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While we waited on a full-scale Sartori invasion, Sloane and I resumed our daily routine. Pets still needed their food topped off, their water refilled, and walksies. Then there was cleanup in the runs for her while I got grooming.

After the hard work was done, we had to get started on cuddle time, one of our most popular add-ons and the bright spot in my day. Who didn’t love snuggling animals? Crazy how I got paid to do it.

As I was trimming Robespierre’s nails, debating on a new polish color for him to wear during his vacation to Orlando next week, the front door banged open on a bellow that startled a yelp out of the chihuahua.

“Peanut?” a painfully familiar voice boomed through the lobby. “Peanut?”

“Wait in the lobby,” I called back, not wanting him to spook the animals. “I’ll be right there.”

I set down my tools, scooped up Robespierre, and crated him until after I had dealt with the drama.

The drama being six feet of muscle crammed into a bespoke pinstripe suit, the expensive fabric groaning at the seams as he struggled to contain his inner wolf.

As soon as he set eyes on me, the wildness in him ebbed a fraction, and he opened his arms to me.

Heat burning my cheeks, I walked into his embrace.

“Do you have any idea who could have done this?”

“I’m not even sure if this qualifies as a crime, honestly.”

“That big heart of yours will get you in trouble one day. That’s why I worry so much.”

“They didn’t cause any property damage.” I wasn’t sure why I was defending the note writer. “It’s okay.” I pulled back to smile my best daddy’s little girl smile at him. “ I’m okay.”

The dark-chocolate eyes that studied my face were darker than my hazel ones.

He always wore his wavy, coal-black hair slicked back, but I got Mom’s stick-straight golden-blonde hair.

The uncanny resemblance to a mother I couldn’t remember had always been a sore spot for me.

I wouldn’t have minded it so much if I had inherited the single most important thing from Dad.

A wolf spirit of my own.

Heightened senses were nice, and the extra strength was a lifesaver in my line of work, but without a wolf, I was more superhuman than shifter, and the pack never let me forget it.

“You’re in danger out here.” He slid his grip onto my shoulders. “You should come home.”

“Home is forty-five minutes away,” I reminded him. “Thirty if I push the speed limit.”

A low growl revved up the back of his throat, his eyes flashing gold, and I took a healthy step back.

“Not that I would ever break the law or endanger my frail human self, but that’s what I’ve heard.”

A masculine snort blew warm air across my nape and tempted me to break character and snarl at Bowie, who must have sneaked in through the back, but I behaved myself.

“You’re not a human.” Dad leaned in to kiss my forehead. “You’re a shifter, the same as anyone else.”

That was the line he used to feed me when I limped home from school after the other kids, who had wolves, beat the taste out of my mouth.

I wasn’t sure if I preferred those early days, when he had been so sure it would happen.

That a she-wolf would burst from my skin under the right conditions to protect me.

Say, when kids tripped me in the lunch line in the cafeteria.

Or shoved me down while we waited on the bus. Or knocked me off the swings at recess.

Violence was a classic shifting trigger, but I only fired blanks.

Now that Dad had lost hope of a wolf emerging from me, he coddled me the same as he had Mom, who had chosen divorce over his suffocating love when I was a toddler.

“Then why do I have bodyguards, unlike everyone else?”

Damn it.

I hadn’t meant to let my temper slip its leash, but Bowie had that effect on me. He had since I was in the fifth grade, and his younger sister knocked out my front tooth. Then, instead of being helpful, he had the balls to lecture me on picking fights I couldn’t win.

“You’re the pack princess, Peanut .” Bowie trailed a finger down my spine. “You get special treatment.”

“Daddy.” Embracing the stereotype, I stuck out my bottom lip. “This creep is bothering me.”

The death stare Dad leveled at him over my shoulder broke a genuine smile across my face.

I wasn’t the only one who remembered the reason I came home with my tooth in a glass of milk.

“I’ll check in with Zoe,” Bowie grumbled at my back. “She’s expecting a call about the Walsh situation.”

