Wild Hearts in Atlantis Read Free

Kat again. In the nearly four hundred years of his existence, no female had affected him like that one. His duty was to protect humanity, but not once in his long centuries as a warrior had he taken it so very personally.
    She wasn’t even human.
    She was
forbidden.
    The priest finally spoke. “Interesting. This mission will prove very…interesting. I may have to visit south Florida soon.”
    And then Alaric shimmered back into mist and swept right off the balcony, leaving Bastien to face the warriors who were his closest friends—and the mission he wasn’t anywhere near qualified to handle.
    Oh, yeah. I’m golden.

Two

    Kat sat in her Jeep, shirt soaked through with sweat from the heat of south Florida in autumn, and wondered when a simple trip to the grocery store had turned into a test of courage. The thermometer at the bank had read eighty-five degrees, not all that unusual for this time of year, and the wild cat in her wanted to curl up in the sun on a rock somewhere.
    Take a nap, maybe.
    Take down a sheep or two.
    “Yeah, right. Take a break from reality.”
    The reality in which Kat Fiero, official National Park Service ranger and daughter to the former alpha of the Big Cypress panther coalition, had never once taken down a sheep. Or a goat. Or even a little bitty squirrel.
    “Fake shape-shifter, useless excuse for a panther, worthless bitch,” she muttered. “Okay, that pretty much covers the range of happiness I’ll have to deal with if Fallon or her minions are in there, hanging out in the tuna fish aisle.”
    She grabbed her wallet from her backpack and shoved it into her shorts pocket, then got out and slammed the door. Eyed the slut-red Jaguar with FALLON1 license plates, felt her lips curl back from her teeth.
    The world is going to hell in a coffin, and I have time to worry about what these morons think of me why, exactly?
    She thought back to the headlines she’d choked down with bitter coffee and overcooked eggs at Thelma’s grill. More bills passing Congress, more extra goodies tacked on to the 2006 Non-Human Species Protection Act, as if the poor humans were any danger to the vamps. Most of ’em cowered in their homes at night, still unable to believe—even after a decade—that the things that went bump in the night were real.
    Vampires and shape-shifters both.
    Her dad hadn’t wanted any of it. “Upsets the natural order of things, Kat,” he’d said, again and again. “We’re meant to stay in the wild, remain true to our natures. Not play at being reporters and law enforcement and other
civilized
members of society.”
    But he’d married a human, hadn’t he? And then he’d died, still trying to hide how disappointed he was in his only child. The daughter who’d never been able to shift. Not even once.
    Now half the rangers she worked with—and a good third of the local paranormal ops unit—were shape-shifters. “Except me,” she muttered as she pushed open the door to the store and felt the wonderfully cool currents of air-conditioned air sweep out toward her. “I’m only
half
shape-shifter. I’m just a—”
    “Freak!” The voice rang out with unsuppressed glee. “We were just talking about you, ranger freak show.”
    Kat dropped her hand away from the butt of her service revolver, regretting yet again that bitchiness wasn’t grounds for shooting under National Park Service regs. “Fallon. Always a pleasure. Or, wait—never a pleasure, actually.”
    She watched, eyes narrowed, as the petite—
damn her
—bane of her existence stalked up to her on the kind of five-inch-heeled shoes Kat would never in her life wear. Then she allowed herself a little smugness because Fallon still had to look
up
at her. Being nearly six feet tall wasn’t always all bad.
    Fallon ran a hand through her masses of black curls, arched her back, and acted like a feline in heat. Which she probably was.
    Bitch.
    The momentary pride Kat had taken in her height shriveledlike her self-esteem, and