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“You knew he was…different?” he asked.
“I was aware,” she said. “But not that he was…not that he was that thing.”
“Ferrets are cute,” he said. “Right?”
Cute how? Cute as in, “Oh my God, that kid has a pet ferret…how adorable!” Cute in that way, yes. Not cute in an “I want him to take me home and fuck my brains out” kind of way.
Penny stayed quiet too long to not make the situation awkward. She was torn between focusing on the incredible hue of his eyes and trying to figure out why this manly guy had just referred to ferrets as cute. In all honesty, she didn’t give a shit. She only wanted to get the rest of her date started. She’d been single far too long and had gone without sex nearly as long. Aside from a couple of drunken encounters over six months ago, she’d been in quite the dry spell. She’d always been the nerdy, q
uiet type. She would much rather spend her nights at home reading or binge watching a TV show rather than hitting the bars and trying to be the sex kitten she clearly wasn’t.
Tonight, Penny had been filled with hope, but then she suddenly wasn’t. A dart flew through the air and popped her inflated balloon. The dart came in the form of an equally handsome Latino man with biceps the size of her head. He, too, screamed sexual energy, but none of it was pointed in her direction. As his arms reached around the blond man and his heavy hands rubbed at the hunk’s shoulders, Penny realized there would be no going home with this hot alpha tonight. He had an alpha of his own.
Nothing was hotter than two gay men and the thought that they might include you in their upcoming rendezvous, except for them not being gay of course. These two men weren’t willing to dip their toes in the straight pool long enough to let her leap in and meet them in the deep end. She was not their type.
“Well,” the blond said. “I hope you learn to pick a better man next time.”
The guy behind him added, “Don’t worry, babe. You’ll know him when you see him. I did.”
They were absolutely adorable. They were ferret-cute. And just like that, Penny gave up on dating again. Maybe she’d try again on the next full moon, when wolves were hungry…not rodents.
Chapter 2
Gliding through the ocean like a torpedo aimed at a submarine, Thane focused all his senses, trying to pick up on exactly where the small motorboat was capsizing. He knew he had less than a minute before the sunlight zone would be bathed in blood. Once that happened, all bets would be off. Even his own would have a hard time holding back once the water ran crimson.
He’d been on the shore of Shamrock Island, his island, when the news came in. Faith had told him. She’d been on her way back from the mainland when she saw the small vessel sinking along the rocky shores of Macleay. The idiot captain had probably been drinking, which was often the case, when he woke up to find he’d run off course. Now, it was too late, and if Thane didn’t reach him and whomever else he had on board, they’d never step foot on dry land again.
A school of marlin scattered as he soared through the water and shifted his dorsal fins to cut right as his senses picked up on the sputtering of an engine still running. The boat would be going nowhere based on the information he’d received from Faith, but it seemed no one had told the captain that.
I’m close. I’m so fucking close I can practically taste him. Please don’t let Evelyn get to him first.
Of course, it would be a him. Female captains, for the most part, were smart enough to stay clear of islands they had no business near. The males always seemed to be the daring ones, pushing boundaries, usually pridefully whisking tourists off to see the schools of sharks. If Evelyn got to him first, it would be the last thing the man would encounter. Nobody, no matter how courageous, wanted to be on the receiving end of what she had in store.
Tunnel vision kicked in and Thane saw it. As if through a giant scope, everything else around the circular sight faded away. It was all about that small dot ahead where five sharks had beat him to the table. Thane would have cleared it if he he’d gotten there first. He would have pulled the tablecloth out from under it, scattered the dishes, and freed the meal. But he wasn’t like the others. They were hungry, ravenous, and they were unraveling the silverware, tucking their napkins into their laps, and licking their lips as they prepared to dine.
Fuck!
He focused and smelled the water. No blood. Motor oil, but no blood.
Thank God.
Using his ability to communicate mentally with other underwater shifters, Thane sent out a message that would ping from one mind to any other in his vicinity. If these sharks weren’t shifters, he was screwed. He could only communicate mentally with his own kind, and he was in no mood to play the charade game he had to use when trying to get a message across to non-shifter sharks.
“You’re too late,” came Evelyn’s female voice, straight to his subconscious. “We’re hungry, baby. And these humans are not yours to save.”
“Don’t do this,” he shot back as he continued to speed toward what was sure to be a mess by the time he got there.
Where the fuck is Kino? Where are Faith and Jagger and the others?
“Consider it already done,” Evelyn said, her voice soft in its wickedness. Like the conniving, evil bitch she always was, she did it all in a soothing voice that made males fall in love with her and beg to be taken into her bed.
Thane had been there, and he’d done that. It was a mistake he’d never repeat.
“Evelyn, I’m begging you,” he said. “This is wrong.”
A cloud of red mist jutted down deep from the surface, spreading out like a scarlet blanket, sending her team into a feeding frenzy and enraging Thane. He’d done everything he could to stop the senseless killing, the murdering of humans that always resulted in retaliation and vengeance from their hunters and law enforcement. He had tried everything to convince his kind that there were other ways. They could shift into human form and eat all the meat they wanted. There was no need to kill humans.
But Evelyn got off on the power. She loved the fear. She lived for the excitement of the hunt, even if her idea of hunting was the equivalent of trying to catch a deer with a hand grenade. Blood everywhere and not exactly what Thane considered a challenge.
