The coyote woman emerged from my bathroom in a pair of borrowed yoga pants and a clingy top. Pizza guy’s eyes widened as they took her in, and his smile followed suit. All guilt over the tip dissolved as I shut the door on him. The fantasy inspiration we’d given him would outlast any tip I could have afforded.

  “Oh wow, that smells amazing!” the woman said as she took a tentative step toward me.

  I opened the pizza box—meat lovers with double the meat—and sat it on the dresser, which also doubled as a TV stand. Wringing her hands, the woman looked at me like a dog waiting for permission to snag a treat off its nose. I grabbed a piece and stepped over to lean against the desk. With my free hand, I motioned her toward the box. She fell upon it like a half-starved animal. After two pieces, she stopped inhaling the food and began to chew and take her time. Taking a furtive look around the small room, she snagged two more pieces and retreated to the opposite side of the bed prop herself against the windowsill.

  For a moment, I savored the mixed scents of sausage, hamburger, ham, and cheese before starting on the pizza. I ate slowly, giving her time to finish her other two pieces. The entire time, her gaze darted about the room as if she expected every shadow to try to tear her apart. I went to the minifridge and retrieved two pops. Holding one up, I gave her a questioning look. Eyes widening, she nodded. I tossed it to her. Before pressing her, I opened my own and took a long drink.

  “So what’s your name?” I finally asked.

  “Yazhi.”

  “You’re Navajo,” I stated.

  She nodded. “Yes, Diné, like you.”

  “No, my mom is Cherokee.”

  Brows pulling down, head cocking, she looked every bit the confused canine—well, in a hot woman’s body. “Half Cherokee, half Diné.” She sounded offended, like I had left the Navajo bit off intentionally.

  I returned her confused look. “No, she’s full Cherokee.”

  For a few moments, we stared at each other with furrowed brows. “But I know your mother’s grandparents on her father’s side. They are the elders of the Yee Naaldlooshii tribe,” Yazhi finally said.

  The meaning of the word was lost on me, but the way she said it made my hackles rise. While I had learned some Cherokee once upon a time long ago, Navajo—or Diné as they referred to themselves—was as foreign to me as Greek. From the balcony railing where he perched, Gripp cronked loudly, the sound carrying through the partially open sliding glass door. I calmed myself. He must have felt my anxiety through our bond—one of many weird things about him I was still getting used to.

  “I’ve never met any of my family from my mother’s side. She was estranged from them,” I said. That still didn’t explain why this woman thought I was part Navajo.

  “That explains a bit. But trust me, the Yee Naaldlooshii are your people. You look a lot like your grandmother.”

  Chills ran along my skin, raising bumps on my arms. It rubbed me all kinds of wrong that this woman might know more about my family than I did. While I wasn’t quite ready to believe her about that, I still needed to know more about her. “Who are this Yee Naaldlooshii tribe?”

  Yazhi swallowed hard and sat up a little straighter as if preparing to give me hard news. “It means skinwalker. We are—they are—the Skinwalker tribe.”

  Shock reverberated through my entire body, leaving me speechless for a moment. The information Ty had uncovered from the Alpha Council revealed a tribe called the Skinwalker tribe had tried to kidnap me as a child. I had to stifle a growl. To save me, my father had killed one of them and gone to prison for it—then died there. I’d only recently found all that out. And I’d assumed the name was just a Native thing, not actual skinwalkers.

  “From the look on your face, I take it that’s not just a clever name.”

  “They’re actually skinwalkers,” she confirmed. Not a hint of deceit lay in her voice.

  Since we were already going to crazy town, I decided to hit the gas. “Like I said, my mom only told me she was Cherokee, so I don’t even know the Navajo stories. I don’t know what skinwalkers are exactly.”

  “Once we hit maturity and go through the ritual, we can shift into animals we collect the skins of. They have to be somewhat close in size to us, so it can’t just be anything.”

