“He didn’t know about you,” Eric said, his voice a warm rumble. “He was one of the first Shifters rounded up, and has been living in a Shiftertown in Idaho ever since.”

“You could have tried to find me,” Penny said, tears in her voice. “You knew who I was. You could have tried.”

“You were married, lass,” Ross McRae said. “You married the man you truly loved, and were happy. How could I take that from you?”

“But he died,” Penny said. “And I was alone.” She still had his hands, holding them as though she never wanted to let go.

“And I was a Shifter with a Collar. Life with a Shifter is hard, and I couldn’t force you to live it. And I had no idea that one of your bairns was mine.”

“I didn’t know how to find you to tell you.”

Iona’s eyes burned as she listened to them. With a moan that wrenched from her heart, she pushed past her mother and flung her arms around her father.

Ross McRae’s face streamed with tears as he swept Iona up into a tight hug. He held her there, shaking, while Eric’s strong hand on Iona’s back warmed her through.

“You can start making it up now, I think,” Eric said. “I’ve put the procedures in motion to move you to this Shiftertown, if that’s what you want.”

Ross lifted his head, his cheeks wet. “Do you want that, Pen?”

Penny nodded. “I think so.”

Ross wrapped one arm around Penny while keeping Iona within the embrace of the other. “Thank you, Eric Warden,” he said.

“My pleasure. Welcome to the family, Ross McRae. I love your daughter with all my heart. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all, lad,” Ross said, trying to smile.

The look Eric bent on Iona had her heart speeding. “And now, if you don’t mind,” he said, “it’s our full moon ceremony. Which means we have lots to do.”

Ross relinquished Iona to him with a bit of reluctance. Eric instantly slid his arm around Iona as though he intended to be touching her in some way the rest of their lives.

Iona looked back as they started for the house. Her mother and Ross had turned to each other again, Ross enclosing Penny’s hands in his.

“How did you do that?” Iona asked. “Find him for us?”

“The Guardian Network. Don’t ask—I don’t understand it all myself. Guardians are the keepers of information, and once Neal had a place to start, he found Ross fairly quickly. I think he’s here to stay.”

“Thank you,” Iona said, heartfelt. “Thank you so much, Eric.”

They’d reached the house. Eric pulled Iona inside its stuffy darkness and warmed her lips with his kiss. “I’m your mate. I do everything for you now.”

Eric’s hard body came against hers, his wanting obvious. Their kiss was quiet, the solitude of the house a soothing contrast to the wildness outside. Eric’s firm, hot hands slid down Iona’s back, and she scented his frenzy rising.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Be careful. What if the pain comes?”

“It won’t.” Eric nipped her neck. “Not as long as I’m with you.”

“What did you find out about it? That was why you went to see this Murdock, didn’t you? Cassidy told me who he was.”

“Come with me.” Eric took Iona’s hands and tugged her down the hall to Jace’s bedroom—which was now theirs—but instead of making for the bed, he opened the secret door that led downstairs.

Eric took her into the stairwell and locked the door behind her, then led her down, not bothering with the lights, both of them seeing fine in the darkness.

He took her to one of the bedrooms in the hall, next to the one Jace had been using. This was a luxurious contrast to the rooms upstairs—a four-poster bed draped with airy hangings, a cavernous bathroom with a marble sunken bathtub, and a rug whose softness she felt under her sandals.

Eric lifted Iona to the edge of the bed and started unbuttoning her blouse. “Dr. Murdock was the one researcher twenty years ago who actually felt sorry for me as he stuck needles into me and shocked me almost to death. Which made him, in that place, a nice guy. I did see him today, and he confirmed what was wrong with me. I told him he needed to cure me, and in return, I’d let him live. He agreed.”

Iona’s Shifter felt a twinge of satisfaction at Eric’s casual threat of violence. She’d grown enraged when Cassidy had told her that Dr. Murdock had been one of the researchers who’d experimented on Eric. Iona had been ready to run after Eric and claw the man herself. These people who treated Shifters like lab animals—as they’d done to Tiger and had started to do to Amanda—deserved to be a little scared.

“And what did he say was wrong with you?” she asked.

Eric finished unbuttoning Iona’s blouse and pulled it open. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and the cool air of the underground room touched her bare skin as Eric’s gaze slid to it. He didn’t ogle, he admired, warmed.

He slid the blouse off her and started on her skirt. “You were right, and Kellerman was right, that what was done to me was part of humans trying to make a super Shifter, like the tiger. Only, they started with a full-grown Shifter in my case. They planned to take off the Collar but keep me programmed with the pain if I turned violent, but only if I turned violent on them. They were thinking that with a series of remotes and implants they would control me with pain when they wanted to, or let me kill for them when they pointed me at their enemies.”

Iona listened in anger and revulsion. “How could they do that?”

Eric shrugged. “They were humans who didn’t know what to think when they discovered that shapeshifters were real. What do humans always do when they find a new species of animal? Capture it, study it, tag it. Or kill it and hang its head on a wall.”

“But what they did to you didn’t work, did it? They stopped the experiments, obviously.”

Eric pushed the loosened skirt down, and Iona wriggled her way out of it. She sat bare, in panties only, and reached for the buttons on Eric’s shirt. “They stopped the experiments because Shifters’ rights activists started to raise hell. I told Murdock that what they were trying to do wouldn’t ever work. The Collars are partly magic, not just technology—a half Fae shithead designed them. Murdock and his colleagues were trying to recreate the effect with biotechnology—just like the humans in Area Fifty-one were trying to recreate Shifters themselves with biotech. They put an implant in me all right, one so tiny I never knew I had it. The implant was supposed to trigger a chemical reaction whenever I turned violent, but they never got the reaction right, and my Collar always went off before it did. Then they were forced to stop the experiments and let me go, so they never could fine-tune the implant.”