“Easygoing?” Addie asked in astonishment. “That’s easygoing?”

“Believe it or not.” Seamus nodded. “Even with his old mate, he wasn’t tender. She was as hard-ass as he was, not a gentle woman. But they loved each other pretty intensely. With you, he’s . . . different.”

“He’s lonely,” Addie said. “I am too, and he recognized that in me. I saw his face when he found you and Jaycee and Dimitri. He missed you like crazy. I’m guessing the whole mate-claim thing will dry up once he’s back to leading you.”

Addie did not like the empty feeling she got when she said the words. Easy to pretend that once Kendrick had resettled himself, she could walk away and return to her old life without a problem.

Not true. Kendrick had changed her, and not simply because she’d learned about Shifters. She’d seen him as worried father, caring friend, helpful to the weak, raw with emotion and need and fearing that state.

“I’m not so sure,” Seamus said. “When I met Bree, I had this idea we’d never stick together once I figured out what was going on with me or found Kendrick. It doesn’t work that way—I’m not leaving Bree, no matter what.”

Seamus, though, wasn’t a father, leader of Shifters, and a Guardian, with all the hang-ups that went with it. Kendrick, as he’d said himself, had issues.

Addie had supposed they’d go to a Shiftertown, but Seamus took her to a house that lay about forty miles south of Austin, in an area between housing developments. The house was old, had been there long before the walled communities in the distance had sprung up, with tall trees, a white picket fence, the whole works.

Floodlights blasted on when Seamus stopped the truck in the front drive, and a woman in a muumuu came out onto the porch.

“’Bout time you got here,” the woman called down to them. “Bree’s getting worried, and Lord, can that girl fuss when she’s worried.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“This is going to be so much fun,” Bree Fayette said as she put makeup on Addie in the downstairs bathroom. “I haven’t costumed in a long time. I gave it up for a man.”

Bree, with her short honey-colored hair and blue eyes, her Feline makeup already in place, laughed out loud as Seamus looked across the living room through the bathroom’s open door. With his Shifter hearing, he’d follow every word, and Bree would know that.

“Hold still, sweetie.” Bree’s brow furrowed as she drew whiskers around Addie’s nose.

Addie had never known there were such things as Shifter groupies. Apparently women put on fake ears and sometimes tails, made up their faces to look like cats or wolves, slid on provocative clothing, and chased after Shifters.

“Why?” she asked Bree.

“Is that a serious question?” Bree gave her an incredulous look. “Because they’re hawt, that’s why. I wanted to know everything about Shifters—wanted to sit next to them, watch them, be with them. It’s not necessarily only about sex. It’s about the experience. Remy, my brother, used to make himself up sometimes and go with me so he could ogle the lady Shifters.”

A hard-bodied man with buzzed blond hair who was in the living room with Seamus called to them. “We can hear you.” Remy’s accent was soft Southern with a touch of Cajun. The Fayettes had come here from southern Louisiana barely a year ago.

Bree winked at Addie. “But now that I caught me a Shifter of my own, I don’t have to dress up and go out. Well, not go out anyway.”

“Goddess,” came Seamus’s voice, sounding embarrassed.

Bree gave Addie a last mark with her pencil. “You look great. Shifters will eat you up.”