My dove lived with her family in an older Craftsman home on a quiet but eclectic street on the northwest side of Fulton City. The Baxter house was well-kept—a modest two-story with dark red paint, large windows, and a wraparound porch that offset the red house in a fresh, bright white. The small front yard was a neat hodgepodge of flowerbeds, with shrubs and other various plants bloomed in shades of red and pink. The uneven sidewalk was made of brown pavers, and mature trees lined the yards along the street.

The house next door was twice as large and was probably worth upwards of a million dollars, while the house two doors down had fallen into disrepair, its peeling paint and sagging porch a small blight on the charm of the neighborhood. An aging multifamily triplex took up the large corner lot at the end of the street. A few kids played in yards. An elderly human woman watered her plants across the street.

In the distance, the faint rumble of the transit system’s trains rolling over tracks was a reminder of our urban environs. I licked my lips and got hints of hot asphalt, smoke from the barbecue joint down the road, and gasoline.

So different from the cookie-cutter suburban neighborhoods and gated communities our shifter brethren had carved out of the hundred miles of forest and mountains that stretched from north of the city to the Tennessee border.

I’d left my Bronco parked a few streets away. The setting sun and the lovely trees had provided me ample shadows to slip through undetected, and the neighbors’ large magnolia had many branches equipped to hold my weight.

Avery stood at the kitchen sink, washing dishes from dinner. Her fox dad, Joseph, dried dishes next to her, his golden hair tied in a bun at the nape of his neck. They chatted amiably, and I doubted I’d ever seen a father more full of love and pride for his daughter.

My beast stirred, the sense of calm that’d come over me since I’d climbed into this tree buzzing pleasantly. Yes, our mate’s fathers are worthy of her, I told him. We will not have to kill them.

Pretty mate. Perfect mate.

The words weren’t spoken aloud in my head, but I could interpret them all the same. This was a new and not unwelcome development, but it was also frustratingly late. Had I been able to commune so easily with the basilisk three months ago, I might’ve known he recognized his Fated hiding within our gorgeous new student.

I could’ve saved us all from making the worst mistake of our lives.

It was the only reason I hadn’t just climbed into her bedroom window upstairs and made myself comfortable in her bed while I waited for her to finish up. Even my beast knew our dove needed space. She needed time to heal from what we’d done, and we would give that to her.

For now.

Avery stepped away from the sink and began putting glasses away in a cabinet. I drank in her lovely profile. I was an addict, and it’d been far too long since my last hit.

My dove appeared healthy and in generally good spirits, but I knew better. She’d been my obsession for an entire semester, after all.

Her movements, normally graceful and quick, were slower, like she was nursing some lingering pain. She had dark little puffs under her beautiful blue eyes—eyes that still carried the weight of everything that’d happened to her. Despite the cheerful demeanor she put on for her family, she couldn’t fool me.

She was resolute, but she was also sad.

My beast coiled tightly, hissing his displeasure. She needs us.

She does, I agreed. We’ll have to show her how much.

Avery paused, her arm raised, still gripping a glass she’d just set on a high shelf. She turned slowly, her eyes narrowed as she peered over her shoulder and out the kitchen window that faced my tree.

That was our cue.

“Your time will be up soon, Dove,” I murmured. “Until then.”

I slipped from the tree and made my way back to my car. I had another appointment tonight.

Heath slammed the door as he climbed into my car. “You’re late.”

Someone was in a fine mood this evening.

“Apologies,” I replied smoothly, grinning as I thought of Avery. “I had to make a quick stop in the Upper City.”

He snapped his head in my direction like an angry Doberman. “You what?”

“Relax. She didn’t see me.”

He ran a hand through his thick blond hair and groaned. “You cannot creep around in her fucking bushes, man. This situation is precarious enough as it is. Don’t piss her off more.”

My smile widened. “You’re just jealous.”

He huffed and slumped in his seat.

I waited.

