, sorry I —”

“She didn’t tell you I’m getting married ?” Carmen butts in. “Elle’s my maid of honor!”

Crap.

Rafael’s eyes snap back to me, and I have to suppress a grimace. There’s a reason I didn’t tell my brother I was flying in from Boston — or about the wedding.

“You’re not going,” he says, his response automatic.

Indignation and annoyance flare in my gut. I’m so glad I left Colorado. “ Yes , I am.”

“Don’t worry,” says Carmen. “I’ll make sure she gets a quality lay.”

I wince. Leave it to Carmen to throw gasoline on the fire.

My brother looks as though he might be sick.

“That’s not my concern,” he growls, each word hitting like a shard of ice.

“There are going to be wolves from eight different packs at that wedding, and I can’t be there to protect you.

” His chilly gaze slides back to Carmen. “It would be seen as an overstep.”

“ And you’re not invited,” she reminds him. “No one wants Lord Buzzkill at —”

“I don’t need your protection,” I tell Raf, drawing myself up to my full meager height. “I’m twenty-two years old, and I’ve been around wolves my entire life.”

“Not without me, you haven’t,” he shoots back. “And things are . . . different now.”

I suck in a breath through my nose at the implication in Raf’s tone, shame and fury churning in my gut.

My brother has always been an overprotective, overbearing ass, but he became borderline insufferable after the accident .

“Take a chill pill, Raffy. I’ll be there,” says Carmen. “I mean, obvs. It’s my wedding. Besides, these are all our friends. Nothing is going to happen to Elena.”

“Oh yeah?” Raf growls, his tone acidic. “When have I heard that before?”

Carmen’s eyes crinkle with hurt and rage. Even for Raf, it’s a low blow.

“Will you two quit?” I hiss, irritated with both of them. “I’m a grown-ass woman. I don’t need protection from either one of you.”

Carmen and Raf exchange a look that says, quite plainly, that I do.

I clench my jaw. This is what’s so infuriating about being a human with a shifter brother. I’ve been immersed in pack life since before I could walk, surrounded by powerful wolves. My friends were shifters. I dated shifters. And yet, I was never one of them.

That fact became brutally apparent the night Carmen’s ex-boyfriend came to pick us up from a party after throwing back one too many shots himself. He took a left turn after the light turned red, and a truck crossing the intersection T-boned our car.

Shifters are notoriously hard to kill, and AJ walked away without a scratch. Carmen broke her arm in the crash, but it healed in a matter of days. I was diagnosed with an epidural hematoma — bleeding around the brain. I’d also sustained a fractured collarbone and dislocated my shoulder.

Even for humans, bones and muscles heal relatively fast. The brain takes longer, and sometimes it never fully recovers.

Carmen opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, music blares over the loudspeakers, and the crowd goes wild. A spotlight beams down near the back of the arena, and I see the next fighter and his team walking out.

I’d been so caught up in this little family reunion, I’d almost forgotten there were more fights on the card. The walkout song is Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” and the fighter —

The man’s tall frame looms over the crowd, and my stomach drops to the floor.

If I was surprised to see Raf here, it’s nothing compared to the gut punch I feel when I see the fighter cutting through the crowd. He’s got to be six three, six four at least, with a strong, sharp jaw and short dark hair.

My breath catches in my throat, and Carmen makes a surprised sound of recognition. “Is that . . . Jake ?”

“Yep,” says Raf, following my gaze to his best friend and our former next-door neighbor. I hear the disapproval in his voice.

I haven’t seen or heard from Jake Carson in six years. The messed-up part is that I’ve thought about him plenty.

“I told him he should quit taking fights,” says Raf. “But he doesn’t listen to me.”

I’m not surprised. When we were kids, Jake was always getting into scuffles with the rougher kids in the neighborhood.

It wasn’t until he took up boxing at the Y that he stopped getting into trouble.

When he turned eighteen, he started training mixed-martial arts and joined the shifter fight league.

As I watch Jake climb the steps leading into the octagon, a little shiver rolls through me. Jake moves with a predatory grace that only shifters have .

He steps into the cage, and another song blares over the loudspeaker as his opponent struts in. Every head turns to look at the dark-skinned mountain-lion shifter heading for the cage, but I’m still too busy watching Jake.

His face looks the same as it did when I was a teenager, but his shoulders and chest are broader — his whole body more filled out.

Even so, the man doesn’t have a scrap of fat on him. His biceps look as though they might have been carved from a block of marble, and he’s got a set of killer washboard abs. His fight shorts hang low on his narrow hips, revealing a thin line of dark hair that disappears beneath his waistline.

I lick my lips, which suddenly feel much too dry.

“Talk about a blast from the past,” Carmen mutters.

I nod, though I don’t take my eyes off the man in the cage.

Jake bounces from one foot to the other to keep his muscles warm as he waits for his opponent. This is the closest I’ve been to him in six years, and yet the thirty feet separating us might as well be thirty-thousand miles. So much has happened since I knew him.

The referee says something to the fighters, and Jake reaches out to bump his gloved fist against his opponent’s in a show of good sportsmanship.

The mountain lion ignores the gesture.

They move back to get some distance from one another, and Jake tilts his head toward his left shoulder — a tell he’s had since we were kids that I know means he’s nervous.

As I watch, his gaze drifts out to the crowd to find Rafael. Then his eyes latch onto mine.