Shit. I sank into the desk chair as the truth hit me like a blow to the gut. What kind of revolutionary activist gives the disenfranchised and underrepresented a vacation? I asked for sanctuary. Autonomy. Instead, I got two weeks in a beautiful mansion with a gorgeous young Alpha.

But what’s in it for Titus?

“He’s in acquisition mode for the element he’s missing,” I mumbled. “Damn it, Robyn!”

“What are you talking about? What element?”

“He needs a wife, Abby. You can’t have a Pride without an Alpha and a dam. But he can’t have you, because you’re with Jace. Which is why he’s being so nice to me. And that means he’s no different than any of the others.”

“You think he wants to keep you here?”

“Considering he looks at me like he’s starving and I’m the last scrap of food in the fridge? Yeah. I think this is an audition. At the end of this two-week ‘vacation’, he thinks he’ll have a decision to make. Whether to send me back, or keep me for himself.”

“He may think you’re pretty—I mean, the man has eyes. But he wouldn’t use you to complete his Pride, Robyn.”

“Of course he would. He’s an Alpha. Running other people’s lives is what they do.”

My eyes flew open in the dark as footsteps pounded down the hall toward my door. I sat straight up in bed, panting as if I’d been running for my life, and if I’d woken up a second later—

I shook my head, dislodging the nightmare and my narrow escape from human hunters determined to hang my severed head on their wall. Was I screaming? Is that why someone was running toward my room?

I glanced to my left, expecting to see Sara Di Carlo’s green alarm clock numbers, but found a window instead, where moonlight gleamed through sheer curtains.

Oh yeah. I was in the not-so-free zone.

I looked to the other side and found red numbers floating in the darkness above the marble-topped nightstand. Three-oh-four. I’d only slept for an hour and a half.

“Titus!” a voice whisper-shouted from the hallway, and on the tail of his name, I heard three sharp thumps that could only be a fist hitting a door. But not my door. “We got another one!”

Heart racing, I threw off the covers and jogged across the large bedroom. When I opened the door, I found Abby and Jace standing in the doorway of their room across from mine, staring down the hall.

“Titus!” Drew Borden knocked on a double set of doors at the end of the hall, a cell phone clutched in his right fist, baggy jeans hanging low on his hips beneath a white tee. “Spencer’s on the line. He’s bringing in another one.”

The left-hand door opened, and Titus appeared, wearing nothing but a pair of sleep shorts, which showed off his nicely sculpted chest.

Stop it! You’re not attracted to him, Robyn. Your body thinks you should be, because you’re a tabby and he’s an Alpha. But it was my eyes, not my hormones, noticing how soft his lips looked, and how his biceps bulged, and how pretty his steely irises were. Titus Alexander was an attractive man by any standard. With or without shifter impulses pushing me toward him.

I had no intention of being used by him, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t look. Right?

“Sorry. My cell was on silent.” Titus took the phone from Drew. “Spence? How far away are you?” He listened for a moment, and though I could hear a deep voice over the line, I couldn’t make out the words. “Okay, take him downstairs as soon as you get here. We’ll get a space ready.”

Titus pressed a button on the phone, then handed it to Drew. He disappeared into his room for a minute, then came out wearing jeans and holding the button-up shirt he’d worn beneath his suit jacket the day before. “Jace?” Titus asked as he passed me, pushing his left arm through the sleeve of his shirt. “Up for this?”

“Always.” Jace kissed the top of Abby’s head, then gave me a polite nod and followed Titus and Drew toward the staircase at the other end of the hall.

“Where are they going?” I asked, as three sets of heavy footsteps clomped down the wood treads.

“Spencer’s bringing in a new stray,” Abby said, on the tail of a yawn.

“Spencer’s one of the enforcers?”

“No, just a Pride member. He works in the ER. Every now and then, they get a case of scratch fever mistaken for the flu. Spencer gives them IV fluids, and when they’re released, he brings them here. Titus and his men can help better than any ER doctor, and the fewer blood tests run on new strays, the better.”

“Because someone will eventually find something weird in the sample?”

“That’s the fear, yes.” She nods. “But it’s not likely as long as they’re only testing for specific illnesses, like strep and flu.”

“So, where are they taking this new guy?” A door squealed open downstairs, then everything went quiet as it closed again on three sets of footsteps.

“They use the basement beneath the guest house as an infirmary.”

I thought about that for a second. Then I headed for the stairs. “Let’s go!”

Abby caught up with me in the kitchen, carrying a pair of slip-on shoes, but I headed into the backyard barefoot. The tiles were cold against my feet as I raced across the porch and down the steps. I passed the pool, which was covered for the winter, then crossed a small patch of grass in front of the guest house.

The door was ajar, so I went in without asking and followed the echo of voices to a stairwell off the small, high-end kitchen.

“Robyn!” Abby called as she followed me down the stairs. “Wait!”

At the bottom of the steps, I could only stop and stare. The basement was small but brightly lit, and divided into two distinct halves. On my left, steel bars were set into the floor and ceiling forming two old-fashioned jail cells. Both stood open and empty. Each cell held a stainless steel toilet and sink, as well as a twin-sized bed bolted to the floor. As I watched, Drew made the mattress in the farthest cell up with a clean fitted sheet.

“You keep new strays in prison cells?” I demanded.

All three of the toms looked up, obviously surprised to see Abby and me, in spite of my stomping down the stairs.

“It’s a precaution,” Titus said. “We don’t close the cells unless we have to, and there’s a private bathroom over there.” He pointed to an open door in the other half of the basement, past shelves of medical supplies, a kitchenette, and a small round breakfast table. “We modeled it after the one in Faythe’s basement.”