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that kind.” Her shoulders drew up. “Now I have proof I was right, and I wish every night that I didn’t.” Her voice broke.
    â€œTalk to me.” He didn’t like seeing her in pain, never had, probably never would. This familiar stranger, this woman who saw him as a monster, was his one fucking fatal weakness and didn’t that just suck?
    â€œThey found Mickey’s body two weeks ago.” A tear streaked down her cheek. She dashed it away with a furious swipe. “He was eleven years old, bright, so bright, could remember everything he’d ever read.”
    â€œLike you.”
    â€œYeah. Except instead of being abandoned as a baby, he had the bad luck to live with a mother who always chose abusive men.” She gave him a smile but it was nothing happy. “He was mine , Clay. I promised him safety and in return, he went to school every day.” Tremors shook her frame, whitened her knuckles. “Someone beat him to death. Everything was broken. The bastards pulverized his face—like they were wiping him out!”
    Anger shot through his bloodstream. He thought of the children in the pack, of what he’d do to anyone who dared harm them. “One of his mother’s men?”
    â€œI might have thought so, but Mickey was at a camp out of state when they took him. And it’s not only him we lost.” A breath that sounded as if her throat was lined with broken glass. “They found two more bodies this week. At least one more kid remains missing.”
    The leopard half of his soul—angry, hurt, and still in shock at her return—wanted to go to her. To hold her. Tactile contact, affection as a method of healing, was the way of changelings, something he’d been taught after being pulled into DarkRiver. But Talin was scared of him. She had told him that to his face, and the sharp knife of it was still buried in his heart. The man wasn’t sure he wanted to chance another rejection. Keeping the animal’s instincts in check, he finally stepped out of the shadows. “Do you want to be held, Talin?”
    Her damp eyes widened at the blunt question, then she nodded in a little jerking motion. Something in him quieted, waiting. “Then come here.”
    A pause during which the entire forest seemed to freeze, the night creatures aware of the leopard’s tense watchfulness.
    â€œOh, God, Clay.” Suddenly her arms were wrapped around his back, her cheek pressed against the white cotton of his T-shirt.
    Hardly daring to breathe, he closed his own arms around her feminine warmth, blindingly aware of every inch of her pressed into him, every spot of wetness soaking through his T-shirt.
    She was so small, so damn soft, her humanity apparent in the delicacy of her skin, the lightness of her bones. The Psy might be fragile in comparison to changelings, but they had powers of the mind to compensate. Humans had the same fragility but none of the psychic abilities. A wave of protectiveness washed over him.
    â€œShh, Tally.” He used the nickname because, at this moment, he knew her. She had always had a heart too big for her body, a heart that felt such pain for others while ignoring its own. “I’ll find your lost one.”
    She shook her head against him. “It’s too late. Three bodies already. Jonquil is probably dead, too.”
    â€œThen I’ll find who did this to them and stop him.”
    She stilled against him. “I didn’t come here to turn you into a killer again.”

CHAPTER 4
    â€œI am a killer,” he said, unwilling to let her hide from this. “I’m a leopard changeling and in my world, killing to protect your pack is understood and accepted.”
    â€œI’m not part of your pack.”
    â€œNo.” So why was he going to help her? Especially after she’d made her opinion of him crystal clear. “No child deserves to die that way.”
    A small silence.