Enforcer Ewan “Cal” Calder hasn’t shifted into his Scottish wildcat form in two years. He should’ve gone crazy by now, because that’s how these things are supposed to work. The governing body of all shifters, the Council, has sent him and his adopted teenage son Kit to a sanctuary in Finland. It’s a last-ditch effort to wean Cal off the morphine he’s been using to keep his cat at bay. If he doesn’t shift soon, there’s no way he’s going to retain his sanity.<br><br>Two years ago, Council security officer Derek Lamont was tentatively dating and getting to know Cal, but then he lost an eye in a tragic accident. While he was recuperating in the hospital, Cal and Kit vanished from the house they’d all shared. Derek has been searching for them ever since, traveling the world and grasping at straws because of the undeniable truth: Derek knows Cal is his mate, even though humans aren’t supposed to be able to feel the mate bond.<br><br>When Derek finds Cal and Kit at a small farm in the middle of nowhere, Finland, he feels relief. But their problems are far from over. From Cal’s guilt over the accident, to stray hunting dogs, to figuring out how to deal with the Council, things keep piling up.

Off and On Again

In late September,after several weeks of being happier than he’d ever been,Derek got a weird feeling.


Mikael’s connection to the Council hadn’t come up with anything new about the mate bond thing they’d been researching.They were continuing the search for any sort of information that would explain why there was a bond between a shifter and a human,but keeping it on the down low was getting hard.


Derek knew how the Council operated,so he wasn’t surprised.He’d been working high up in their security branch once,and he’d been one of the people keeping an eye on different records and protecting secrets to see if anyone tried to access any of them.He didn’t know what was on those databases or in the Vault.Hell,he didn’t even know where the Vault was located,other than somewhere under the city where the Council had made its home for centuries.


So with that itchy feeling,maybe it should not have come as a surprise when one day,Rider and his son Nicolas came calling.


Chapter 22