And if he pinched my hip on his way out, I didn’t give him the satisfaction of flinching. “What’s the Walsh situation?”

“There are no signs of forced entry or magic use.” Mercer swooped in, saving the day and giving Dad the perfect excuse not to answer.

He offered Dad his mini tablet then winked at me before presenting me with a lollipop, like that made excluding me any better.

“Whoever broke in picked the lock with a good set of tools and a steady hand. This wasn’t their first rodeo.

” He unwrapped a sucker for himself. “I would think they didn’t want Anie knowing they had been here, but a dog that ugly is hard to miss. ”

“Hey.” I anchored my hands on my hips. “We don’t dog shame at GSG.”

“Apologies.” Mercer wiped the smile off his face, but it lingered in his eyes. “I meant no disrespect.”

“No magic means the intruder left behind a scent.” Dad watched the screen for long moments before he tilted it toward me. “Have you ever seen this man?”

The short clip let me watch a powerfully built man in sweatpants and a hoodie let himself in through the back with a mesh dog carrier slung over one shoulder. “I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell.”

For the whole minute he spent coaxing the lock to open, the man had kept his head down, denying me a glimpse of his shadowed face. He kept his wide shoulders bowed too, making it difficult to peg his height except to say that he was tall. Maybe around Bowie’s height, give or take an inch or two.

“The thing is,” Mercer said, circling back to Dad’s earlier comment, “GSG is a public building, and Anie has all kinds of clients. Human, witch, shifter, vampire.” I was damned proud of the diversity I had cultivated too, even more so when I reminded myself how few of the pet owners had Sartori ties these days.

Bailey might have been my first, but she was far from the last client I earned through the reputation I built for myself, not the one attached to me at birth.

“We have no means of parsing customers’ scents from the intruder’s scent without a baseline. ”

The men shared a look that transferred onto me, but I wasn’t having any of it.

“We can circle back to how you mounted surveillance cameras across the street without telling me.” The energy it would take to act surprised, when I was more shocked they hadn’t wired the inside too, wasn’t worth the effort of scrounging up enough outrage to carry me through an argument that I wouldn’t win.

“That poor dog has had enough excitement for one day without randos smelling like wolf backing it into a corner in a strange place and sniffing it for clues.” I blasted out an exhale. “I’ll do it.”

A wolf spirit might have snubbed me in the womb, but I was born possessing the exact same heightened senses and increased strength and stamina as the rest of the pack. Not that anyone gave me credit for it.

One whole step later, Dad cleared his throat. “Are you sure you?—?”

“I’ve got this.” I ditched them in the lobby and entered the kennels. “Sloane?”

“Here, boss.” She trotted over from where she had been talking to one of the sentinels. “What’s up?”

“Clear the room, please.” I palmed a ring of keys in my pocket. “I’m going to visit our guest.”

“On it.” She allowed her wolf to climb into her voice. “Everybody out.”

The four male wargs in the room hustled to obey the command in her tone, reminding me she might not be the world’s greatest kennel tech, not yet anyway, but she was fierce when it came to doing her actual job.

All her anxiety melted as her dominance streak emerged from where she kept it hidden for my sake.

Because I had the heart of a dominant and no wolf to back it up if I triggered her instinct to fight me.

As soon as the room was empty, I let myself into the suite and shut the door.

I sat on the concrete floor, crossed my legs, and let the dog decide when to come to me.

I smelled like a predator, which helped me when it came to wrangling difficult clients into the tub for their bath or holding them steady underneath the force dryer, but it hindered me when pets had human owners.

“I’m sure you have some kind of fancy name,” I said, voice low and soft, “but I don’t know it.”

The dog cocked its head at me, listening, but it continued lounging on the custom golden-size dog bed.

“Still, I can’t keep calling you it or the dog .” I couldn’t get a visual read on gender with it belly down, face aimed at me. That didn’t mean I couldn’t smell it on her. She had been in this confined space for a while, and her scent overlapped Bailey’s. “How about I call you Myrtle?”

