Excerpt:
Sniffing the air around her, she had a feeling Ethan had dumped her in his brother’s office because she could smell his familiar pine scent. She could also hear Ethan on the phone downstairs talking to who she assumed was Owen and knew her time alone was limited. Since she had on cuffs he probably didn’t think she was much of a threat. It’s not as if she could shift to her jaguar form like this. Well, she could, but her arms and legs in cat form were a lot bigger and she wasn’t positive the change would break the cuffs. If it didn’t, she’d be in serious pain.
She didn’t plan to stick around long enough to see why this crazy wolf had kidnapped her. Thankfully Ethan had cuffed her hands in the front so she had some mobility. Quietly riffling through the top drawers of the giant oak desk, she smiled when she finally found a very slim letter opener. It was as long as a screwdriver but much thinner and flatter. The cuffs on her wrist were thicker than normal and so was the lock opening. Picking up the end of the opener with her mouth, she slid the shiny tip into the circular opening.
A slam sounded from downstairs. Shouts followed. Her heart beat erratically. She recognized that voice. Owen.
No, no, no.
Forcing her hands to remain calm, she began twisting the opener with her mouth. She’d done this before—of course she’d had better tools then but she knew exactly…click. The tiny lever inside sprung free, releasing her manacles.
As they fell from her wrists, the door flew open, slamming against the back wall with a sickening crash. She felt as if her heart actually stopped for a moment. Everything around her funneled out as she stared into the clearest blue eyes she’d ever seen. Owen had always been big, but he’d grown even taller since she’d last seen him. He was probably six-foot three now. And he had that GQ thing going on. Tall, strong jaw, incredibly broad shoulders and muscles that couldn’t be disguised by a mere T-shirt. His blue-black hair and blue eyes gave him an exotic, appealing look. Of course she could see the wolf lurking beneath the surface. Just a hint of danger that even humans wouldn’t be able to ignore.
“Gabriela,” he whispered, some foreign emotion injected into that one word.
That broke the spell. Fisting the cuffs, she chucked them at his head and turned, diving for the glass window. Unlike wolf shifters, her change to animal form was seamless. Her clothes and shoes shredded as she became a jaguar. Vaguely, as if from a great distance, she heard Owen cursing behind her, but she didn’t pause in her escape. Drawing on the strength of her hind legs she used the window frame as a springboard—and tried to ignore the pain of the glass slicing into her paws—to propel herself to the oak tree.
The sun had risen farther in the sky, illuminating everything for her, not that she needed it with her extrasensory abilities. Nimbly, she jumped from branch to branch until she hit the dirt running. She could hear the sound of a growl behind her, but ignored it. If Owen or Ethan thought they could kidnap her and hold her hostage, they’d have to catch her first.
As a jaguar, she was a heck of a lot faster than them. Her family wasn’t native to this area, and with the exception of the local doctor, they were the only jaguar shifters living in Montana that she knew of. Still, she could travel these woods blind. First she needed to know she had outrun her pursuers. Then she was going to figure out why a member of the Wright pack had kidnapped her in broad daylight. And there was going to be hell to pay.