  It took a few seconds to get past my surprise. There couldn’t be any way I was part skinwalker and didn’t know it, could there? It would explain why the Skinwalker tribe had tried to kidnap me as a kid, to keep me from my werewolf side. It might also explain why I’d never known anyone on my mother’s side of the family. No aunts, no uncles, no grandparents. But my mom hadn’t known either. I did my best to focus on Yazhi and her issues. “That sounds…magical.” Shifting into a wolf, I got. Atoms heated and rearranged into the form of animal your bloodline dictated you were. It worked more like science than magic.

  “I guess you could say that,” Yazhi answered.

  My world had just expanded a little bit more, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that. So I focused on the next puzzle piece instead. “But you were just bitten in. I saw your shift—it didn’t leave a skin behind.”

  Tears muddied her pretty brown eyes, making me feel like an insensitive ass. “Our tribe comes from ma’ii bloodlines, way, way back, so far back hardly anyone sings of it anymore.”

  I hated to point out the obvious, but I had to ask. “You were a skinwalker before. What does that mean for you now?”

  She looked down, finding a sudden interest in a loose thread along the cuff of the yoga pants. After a long pause, she swallowed hard and answered. “It means I’m outcast from my tribe now. I can never go home.”

  Anger threatened to unravel my cool. Skeletons in the family closer I could handle, people willing to banish their own I could not. “That sucks that they would cast you out. Why would they do that?” I asked in my best sympathetic tone, which, believe it or not, they didn’t teach to psych majors. If anything, they taught the opposite, to keep a clinical removal from one’s patients. It was stupid.

  While she picked at the thread on her borrowed pants, she answered. “I’ve lost my ability to skinwalk. I can only shift into a coyote now. It means there is a high chance my children will be shifters instead of skinwalkers. Our tribe is endangered. They won’t allow me to marry another skinwalker for fear of putting our kind further at risk of extinction.”

  If these were my mother’s father’s people, I was suddenly glad she had kept me from them. To cast out one of their own who had been brutalized and bitten in against their will was harsh, no matter the reason. What must they think of me?

  “Makes me glad I’m only part,” I mumbled.

  She made a snorting sort of noise, but it was filled with sadness, not humor. “That’s more than most, and you shouldn’t turn your back on it. Our kind are endangered, and I don’t just mean the skinwalkers.”

  I gave a noncommittal grunt as a reply. It was not a subject I wanted to talk about, particularly with a stranger. This conversation had to be diverted, now. “You’re a coyote shifter. Why come to me?”

  “You’re the seeker.” She said that as if it explained everything. It didn’t. Despite what Ty had told me, I didn’t know the first thing about how to handle shifters of other races. The brows raised, face pinched look I gave Yazhi communicated that, I hoped.

  “And you’re part Diné.”

  Damn, that backfired. “Weird time for solidarity.”

  She shook her head and fixed me with a cold look. “Hardly. As I said, our kind are endangered; there is never a bad time for solidarity.” It was practically a recitation, one she had likely been told time and again.

  “Last time I checked, coyotes weren’t endangered.”

  Her gaze narrowed at me. “I don’t mean shifters; I mean the Diné nation.” Anger punctuated her words. She began to shake with the strength of it, reminding me of how bad it was for newly bitten.

  I held my hands up. “Whoa, easy. Strong emotions can trigger the change. Take a breath.”

  Lips curling back from her teeth—which thankfully hadn’t elongated into fangs—she glared harder at me.

  “You came to me for help. Let me help,” I said, making it a gentle command, but a command nonetheless.

  For a moment I saw the near-feral canine behind her eyes and thought it was going to come down to shifting and fighting. But after a long, shuddering breath, she started to relax.

  “Understanding the reasons why we do things helps us control our emotions and act logically instead of instinctually,” I told her.

  Her eyes glazed over in confusion. I tried another approach. “Think about why you are mad, and it will help you control yourself. The wolf—or coyote, in your case—is the instinctual creature, while you are the more logical, so focusing on logic helps you regain control.”

  Her brows pulled down. “What if I don’t want to control it?”

