After several hundred feet, Souza stopped. “Here. She was here.” She leaned against the tree and sniffed. “Yeah. Right here.”

“She?”

“Definitely.” She climbed the tree, slipping effortlessly up and briefly getting lost in the branches and leaves. “Definitely a she. On her period.”

Dez threw her hands up. “Hey! There are some things I don’t need to—”

“Lion.”

Shocked into silence, Dez watched Souza flip back out of the tree. She landed with ease and shook her head. “Yeah. You heard me right.”

“That can’t be right.”

“I’ve got the best nose in the NYPD. She was lion. She was female.” She stared at the tiny stamp that was the hotel Mitch had stayed in. Dez didn’t realize how far away they were until this moment. “And she was a really good shot. Even for a shifter.”

Souza looked at Dez and gave a small smirk—she didn’t seem to be real big on smiling—and said, “Exactly who did your friend piss off, MacDermot?”

Sissy stared down at Mitch. She was getting worried. He slept so much. At least, she pretended he was sleeping. It was more like he was passed out. It was Tuesday morning, and except for helping him to the bathroom and spoon-feeding him some more soup, he hadn’t moved a muscle.

She was used to fevers. Her daddy had gotten them more than once, and he usually recovered in about twenty-four hours. During the fever, her father shifted from man to beast many times over. He had delusions, and he had a thing about grabbing Janie Mae and tussling with her.

But Mitch had been down since Sunday with no fever and very little movement.

It began to worry her so much she even called in the town doc. He didn’t seem real happy to deal with a cat, but he’d always liked Sissy and wanted to help. But even he didn’t know what to do with a non-fever-having shifter.

“Keep an eye on him,” he’d told her. “And hope he don’t die in his sleep.”

What kind of bedside manner was that anyway?

Letting out a breath, Sissy tried again not to panic. She felt so alone. How did full-humans live like this? No Pack. No one who watched her back or was just there when she needed someone. She’d give anything to have Ronnie here. Someone who could tell her, “Don’t worry. Mitch will be fine. He’s too crazy to die.”

But they were still on “radio silence,” as Bobby Ray always put it.

She sighed when she thought of her brother. She really missed him. He was the rational brains in their partnership, and she was the crazy one who made everyone afraid to push them. It worked brilliantly for them. She wished he was here, but she wouldn’t be the one to ruin his honeymoon. She had a feeling Jessie Ann would think Sissy had used this just to ruinher time with Bobby Ray. They had lots of years to get on each other’s nerves; Sissy would rather not start right away.

So instead of being surrounded by her Pack and even those annoying dogs, she was trapped in hostile territory with a sick cat and her eldest brother Travis less than a hundred miles away from her.

She and Travis had never gotten along. He wanted everyone to submit to him, but she never had. Neither did Bobby Ray. And he hated both of them for it.

It surprised her he hadn’t come by yet, but she knew he would. He’d try and push her out—of that, she had no doubt. Whether she could stop him was a whole other thing. With both her parents and Ronnie Lee’s out of town, she had no backup and no Pack of her own to protect her.

And it wasn’t only her brothers she had to worry about. Without her mother’s protection, she had to worry about those who lived on the hill. No one spoke of them. No one uttered their names unless absolutely necessary. They’d been howling for her every night since she’d arrived. It was becoming more insistent, too, the more she ignored them.

For the first time, Sissy knew what it was like to be completely alone, and she hated it.

Okay. That was wrong. She wasn’t completely alone. Her aunts had stopped by quite a bit to keep an eye on her. “You need us, you just call,” each of them would tell her on her way out the door.

She hadn’t told any of them about the calls from the hill. To be honest, she was afraid of what her aunts would do. Those on the hill didn’t get along too well with the Lewis sisters, and Sissy didn’t want to be responsible for anything happening to her aunts. She loved them too much. And she really didn’t want to hear the shit she’d get from her momma.

Sissy frowned when she realized the corkboard over Mitch’s head was moments from falling on him. It had been part of her room since she was twelve and held her all-important travel list. All the places she’d been planning to go since she was seven or eight. She left the board up there to remind herself she’d been to most of those places. It helped her deal with her mother. And more than once, after one of her mother’s “lectures,” she’d look at the list, call up Ronnie Lee, and ask something like, “Ever wanted to go to Sydney?” If she didn’t know better, she’d swear the woman did it on purpose.

No. She better move that board, or Mitch would wake up with more wounds than he went to sleep with.

Mitch opened his eyes, closed them, and then opened them wide.

“There are big breasts in my face,” he announced to anyone who would listen.

“Wha—oh, stop it.”

He didn’t know why Sissy was hanging over him, but waking up to her breasts was definitely enjoyable.