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your third shift?”
    “Fourth,” she told him. “How come you don’t have a mate?”
    “It looks like I do,” he teased, and touched a finger to her nose. “She’s currently on her fourth change.”
    “Not me,” she said, swiping at him with one hand that looked more and more like a paw as the seconds passed. “How come you never had a mate before me?”
    He shrugged. “Never was interested before.”
    That was surprising. He’d been all over her ever since he’d declared that he wanted her as his mate. Not in a bad way, just in a way that let her know exactly what his intentions were. Then, it dawned on her. “Oh. It’s because I’m a tiger, right?” The only other female tiger-shifter in the area was Estrella, Vic’s mate, and she was only half tiger. The rest of the Merino clan were men, and as a one, they seemed very, very single. That was the reason why Johnny had turned her, after all. He was lonely.
    “Not the tiger thing,” Adrian said in a musing voice. “Though I admit, I find it attractive. But there are other big cat females in the territory. I could have pursued one of them, I suppose.” He shrugged and brushed another sweaty lock of hair off her face. “Like I said, just wasn’t interested before. They were missing…something.”
    And because she was feeling a little pathetic, she asked, “Something that I have?”
    His mouth curved into a smile. “Yeah. Which is why I wanted to murder Johnny when he got you exiled, and why I nearly murdered him again when he abandoned you. Because you’ve got that something that attracts me, and I was helpless to do anything about it, short of fighting my brother for you.”
    “He didn’t abandon me, he dumped me. Though it was kind of mutual at that point.”
    “He abandoned you,” Adrian said, his expression hard. “He turned you and then when he didn’t get his way, he left you to fend for yourself. That won’t happen with me.” He leaned in and caressed her mouth. “I would never leave you to fend for yourself. Ever.”
    “I know,” she told him. It was true; she did believe him. Since they’d been forced to spend time together this week, he’d been nothing but attentive and caring. It was a shame they had to meet under these circumstances, really. If he hadn’t been a tiger, she’d have loved dating someone like him. But because he was…it felt like giving in to like him. Like she was just giving up on who Mandy Used to Be. And she couldn’t. She had opinions, dreams, plans. She mattered, damn it.
    Adrian gave her an intense look. For a moment, Mandy wondered if he was going to say something to her. Something to make her feel better, less hopeless. But he only leaned in and very gently kissed her mouth.
    And oh, that was so sweet that she couldn’t help but respond to it. Her lips parted under his, and she kissed him back. His hand caressed her cheek, and then he continued to kiss her, nibbling and sucking at her lips. She moaned against his mouth…
    And then her transformation kicked into high gear, and Adrian pulled away with a look of regret as Mandy went tiger.
     
    ~~ * ~~
     
    If she had to be a shifter, she supposed, being a tiger wasn’t so bad. She was strong, and powerful, and her sense of smell was great. She prowled through the woods, her tail swishing back and forth as she chased down rabbits and armadillos and whatever else caught her attention. Adrian was there, in his transformed tiger form, but he stayed out of her way and let her have the roam of things. If she got too far off track, he’d swing by with a nip to remind her to stay on the Merino land. Other than that, she was on her own, and it was gloriously freeing.
    Well, she took that back. He’d nipped her when she’d been about to eat an armadillo. In retrospect, it was probably smart that he’d warned her off because they carried diseases. She’d bounded after a deer instead, and while she hadn’t caught it, she’d had an enormous amount of fun