Chapter One

The charred remains of the land were barren and sorrowful. Two cars drove up from different directions and met on a patch of unburnt ground. A couple emerged from each vehicle.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Rachelle?” an older black man asked.

“We won’t be around forever, Donavan. She needs—I need to know she will be protected.”

Donovan opened the back door and lifted the baby from her car seat. Her brown eyes watched him trustingly and lovingly. Nuzzling the cherubic face, he sighed. Rachelle joined him and settled a hand on his arm.

“This will work out.”

He wasn’t as optimistic. Glancing over the roof of his sedan, he spied the other couple. Uncertainty filled him but he did his best to contain it. They made him uneasy. From the inside of their luxury vehicle a thin boy emerged. His hair was stringy and he looked as if he rarely saw the sun.

His wife tightened her grip on his arm when he hesitated. Brushing a kiss along the baby’s head, he forced himself to move.

“How are you?” he asked as they met on green grass. There were no remnants or burn marks on the other female.

“Much better thank you.” The woman was the one who answered him. “Again, thank you for saving my life.”

He gave a small smile, his unease ratcheting up as the air around them thickened with danger. In his arms, his granddaughter looked up at him and stuck out her lower lip, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Let’s get this over with.”

The man spoke to the boy in a language, Donovan didn’t understand. The young child coughed and nodded before walking up to him and holding out his arms.

Donovan reluctantly handed over the baby to the boy who despite his frail body, held her securely in his pale, stick-like arms. His granddaughter’s skin, dark against him.

“As long as this is valid,” the man said. “She will be considered one of our own. Protected. Defended. If ever she needs anything it will be provided.”

As long as it’s valid? I thought this was supposed to be legal and binding. Marriages usually are. He’d heard of shifters but until the night he and Rachelle had witnessed the raging forest fire that damaged the land and he’d had saved the woman who’d been tied up in a trunk—about to be burned alive—he’d never seen one. They had been naught but rumor to him. Now that he’d met them, he wished they were still just rumor.

“You saved my mate and wanted nothing for yourself. You did so at risk of your own peril. For that I can never repay you. You wanted something for your granddaughter. With this arrangement, she will be part of our pack.”

Perhaps money would have been a smarter way to go.

“Thank you,” Donovan said, slanting a peek at his wife. She’d been the one who pushed this. And it made him wonder. Her typically vocal self was unusually quiet. And Donovan was extremely suspicious.

The man—whose name he still didn’t know—said some things in that language he didn’t know. And that was it. The child, with his watery blue eyes, handed her back and Donovan took her quickly.

“Good day.” His words came yet he was unsure what was proper to say at a time like this. He walked back to his older car and fastened her back in the car seat. Rachelle stood talking to them and he watched her.

When she returned to the car, he slid behind the wheel and started the engine. Her smile was in place and she leaned back with a sigh.

“That went well.”

He turned around and drove away, glimpsing the young boy in the rear-view mirror as he climbed back into his car.

“Well?”

“Yes. She is safe and provided for now. The family is large, wealthy, well-respected, and very powerful. They own all of this.”

“Why would they keep their word? She’s nothing to them and that boy is sickly.”

She patted his arm. “It will be for the best.”

Personally, he wasn’t as confident. Arranged marriages weren’t necessarily successful. Peering in the rear view again, he stared at the eight-month old bundled up. She opened her eyes and sent him another heart-melting smile.

Lord help him, he hoped they hadn’t just committed a grievous error.