***

Zach’s body was concealed behind trees as he watched Sara’s house. “I want you at her house,” Yates had ordered after he’d argued. “Make sure she doesn’t have any more surprise visits.”

He hated babysitting duty and Yates knew it. But he put up with it… for now. Because everyone knew, clearly even Yates, that Zach would be making a move to be Pack leader. He knew he was ready. And he wanted it. He was just waiting for the right time to move. He loved Yates like a brother, but the man was getting weak. It wasn’t age either. It was his woman. Casey was tough, but she was toxic. She was too human for the role. Wanting power. Her primary concern, no matter what she said, was not the Pack. But her standing within it. The females put up with her, but he could tell that wouldn’t last much longer. His sister, who had been traveling for about a year, had a good shot at Alpha Female, but he wasn’t sure she even wanted it or would leave Europe to come get it.

That’s why Casey’s recent foray into the past was an obvious tactic to keep him busy and out of the way. She never cared about Bruce Morrighan’s missing offspring before. They all knew she had been taken by her grandmother after the brutal killing of the girl’s father. And although Casey thought she could keep Zach away for weeks “monitoring the girl,” as she put it, they never expected the Pride to actually be hunting the woman. Finish off the job they had started so long ago. But Pride females were notoriously patient. They had probably known where Morrighan’s offspring was for years, but no one, absolutely no one, would even think about going up against Lynette Redwolf.

Why? Because the bitch was crazy.

A Native American and a shapeshifter, Lynette had rejected both early on. Instead she’d tried to become a “normal woman.” She buried the Beast and stayed human. The fact that she’d come from a long line of shape-shifting shamans apparently meant nothing to her.

And her plan had been to raise her daughter the same. She had big plans for Kylie Redwolf. But Kylie figured out what she was by the time she was fourteen. At eighteen, she met her mate and Sara’s father, Bruce Morrighan. His family dated back to the 16th Century. A tough Scottish clan of wolves that had done some serious damage to the land before they’d gained some control over their need to kill. Like Zach, Bruce was born and raised as part of the Magnus Pack. It was the only world he’d ever known. Until he met Kylie. Their mating was supposedly one for the record books. Their passion scorching the Colorado Mountains were they found each other. Bruce on a camping trip. Kylie trying to escape her controlling mother by working as a waitress in a local diner. Once they were marked and mated, the couple seemed to become more wolf than human. Staying in wolf form for days on end, they slept, hunted, and lived the majority of theirlives as wolves. When they had Sara, the Pack’s feeling was that she was certainly going to be Alpha female one day.

But then Kylie fucked with Annie Withell, head of the Withell Pride, and all hell broke loose. During a confrontation, Kylie somehow killed the 400-pound Annie and started a Pack-Pride war that had continued to this day. By the time Sara was one year old, Kylie’s torn and half-eaten wolf carcass was found dumped on the front door of the Pack’s den.

Bruce had been inconsolable. And he, with the help of several Pack mates and against the Alpha leader’s orders, attacked the Pride. Killing two of its prime breeding males. Then he’d taken his daughter and left. Moved to Arizona. Everything went quiet. Until the pair went on a hunting trip in an Arizona state park. No one knew the details, but the human remains of Bruce were found by the campsite.

Sara was missing for a day, but was eventually found 20 miles from where her father’s body was found, unconscious next to a riverbank. Her face torn like it had hit jagged rock. Her leg torn as if hit by an animal paw. She was in a coma for a week. No one thought she would survive. When members of the Pack went to the hospital to visit and protect her, they were greeted by Lynette. She took Pack members outside of the hospital to “chat.” But her chat consisted of her attacking them with a thin blade. She got one in the shoulder. Another in the back and a female in the face, taking off part of her ear. She left them all alive, but told them never to come back. That the “bitch” was hers now.

She’d taken the girl to this tiny town in the middle of nowhere Texas and raised her. The ultimate revenge against a daughter that had abandoned her and represented everything she hated about herself.

But why would Lynette bring Sara here? To a town run by wolves? Marrec was a shapeshifter and so was half the town. He protected and loved Sara like his own daughter. He could have turned her himself. So why hadn’t he? Or was it once again the wrath of Lynette, clearly a psychotic bitch to the extreme, which kept him from putting his life and the life of his Pack at risk for a girl that, in the end, was not his blood?

Yet his loyalty to Sara was still strong. Palpable, in fact. Apparently Casey had to do some fast talking to keep the guy from pushing them off his territory. Maybe now that the old bitch was dead, Marrec decided it was time for Sara to know the truth. To know who and what she was. Perhaps he’d waited until he felt that the death of her grandmother was far enough away, that she could more easily learn to accept what she was. But before he had the chance, they’d shown up. The Magnus Pack. Her true father’s Pack. Perhaps to Marrec having her turned by her father’s Pack seemed only fitting. So, in the end, he’d allowed them all to stay without much trouble.