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Chapter Two
Quinn
Quinn Taylor feltlike everything had just happened in slow motion. She followed her mother through the crowd, looking for their little band of protestors.
Her mother, walking ahead of her, was still spewing vitriol left and right, walking with her head high, ignoring the vicious stares of everyone she walked past.
“Disgusting,” she said. “Revolting.”
Quinn had no idea what to think. Two days ago, she’d have agreed with her mother wholeheartedly. After all, she’d been hearing both of her parents say terrible things about shifters for most of her life.
But then again, two days ago, she’d never actually met a shifter before. There were none in her little town of Eastham, Nebraska, and the news seemed to always be full of shifters doing bad things.
Now she was in Cascadia — the shifter state — and none of the terrible things she’d been waiting for had happened. She hadn’t seen anyone torn apart by an out-of-control shifter. She hadn’t been sexually assaulted by roving groups of shifter men.
Hell, she hadn’t even been hit on. At most, she’d seen triads out and about, always two men and a woman, but they always seemed so normal. Going out to dinner, running errands, carrying adorable sleeping babies.
And then, to top it off, when the gunshots had rung out, everyone in her group dove to the ground to save themselves. It had been the shifter lawyer who’d protected her.
The hot shifter lawyer. She’d seen him on TV, but in person, there was just something about him. The way he’d just thrown himself over her without thinking twice. Later, the way he’d held his mate, both kneeling on the ground. They’d been much happier to see each other than she’d been to see her own mother.
“Quinn,” snapped her mother, jolting her from her reverie. “I asked you what was wrong with your wrist.”
Quinn looked down, doing her best to get back into reality, and realized that she was holding her left hand tightly around her right wrist, so tight that her right hand was turning purple.
“Were you shot?” shouted her father, practically diving toward her through the small throng of people standing around, still holding anti-shifter signs.
“What? No,” she said, almost rolling her eyes.
He ignored her, reached out, and grabbed her hand, yanking it toward him.
“Ow,” she said as he pulled on it, turning it over and inspecting her hand. He reminded her of a hawk sometimes. His thin face looked older than his age, fifty, and between his protruding eyebrows and sharp cheekbones, looked like a bird of prey.
“That hurt?” he asked.
“That’s why I said ‘ow,’” Quinn said, scowling.
He ignored her and flopped her wrist from side to side, watching her face.
“Ow,” she said again, pulling her wrist back. “I must have fallen on it or something.”
“It was that lawyer,” said her mother, standing next to her father, her permanent frown on her face. “He leapt on top of you like he was on fire and you were a pool of water.”
“He probably orchestrated the shooting just so he could rub his disgusting shifter genitals on you.”
Quinn’s mouth dropped open.
They’re insane,she thought.
“He was shielding me from bullets,” she said, trying to sound reasonable.
By now there was a small cluster of protesters crowded around them, all with their anti-shifter cardboard signs.
One of them, Vince, a forty-year-old man who was balding but still had a ponytail, spoke up.
“They’re sex maniacs,” he said authoritatively. “Even if he was shielding you, you’re lucky he didn’t just have his way with you right there on the courthouse steps.”
I bet you’d love to see that, Quinn thought. She’d never liked Vince. On forearm, he had a tattoo of America, but the three shifter states — Cascadia in the west, Meriweather in the middle and Cumberland in the east — were blacked out. The thing gave her the creeps.
