After years searching for a mate and failing to find him, Caidi wants to build a future for her pack of Zarain shifters. If she couldn’t have a mate, she at least wanted a baby. So she creates a plan with her packmates. One hot night with a Zarain who’d never fit into her life and she’d get what she wanted. Until everything goes wrong and she finds her mate in a man she can never take home. She runs, but she knows he’ll hunt her.

Raven, an alpha Shadatai Zarain warrior, doesn’t know the blonde woman who approaches him in a tavern, but he wants her. After just one night with her, he has no doubts. He’s found his mate—and she isn’t getting away from him.

When Raven finds her, Caidi’s torn between enjoying her mate and fighting against the loss of her personal freedom. Raven’s determined to care for her and keep her safe, but trouble plagues the pack. Can they build a life together or will an old enemy destroy their chance at love?

Planet Mijohin, 862 Neshan Calendar

The risk is necessary, Caidi Satoan thought as she stared out of the inn’s window watching the orange sun sink below the horizon. Beyond the squat city dwellings, she could see the dark green blur of the forest and beyond that the purple shadow of a large mountain. The trouble with the trade goods is finally settled. It is time to see to the future.
Caidi knew that finding that one man with whom she could bond for life was improbable. There were just too many worlds. Most of the populated worlds were inhabited by humans and those humans far outnumbered shifter populations. There wasn’t much of a chance that she’d find the one Zarain meant for her.
Her personal precautions also caused some difficulty. She avoided contact with her own kind and when she did meet them, getting close enough to scent them meant something had gone wrong. Over the course of her years as Acine, the alpha female of her pack, she had learned to avoid taking foolish risks. The protection of her pack was her sacred duty and a constant worry when she had to deal with it on her own.
Success of tonight’s quest was as inevitable as their return home to Carait. The single difference between this and a normal hunt was the choice of prey. Tonight’s quarry waited in a tavern, not too far away.
Their target, the males of their own kind—the Zarain—wouldn’t suspect anything.
Caidi had ensured that. She had used the combined resources of her pack and the Feiral pack which also lived on Carait to make this hunt feasible and safe.
Both entirely female packs would benefit from this hunt. The drive, the pull to mate and have children, grew with each passing day, a throbbing need that couldn’t be ignored. They needed to see to the future, even if the method was strange. Just as in any other hunt, they would use the habits of their prey against them.
Shifter males often had sex with human females, but the hunters would have to be cautious. Although she wanted a baby, Caidi didn’t want to lose her freedom. A male Zarain or Feiral with his senses unsuppressed by a powerful drug would know at the first whiff of their scent that they weren’t human and were very fertile. The drugs had been administered to the men to counter that ability.
Male shifters searched for their mates for most of their lives and they all knew how hard it was to find that one true mate. They wouldn’t have sex with a female shifter who wasn’t their mate. And they would not get a female shifter pregnant if she wasn’t their mate. It went against everything they were taught.
Shifter males were born with a fierce drive to protect and defend. That drive only increased when females of any species were involved. Those men wouldn’t hesitate to take any female shifter they found captive and would hold her until that woman’s mate found her.
Their plans had been made ronas, months, ago. Bribes had been paid and instructions had been given to those who would be able to carry out the details of the plan. Now, all that remained was the wait before the hunt.
Caidi turned away from the window and prepared for the hunt. She combed her golden hair to a glowing shine and allowed it to hang loose, falling to the middle of her back in soft waves. Her silver eyes danced as a tingle of nervousness coursed through her. At her neck, her pulse pounded a furious rhythm.
She took a deep, calming breath. This hunt will be a success. In her mind, she chanted the words.
As they made their way down the street to the weathered, wooden building which housed Oshiah’s Tavern, Caidi was very nervous. So much of this had been out of her hands, out of her personal control. Most of the plan tonight relied on the ability of others to fulfill their side of the bargain.
It made Caidi uneasy to have to rely on others, non-pack members, for such necessary details, but there hadn’t been any other way to do this. The Zarain and Feiral women were strangers to this planet and couldn’t stay here long. Their purpose on Mijohin was simple—find suitable male shifters, have sex, and leave.
This wasn’t like the other times that she had to hide her identity from a shifter or group of shifters. This time she would be in bodily contact with the shifter. She couldn’t rely on her usual means of fooling them. They had used those methods until they had left the inn, but couldn’t risk using them now. The contact was going to be much too close tonight.