After a moment, he sighed, relenting. “How did she look?”

“Like a goddess sent by the Moon to break hearts and slay wraiths.”

Gold flashed in his eyes, and he shut them like he was in pain. “I already knew that, you asshole.” He opened his eyes and glared at me. “Is she okay? Does she look like she’s hurting? Do we need to send Dr. Lee or preferably one of his less-attractive-but-just-as-skilled colleagues to her house?”

I chuckled, pulling the car out onto the road and leaving our meeting spot—a Walmart on the south side of Fulton City—behind. Heath had parked his Cadillac SUV in the brightest spot he could find and within mere feet of two security cameras like a paranoid rich boy.

“I suggest you focus on the task at hand, Captain,” I replied. “The reason you joined me on this little errand was to take your mind off things, correct? So you’d stop stomping around the halls of Gale Manor like an angry ogre?”

“I have not been stomping.”

“Sure you haven’t,” I said, waving a hand at his general state of being. Tense muscles, aggression pulsing around him like an electrified fence. His beast was always on the surface these days, just waiting to break free and run all the way from Wyatt’s estate to Avery’s house. I sighed, taking pity on him. “She looks good,” I said quietly, “but some of her vibrance is gone. I have to imagine that’s our fault.”

He swallowed roughly, and his fists clenched so hard that it was a wonder he didn’t break his own fingers. “I know.”

We didn’t speak the rest of the twenty-minute drive into the industrial wasteland south of the city, where the Low Country Kings MC made their lair.

It was a joke of a motorcycle club, full of minor shifters and run by men with only slightly more powerful animals than would rank as ordinary.

Petty criminals with small dicks and big ambitions.

And, in all likelihood, the hired help who’d murdered my mother twenty years ago.

We weren’t headed for their decrepit clubhouse, as much as I’d have loved to sniff around in there. I’d spent not an insignificant amount of time last semester surveilling the place, and there were always at least two club members present and awake in there at any given time. Not ideal for breaking and entering.

Instead, Heath and I were headed to a nearby neighborhood where the widow of the club’s ex-President still lived in the house she’d once shared with her deceased husband. The investigator hired by my uncle, Horatio, had located her a few months ago, and I’d already let myself into her empty house once to snoop.

That was how I came to be in possession of an old cell phone that I’d recovered from a dusty drawer in an even dustier little home office. The call log from the days around my mother’s murder showed both incoming and outgoing calls to a now-disconnected number simply labeled “Archprime” in the contact list.

Add this to the other item I had in my possession—an odd knife, its hilt carved into a flowering plant with trumpet-shaped purple blooms and onyx berries that perfectly matched the description of the murder weapon—and you had the extent of the trove of evidence I was working with.

Tonight, the widow and I were going to have a little chat, and with any luck, I’d have something to add.

“Brenda, stop fucking talking to that asshole!”

Heath buried his fist in the mouthy gentleman’s stomach as he lunged at me for the second time this evening. His leather cut said his name was Razor, but Brenda had called him Carl a few times.

“Shut up,” Heath growled. He knocked Carl’s hand from where he’d been reaching inside his cut. Heath slid his hand in there instead and deftly extracted a hidden dagger. He shoved Carl to the ground, and the unfortunate man crashed through the rickety coffee table with an embarrassing yelp. Heath pressed a boot into his neck and held up the small knife, a droll look on his face. “Really? What were you planning to do with this? Poke Elijah enough to annoy him into leaving?”

Carl gurgled something unintelligible.

I returned my gaze to Brenda, who was sitting across from me at the small kitchen table. She looked a decade younger than her fifty years and wore a tight tank top over frayed denim shorts. Her massive tits were barely contained by her shirt, and her platinum-blonde hair was freshly dyed, if the ammonium taste lingering on my lips was anything to go by.

Brenda had surely been a looker in her day and still was, which accounted for her younger male companion, who couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five.

