Chapter One
“Whoa there, little lady.”
Maria stopped, scrabbling to hang on to the tray loaded with beer bottles and glasses, to find the asshat who’d been bugging her all night standing in front of her. He was human, annoying, and in the Shifter bar for kicks.
Maria had labeled him asshat the second he’d walked in the door, for two reasons. First, he’d strolled in with his friends in his greasy jeans and baseball cap, unshaved whiskers, and attitude. He was human; he was superior—he thought—over these Shifters and the little human Maria who was there to serve him.
Second, Maria called him asshat, because Ellison liked that word, and she liked Ellison.
“You bringing those to my table?” the man said, raising his voice over the rollicking country song playing on the old-fashioned jukebox. “None of that Mexican beer crap, right?”
“Your order’s coming,” Maria said with cool dignity. “This is for them.” She jerked her chin at a cluster of Lupine Shifters in the corner, one family—brothers, sisters, father, and mother, all having a good time.
“Don’t think so. We’re tired of waiting. Take it to our table.”
Maria stood her ground. “Not yet.”
“You talking back to me, bitch? Someone needs to teach you a lesson.”
With a practiced hand, the man banged the tray upward from the bottom. Maria tried to hang on to it, but the tray became a vertical plane, and bottles and glasses slid off to land in a spectacular crash on the floor. Beer fountained over Maria’s black leggings, glass skittering past her sneakers. The asshat danced back, laughing . . .
Right into a tall Shifter in jeans and a button-down shirt, with honey-colored hair, wolf-gray eyes, and a body that bulked above the human man’s. His large hand, tanned by Texas sun, landed on the human’s shoulder.
The music from the jukebox ran down, and the Shifter’s slow drawl sounded over the last strains. “I think you need to apologize to the lady, son.”
Ellison’s grip on the man’s shoulder looked loose and relaxed, but Maria saw the asshat flinch, his pale eyes widening. “Stupid clumsy bitch dropped beer all over me.”
Ellison’s fingers tightened. “Wrong answer,” he said in his fine Texas baritone. “You go on over to the bar and pay for what was on that tray, then you and your friends get on out of here.”
“Screw you. I ain’t paying for that. She dropped it. Take it out of her paycheck.”
His stupid trick hadn’t angered Maria much, but his last words made her fury rise. She needed every penny of her paycheck and her tips for the goal she’d determined as soon as she’d moved back to the Austin Shiftertown six months ago. Every day she worked for it, saving everything she could, so that one day, she’d not have to put up with asshats like this, or live on the charity of the Shifters who’d rescued her.
Another Shifter, a scary-looking Feline with a shaved head and body full of tattoos, was already coming up behind Ellison. His name was Spike, and when Maria had first seen him, when she’d arrived scared and broken from Mexico, she’d wanted to run the other way.
Asshat didn’t notice him, and he didn’t notice the tall, black-haired, blue-eyed Shifter who ran the place coming up behind Spike. The man did see the Shifter Maria sensed behind her—Ronan, a giant of a man who could turn into a Kodiak bear. Hard to miss Ronan.
The human man paled. Liam Morrissey, the black-haired Shifter, stepped into the man’s line of sight. Liam flashed his Irish smile that could melt paint off a building, and the asshat looked uncertain.
Shifters did that—they charmed and terrified you at the same time. They could gaze at their prey with half-closed eyes, like animals dozing in the sun. The next moment, they’d be awake, alert, focused right on you, while your animal brain yelled at you to run, run, run . . .