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      Chapter 1

      Watch her, Nick Carter had told Mark Burton, and sent Mark into the night after Tayla Garrett—into the sporadically lit Phoenix park she patrolled this night. Watch her patrol, watch her stalk the night greenways—a little sideways jog to avoid a loose dog, so casual, and then all her attention back on the night, on the people within the park, and only Mark’s excellent warding keeping him from her scrutiny.

      Watch her. As if Mark had been doing anything but watching Tayla Garrett since his recent reassignment had them crossing paths in Sentinel field activity. Not to mention in the Phoenix brevis regional office, in the hallways…in the damned security lot where she sometimes parked a scooter and sometimes parked a bike. But she’d made it clear enough she still—after all this time—preferred to keep her distance, and he’d reluctantly, achingly, respected her wishes. In spite of the restlessness, the aching, and the tendency to offer her name at intensely inappropriate moments in his personal life. Not that he’d expected to see that particular date again, anyway.

      She’d always done that to him. As an awkward fourteen-year-old, growing into impossibly long legs, learning to hide her natural speed from the world and to finesse her cheetah shift, while Mark, a much more mature and worldly eighteen year old, learned that he was indeed human-bound in shape, regardless of his parentage and obvious peripheral shifter skills—the physical prowess, the tracking skills, the prescience…

      She runs the Phoenix city parks at night, Nick Carter had told him—Nick, regional adjutant and rarely directly involved in Mark’s Sentinel assignments. “You’ll see what I mean—and I need you prepared to deal with it. You’re going to work together on the summit.”

      Summit. Fancy word for a meeting with an Atrum Core snitch, a man whom the local Core sect would no doubt love to identify and eliminate—after a satisfying round or two of torture.

      The Atrum Core. Not nice people. Not from their very earliest start, when the world was barely looking at AD, and the Romans and the Gauls were mixing it up in so many different ways. The Sentinels were finding their shape-shifting; the Atrum Core remained ever determined to outpower them any way it could, full of need and greed and ancient family squabbles. And while the druidic Sentinels had grown into their calling as protectors of the earth and its inhabitants, the Roman-sired Atrum Core became entrenched in grabbing power and influence without scruple or care for the consequences, stealing from the earth and even from the lifeblood of innocents to create their power-manipulating amulets and twisted workings.

      She runs the Phoenix city parks. Hot damn, she certainly did. Must have been a challenge to dress in the necessary natural materials needed for taking the change and still look like that. Skirt that short, blouse that sheer, camisole peeking out low over her perfectly plump breasts. Her hair, fiery copper, spilled carelessly from a high, loose ponytail, strands of it framing her face. A saucy little purse dangled off her shoulder, and long, long legs stretched down to leather flats—incongruous but no detraction at all. No, no, not the slightest. A living lure, she was.

      And a huntress. With all the innate grace of her cheetah form, she moved across the dark grassy grounds of the east Phoenix park, showing no sign of whatever Nick Carter thought Mark might see—what he should prepare to deal with. Nothing but the ever-present thump of wild blood in his veins, wishing for that which he could never do so he might join the one he might never have.

      Prescience stole his breath. Here. Now. It happens.

      Prescience, a gift from his mother’s line. And tracking, from his father’s side. Not to mention the Sentinel strength, the uncanny night vision, the superb hearing. A certain resistance to death. But when it came to the shifting, Mark was empty. Nothing there to reach for, nothing there to set free.

       Here. Now. It happens.

      “Hey! No! What’re you—hey!” A woman’s voice, high and startled and shifting quickly to fear.

      Mark jerked back his instant response. Sentinels, guardians of the earth—in the beginning, against the Atrum Core, and now against almost anything.

      But not tonight. Tonight, in spite of having trained since childhood, Mark merely watched. Watched as Tayla’s posture changed from sexy insouciance to taut huntress within. Wild thing. Still human, still very much in undercover mode. But oh, Tayla Garrett could run. Mark’s heart swelled with the beauty of it, the flashing legs and stunning grace, deceptively swift—crossing the patch of green between curving sidewalks and manicured trees before he could so much as blink, having spotted what Mark couldn’t yet see.

      He moved in slightly—she wouldn’t notice, not now. Not with her eye on her target, there, just the other side of the sandstone-brick public facilities: two struggling figures, and she was almost upon them. Mark drew closer, fists clenched on his need to plunge into the fray. Never mind orders—she’d be furious and embarrassed by his intervention.

      So he watched. Closer now, easily making out the plump, scantily dressed young woman who fought off a man twice her size. Close enough to see Tayla, moving so swiftly she had no chance to decelerate, and what was she thinking, and ah, there—she had it planned all along, that lightning grab at the attacker as his arm swung back to strike, using him as her brake—transferring all that speed into torque as she planted her feet and wrenched him back and around. His arm made a funny crunching noise as it broke; he cried out and gave way, slamming up against the sandstone brick while the young woman sobbed and scrabbled to put a few feeble feet between them. A few feet and then, face distorted with fear—of Tayla as much as her attacker—she gained her balance and fled.

      “No, dammit, let me help—” But Tayla stayed on the man, anyway, following up to snatch the side of his head, fingers twined in his hair and steadying him as her other hand dove for his throat—no attempt to circle that beefy neck, but grabbing his windpipe in a precision claw grip.

       Whoa. That’s my girl.

      But in the next instant, the huntress fumbled.

      “You let her get away!” the man choked, gesturing vaguely after the fleeing woman.

      “So I did,” Tayla said, her voice a purr. “You won’t, though.”

      “My cousin—” he said, and surrendered to her grip. “Been looking so long—”

      Doubt changed Tayla’s posture entirely, suddenly.

      No, Mark thought at her, inching closer. You can’t buy that.

      “You hit her.” But the doubt crept through to her voice.

      His voice sounded stronger. “I was defending myself!”

      The doubt settled in. In spite of her instincts, in spite of what