I caught it, though I’d literally never held a shovel before. Cats have great reflexes, which isn’t always a good thing.

He grinned, gold-flecked eyes sparkling in the moonlight. “First one to hit five feet wins.”

“Wins what?”

“A nap on the way home.”

I groaned, my good humor beginning to fade. Nothing good could come from such a wager. If I lost, I’d have to drive for the entire five-and-a-half-hour trip home. But if I won, Marc would drive, which was much, much worse. With him in the driver’s seat, I’d be afraid to blink, much less sleep. Marc’s favorite travel game was highway tag, which he played by getting just close enough to passing semi trucks to reach out his window and touch their rear bumpers. Seriously. The man thought the inevitability of death didn’t apply to him, simply because it hadn’t happened yet.

Marc laughed at my horrified expression and sank his shovel into the earth at the end of the black plastic cocoon. With a sigh, I joined him, trying to decide whether I’d rather risk fal ing asleep at the wheel, or falling asleep with Marc at the wheel.

It was a tough call. Thankfully, I had three solid hours of digging during which to decide. Lucky me.

Chapter Three

Marc hit five feet first, naturally, and as he grinned in triumph, completely covered in grave dirt, I dropped my shovel in defeat. I was done, and not a single threat from him could pry my tired, grimy ass off the ground. My formerly white T-shirt forgotten, I lay sweating on dew-damp grass as Marc rol ed Bradley Moore into the hole, then shoveled dirt in on top of him. Then I took the keys Marc held out to me and snatched my shovel from the ground, my mood growing more foul with each step I took toward the car, in spite of my relief to be leaving the unmarked grave behind. This was not how I’d planned to spend my time off.

I stopped for coffee five times on the way home, and had to use the restroom at each stop. Marc slept the whole way, and his obnoxious snoring did more to keep me awake than the caffeine did during the drive from White Hal , Arkansas, to the Lazy S Ranch. My family’s property—devoid of domestic animals in spite of the title ranch—sat on the outskirts of Lufkin, Texas, sixty miles from the Louisiana border.

Yes, at twenty-three years old, I still lived with my parents. But so did three of my older brothers, and four of my fel ow enforcers, though they technically lived in a guesthouse on the back of the property. The concept of a group dynamic is different for werecats than it is for humans. Pride members are very close, both emotional y and physically, especially the core group, consisting of the Alpha, his family, and the enforcers. We’ve always lived in large, mostly informal groups for protection, comfort, and social interaction. And because one of the primary duties of an enforcer is to protect and assist the Alpha, which we couldn’t do if we weren’t with him most of the time.

Fortunately, the advantages balanced out the drawbacks of being forever under my father’s watchful eye. Most of the time. And the number one benefit—other than free food and freshly folded laundry—was the fact that my family’s mostly wooded property backed up to the Davy Crockett National Forest and its 160,000 acres of woodland. Which made one hell of a big—and convenient—playground for a houseful of werecats.

It was nearly 10:00 a.m. when I turned Marc’s car onto the quarter-mile-long gravel driveway. I parked in the circle drive, as close to the front door as I could get, and heat hit me like a blast of steam from a furnace as I opened the car door. The 102-degree-heat index was our own personal inferno, a September-in-Texas specialty, guaranteed to melt tourists where they stood. But I was a native, and al the searing, blacktop-melting blaze drew from me was a weary sigh.

My boot heels sank into the gravel as I stood, and I glanced at Marc, where he still sat snoring against the passenger-side window. I should wake him up, I thought. But then, he should have offered to split the drive with me.

I was too tired to go to war with my conscience, and more than a little irritated with Marc. So, I cranked down the driver’s-side window to keep him from baking and closed the door gently, smiling to myself as Marc shifted in his seat, then resumed snoring, still out cold in spite of the heat.

My boots clomped as I trudged up onto the porch, and when I opened the front door, cool air rushed out to meet me. I sagged in the doorway for a moment, one hand on each side of the frame, letting the artificial breeze dry my sweat and chase away the heat that had been slowly draining my vitality.

In my room near the end of the long central hallway, I stripped completely, tossing my dirty clothes into a pile by the door. I considered putting them in the hamper, but since I had no plans to ever wear them again, going through that much effort seemed pointless.

I glanced around the room, happy to find everything just as I’d left it.

My books—hundreds of them—were crammed two rows deep into my only bookshelf, the extras stacked horizontal y wherever they would fit.

My bed was unmade, because I hadn’t made it, and because I’d refused to let my mother into my room to clean since my first week home, when I’d realized she was using housework as an excuse to spy on me. That could not continue. Besides, I was damn well old enough to clean my own room. Or to not clean it in peace. So I’d told her to stay the hell out.

She’d frowned at my language, but complied.

At my dresser, I paused to take off my watch and caught sight of my own reflection. I looked like shit. Dirty, sweaty, tangled, and…still wearing the diamond stud earrings I’d put on in concession to my original plans for the night before. It was a miracle I hadn’t lost them both—along with half my earlobe—to Dan Painter’s temper and desperate, flailing fists. Or his teeth.