Shadow’s Edge

The collective gasps of twelve people were drowned out beneath the piercing metallic shriek of the refrigerated case as it was dragged across the linoleum, its round feet cutting deep into the steel and cement floor beneath. There was twenty feet of gouged floor between the aisle where she’d been standing and freedom, and it took only a few seconds and a very slight push. She didn’t look back as the refrigerated case came to rest against the customer service counter with a muffled boom, scattering a stack of coupon flyers into the air like confetti.

She began to run.

She almost made it to the sliding glass doors at the front of the store when she felt the jolt of electricity again. It was a concussion that pierced down into her muscles, into the very marrow of her bones. A rising thick pulse of intuition flooded through her veins and she felt something vast and intangible rushing at her, heated and dark and inevitable as death. She stumbled into a dust-covered display of Duraflame logs stacked in a wire rack and sent row upon row of plastic-wrapped logs bouncing to the floor.

And then, shaking and gasping for breath, gazing out the sliding glass doors into the shimmering heat of the parking lot, Jenna saw them.

Tall and graceful, lithe like dancers, sleek and silent and dark.

They stood on the far side of the parking lot in the long shadows of a tall hedge of shaped ficus trees, staring right back at her from beautiful faces with detached expressions and very sharp eyes. All three were dressed in black clothing, obviously expensive, fitted and formal and distinctly out of place in the bludgeoning summer heat. There was nothing but grace and loveliness about them, nothing to suggest danger, but her skin crawled with bone-deep fear.

Because even from here she saw it. For all their elegance, there was something very wrong.

It could be seen in the planes and angles of their faces, in the slanted set of their eyes, in the cold red curve of their unsmiling lips. Their posture, the lines of their bodies, even their faces were perfect but—odd. Carved and otherworldly, almost elfin. They were beautiful in the way that certain predatory animals are beautiful.

And just as devoid of humanity behind the eyes.

One stood apart, slightly ahead of the others. Like his companions he had ebony hair, honey-bronze skin, feral, flashing eyes. But he was larger, broad-shouldered and substantial, forbidding even with all that perfect symmetry of bone structure, that jawline that seemed sharpened on a diamond cutter’s lathe. Something about the mouth: sensual but hard, so hard it seemed he hadn’t smiled in years. Or ever.

Their eyes met, and it gave her a jolt like lightning to her toes.

Who, she thought, and then, what? Her mind struggled to keep up with the adrenaline that flooded her veins. Her limbs lifted into sudden power and buoyancy, her nerves screamed RUN!, but she could only stare at him across the distance of the parking lot, into eyes beast-bright and wondering, luteous green. He stared right back at her with a gaze so intense and burning she thought he might ignite her with it.

On instinct she inhaled and caught the essence of him distilled into one tiny, heady whiff: Male. Potent. Dangerous.

Then he shifted his weight forward on one leg, and with that small movement, everything changed. His expression darkened, sharpened. He looked for a moment like he would cross the parking lot and devour her whole.

Another blistering shock of heat hit her—heart- stopping, blood-curdling—and to her great horror, everything began to slide sideways in one long, nauseating pull. Her body went curiously limp, out of her control. Her eyes blurred and focused, only to lose focus again when she slumped hard against the rack of fake fireplace logs and hit her head on a metal bar.

Spots of color popped and faded in her peripheral vision, the world leached of color. Except for those eyes that remained a constant, phosphorescent glow against the encroaching darkness.

No! she thought, panicked. No! I’m not—I can’t—

Just before she fainted, Jenna saw the feral green-eyed stranger lick his lips.

2

“Well, Leander, she certainly looks charming. Though a bit equilibrium challenged. Are you sure we’ve got the right blonde?”

Leander didn’t turn at the sound of his younger brother Christian’s amused voice, nor did he move or blink, or in any way acknowledge he heard him. He only stared, with fevered eyes and a flush of blood creeping over his cheeks, across the parking lot and through the doors to the grocery store, where a small crowd had gathered around the slim female figure recently collapsed onto the floor.

“It’s her,” Leander said with a calm that hid the way his heart was pounding in his chest. “I know that’s her.”

From the moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d known. And not only by the Eyes, by her scent as well. She smelled of youth and power and heated woman, and something else indefinable, lovely and dark and deep, particular to their kind. It was a sensual mix of forest floor, herbs and rain, fresh air and musk and moonlight.

Leander’s senses were unmatched. It was one of his Gifts, though not by any means the most powerful one. He’d spent much of his life trying to manage the assault of smells, noises, sensations, and vibrations that emanated from everywhere around him. He’d long ago learned to shut out much of the chaos, to filter how much he absorbed, but he’d opened his senses fully to take her in and now had the taste of her skin lingering on his tongue like afterglow. Every nerve ending in his body felt her. Every pore was filled with her. He was almost dizzy with desire.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” came another voice, this one female, from Leander’s other side. A dramatic sigh followed, then the sound of leather boots scraping across hot asphalt with the annoyed shifting of her weight. Without looking, Leander knew the boots were Italian, designer, and absurdly expensive. “That’s her? The wilting flower? The deer-in-the-headlights Snow White?”

“Morgan,” Christian said quietly, just the one word. Leander didn’t have to see it to feel the look of warning Christian shot at her behind his back. He allowed the smallest of smiles to curl his full lips.

As Alpha, Leander enjoyed not only the elevated rank and accompanying status among his colony but was also afforded the respect of someone with his very rare, very powerful Gifts—Gifts that the girl now being helped up from the floor of the supermarket by a huge, sweating ape of a man possibly had as well.

Not that she knew it. Not yet.

But they were here to find out if she did. If so, she would be brought back to Sommerley to take up her rightful place in the colony. If not—

But Leander didn’t want to think about what would happen if she showed no sign of the Gifts. Not after he’d felt her, not after he’d seen her.

Though they were all beautiful, even the least Gifted of their kind, she was something else altogether. An exotic sylph with elegance and strength and solid luster, all feminine curves and opalescent skin and a surfeit of raw power simmering beneath. He felt the fine, humming force of her all the way across the parking lot, like a hand caressing his skin.

“What now?” Morgan asked, her tone a tad more civilized, though he sensed her irritation like an angry bee under his skin.

Leander reluctantly turned his eyes away from the girl and met Morgan’s level, impatient gaze. Her outfit was so tight it followed every curve of her figure like a second skin—just as she wanted it to, he knew.

She was nothing if not provocative.

“Now we wait,” Leander replied evenly. “There’s only a week to go. Now that we’ve found her, we lie back. And we wait.”

“And what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Morgan complained, one hand on her slender, leather-clad hip. “Babysit her? Make sure she doesn’t trip over a rock and bash her head in? She appears to have the tendency to faint dead away for no particular reason.”

She shot a resentful gaze at the doors of the supermarket, where a half dozen men had surrounded the