Read Shift for Free Online Page A

pulse under control. “What do you mean?”
    He hung back to let me through the doorway first, so he didn’t see my eyes close in silent, fervent hope that he hadn’t seen too much difference in Jace. Or in me. “He’s serious all the time now. Morose and angry. It’s creepy.”
    “He’s a better enforcer for it,” I said, and Marc nodded without hesitation. I knew what he was thinking: too bad it took my brother’s death to bring out Jace’s true potential.
    A line had formed in the kitchen, leading in through the hall and out through the dining room. Kaci and my mom stood behind the bar, handing out an assortment of makeshift weapons that would have made any action-movie bad-ass proud. Toms left in pairs, clutching knives or tools someone had gathered from the basement and from assorted car trunks.
    Ed Taylor and my uncle Rick were at the head of the line, and right behind them stood my father and Bert Di Carlo. The Alphas selected weapons, then headed toward the door with the enforcers, and I blinked in surprise. Then nodded in growing respect. Most Alphas were past their physical prime—although a glance at Taylor would undermine that assumption—and while they still had to Shift and exercise to maintain good health, they didn’t often patrol or hunt with their men.
    The fact that they were all going to go out in search of our missing man filled me with more pride than I knew how to contain. They knew that every life was valuable, and unlike Calvin Malone, they were willing to put their own tails on the line to prove it.
    Jace and Brian accepted their weapons in front of us and headed outside without a backward glance.
    “Here.” As I stepped up to the counter, Kaci reached to the side of the dwindling selection and picked up a large hammer with a black rubber grip. “I saved this one for you. Figured you’d need an advantage, working left-handed.” She nodded toward my casted right arm.
    My mother watched out of the corner of her eye, sliding a large wrench across the counter toward Marc while I arched one brow at Kaci. The tabby hated violence, which, on the surface, should have made her the ideal young tabby. But Kaci was raised as a human, by human parents who’d had no idea they’d each contributed the recessive gene necessary to transform their youngest daughter into a werecat at the onset of puberty.
    Considering what she’d been through—accidentally killing her mother and sister during her first Shift, then wandering through the woods for weeks on her own, stuck in cat form—Kaci’s die-hard pacifist stance was no surprise. But it wasn’t enough to make her into what the opposing half of the council wanted. Because she was raised as a human, Kaci had human expectations from life, none of which included marrying the tom of her Alpha’s choosing and siring the next generation of werecats—as many sons as it took to get a precious daughter.
    And Kaci had a mouth, and she was not afraid to use it. Which made certain elements of the council even more determined to get her out from under my questionable influence.
    “Thanks.” I forced a smile, and met my mother’s gaze over Kaci’s head.
    “Be careful,” she said, and I nodded. Then Marc and I went out the front door after the others.
    Several pairs of enforcers had gone into the woods, but Jace and Brian were headed for the west field, so Marc and I started out in the opposite direction, walking several feet apart, and breathing through our noses in spite of the February cold burning my nostrils. We didn’t want to miss a scent.
    It was eerily quiet in the field, other than the whisper-crunch of our boots crushing dead grass. Though the temperature had risen dramatically from the ice storm a couple of weeks earlier, it was still hovering in the mid-thirties, and my fingers had gone stiff with the cold. I tried to shove them in my jacket pockets, but my cast stopped my right hand at the first knuckles. My nose was running, and I