Page 20 of Kitty Cat

Coveney, the tall, dark and handsome Head Enforcer, was fluent in grunts, but she didn’t think she’d heard him say much. Daunte, as per usual, was the life of the party, smiling when he didn’t laugh. Ian spent most of his time behind his laptop, but never seemed to miss a word of the conversation going on around him. Christine - the woman who’d ridden on Rygan’s bike - was sassy and outspoken, although she was clearly submissive, while Tracy, a dominant, read quietly in a corner. Ola seemed to be the caretaker, focusing on the children; Aisling recognized Hsu as the Seer, because she occasionally spoke of the future as though it was set in stone. “Don’t worry when you pick Niamh up late, tomorrow. She’ll make new friends at the grocery store.”

Niamh was the only one of their children who wasn’t a werecat; in fact, she wasn’t a shifter at all. If Aisling wasn’t mistaken, the kid was actually a witch. She knew plenty of witches with auras similar to hers, in any case. Then, there was Lola, the youngest, who was often glued to Rygan; the reason behind all their trouble was an adorable little thing who still sucked on her thumb.

Jasper, Clive, Victoria, Daniel and Will were around the same age, and acting like siblings, although none of them had any features in common.

Her cat purred, soaking in the atmosphere, and Aisling felt a pang of regret. The loner life was better for her, but there was no denying that her cat missed the sense of belonging a pride could bring.

Although frankly? She’d never known it. Aisling might have lived in a pride for a dozen years or so, but she had never beenpartof one.

Aisling and Daunte’sfather wasn’t all there. Actually, scratch that. He was a pointblank lunatic and his nickname, The Butcher, was a euphemism. Nowadays, he was just a little unstable around the edges, but thirty years ago? That had been another story altogether.

Aisling knew other shifters felt sick to their stomach every time they heard the story but to her, it was just a fact. Just her life.

Her father had been feral - completely wild, never shifting back to his human form. As such, he mated with an actual animal. There was nothing wrong about it, as far as she was concerned because, well, hehadbeen an animal, too.

She would have preferred if he’d picked a panther, a lynx, a margay - just about anything, really - but somehow, The Butcher mated with a Savannah; a breed that was a mix between a serval and a domestic cat. They were pretty and delicate, so she supposed it meant the man had good taste.

Either way, like it or not, those were her parents. A shifter and a cat.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d lived in the wild, two, three years maybe. But she hadn’t known better; she was smarter than her mother, and she questioned more - but as far as she had known, Aisling had been a cat.

Eventually, the pretty Savannah died. Aisling mourned her without being able to express it, not understanding the feeling that wasn’t quite natural in the forest. Death was part of life and another cat - an adult cat - would have moved on. She didn’t. She cried and stayed with the carcass for days. She still remembered the smell of the rotting corpse, and the way she’d had to fight against the predator who’d wanted to eat it.

But then he’d arrived. The smooth, big biped. She recognized his scent; she smelled exactly like the leopard who looked at her and her mother from afar some times, never attacking them.Safe,she thought. So, she let him approach, only scratching when he moved to touch the broken corpse.

The man ignored her hisses and warning claws, held her up by the scruff of her neck, and popped her on his shoulder.

“Stay here.”

It sounded like a weird growl to her, but while she didn’t understand the words, she obeyed his dominant order.

He buried her mother deep, so that no other animal would harm her. The grave was unmarked, but she could still exactly pinpoint the place where it had happened.

Then, her father took her home.

It took two years for her to shift to human form, and she didn’t talk before she was ten. However, she could hunt, and kill just about anything, completely at peace with her animal.

Aisling was a legend - everyone knew of The Butcher’s first child. Especially since she’d taken on some jobs as a bounty hunter after leaving her pride the minute she’d turned eighteen.

The pride members had been frightened of her - understandably - and that meant that the kids had bullied her, while the adults treated her like trash and blamed her for everything that ever happened.

Her pride did one thing right. She’d left ten years ago, and still, no one knew she was a girl; The Butcher’s first child, as far as the world knew, was a gruff, illiterate, grunting hunter who never shifted to his human form - not a bookish baker. The Alpha might have given them all an order to keep it secret, frightened of what would happen to them if she was thrown under the bus.

Oh, she wouldn’t bother them - as far as she was concerned, they were nothing more than a bad memory. But her father, who still lived with them in Maryland, might have seen things differently. The Alpha wasn’t stupid. He knew The Butcher could and would kill him, if he ever felt like it.

* * *

She was snapped backfrom memory lane and her cat lifted her pretty head when someone cooed at her, flattered by the words and soothed by the tone.Of courseit had to be the damn Alpha she wanted to jump.

Rygan.

Rygan Wayland. She’d googled him the minute she’d been alone after her brother had given her his name.

Second son of the Ruler of all feline shifters in the US, Rygan had formed his own pack after his current Head Enforcer, Coveney, had wrongfully been accused of raping some important guy’s daughter. He probably hadn’t wanted the man to become a loner - a hated loner, at that. Coveney had been a close friend of his and, going against most of his pride and all his family, he supported him. He was followed by another one of his friends, Ian, Ola, an apprentice healer, and Christine, a submissive. Ace wasn’t sure how or when the others had joined, but she knew Daunte had turned eighteen a couple of years after the whole drama; he immediately asked to be transferred to his pride.

About six years ago, the woman who’d started the whole mess had come forward to retract her accusation, but by then, the Wyvern Pride had been fully formed, and completely independent.

Rygan wasn’t all heart and flowers. His linage and the size of his pride made him a prime target for any idiot wanting to make a name for himself by killing a werecat prince, so he’d been attacked numerous times, and each time, he and his small pride had left dozens of corpses - wolves, hyenas, crows - anything that had come at them. The Vergas pack was a different kind of enemy, though - they were large, resourceful, and determined. Worse yet: they genuinely believed they were doing the right thing, and that made them dangerous.

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