“I’ll take that as your thank-you, I guess,” Jaden said, “since it’s obviously all I’m going to get.”

“Take it however you want,” Lyra replied. “As long as you take it and go. I’m not interested in chatting right now and lucky for you, not in the mood for cat chasing either. But I might change my mind.” When her words seemed to amuse him for some perverse reason, Lyra narrowed her eyes and added, “Go away.”

She thought, and hoped, he would leave now that his heroics were finished. Instead, he surprised her by lingering. And she surprised herself by not turning and walking away, which is what she knew she should have done. Now that she had stepped closer to him, she was unable to avoid his scent. He smelled unmistakably of vampire, the faint whiff of some rare and ancient spice that Lyra doubted he could even smell himself, just as she’d been told (snarled at, more like) on several memorable occasions that her breed stank of wild animal musk. She had never seen anyone but a vamp react to her as though she’d rolled in garbage, and she certainly saw nothing wrong with the wolf scent.

But Jaden wasn’t reacting normally to her, wasn’t cringing and backing off as though she had some dread disease. He simply acted… interested. And it had affected her, Lyra realized, because she didn’t find him to be an assault on her senses either. He smelled good to her. Really good. Good enough to make her want to roll over on her back and—

She took a quick step back, sucking in a breath as she realized what was happening to her. Her skin had warmed, her heart rate had increased, and she was greedily drinking in Jaden’s vampire musk. Beneath her shirt, her nipples had pebbled into tight little buds, and it had nothing to do with the cold. Her sex was swollen and slick already, demanding she accept him, bare her neck to him, get him behind her and let him… let him…

Lyra exhaled harshly and stared at Jaden as though he were the Hellhound himself, a mythical beast come to drag her to the underworld for her disloyalty to the pack. He watched her steadily, his eyes still blue but grown decidedly more feline. The pupils were long, dilated, the irises a glowing blaze of blue. And she knew she was in trouble when he took two steps toward her, closing the distance until he was only inches from her, his breath fanning her face.

Only pride kept her from backing away again. Lyra stood her ground, even when those unusual eyes dropped to her lips. She licked them nervously, saw his jaw tighten. She decided it was not to her advantage that Jaden was only perhaps an inch taller than she. She’d always hated the way the males of her kind used their height and brawn to try to intimidate her, though at five feet eight she was tall for a woman. But she saw now that there had been one good thing. When those men had tried to move in on her, their mouths hadn’t been so very close, so evenly matched with the position of her own. If Jaden leaned in just a bit, he would have her.

Lyra couldn’t let that happen. But the thought of it was so much more tempting than it should have been. Her skin tingled pleasurably. Her fingers flexed, itching to grab him by the shoulders, the hair, and plunge.

“You’re something,” he said softly, his British accent doing terrible, forbidden things to the muscles deep in her belly. “Telling me where to go on my own territory. You shouldn’t even be here, Lyra. You know the wolves are banned from our cities, and this place belongs to the Lilim now. So this is twice I’ve met you when I’d be well within my rights to tear you apart for crossing the line.”

It was a threat, but she knew instinctively it wasn’t a real one. Killing her was the last thing on Jaden’s mind, just as fighting him was the last thing on hers. Still, she knew the reality of the situation would intrude soon enough, and at that point she was going to have to get away from him, no matter what it took. Sure enough, his next words set her already frayed nerves on edge.

He tilted his head, putting her in mind of a curious and not altogether benevolent cat.

“What are you up to, here? First it was hiding in that safe house in Chicago, and now you’ve turned up in a small town in Massachusetts that just happens to be the home of the newest vampire dynasty. What are you looking for?” He drew even closer. “Spying so you can run back and tell your leader what a dynasty full of cats looks like, are you? Or were you thinking we wouldn’t notice if you holed up here for a while? What are you running from, Lyra?”

Lyra swallowed with a dry click, and the words wouldn’t come. He would think what he would think, she knew. It didn’t matter what she said. His kind didn’t understand hers, and never would. And he would never understand the desperation she’d been grappling with, looking for ideas, or even scraps of ideas, that might save her.

