This woman, this stranger, was now his mate. The thought rocketed through him, hitting him with the subtle force of a sledgehammer. How had he let this happen? He was a man who controlled everyone and everything, especially himself and his women. His finger pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to make what his instincts told him fit with what his mind knew.

“Who the hell are you?” His anger was more directed at himself than her, but her flinch told him she'd taken his tone as a direct hit. He bit back another curse.

He'd let a situation slip from his control. And he'd seen in his older brother Jason what that kind of weakness, what letting a woman get under his skin, could do to a man. How the hell had this happened? And with a stranger.

Her face looked familiar, but he couldn't place her. She wasn't a guest. Of that he was certain, so how did he know her?

She swallowed and straightened. Her clothes shifted as she did, and he got a peek at one rosy nipple before she covered herself once more. A damn shame. He wanted to see more. And his body clamored an immediate agreement, his cock rising.

He had the distinct memory of what her skin tasted like on his tongue, and he craved more. A bone deep addiction.

“Cleo Nemean.”

He knew that name. He wracked his fogging brain, waiting for the synapses to connect in coherent thought.

Damn, but he needed coffee. And about ten aspirin. It had been a long time since he'd had so much to drink. He'd already had one too many by the time he'd seen her across the bar and approached her. He'd offered to buy her a drink and one had turned into . . . a lot. The rest was an alcohol soaked blur.

He narrowed his eyes on her face. Wide amber eyes dominated a face framed in a smooth mane of golden waves. She wasn't stunning or even beautiful, but something about her drew him to her. Her look was quiet, coolly enchanting. But it was her eyes that caught him. Haunted, pained, secretive. The whole package made him want to explore what was hidden from first glance.

She wouldn't be here unless she was werekind or mated to werekind. He winced. Well, now she was mated to werekind, and the prick of her fangs in his shoulder made her a shifter of some kind. “You're a . . .”

Blinking, she tilted her head to the side. Confusion filtered through her gaze for a moment before she grinned. “Lion.”

The smile kicked him in the gut hard. God, she was lovely. And his.

He swallowed. What should a man say to his mate?

Hell if he knew.

He jerked a thumb at his chest. “Leopard.”

The grin bloomed into a charming smile. “I know, Mr. Leonidas.”

That was it. He knew her now. He groaned, and the sound made hammers pound in his head.

What the hell had he done? He'd gone and mated with an employee. As the CEO of all Leonidas business interests and ruler of the leopard species--among others--he kept strict non-fraternization standards for himself with the staff and guests. Dalliances with either type of woman was a bad idea. He blew out a long breath. “The new head of PR.”

“Yes, sir.” Her spine snapped straight.

He'd been away on business for the week she'd been here. Zander had called to let him know she arrived, but that's all he knew. Damn it. How had he let it go so far last night? It wasn't like him.

“I'll just . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she tilted her head toward the bedroom door. She turned as though to make good her escape, and rage flowed through his veins. Possession unlike he'd ever known fisted in his belly.

His mate.

He wanted her back in bed with him, wanted to memorize every detail of her lush body, wanted it with a fierceness he'd never known before.

Mate.

Everything in him screamed for her, this woman he knew nothing of. Lust, possession, and . . . something sweeter twisted tight in his chest. He tried to cut it off, to distance himself, to regain control. And failed.

“Wait,” he snapped. His anger was unreasonable. He knew it, but it didn't seem to make a bit of difference in how he reacted.

She wavered in front of him, flinching at his harsh tone. Some emotion he couldn't identify flowed through her amber gaze before a professional mask slipped over her features. “Yes, sir?”

Another wave of anger rolled over him that she could keep her calm when he could not. Damn it. “Adrian. You'll call me Adrian.”

Her chin bobbed down in a quick nod, and a small dart of fear flashed through her eyes. If he hadn't been staring at her so intently, he would have missed it. What was she afraid of? Him? He hadn't made a move toward her.

Was she afraid he'd have Zander fire her? He held back a snort. As if he'd let her go so easily. No matter how little he knew of her, she belonged to him now. His. She'd simply have to get used to it.

Dragging a hand down his face, he rubbed the back of his neck.

What a mess.

The last thing she remembered seeing was a gloved fist slamming into her jaw—and it packed the kind of strength behind it that a human couldn’t manage. It had to be another shifter. The physician in her began cataloguing injuries even as the wolf wanted to rip someone’s throat out for doing this to her. Multiple lacerations and contusions, possible fibular fracture and a serious case of dehydration. If she didn’t get to water soon, she was so screwed.

The anger whipping through her made it easier to ignore the shrieking agony that threatened to make her collapse back to the sand. It didn’t matter if it hurt—she was going to die if she stayed here. She wiped sweat and dried blood from her face, pushing her long black hair back over her shoulder.

Lifting her nose to the wind, she inhaled and tried to catch the scent of
civilization…or water, whichever was closer. West. The faintest aroma of people came to her, so she turned in that direction. Her gait was a broken stagger, but she was moving. She stumbled again and again, crashing hard to the ground and scraping skin from her palms and elbows.

A hopeless sob was wrenched from her chest, but she forced herself to get up, to keep going. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to give the son of a bitch who’d done this to her the satisfaction. The wide expanse of rocky desert terrain stretched before her endlessly, broken only by stark mountains rising to the north. Sweat burned the cuts on her face. Gritting her teeth, she pushed on. If she gave in to the pain, she’d never get to see them punished. A grim smile pulled at her cracked lips. Revenge was a great motivator.

When her ankle twisted and gave out from under her, she tumbled down a short ravine, landing on her back. Squinting against the glare of the sun, she saw a large bird pass in front of it. Probably a buzzard coming to pick her bones when she died. Groaning, she braced her hands on the ground and tried to force herself up again, but her arms collapsed, and her head slammed down to the ground. Her ears rang with the force of the impact.

It was almost funny that she, Doctor Lyra Marcus, fastidious to a fault and niece of the most powerful werewolf Alpha in America, was filthy, bloodstained, lying in the dirt and couldn’t do a damn thing about it. A giggle that bordered on hysteria bubbled from her throat. Well, at least she remembered her own name. That was something. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter.

Get a grip, Lyra.

Digging down deeper inside herself than she ever had before, she used the side of the ravine to pull herself upright, to stand, to lean against as she shuffled along again. The farther she walked, the more her thoughts grew fuzzy around the edges, and that wasn’t good. No, not good at all. Eventually the ravine ended, and she staggered out into an arid wasteland. It wouldn’t be much longer before she couldn’t get up if she fell, couldn’t go any further. And then the scavengers would have their turn at her. The thought didn’t scare her as much as she knew it should, and time slid away as she put one foot in front of the other.

She lifted her head as she smelled something worse than death on the wind, and the horror of her predicament finally hit home.

Wereleopard.

The sworn enemy of her kind. She was in the desert, which meant that if she was still in the United States, she was deep into the western territory the cats claimed for their own. A place where no sane wolf would ever go.

She couldn’t see it among the scraggly brush and broken rock, but she knew it was there. The way her wolf senses screeched danger was no lie. She picked up her pace, tried to run, tried to escape. To where, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t being taken in enemy territory without a fight.

And there it was, all tawny fur and dark spots—huge, sleek, and undeniably male. His gaze locked on her as he pursued her at a ground-eating pace, hunting her. She snarled, more the wolf now than woman. Her fangs erupted from her gums, but she didn’t have the energy left to shift into full wolf form. Too weak to defend herself.

Weak, and probably dead before the vultures ever got a piece of her. It was her last thought before she tripped over a sunken boulder, and the ground came rushing up to meet her.

The world went dark, and she knew her life was over.