“So I took initiative. I didn’t have the chance to ask your permission. You’ve been hard to track down lately, if you hadn’t noticed, and distracted when you are. I’m glad you’ve met someone, Dad, but your brain is warping.”

Fathers were supposed to be proud when cubs struck back. That meant the father had raised the cub to be strong.

Eric’s hand sprouted claws, and he snarled. Jace looked surprised, then he snarled too, his eyes going flat.

Reid popped in right next to them, displacing air. “You might want to keep it down,” he said. “Sound carries.”

Eric forced his claws to recede, but his anger didn’t diminish. Jace took a step back, but the move was in no way submissive.

“Don’t you want to know what I saw?” Jace asked, his voice quieter.

“I do,” Reid said before Eric could answer.

Jace let out a breath. “They did absolutely nothing until about five thirty this morning. No lights, no one moving around, just the guards smoking and talking. Then, jeeps, five of them. They came straight across the desert from the north.” Jace pointed to where coarse sand stretched, empty and white to the hills. “The guards opened the gates like they were expecting the jeeps. Each jeep had a driver and a passenger. They all got out and started unloading—one big cage from each one. Not mesh cages, but ones that looked like dog carriers, only much bigger.”

Eric grew colder as he listened. “What was in the cages?”

“Nothing. They were empty. I couldn’t smell anything but the men. They put the cages into the first building, then they all got back into the jeeps and drove away.”

Eric thought about the layout of the place, the tidy rows of buildings with the air conditioners on the top. “We need a look inside there.”

“Want me to teleport in?” Reid asked. “I could have a quick look around.”

Reid could only teleport to a place he’d seen or been to, or so he’d said. He’d come out here with the trackers to have a look before, which is why he could teleport Eric so close, but he’d have to get a look inside one of the buildings before he could will himself into one.

“Not yet,” Eric told him. “We don’t need a guard to see you. I don’t want them alerted that anyone knows about them until we find out more.”

Diego and Xav’s research had drawn a blank so far on the compound and what was in it, they’d told Eric. They’d found the place via satellite photo but couldn’t zoom in close enough to have a good look, and they couldn’t find plans or building permissions for the compound. Xavier had promised to look for something more covert, but so far, he’d turned up nothing.

Reid shrugged. “It might have nothing to do with Shifters.”

“True,” Eric said.

But the mention of cages bugged him. Sure, the people here could be out to capture mountain lions, maybe for some zoology professors to study. But mountain lions were few and far between, and it was unlikely they’d need to be prepped for five of them.

Not good. Not good.

“We’ll keep an eye out,” Eric said. “And have Diego and Xavier keep looking for info. If it has nothing to do with us, then it has nothing to do with us, but I want to know.”

“You’re welcome,” Jace said. “I’m going back to Shiftertown to get some sleep.”

Jace turned his back and walked away, sun strong on his bare back. He’d gotten a tattoo in stages this year, across his shoulder blades, a prowling leopard in full color. Eric watched him go, proud that his son was so strong and upright, and still as worried about him as he’d been when Jace was the cute little cub who liked to chew on Cassidy’s shoes.

Then Eric grimaced. “Wait, Son. I need to ride back with you. Teleporting makes me sick.”

Jace kept walking. “Suck it up, Dad,” he said, then he shifted, jumped back down into the wash, and was gone.

Iona spent the day helping people move. The bulk of the Shifters from Graham McNeil’s Shiftertown would start arriving the next day, and houses had to be cleared for them.

Iona had called her mother after breakfast. Penny hadn’t been happy that Iona had let Eric take her to Shiftertown, but she agreed to wait and see what happened. Iona heard tears in her mother’s voice when they hung up, and her heart burned.

She worked off her anger by lugging boxes. She, Cassidy, and Diego carried boxes and pieces of furniture from porches to Iona’s truck, and then to the porches of the houses that the Shifters were moving into. Cassidy, as pregnant as she was, carried plenty, though Diego was after her to rest a lot.

Iona offered to carry the boxes all the way into the houses, but her offer was declined by their owners—politely but firmly. She was to set everything on the porch and come no farther inside.

“Why?” she asked Cassidy when they took a breather. “You’d think they’d welcome the help.”

“Shifter secrets,” Cassidy said between sips from the bottle of water Diego had brought her. “If you were just visiting, that would be one thing. But they’re clearing out their houses from top to bottom, and want no one outside their clan to enter until they’re settled.”

“You’re talking about the underground spaces Eric wants my company to build in the new houses, aren’t you? And the Shifters don’t want me to see what’s in them.”

“They don’t want me to see either, or Diego. Every pride, pack, and clan has its own space, and even the Shiftertown leader doesn’t get invited in. We have to keep something of ourselves totally private.”

“I understand.” Iona was curious, but she’d respect their wishes.

The Shifters they helped, though, didn’t seem to worry about invading Iona’s privacy. They asked about her family and who her Shifter parent was, gave her frank and assessing stares, and openly sniffed her. No one was aggressive, only curious, but very much so. She admitted her father’s name after some initial reluctance, but no one had heard of Ross McRae.

The sniffing bothered her though. The Shifters would lean close to her and inhale, then give her another grave stare and nod.

They were checking her scent, Cassidy told her, because Eric had scent-marked and mate-claimed Iona. They were acknowledging that Iona belonged to him.

“I don’t belong to anyone,” Iona said irritably.