  I sat my pop down on the desk and straightened. “You have to. If you give over completely to instinct, you will lose your mind—go insane. And it will likely happen in the next two days.”

  Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened. I hated to go for the shock factor, but we were out of time, and she needed to understand the severity of the situation. Another loud, shuddering breath tore from her. She sank on the unfortunately mustard-hued carpet.

  “I didn’t choose any of this,” she whispered in a clear attempt to avoid sobbing.

  Moving slowly so I didn’t alarm her, I walked over and sat near her, leaning my back against the wall so she didn’t have to look at me if she didn’t want to. I got not wanting others to see your pain sometimes.

  “I kind of figured. Usually, the only ones I find, or who find me, are bitten in against their will.”

  After a long moment of silence, she spoke. “Sucks for you, sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I like helping. While it wasn’t violent, or even an attack, I was bitten in without my knowledge of what it meant.” My thoughts turned to Raul—the one who had bitten me in. The usual anger that rose when I thought of him was gone now. Though it didn’t make it right, I’d learned he had been blackmailed into biting me in. He was the type of guy who wouldn’t hurt anyone of his own volition, but at the time I hadn’t known that.

  “That sucks,” Yazhi said.

  I waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be sorry for me, just know I understand. Do you know who bit you?”

  She pulled her knees to her chest and gripped them tight. “No. It was dark. I was walking to my car after my shift at the store. Someone grabbed me from behind, tore into my neck, and stuffed me in the trunk of a car.” Her voice got all choked up on the last word, but she went on before I could tell her she didn’t have to. “I came to just before he opened the trunk. When he took me out, I surprised him, fought him, and ran off. Asshole must not have known I was state champ long-distance runner three years in a row in college.”

  Damn, kidnapping. That was new. Well, not where I was concerned, but when I’d been kidnapped it had been to awaken the reaper. “Any clue why someone might target you?”

  Cocking her head, she chewed at a fingernail for a second. “Not specifically, but…” Her foreboding tone told me I wasn’t going to like how that sentence ended. “I am third woman in my tribe to disappear over the last two months.”

  Sadly, the number of Native women who disappeared every year was high, but even considering that, this was unusual.

  “Does anyone know anything about the disappearance of the other women?” I asked.

  She made an angry snorting noise. “No one talks to the police. Do you think they all could have been bitten and taken like me?”

  I thought about it for a moment before answering. “It’s possible. But right now we need to worry about you. You’re struggling to control your…coyote. I can feel it.”

  She gave me a sideways smile. “That obvious?”

  “Naw, it’s a seeker thing.”

  Blowing air out between her lips, she leaned back against the wall. “I get angry or freaked out, and I slip into the coyote. It’s happened since that guy opened the trunk two days ago.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  She shook her head. “I know it sounds cliché, but it was dark, and I had just shifted for the first time, so the images are all jumbled in my mind.”

  “Don’t sweat it. If you can accept your anger, understand the reasons for it, and know you are safe and strong now, we can get a handle on this.” At least I hoped it would work that way for someone who had started out as some other sort of supernatural creature.

  A small ray of hope lit her eyes like a sunbeam trying to come through dark clouds. I retrieved the last two pieces of pizza and handed her one. After finishing mine, I got comfortable and settled in for two long nights of psychoanalyzing and girl talk.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the second morning Yazhi had a firm grasp on her anger and was able to shift back and forth without wanting to murder anyone. Sadly, it seemed her skinwalker abilities were gone. We hadn’t gotten back around to talking about the Yee Naaldlooshii tribe, but I was perfectly fine with that. The subject brought her too much pain and anger—something we had in common. Shortly after dawn backlit my curtains on the second day, I rose, dressed, grabbed two cups of coffee, and stepped outside.

  Yazhi still snored softly from the couch, so I left her to it. No sense in rushing her. The poor thing needed her sleep.

