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CHAPTER ONE

Opening your eyes to find that you’re upside down can’t be good, can it?

Through the cobwebs clouding her mind, Roni Axton realized that it wasn’t just she as upside down The car had toppled over

Well, that sucked Clearly the fuck-up fairy had made an appearance

Strangely, Roni felt no rush of panic, no fear And despite that she was pretty sure her head was bleeding, there was no pain There was only a feeling of weightlessness Even the fact that her as frantic didn’t disturb Roni in this dreamlike moment

Her brain distantly registered that the car kept leaning sideways, as if so at it But it was the various sounds that penetrated her , and strange voices arguing

Sensing that the ringtone and thefrom her left, Roni turned her head to find a male wolf shifter in the driver’s seat, eyes closed Tao Huh Odd that the Phoenix Pack’s Head Enforcer ith her She rarely hung out with anyone outside her pack In truth, Roni counted very few people as friends

Sadly, she was very like her brother, Alpha of their recently formed Mercury Pack, in that she found social situations uncomfortable In Nick’s case, it was because he didn’t like most people In Roni’s case, it was because most people didn’t like her Even when she was a kid, she’d foundfriends difficult, especially at school It was kind of hard to fit in when you were a toher IQ than that of your teachers

It probably ender But she just didn’t see the appeal behind constantly gossiping, shopping endlessly, asking deep personal questions, or having different lotions for different body parts

Roni was uys, particularly her two brothers and her Beta male, Derren Men didn’t care that she wasn’t a people pleaser, or that she didn’t kno to satisfy social niceties, or that she preferred chocolate to living beings of any species The only feht of as a friend was her Alpha female, Shaya, who—

A succession ofto a toddler in the backseat, Tao playfully gru, an unexpected impact to the side of the vehicle, a blow to her head that o black

Grasping onto those threads of memory, Roni renant—on a daytrip to the zoo with Shaya’s godson, Kye, and his bodyguard, Tao The Alpha female had wanted a break fro the drive back to Phoenix Pack territory when a car had slammed into theirs

And then she’d gone and passed out like a girl How e

Blinking rapidly, she swiveled her head as ht have winced at the sharp pain that lanced through her neck if she hadn’t been distracted by the fact that Shaya wasn’t in the backseat beside a still crying Kye That hen Roni noticed the ferass a few feet away from the vehicle Fuck

The dreamy quality of the moment disappeared as reality crashed into Roni, and her wolf howled in fear and rage One word doet out

Forcing a reassuring s in his safety seat and reaching for her, she crooned, “It’s okay, little man Give me a second and I’ll—”