“Shift back,” Jace said, smiling down at me. “I’l get you something to eat.” He closed the door without waiting for my response. Not that I could have said no. But it would have been pretty satisfying to nudge the door closed in his face.

The Shift back to human was harder than it should have been, and took longer than normal because I couldn’t help thinking about Marc and dwel ing on my own anger. I could stil taste his blood, which made me simultaneously hungry and furious, a decidedly bizarre combination.

Jace’s last comment ran through my head as I Shifted. He’d said a stray had been reported in Oklahoma, wel within the boundaries of our territory. That made at least two such reports, that I knew of, in the last two days. What was going on?

Strays are humans who became werecats after being scratched or bitten by one of us in cat form. Not every bite or scratch produces a werecat, but in spite of centuries spent observing the process, no one seems to know for sure why. Or why not. But there are plenty of theories.

Some werecats believe the size or severity of the wound is directly proportionate to the chances of “infection,” if that’s even the right term. Others, mostly the older generation, believe that transmission is more likely to occur under certain phases of the moon. I’d even met one sweet old dam years earlier who believed that fate determined who would join our ranks and who would not—that those meant to Shift would, and those who were not meant to would not.

According to her theory, human women were not meant to be werecats. Ever.

In my entire life, I’d never heard of a female stray. Natural y, nearly everyone had a theory explaining the transformation’s apparent gender bias, and the reasons were just as ridiculous as the prevailing theories about conduction in general. The most popular of these was the conjecture by an elderly former Alpha that women—as the weaker sex—weren’t strong enough to survive the initial Shift.

I thought that particular old man was full of shit. My personal theory was that something in a woman’s physiology, maybe in her immune system, kept the werecat

“virus” from getting a grip on her body. But until I could prove it, which wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon, no one gave a damn what I thought. As usual.

Either way, the only thing we know with any certainty about contamination is that humans can only be infected by one of us in cat form, just like with werewolves in the movies. Hollywood got the transmission part right but missed the species altogether. By a long shot.

As a child, I once saw two thunderbirds, flying in tandem across a bril iant blue sky too large to hint at their actual size and strength. And we’d al heard my father recount his infamous run-in with a bruin—a werebear, if you wil . But to my knowledge, werewolves are pure fiction. Stray cats, however, are undeniably real, and they posed a constant problem for the rest of us.

Since they were not born into any Pride, most strays could claim no territory of their own and had no system of support. Along with wildcats, who either left their birth Prides or were kicked out, strays lived their lives in seclusion from the rest of us, wandering within the free territories, struggling to either accept or end a life they never asked for or even imagined.

From al accounts, strays lived a miserable existence, so it was no wonder they sometimes crossed the border into our land looking for companionship, and sometimes for answers. When that happened, our enforcers were glad to fil in the many blanks—as the strays were escorted back to the border. Unfortunately, most strays who crossed our boundaries were looking for something else entirely: revenge, or even a slice out of the territorial pie. As a result, the territorial council had long since passed laws forbidding strays from crossing Pride borderlines. Marc was the exception. But then, Marc was exceptional, so that was real y no surprise to anyone who knew him.

And now I’m back to thinking about Marc…Damn it.

By the time I stepped back into my pants, I could smel beef cooking.

Hamburgers. It had to be, because Jace’s culinary skil s were limited to burgers and spaghetti, and I didn’t smel tomato sauce. Oh wel , a girl can never have too many burgers, right?

I padded down the hal on bare feet, my steps silent as I passed several closed doors on the way to the kitchen. Jace’s off-key whistling met my ears, accompanied by the sizzle of meat on the stove. I paused in the doorway, glad to see that he’d donned a pair of jeans, if nothing else.

A smile slid into place as I watched him. Jace was comical y out of place in front of any household appliance, particularly my mother’s six-burner, stainless-steel behemoth of a stove. He subscribed to the Jackson Pollock theory of cooking, which had somehow led to the creation of an abstract masterpiece out of the formerly spotless, white-tiled kitchen.

As I watched, he turned from the stove toward the peninsula, dripping grease in an arc across the floor from a plastic spatula gripped loosely in one hand. He dropped the spatula on the countertop—without the benefit of a spoon holder—and began slicing tomatoes with a six-inch smooth-bladed butcher knife. I covered my mouth to stifle a giggle as tiny seeds and red juice spurted across the countertop tiles, mingling with a tangle of discarded onion skins and outer lettuce leaves.

“Shit,” he mumbled under his breath, stil oblivious to my presence. Grinning, I slipped silently into a chair at the breakfast table. I inhaled deeply, tempted by the aroma of beef and onions. Beneath those were the usual kitchen smel s: disinfectant, most notably, mingled with the faintly lingering scents of lemon and rosemary, my mother’s favorite ingredients.