Chapter 1
The sign indicating they were approaching the Bratburg Institute flashed by the bus window.
With a sigh, Lily grabbed her backpack from between her feet and pulled the overhead cord, alerting the driver she wanted to get off.
Pushing out of her window seat in the middle of the half-empty bus, she walked to the front and stood in the aisle just behind the driver.
“Please stop so I can get out.”
The driver looked over her shoulder then returned her attention to the road. She slowed the bus, causing the dozen other passengers to grumble about yet another delay. They’d left an hour late for some reason, and this was their third unscheduled stop in the last hour.
“You sure you want off here, honey? There’s nothing around for miles, except wild animals and that Bratburg Institute.”
“I’m visiting a cousin at the institute,” Lily lied smoothly.
She’d gotten so good at lying by the time she turned ten that no one ever knew whether she was telling a lie or not. Most of the time she stuck to the truth, but sometimes only a lie would keep her out of trouble.
Her last series of lies on a mission ended up backfiring when the CEO she was investigating praised the company’s director of HR for finding him an assistant who lasted more than two weeks.
That was when he’d found out she’d never been hired.
The director of Human Resources had not questioned why the man stopped requesting another assistant. She had just been glad he’d stopped.
Once her boss found out she’d bluffed her way into the job, his biggest issue was not how she’d gotten the job, but that she’d never signed the company’s standard non-disclosure agreement.
By skipping the onboarding process, Lily had been able to share everything she’d learned about the firm’s business practices with Ian.
That information led to the SDI raiding the company just hours after her boss had called her into his office to discuss her unsigned NDA.
As her boss had been dragged out of the building in handcuffs, he vowed to see her dead, one way or another.
Before she could find out whether the man’s blustering was just harmless threats or a promise of retribution, Ian had sent her on this new assignment. She was now far away from the capital and the possibility of being killed by a hired gun.
The backstory she and Ian had concocted for anyone who asked was as close to the truth as she normally came.
She was a woman on the run from her former boss, who had threatened to kill her.
She just hoped the administration at Bratburg would not do more than a cursory background investigation, though the truth of her background had been deleted from every computer, everywhere.
Adding truth to the story, she’d cleaned out her bank account just before climbing on her first bus, three days before.
Her only luggage was a backpack that held the basics— two days of clothes, an oversized nightshirt, toiletries, her wallet with a little over a hundred dollars, one credit card and her driver’s license in it, and her stuffed gorilla, Percy.
Working for the Council had taught her that shifters were real and ran the Bratburg Institute where supposedly wild and out of control women were “retrained” to better fit into society.
She also learned that the rumors that these women disappeared after being sent to Bratburg were not true.
Instead they were relocated to other cities with new jobs and enough money to start life over.
Sometimes they were even given new identities, if the situation warranted.
The driver frowned at her as she opened the door. “Are you sure you want to get off here?”
Lily nodded and stepped off. “I’m sure. Thanks. I’ll be fine.”
The driver closed the door without saying another word, and the bus immediately began to roll forward, angling onto the road to continue its trip to the capital. Lily waited three minutes until the bus was out of sight before she began walking in the opposite direction.
Once she reached the road sign that designated the turnoff to Bratburg, she looked around to find the road.
It took a moment to realize the road to Bratburg was not so much a road as it was a grass and gravel path.
Following it into the thick woods, Lily mentally reviewed the story she would use as to why she was walking to the Institute unannounced instead of arriving by helicopter like the other women did.
It only took a few minutes of walking the one-lane road before she could no longer see the highway behind her. A cold shiver raced through her when she turned in a circle and saw nothing but trees and the narrow path through them.
Starting forward again, the wildflowers growing along the right side of the road caught her attention. Moving toward them, she picked a few to keep her company on the walk. Flowers always made her happy.
As she put together a bouquet, Lily felt herself slipping into the Little headspace she’d ignored for too long. Once she had a handful of flowers, she giggled and began to skip down the road, feeling a bit like Dorothy dancing her way to the Emerald City.
The breeze blowing through the leaves overhead and her own breathing harmonized with the rhythm of her skipping footsteps to make a happy little song that had her giggling for no reason.
When the back of her neck began to itch, Lilly stopped and worked to slow her breath.
The itching was her body’s well-honed signal that someone was watching her.