Caidi received a nod from one of the serving women when she and the other Zarain females entered the large, open main room of the first-floor tavern. Caidi breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. It was safe. The drug had been served to everyone in the tavern.
Caidi and the seven other members of her pack who accompanied her mingled among those in Oshiah’s Tavern. It was more of a gentleman’s club than a true tavern, with rooms upstairs available for the members’ use for a fee. Caidi saw Chey across the room and nodded at her in response to her smile and the slight lift of Chey’s mug.
Caidi smiled. Chey looked as if she was plotting. The cunning nature of the Feiral was very much evidenced by that smile. She knew just how cunning Chey could be and the woman was formidable.
Caidi was glad that they were allies and friends. Both groups were isolated from their own kind, trying to make the most of what they had and had found that their differences were insignificant when compared to the reality they faced.
The Feiral animal form—a narrow sharp-angled face with a long muzzle and pointed ears, a body built for speed rather than power, sleek furry body, and a long tail—was much different than the Zarain form which was built for strength and endurance. The hulking Zarain form made the Feiral seem small.
Chey’s pack lived on the plains near one of the great rivers on Carait, preferring to have the vast expanse of rolling hills around them rather than the verdant forest. Their holding was almost two weeks’ travel away from Caidi’s home. Even with that distance, the two groups managed to keep in close contact, conducting joint trade ventures and offering help when it was needed.
Caidi began to hunt in earnest for a man to father her child. As he was part of this world, he wouldn’t want a safe home, family, or the responsibilities that came with those things. No man she met here would try to follow or find her after she left.
She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the heavy odor of perfume and body odor that assailed her sharp senses as she moved through the room scattered with wooden tables and chairs. Someone had tried to disguise the lack of a bath with a heavy splashing of perfume. Goddess, this was awful. How could any Zarain, male or female, stand this for long?
The smells, the restrictions, and the lack of space already choked Caidi. Even if it were possible, she couldn’t endure the confinement of this city for more than a night. As she moved through the crowd, she kept her gaze centered on a group of black-haired shifter males at the back of the room. With any luck, those large men were Zarain.
Caidi noticed one of the women from Chey’s pack, a woman named Asia, smile and turn away from the men. She walked over to Caidi and leaned close for a moment.
“They are all yours. The one at the back would be the one for you, very alpha. Although, don’t count on him remaining here. I get the feeling that he has had more than enough of this life.”
“Good luck,” Caidi whispered as she walked toward the men sitting around the large, round, wooden table.
Asia’s words rang in her head. It was for that isolated possibility that they had gone to such lengths. There was always the chance that the man wouldn’t want to let the woman leave if he knew she was shifter, as well as a chance that the man would just grow tired of city life.
The men around the table were large and very muscular, as was normal and expected in a Zarain man. Caidi ran her eyes over the men in a cursory inspection. They all had dark hair ranging from deep brown to shining blue-black and all had dark, golden-brown skin. Every single one of them had silver eyes.
Caidi studied them for a moment, noticing their posture and attitude. Asia had been right. The man at the back was the alpha of this group and, from the way his eyes roved over her body, he was interested in her.
He had long, straight, black hair that was secured at the back of his neck and he looked harder, more experienced than she thought that a man who lived on Mijohin would look. For a city dweller, he looked every inch the warrior. High cheekbones and a hard jawline heightened the impression that his hadn’t been an easy life. Over shoulders which were impossibly wide, he wore a white shirt which was open to the navel, revealing a chest covered in black markings that seemed to emphasize the corded muscles under the flesh. As her eyes lowered, they traced the hard rippling muscles of his flat abdomen and lean hips.
He was sitting back from the scarred, wooden table, leaning against the light tan wood of the wall. Tight, black leather pants encased strong, muscular legs. She frowned as she caught sight of his black boots. They were clean but scuffed. Well-worn, they weren’t the polished articles that she expected to see on a man who lived his life in a city. Her gaze swung to his waist. That sword was no mere ornamentation. A tiny warning began to sound within her.
“Sit.” The man at the back of the table gestured to a seat next to him. That deep, rumbling growl tugged at her insides, tightening her abdomen as desire stirred.
Caidi pushed down the doubts that plagued her. There was no reason to delay this with idle chatter. She wasn’t here to talk. She had a mission to complete and stirring the Zarain within him would ensure that she completed it.
“No.” She shot him a taunting smile. “You are not the man I am looking for.”
She turned and walked into the crowd, looking for a safe challenger, a human. Someone he wouldn’t consider a real threat. She didn’t have a doubt that he would follow her.