The dog—Myrtle—appeared to consider it but found the TV bathroom demo more interesting than me.

Good thing I always carried homemade peanut butter treats in my pocket.

“Are you hungry?” I counted out three smaller ones and held them on my open palm. “Want one?”

With a sigh that hinted she wasn’t used to fetching her own treats, she trotted over and nibbled on one.

I held my breath, waiting for the verdict, but the recipe must have met with her standards.

She inhaled a second and third one before I promised I would get her real food as soon as the pack left us in peace.

Careful not to spook her, I leaned forward until I could get a better sniff, hoping for a clue as to her owner’s scent.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing but clean dog.

Once certain I was serious about the treats, she grumbled then trotted right back to bed to watch TV.

Motion caught my eye in the observation window, and I locked gazes with Bowie, whose eyebrows rose.

“You don’t know how good you’ve got it in here,” I mumbled to Myrtle, shoving to my feet. “Back soon.”

Before my fingers brushed the knob, Bowie had the door open, his irritation with me plain on his face.

“Nothing.” I secured the door on my heels. “There are no competing scents on her.”

“I’ll let your dad know.” He raked his teeth across his bottom lip. “Has anyone been hassling you?”

“Other than you?”

“Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “Other than me.”

“No.” I shoulder checked him on my way past. “No one dares.”

Not with Sloane dogging my steps.

“That’s how it should be,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Because I’m some delicate freaking flower?”

“No.” He gritted his teeth. “You’re precious, Ana.” He cleared his throat. “More precious than you know.”

Precious was a cute word when I was a kid, but it didn’t hold much weight these days. “Do you think this has anything to do with Dad?”

“I can’t see how.” A frown gathered across his forehead. “Unless the dog is some kind of Trojan horse.”

“Myrtle.”

“What?”

“The dog. I’m calling her Myrtle. Just until we find her owner.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, but it was too late to take back the words.

“There is no we .” He narrowed his eyes on me, crowding me against the door and leaning down into my face. “You do not go looking for the owner.”

“Me?” I widened my eyes and rested a hand at my throat. “I would never?—”

“Don’t give me that crap, Peanut.” He poked me in the shoulder, his eyes golden. “You might fool your old man, but I see you. You’re as delicate as a fucking bomb, and your fuse is shorter than my thumb.”

Oddly flattered by the comparison, I tilted my head. “Often measure things with your thumb, David ?”

“For the last time,” he rumbled at me, “I was named after the knife, not the singer.”

“Then don’t call me Peanut. That’s a father/daughter thing, and you’re not my daddy.” I made gagging noises. “Eww.” I cupped a hand over my mouth. “That’s a mental picture I wish I could erase.”

Lifting his hands with a huff, he walked away to pester someone else.

“That’s Lyra’s brother, isn’t it?” Sloane sidled up to me. “I heard he was a sentinel.”

To prevent my former bullies from earning a spot on my security detail, Dad recruited from outside the pack. I so rarely saw Sloane off the clock, and almost never with the pack, sometimes I forgot she hadn’t been a Sartori but a year.

“Good eye.” I supposed they did resemble one another. “That is definitely Lyra’s brother.”

Just like that, her brows slammed down. “And do we like Bowie?”

About to snap that no we did not like Bowie, I caught her drift. “He won’t hurt me.”

“Are you sure?” She tracked every step of his exit. “He looked ready to tear out your throat.”

From her angle, I could see how she got that impression. “He’s never laid a hand on me.”

“Let me know if that changes while I’m not around, okay?”

“I will.” I touched her arm. “Thanks for having my back.”

Sad as it might sound, she was the closest thing I had to a friend, even if I had to pay her by the hour.

“It’s my duty,” she said, bowing her head, “and an honor to serve.”

Certain Dad was ready to climb out of his skin for the verdict, I went to give him and Mercer my update.

And if I felt a pair of golden eyes on me the whole way, well, I was used to feeling like there was a target on my back.