She frowned at Carl’s predicament, like she wasn’t sure what he was doing on the floor in a pile of cheap wood shards, before she was back to smiling serenely at me. “I’m sorry about him. We only just started dating, and shifter men can get possessive, can’t y’all?”

“Of course,” I replied smoothly. “Heath and I have a mate of our own, so we certainly aren’t here with untoward intentions. Once Carl gets his wits about him, he’ll realize you’re just helping a boy find out what happened to his mother.”

I let the basilisk peek out again, ensnaring her. I was using the lightest possible touch—I didn’t want to lose Brenda to the near-blackout daze my beast could unleash on all but the most powerful shifters. Our project today just needed a teensy bit of hypnosis and a whole lot of my natural charm.

She sighed dreamily. “Yes. I just wish I could be more helpful to you, Elijah.”

Carl thrashed behind me. The thud of Heath’s kick sounded, followed by a pained groan.

We hadn’t anticipated Brenda’s new beau, and while he was a lively one, he was no match for Heath. His pheromones tasted of inferior canine, and he yelped like a chihuahua. Heath could’ve held him immobile with just the force of his wolf’s dominance, but he needed the exercise.

“So your late husband never mentioned who he was working for back in those days when you guys had a little extra spending money to throw around?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “He was so secretive about it. Club business, ya know?” She pursed her lips, a look of real disappointment on her face. “I’m sorry. If I’d have known I might need to help such an adorable young man, I’d have paid more attention.”

Heath snorted.

“And the name ‘Archprime’ doesn’t mean anything to you?”

“No….” Her frown deepened, and I allowed her to tear her gaze from mine as a thoughtful look crossed her face. “Well, I did look at a bank statement once,” she said after a moment, grinning sheepishly. “I was just curious. Usually the money he made from the club was cash, but suddenly we were getting funds in our bank account like a proper job. Doug had left the statement on his desk to go outside to take a call. He shredded it when he came back.”

I beamed at her like she was the smartest lady in the world. “But you took that chance to take a little peek before he could destroy it, didn’t you?”

She batted her long lashes. “Yeah. Most of it was debits for our bills and stuff, but there was a big deposit from something called ‘Lunar Heritage.’ I don’t remember any Archprime, though,” she added, back to frowning.

Bingo. I typed the name into the notes I kept on my phone. Hopefully Horatio’s investigator could handle this one too. “That’s okay, Brenda,” I cooed. “I’ll just see what I can find on Lunar Heritage. I bet it will get me going in the right direction. Thank you so much.”

The yellow light of the single bulb hanging over the kitchen table cast a dingy glow on her flushed cheeks. “You’re welcome. Are you sure you don’t want to stay for a drink? You boys are old enough, right? Not that I’d tell if you weren’t,” she added with a sultry wink.

“Brenda, what the fuck?” Carl protested weakly.

I stood up and dusted off my jeans. “We appreciate the invite, but we’d better get going. I apologize for interrupting your date with Carl.”

She waved a dismissive hand and waggled her blonde brows. “There’s still plenty of time left for our date.”

“You hear that, Carl?” Heath asked the man on the floor. “Don’t move a muscle as we walk out that door, or I’ll break your dick in half. That would be unfortunate because it sounds like you’ll be needing it later.”

I chuckled. “He’s not joking. Heath and I have been going through a bit of a dry spell, and we’d both take some enjoyment in preventing someone else from getting laid.”

“Fine,” Carl gurgled. “Just get the fuck out.”

I released Brenda from my hold. She shook her head slowly, her eyelids fluttering.

By the time she realized a couple of college kids had just bamboozled her into spilling secrets and put her boyfriend through a coffee table, Heath and I were already in the car and speeding swiftly out of the neighborhood.

Hopefully this little sliver of information I’d manipulated out of Brenda would bear some fruit. The basilisk and I both needed a target, or the draw to my dove’s side could prove too powerful to resist.

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