Then he bit her.

It wasn’t hard, nothing that would break the skin or leave a mark, but a native, untapped burst of energy flashed to life inside her under the fleeting sting of his bite. A blinding white current of feral awareness shot through her muscles and blood and nerves as if she were a pile of dry leaves touched by a torch and doused with accelerant...

...As if an animal sleeping just under her skin had awoken to barbarous, savage joy.

Jenna opened her eyes and stared hard at the ceiling and felt something dark within her gather into storm.

One moment she was velvet and fire and flexed tension in his arms, the next she dissolved completely into mist.

Leander supposed it shouldn’t have surprised him. He knew this was coming, after all. From the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d sensed the latent power that simmered just beneath that ivory skin—he knew she would Shift, as surely as he knew his own name.

But it wasn’t only the suddenness of it that left him frozen, staring down at her empty dress still settling back against the bedcovers with a faint rustle of silk, the perfume of her skin still lingering in his nose.

It was the fact that she’d Shifted now—it was still days before her birthday.

In the entirety of a recorded history that stretched back nearly two thousand years before the appearance of Christ, Leander had never heard of a half-Blood making the turn before turning twenty-five.

It was an immutable, scientific fact. When fused with its human counterpart, Ikati Blood was diluted, warped, corrupted from the state of purity that allowed their specific genetic characteristics to flourish. The first Shift would generally occur anywhere between twelve and sixteen for an Ikati child, but for a half-Blood...

Twenty-five years to the minute from birth, and the Shift either happened or it did not.

If it did come, only a tiny percentage survived it.

And so there were unmarked graves near the outskirts of every Ikati colony where the bones of those lesser creatures were cast into the ground. The Law was clear: Shift or die.

But Jenna had made the Shift effortlessly and had done it early. Leander didn’t quite know what to make of the anomaly she was proving to be.

He looked up to the ceiling where she had spread out against the white plaster. She moved silently toward the chandelier in the center of the room, a fine plume of white mist that hovered and dipped and flowed, a curving ghost slinking through the air.

“Jenna,” he said, his breath still coming as a ragged pant from the pleasure of her lips under his, of her body so feminine and lush. “Come back.”

He watched as she gathered herself around the chandelier, moving over it, learning its edges and cool planes as she sifted through the shining drops of crystal. His gaze skipped to the veranda doors and his heart missed a beat. He’d left one of them cracked open.

He pushed off from the bed and went to stand under the chandelier.

“Please come down.” He stared up at her as she hovered above, the most beautiful phantom. “Just think it, down, and it will happen.” He watched her form and unform, ripple and flow and stretch out so thin he glimpsed the ceiling beyond.

She dropped down from the ceiling in an elegant column of ruffling white mist and Shifted to woman just under his nose. To a completely nude woman, save only for strands of that cascading mass of honeyed blonde hair, which covered a few inches of bare skin as it draped over her chest but left very little to the imagination.

His breath caught in his throat as he caught sight of the rise of her breasts beneath her hair. He took a step back and tried to look straight into her eyes.

Her eyes were wide as saucers, glowing green and yellow, staring at him with a combination of horror and flat-out elation.

“You’re all right,” he said. “Don’t move.”

He snatched the soft cashmere throw from the end of the bed, spread it open and wound it in a lush expanse of dove-hued softness around her body. She was trembling. He rubbed his palms up and down her arms to get her blood circulating and thought about baseball to distract himself from the straining ache of his erection, from thinking about what pleasures were hidden under that blanket, how just one yank would leave her entirely exposed—

“Leander,” she whispered. Her voice broke over his name.

“Yes.”

“I just—I just—”

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “You just Shifted,” he said.

She looked into his face, a clear and concentrated look, her wide-set eyes gleaming phosphorous green from under extravagantly long lashes. A faint stain of color bloomed over her cheeks. It was like watching a lovely piece of marble flush to life.

“Shifted...”

His heart skipped a beat. Even in a haze of confusion she was so beautiful it made breathing difficult. “You’re a Shifter, Jenna. Ikati. Like your father. Like me,” he murmured, drawn into her eyes.

She blinked once, and her shaking slowly stopped. She released all the breath in her lungs in one long, quiet exhalation, and along with it all the tension in her limbs dissolved.

“Ikati,” she repeated, rolling her tongue over the unfamiliar word.

“It’s an ancient word from our motherland, it means you can manipulate your human form to become...something else. Something more.”

“More than human.” She stared without blinking so deeply into his eyes he felt as if every corner of his soul was exposed, as if he was a mystery, her mystery, that she was trying to divine. Her lips began to lift into a smile, but they paused, then turned down. She frowned.

She then regarded him with an eyebrow raised, that look of defiance he was beginning to recognize settling over her face, thinning her mouth into a firm, stubborn line.

“I think I need to sit down now,” she said.

He moved instantly to drag the ruined silk chair over to her. He positioned it behind her and she sat, her back ramrod straight, her naked body swathed securely in deep folds of cashmere.

She gazed out the windows toward the veranda and the city skyline beyond and didn’t make a sound.

“I know it must be shocking for you. Unbelievable, most likely,” Leander said, unnerved by this unnatural calm. He couldn’t begin to imagine what was behind it. The first time he’d Shifted, at eleven years old, he’d run screaming with joy in circles over the lawn at Sommerley.

But then he’d been prepared. He’d known his whole life who and what he was. He’d always wanted it. While Jenna...

He dragged the other side chair across the carpet and sat down across from her in it, while she only continued to stare out the window, silent, still as stone.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he began, uncomfortable with her continued silence. “I didn’t actually know you would—it’s not your time yet, you see, we still have a few more days—I thought I would have more time to explain. I only thought to show you how I—” He checked himself and ran a hand through his thick hair when he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Jenna gave him a long, frozen look that stripped away every pretense of softness between them. “What else can I do?” she demanded, cool and controlled. Accusing.

He was taken aback by the difference in her. Only a moment ago she had been pliant and soft in his arms, she had kissed him so passionately he’d felt himself melting. He still had the taste of her on his tongue. But now she was sitting soldier straight in her chair and glaring at him with daggers in her eyes.

“I don’t know yet. I’m not sure exactly what you’ll be capable of—”

“But you have an idea,” she interrupted, her voice still the same low, guarded cadence that twisted his heart into knots. Her lovely features hardened into a mask of wariness.