It was a shame she couldn’t have stayed, seen more. She’d really hoped to find a way to see Lily, without Lily seeing her, of course, and study how a woman with so much power and responsibility conducted herself. Was there some secret to the way she walked, moved, talked? Why had they allowed her to claim so much so easily, with no males fighting for dominance? The whispers she’d heard of the human woman’s ascendance to the upper echelons of vampire society had been true. But as insane as it had sounded to all the wolves who had heard the rumors, Lyra now knew the rest was true as well. This was now a dynasty of Cait Sith, the vampire cat-shifters, no matter the new name they had taken. And if there was a more poisonous relationship than the one between that bloodline and her kind, she’d never heard of it.

There would be no help for her here, not now that her presence had been discovered by both a Cait and one of her many unwanted suitors. If Mark had sniffed her out, others would too. They were getting better at it, especially with the Proving so close at hand. So she would run again. Run home, this time, where she would have to begin preparations in earnest. Alone.

Defiantly, Lyra raised her chin and glared into Jaden’s searching eyes. “Where I go and what I do are none of your business,” she said. “But you’re welcome to your territory. There’s nothing here I want.”

She started to spin away, and as she did caught the dangerous flash of his eyes too late. His hand closed around her arm, and Lyra could feel the incredible, tightly controlled strength in his grip. He pulled her back hard, and she wound up plastered against him. For a brief, heated instant their bodies connected, and she could feel every hard knot of muscle in his long, lean form. Her body wanted to curve against it, fitting itself so that they were fused together, two pieces formed to connect with the other.

Jaden pressed his mouth to her ear, and she could feel the briefest rub of his head against her hair, like a cat marking a possession with its scent. She tried to struggle: she was no man’s to possess, and certainly not his! But with the slightest flex of deceptively strong muscle, she was forced to be still.

“You didn’t answer my question, Lyra. What are you running from?” he breathed against her ear. Such a simple question from a stranger, and still she felt herself tremble with the need to pour it out to him, to plead for help from a man who would doubtless laugh at her before turning away. It was the stress, she knew. The knowledge of what was building against her back at home, from both within the pack and without.

Finally, she found the strength to wrench away from him, and this time he let her go. She bared her teeth and growled at him, the only warning Lyra could give now since words had failed her. Fear, anger, and helpless lust tangled together inside her, threatening to push her back toward Jaden and make her do something she would later regret. And he was so still, standing there watching her, as poised and inscrutable as the sphinx with his eyes glowing like blue flames. But she could feel his want, the beast half of her sensing it and demanding she respond.

There was only one response she could give that she wouldn’t regret.

“Stay away from me, cat,” she snapped, her voice rough as it began to morph into a wolf’s snarl. “I have enough problems.”

She turned from him, surprised by how hard it was to leave him standing there. She was losing it, Lyra feared. Losing it from the pressure of being hunted, ridiculed, and discounted for so long. But it would be over soon, one way or another.

Lyra took off at a sprint, her muscles coiling and responding like a well-oiled machine. Her heeled black boots were no impediment to speed. She didn’t give a damn how she looked, running away from him. He was nothing to her. Just like any vampire. She felt her limbs burn and change, pulling her toward the ground and into a four-legged lope, clothing vanishing as fur bristled over her skin. As the wolf, she could breathe again. Never looking back, Lyra raced away from where Jaden stood watching and let the seductive embrace of the night be her freedom, if only for a little while.

It was time to go home.

Jaden watched the wolf, her silvery fur the color of smoke, vanish around the corner and into the darkness. Lyra was as long limbed and graceful in this form as she was in the other, the very picture of deadly beauty. And she was beautiful, even if his nature stood in dangerous opposition to her own.

There were a few drawn-out moments when he didn’t trust himself to move, worried that he’d wind up chasing after the wolf. He had no doubt now that Lyra was still in some sort of trouble, still running, and that the unfortunate suitor lying on the ground was only a piece of the problem.

“It’s no concern of mine,” he said out loud, hoping the sound of his own voice would bring him back to reality and lift whatever spell he’d fallen under. But nothing was going to remove the memory of how Lyra had felt against him, as if she’d been burned into his skin. Silently, he cursed himself for having touched her. Impulse control wasn’t an area where he usually failed. But something about Lyra Black—yes, that had been her last name, he remembered—had made it impossible to resist. Her hair had been like silk against his cheek, and the scent of her skin…

“Enough,” he growled, and turned his head away from the direction she had gone. She had let it go, walked away. He needed to do the same. Jaden didn’t know where this interest in the ornery she-wolf had come from, but he knew nothing good could possibly come of it. Time to get out of here. The sun would be up before long, and at that point he could brood about it in his dreams and hopefully wake up refreshed and past this madness.