Olaf rarely spoke much—the poor kid had watched his parents be shot to death. To have three or four sentences in a row come out of his mouth was unusual.

“Tiger’s walking Broderick home,” Ellison said. He straightened up from the tree, but he didn’t take his arm from around Maria. “We’ll walk with Maria to Sean’s house and hit him up for pancakes. All right?”

“Yay!” Olaf grabbed Maria’s hand. “Were those men trying to kidnap me, Uncle Ellison?”

“Kidnap?” Maria’s eyes widened, some of the warmth evaporating. “What happened?”

“Some men tried to grab me. I smacked them.” Olaf danced back, swatting with his hands as he would his bear paws.

Ellison looked grim. “Guys in an expensive SUV,” he said. “Their tranq gun was top of the line too.”

Olaf had opened Maria’s bag and was pulling out his clothes. “Why were they trying to kidnap me?”

“I have some ideas,” Ellison said.

Maria bent down to help Olaf pull his shirt over his head. “We need to get him home.”

“But Ellison chased them off,” Olaf said, his rumpled head appearing through the shirt’s neckband. “He fought them with his wolf.” He growled again and punched the air, his shirtsleeves flailing. “And then Tiger came. It was awesome.”

Maria grabbed Olaf’s hands and thrust them inside the sleeves. “Home. Now.”

She tried to berate herself for stopping to kiss Ellison instead of taking Olaf to safety, but the imprint of Ellison’s lips remained on hers. The kiss had opened something inside her, as did the smile Ellison sent her now as he caught Olaf’s other hand.

What had started to open, Maria never wanted to close again.

***

“You got the license number, then?” Dylan Morrissey, who showed his nearly three hundred years of age only by the gray-flecked hair at his temples, gave Ellison his powerful alpha stare.

Dylan was no longer leader of Shiftertown, but he was still one of the strongest Shifters around. As Lupine, Ellison should go into intense defensive mode under Dylan’s questioning, but because the Morrisseys had accepted Ellison as friend long ago, and because Ellison worked for Liam as a tracker—bodyguard, investigator, enforcer—Dylan was going easy on him. Ellison pushed his instincts aside and answered.

“License plate number, make of the car, description of the guys. It’s all in here.” Ellison tapped his head. “Tiger saw them too, but he was in killer mode, so who knows what he remembers.”

“Tiger and Ellison kicked butt,” Olaf said.

Olaf remained at Dylan and Sean’s house. Maria, once she’d heard the full story, insisted that the cub shouldn’t go home until Ronan could be there to take care of him. Ronan, alerted by Ellison, was on his way, and he agreed Olaf should stay at Dylan’s, one of the safest houses in Shiftertown, until he arrived.

Maria played with snap-together blocks with Olaf, the kid building some kind of robot monster with it. From a movie, but Ellison didn’t know which one. The only movies Ellison watched were Westerns. The remake of 3:10 to Yuma was his current favorite, even though it wasn’t set in Texas.

Maria’s black braid was mussed from Ellison working his fingers through it. He could still feel the amazing heavy silk of her hair, that and the taste of her. Honey, sweetness, fire. Maria.

She was resilient, protective, defiant, and soft all at the same time. Like a rose—fragile but tough.

Maria helped Olaf build the robot with confident hands. She’d seen the movie, because Maria watched every movie and TV show she could, and read every book she could get her hands on. To learn English, she said. She already spoke better than some Shifters who’d come to America twenty years ago.

“Can Sean do his magic and find out who owns the car?” Ellison asked. He mimed typing on a keyboard. Sean could do amazing things with an old computer and dial-up modem.

“Not really,” Sean himself said, coming in from where he’d been cleaning up the kitchen. “I already tried it, and got nothing on the plate numbers. They might be fake. Finding out who owns a dark blue recent-model Escalade is playing needle in a haystack. If they drove a 1952 powder-blue Chevy Fleetline DeLuxe with a dent in the right fender, I might have more luck.”

“There could be another way,” Dylan said. He had the heaviest Irish accent of his family, and every word had a musical quality to it.

Ellison had the feeling he knew what Dylan meant, and Sean nodded. “You’re talking about Pablo Marquez,” Sean said.

“Didn’t y’all run him out of town?” Ellison asked. “After he nearly got Ronan’s mate killed?”

“He’s been proving himself a useful man,” Dylan answered in his quiet way. “He’s got a stranglehold on trade coming into South Texas, and keeps the more dangerous of the lot at bay. He knows what he’s doing.”

High praise from Dylan Morrissey. Made sense, though, that a man like Pablo, overseer of transactions not exactly legal, would know about anyone else trying to stay under the radar in his town.

“I say we go talk to him,” Ellison said.

“Aye,” Sean said, a sparkle in his blue eyes. “Be good to intimidate . . . I mean visit . . . Pablo again.”

“Agree,” Ellison said. “Let’s get Spike.”

Maria rose from the jumble of big white toy blocks. “We’ll wait for Ronan first. And then I’ll come with you.”

“No, you won’t,” Ellison said at once.

“If this Pablo knows who’s trying to take Olaf, I want to ask him questions,” Maria said, anger in her eyes. “I know a thing or two about people who snatch other people and take them away. I won’t sit at home waiting for you to bother to tell me what’s happening.”

The thought of Maria anywhere near Marquez made Ellison’s wolf start to snarl. “I’ll tell you,” he said, a growl in his voice. “I won’t keep you in the dark. But you wait here—or better yet, go across and stay with Den.”

Maria put her hands on her hips. “And wait how long? Besides, maybe I can ask him questions you won’t think of.”

“Maria.”

They were a foot apart, Maria’s eyes holding dark fire. She was scared, but not for herself. For Olaf. For the cubs. And that gave her the strength of angels.