  Across the parking lot, parked beneath an oak tree with little green buds of leaves, sat Ty’s Harley. Though I hadn’t heard it pull up, I knew it had been there awhile. I suspected he had probably been nearby since shortly after I’d called him. Putting on a smile, I did my best to bury my irritation at his overprotectiveness. He sat on the grass beneath the tree, long legs stretched out before him, back against the trunk. In dark blue jeans and a forest green cotton T-shirt that hugged his muscular chest and arms, he looked good enough to eat. I almost lost my resolve to be angry, especially when his gorgeous, sky-blue eyes cracked open. The man was so many kinds of fine it hurt.

  Perched on a limb over Ty’s head, Gripp chattered away in raven speak. The moment the door clicked shut behind me, the raven made a ululating, gurgling noise and spread his wings in what I could only interpret as “I’m over here.” His left wing caught on a cluster of green leaves. Balance thrown off, he tipped forward and nearly fell from the branch. I winced and wondered for at least the hundredth time what the gods had been thinking when they sent me the most clumsy bird on all the nine planets.

  Ty reached up, steadied Gripp, and held some sort of treat out to him. After a happy squawk, he gobbled it down.

  I walked up and handed Ty one of the coffee cups. “You shouldn’t spoil him so much,” I said through a grin I couldn’t hold back.

  The sleep in his eyes and grateful smile that lit up his face confirmed my suspicions of him having been here awhile. He stepped toward me, looking like he wanted a kiss. Fighting my traitorous libido, I took a long drink of my coffee to avoid him, and felt instantly guilty. The guilt pissed me off. A lady shouldn’t feel guilty about standing up for her independence.

  “Sleep well?” I asked with maybe a touch more snark than was necessary.

  “Oh…I…um…” Instead of continuing to try and finish that doomed sentence, he wisely sipped his coffee. “This is quite good, thank you.” The charming smile he gave me did not make up for the fact he didn’t deny having slept out here.

  With a sweep of his arm, he indicated a bench not far from the tree. Sipping our coffee, we wandered over to it and sat down. Gripp followed, smacking me in the head with a wing as he landed on the back of the bench to my right. Used to it, I reached up on instinct and disentangled my hair from his feathers. He nuzzled into my hand once I finished, melting my irritation.

  “How did she find you?” Ty asked after a moment.

  I let out a long breath. “Well, remember how we weren’t sure what my mother’s ties to the skinwalker tribe were?”

  He made an affirmative noise over the rim of his coffee cup.

  “They claim she is half Navajo, half skinwalker to be exact. Which, if it’s true, would make me a quarter. It would explain why they tried to kidnap me when they found out my dad’s family are from werewolf bloodlines,” I said.

  His blue eyes widened so much his brows disappeared into his blond locks. It took a moment before he spoke. “I know you do not want to talk with your mother, but it sounds like you need to.” Though his tone was gentle, the words inflamed me, not because he said them, but because he was right.

  Refusing to admit it, I let silence descend between us as I focused on my hot drink. I couldn’t talk to her, not right now, for so many reasons. Eventually, he spoke.

  “I am so sorry we never talked about the other races of shifters. Until two days ago, I did not even know the leitar oversaw them. I confirmed it with Vidar.” His apologetic tone softened my hard shell.

  Vidar, boyfriend to Ayra—the reaper, my counterpart—had recently defected from the Order of the Verndari. They were Icelandic monks who existed for the purpose of preserving the history of the varúlfur, and helping the reaper—or uppskera, as they called her. They knew about everything reaper related and many things seeker related.

  I bumped Ty’s shoulder with mine. “Don’t sweat it. You’re a kennari, not an expert on all things seeker.” Kennari, our kind’s term for a teacher, fit Ty in more than one way.

  He made a little growly noise that managed to be sexy despite the frustration lacing it. Gripp tried to mimic the sound, instead coming across sounding like a choking dog.

  Side-eyeing my strange bird, I told Ty, “Seriously.”

  “But I should be.”

  I put my hand on his leg. “I’m the first in three hundred years. You can’t possibly know all there is to know about it.”

  From beneath his blond brows, he shot me an incredulous look. “Do not forget I am a world history professor. History is a passion of mine.”