“All right, if you want your future slippin’ away from you cause you ain’t got no sense…”

“Why can’t you be normal?” Nik didn’t mean to bark it, but his father’s pushing had finally gotten the best of him. “Why can’t you be like everybody else? Have yourself more than one female. Have yourself twenty! Why are my brothers, my brothers? And not my half brothers? The only ones who should be from the same mother is Kisa and Aleksei because they’re twins.”

“Being normal is boring.” His father looked around at the greasy diner he always insisted on going to. Full of shifters, mostly tigers but a few Pack and Pride, they all openly stared. Most likely hoping for a full-on fight between the old tiger and the younger one. Old tigers never went down quietly. “These people are boring. Your Momma, though…that woman has never been boring. Crazy. Mean as a snake. Snobby as all hell. But never borin’.”

“And what makes you think Angelina is never boring? Right now she’s back at my house reading Vogue…again… and whining about how there’s no TV. Does that sound interesting to you?”

“Really?” His father nodded toward the window. “Isn’t that her in one of my pickup trucks?”

Nik’s head snapped around. Sure enough, Angie—most likely one of the most dangerous drivers in the Carolinas from what she’d told him—was behind the wheel of his father’s Chevy dually pickup.

“And ain’t that your sisters next to her?”

He rubbed his eyes. I leave the house for five goddamn minutes and all hell breaks loose.

“See, boy? Never borin’.”

***

“What do you think?”

Angie sipped her champagne. She debated whether to be kind.

Nah.

“I wouldn’t, hon.”

“Really?”

“It makes ya look dumpy…and fat.”

The lioness turned and stormed back to the dressing room.

Reena, a little tipsy on all that champagne, stretched out on the couch. Her head rested against Angelina’s side and Angelina felt the urge to toss her off the couch. But she didn’t have the heart to be so bitchy. Not today.

“You know, Santiago, you should feel damn proud of yourself.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

“Because this is the first time Fallons Department Store ever had tigers, lions, she-wolves, a couple of cheetahs, and a few bears all in the same place without beatin’ the hell out of each other.”

“I thought these places were neutral ground for you shifter types.” She liked this place. It reminded her of Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdales. Big, spacious, with all the great designers.

“They are. Humans shop here, but it’s run and owned by shifters. Still, we can usually smell each other. And the lions stay away from the tigers. Thehyenas away from the lions. Etcetera, etcetera. This is the first time that I can recall this level of inter-mingling.”

“How many of these stores are there?”

“All over the states and Europe.”

“Cool.” Maybe she could drag Sara’s ass to one close to the Pack den and get the woman some hot clothes without the Harley-Davidson logo on it. “I find out something new everyday.”

Kisa sat on the couch, “Like what else?” The more she talked to her, the more Kisa opened up. Like a turtle sticking her head out of her shell.

“Well, I had no idea Manolo Blahnik made size thirteen shoes.”

“Well, they don’t make them openly. But the bears and wolves have huge feet,” Reena whispered.

“We heard that!”

Angie stood up, laughing as Reena’s head slammed against the couch. “Sorry.”

She headed off toward the bathroom, stopping several times to dissuade two women to never wear orange again and to urge a wolf to consider waxing her brow into two distinct ones.

She reached the bathroom, her hand on the door, when her hackles raised off her neck. She remembered feeling that way before. When she turned around to find a hyena female standing behind her outside her shop.

Angie turned slowly. A different female stood behind her this time, but a hyena just the same.

The woman didn’t speak, but she bared her fangs. A whole mouth full of them. Little, needle-sharp fangs that could easily tear the flesh from Angie’s body.

What a pleasant thought.

The hyena took a step toward her and Angelina tensed her body, ready to start hurting anything that got near her. Most normal people would run. But Angie didn’t run unless someone told her too. Otherwise she stood around and started swinging. Since neither Sara nor Miki were there to tell her to run that meant one thing…

“Is there a problem, Angelina?”

Sahara Lyon stepped around the corner. A wolf female beside her.

“We thought we smelled somethin’ funky,” the She-wolf grumbled. “So we decided to come check.”

The hyena female stared at Angie. She knew that look. The look of someone desperate to kick the living shit out of her. She’d seen it more than once over the years. And Angie bet her face mirrored the exact same sentiment back to the hyena. She could almost taste the beating she’d planned to give her. She could practically feel the flesh and bone give as she laid into her.

“What will you do,” Angie whispered. “So close and yet you just can’t get near me.”

The female took another step toward her and Angie thought she might have goaded the dumb bitch into a fight. But to Angie’s eternal surprise, Kisa stepped in front of her. Big tiger fangs bared. She opened her mouth wide, a tiger growl ripping through the store.