Nalini Singh - Night Shift

SECRETS AT MIDNIGHT: NALINI SINGH

MAGIC STEALS: ILONA ANDREWS

LUCKY CHARMS: LISA SHEARIN

THE BEAST OF BLACKMOOR: MILLA VANE

Bastien Smith knew he’d been suckered. By his own mother no less. The only thing that might make it bearable was if Sage had been suckered, too. “Tell me you didn’t know,” he said to his younger brother through gritted teeth, both of them propping up the wall nearest the door and an escape they couldn’t make.

Eyes narrowing, Sage folded his arms. “Are you accusing me of breaking the bro code?”

Bastien shoved a hand through his hair, the dark red strands no doubt a mess by now. “Sorry.” It was only right he apologize after suspecting Sage of something so heinous, even if it had resulted from sheer exhausted frustration. “Mom told me she needed help setting up.”

“Technically, she did.” Sage nodded toward the heavy dining table their mother had asked the two of them to shift into the large living area of the home where they’d both grown up. It fit, plenty of space around it for their mother’s guests to mingle, only because Bastien and Sage had first hauled the usual living room furniture into other rooms of the house.

It hadn’t taken long, both of them happy to help their mom prepare for the “book club luncheon” she’d been looking forward to all week. What she’d neglected to mention was that all her book club buddies were bringing along their nubile daughters, nieces, neighbors, and any other random young female they could corral into this excruciating exercise.

Normally, Bastien would’ve groaned, then sucked it up. He loved his mother, would never hurt her. But normally, he wasn’t strung out from two solid weeks of sleepless nights . . . because he didn’t want just any woman. He wanted her , the woman he knew in his gut was his mate, but who, against all known laws of changeling mating, he couldn’t find .

He’d first tasted the scent of his elusive lover on a street in Chinatown fourteen days, eight hours, and seventeen minutes ago, the scent igniting a possessiveness in him that was as feral as it was joyous. Yes, he’d thought, yes , and turned to follow the scent that spoke to him in a way nothing else ever had . . . only for it to dissipate into intangible mist even his changeling-acute senses couldn’t pierce.

Refusing to believe he’d lost her, he’d spent hours searching the area, day fading into darkest midnight, until he’d finally had to go home empty-handed, his soul craving the touch of hers. The leopard inside his skin had clawed him awake only hours later, certain she was just beyond his reach, hurt and in pain. Torn apart at the idea that he wasn’t there when his mate needed him, he’d immediately gone out again.

Dawn had come on a smudge of light that grew steadily brighter, bringing with it hundreds of people of every size and shape and hue, but not her.

The rest of the world might be in the grip of a tense silence as they waited to see if the days-old historic change in the lives of the Psy, the psychic race that shared the planet with changelings and humans, would spill out into new violence, but Bastien cared only about finding her.

He’d repeated the pattern from that first night every night since, prowling the empty and fog-shrouded city streets in his leopard form long after its other residents found their beds. He’d discarded thousands of trails, sensed myriad secrets, and three or four times, he’d caught the wild, sweet, utterly unique and just as intoxicating scent that was hers, but it never lasted. Not as a scent should last. It faded out with impossible abruptness in the middle of a narrow pathway between buildings, or halfway down a flight of stairs—places where she couldn’t have gone anywhere unless she had wings.

The idea that she might be an aerial changeling, perhaps part of the falcon wing with which Bastien’s pack had an alliance, would’ve been an answer that gave him a way to find her, but there was a feline undertone to her scent that told him he was stalking a fellow cat changeling.

One who was there one instant, gone the next.

Always when the changeling scent ended, he caught a softer one below it that also awakened his most primal instincts. Despite the fact he knew a changeling male couldn’t have that kind of a visceral reaction to two different women, he’d followed that scent, too—only it was too gentle, too easily lost among the bitter odors of coffee and spice outside a restaurant, or the overpowering aromas that poured from a beauty parlor, the city a kaleidoscope to his senses.

In truth, both scents were less intense than they should be. The only reason he could track the feline one longer was that it had a bitingly primal edge to it that made it stand out even amid the other changeling scents in the city.

It was starting to drive him to madness.

“I didn’t even get a bite of the brownies.” Sage’s mournful voice broke into his thoughts, his brother’s gaze on the table groaning with food on the other side of the wall of female flesh. “I was just about to grab one when they began arriving, and I tried to bolt out the back door.”

So had Bastien. Only to be stopped by their mother’s firm order to stay.

“Why is it”—Bastien folded his arms, mirroring his brother’s stance—“that though we’re the ones ostensibly doing the choosing, this feels like a two-man meat market?”

Sage bared his teeth at a tall human blonde who turned his way, her body angled in invitation. She hurriedly glanced in another direction, and Sage smirked . . . until he found himself on the receiving end of a patented maternal glare, Lia Smith’s petite body as stiff as a general’s.

Smirk wilting, he pushed off the wall, a big, tough leopard changeling with his metaphorical tail between his legs. “Crap, I have to go make nice now, or I might as well say good-bye to ever again tasting one of Mom’s brownies.” Shoulders hunched, he shot Bastien a pleading look. “Don’t abandon me, man.”

Bastien turned into a rock, feet glued to the floor and arms still folded. “Hell no. And don’t even think of bringing up the bro code,” he added when Sage went as if to open his mouth. “I’ve had to suffer through far more of these than you.”

As he watched his brother thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans and slink off to join the lovely, perfumed mass of women who might as well have been a tank of ravenous sharks, Bastien fought the urge to simply shove open the door and leave. No matter how raw and trapped he felt right now, he knew his mother was only trying to help, because though he hadn’t said anything to her, Lia Smith knew her children.

She’d clearly sensed he was unhappy, even made the connection that it had to do with his single status. How could he explain the impossible to his mom? A changeling male never lost the scent of his mate once he’d caught it. He should’ve been able to stalk her through fire and hail, snow and rain, much less down city streets.

“Sweetheart.” His mother’s hand on his arm, the scent of her familiar and of home. “Come into the kitchen. I need you to grab some glasses from the top cabinet.”

He followed her without argument, avoiding even the glancing touch of other women. His leopard was in no mood to be touched by any unmated female but the one he couldn’t find; Bastien wasn’t certain he’d be able to control the urge to snarl if one of the women in the room dared attempt even minor skin privileges. Better to make certain the situation didn’t arise.