“Screw safer.” Carly sat up, her hair tumbling forward. “I told you, I chased safety because I thought it would make up for what my dad did to us. But it doesn’t. It just means your life goes nowhere. And anyway, I don’t believe anymore that there’s any such thing as safety. I fooled myself into believing it, that’s all.”

He looked at her as though not paying attention to a word she said. “I can move faster without you.”

“That’s probably true. But you don’t know where to go, or how to live as a human. You’ll give yourself away as soon as you try to buy food or find a car or a place to sleep. And if anyone sees you change into a Tiger—sheesh. Every hunter will be after you with a shotgun. Sure, you can throw bullets out of your body, but I bet too many blasts, and you’re dead.”

“Cutting off my head would probably work too,” Tiger said, face straight.

“It’s not funny. You need me, and you know it.”

Tiger again moved his fingertips through the air, his eyes on what he touched, whatever it was. “I need to protect you. I didn’t protect my mate before, or my cub.”

“From what you’ve told me, you didn’t have a chance. The researchers locked you away from them and wouldn’t let you see them. Well, I don’t want to be kept away from you.”

Tiger’s face went hard. “You have so much here. Your family. All that will be gone if you run away with me.”

“I understand the risks,” Carly said angrily.

“I think you don’t.”

Carly’s retort cut off as she heard the noise of a car below, then the slamming of doors.

Tiger was off the bed in a single second, moving to the window without a sound. He kept to the shadows, looking out.

“It is not the soldiers for the Bureau,” he said in a low voice. “Or Shifters.”

Carly heard voices now, shrill and laughing, and her heart sank. “Shit, what are they doing home already? They’re supposed to be gone until next week. And, crap, we left our clothes downstairs.”

She scrambled off the bed, throwing open the closet to grab for the spare T-shirts and jeans she left here. Tiger was out of luck though.

“Stay here,” Carly said to him. “I’ll talk my way out of this somehow. We can sneak you downstairs and out later.”

Tiger remained by the window, hidden to all below. Carly thought he looked wistful somehow, as he watched her sisters as they jabbered in their shrill voices, their mother answering as loudly.

Carly hurried down the stairs in her bare feet. The staircase spilled out into the wide foyer that was open to the kitchen. She hit the bottom step, ready to dash in and grab all the clothes, when her sisters and mother walked in through the back door, hands full of boxes, bags, clothes on hangers.

“Carly?” Althea, her oldest sister, said in surprise. “I hope that’s not your piece-of-crap car in the garage. I almost slammed into it.”

“Never mind about the car,” Zoë, the second oldest, said. She grabbed a wooden spoon from the counter and used it to lift the red boxers covered with black hearts from the kitchen floor. “Whose are these? Carly, you bad, bad girl.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Put those down. It’s not what you think.”

“No?” Zoë raised her brows at Carly over the underwear. “I think it’s a pair of men’s sexy underwear on our kitchen floor. Or were you playing dress-up? And you didn’t invite us?”

The Randal next youngest to Carly, Janine Randal-Johnson, respectably married with a kid, said, “Those don’t look like something Ethan would wear.”

Carly put her hands on her hips. “And you’d know all about Ethan’s underwear how?”

“Janine’s right,” Zoë said. “These don’t look like the boulder holders of a man who wears suits in a hundred degree weather and knows every chichi restaurant in Austin. So who is he, Carly? And where is he? Upstairs?”

Zoë started for the stairs, carrying the underwear like a banner. Carly stepped in front of her, grabbed the underwear, and blocked Zoë’s way up. “No!”

“So, not Ethan,” Althea said. “Carly, good for you.”

“Oh, Carly,” Janine said, sounding sad. She alone of Carly’s sisters had thought Ethan a good catch.

“Would you pipe down?” Carly said. “No, it’s not Ethan. Ethan and I . . . broke up.”

Such a tame term for the volatile events of the last few days.

“Carly, why didn’t you call me?” Carly’s mother, Rosalie, went around Zoë and pulled Carly into a hug. “Did you have an argument? Honey, you can tell us.”

“She doesn’t have to tell us anything.” Zoë moved back to the kitchen, where she and Althea shared a double high five. “Ding-dong, the bitch is dead. By the bitch, I mean Ethan.”

“Zoë,” Rosalie said sternly. “This isn’t funny. Carly’s broken up with the man she was going to marry. She obviously met someone on the rebound. You need to talk to us, sweetie.”

“Couldn’t you have worked it out?” Janine asked. “I mean, Ethan’s filthy rich. Make him buy you a car or something. Better than that hunk of junk—please don’t tell me that’s the new boyfriend’s car.”

“Ew,” Althea said. “What did you do, pick up a guy at a pool hall? Please tell me you made him bathe. And that he didn’t use my good bath towels.”

“Will you all please shut up!” Carly yelled. She backed up, holding Tiger’s underwear close, one hand up, stiff, to stave them off. “I caught Ethan screwing another woman, and I threw the engagement ring at him. End of story.”

They stared at her, openmouthed, Zoë’s and Althea’s expressions changing from glee to stark surprise. Carly realized after a few heartbeats that they weren’t staring at her, they were staring past her, up the stairs, at someone else.

She swung around and saw him a few steps behind her, one of Althea’s precious towels tucked around his waist, the towel barely large enough to fit around him.

Moments stretched while Tiger stared down at them, and Carly’s sisters and mother stared up at Tiger.

“Okay,” Janine said after a beat of silence. “I’ll admit it. You traded up.”