As a government agent, she was not supposed to be afraid of anything, but knowing what she was heading into, fear became an unwelcome shroud that began to weigh her down.
Pulling off her backpack, she opened the top and pulled out Percy, her gorilla stuffie.
He’d been a birthday gift from a boy in high school who was more brother-like than boyfriend.
Nowadays, Percy was her only true friend.
After slipping the backpack on again, she looked at Percy and tried to find the badassery that Ian admired in her.
“There is nothing out here that will hurt us,” she assured them both.
Percy looked like he did not believe her.
Which was okay because she wasn’t sure she believed it herself.
Taking several slow, deep breaths, she straightened her spine and threw back her shoulders, adopting a more self-confident posture, though her Little side still pushed to take over, wanting to turn back and run away.
“We can do this, Percy. One step at a time. Slow and steady just like the turtle in that story. We’ll pick more flowers, and maybe that will help convince them to let us in.”
Needing to distract them both, Lily began to sing her favorite Disney movie songs, hoping to calm her racing heartbeat.
She froze when the bushes across the road rustled. A moment later, a gorilla pushed his way into view. A big silverback gorilla wearing a red messenger bag draped across its chest.
Lily wasn’t sure if she should scream and run or lie down and pretend to be dead. What did one do when faced with a wild animal not native to the country?
Especially when he appeared just as shocked to see her as she felt seeing him.
Ross Lawson, known to everyone as Sailor, wandered through the forest around Bratburg without the anxiety, depression, or PTSD symptoms he’d lived with since leaving the Navy.
For the first time in his adult life, he felt like he’d found his place in the world.
As a member of the Bratburg Institute security team, he no longer lived on the streets where he’d been hyperalert and suspicious of everyone and everything.
It was a nice change to relax and just be.
Lonergan Mireles, the director of Bratburg Institute, and Kodiak Furr, the head of security, allowed him to roam the forest as much as he wanted in his shifter form.
Their only condition was that he keep his GPS tracker, a set of clothes, and a two-way radio with him at all times.
He thought his gorilla probably looked silly with the red messenger bag slung across his massive body, but he understood their reasoning, and it was a compromise he could live with.
After twenty years in the Navy, where he might be able to get away once a month to shift into his animal form, he could now spend days at a time living in his beast form.
So he did, wandering the forest around Bratburg on the lookout for intruders.
He also kept an eye on the real animals who lived in the forest to make sure they were safe and healthy and living their best lives.
Being on patrol allowed him to be a productive member of the Bratburg staff while keeping him away from the other shifters and their Little mates.
Until he’d come to Bratburg, he had never been jealous of what others had, but lately that had changed.
It was difficult for him to be around the happy Daddies and their Little mates when they had what he’d always wanted.
A mate of his own to protect. A Little of his own to care for. A life partner of his own to love.
All at once, the breeze shifted and a sweet, spicy scent wafted in his direction. Turning his head left and right, he inhaled deeply as he tracked the source.
With the second deep breath, his body began pulsating with need.
Without thinking about what he was doing, Sailor followed the faint scent.
It led toward the barely there road that connected the Bratburg Institute property with the highway and the rest of the world.
Pushing through the bushes that lined the narrow gravel road, he froze.
There was a woman standing on the other side of the road with a bunch of flowers in one hand and something purple and fluffy in the other. As he took a deep breath, his cock began to stiffen.
And then he knew.
She was not just any woman.
She was his woman.
His mate.
The woman he’d been looking for since he’d learned about mates and their purpose.
But what was she doing here, walking the road to Bratburg?
His shifter side didn’t care about the whys or hows.
It was just happy she stood before him. While his animal wanted to rush over, scoop her up, and carry her off somewhere deep in the woods, his human side recognized that action would only lead to disaster, especially when the other residents of Bratburg found out about her.
Looking closer, he noticed she appeared scared. Of him. Then he remembered he was still in his gorilla form.
“Look Percy, a real gorilla,” she gasped. With that, her eyes rolled up in her head, and she went limp.
Sailor raced across the road, shifting as he did, catching the woman before she hit the ground and hurt herself. Lifting her into his arms bridal-style, he bent his head close to hers and pulled in a deep breath.
Yes, it was true. He had found his mate.
Now all he had to do was figure out how to keep her. That was, after he got her somewhere safe and put on some clothes so he didn’t scare her in human form.