Raphael always brought out a strange side of me. The wild side, the one that was knitted from pure emotions. That wild Andrea loved him completely and did irrational things, like sitting by the phone with her heart beating too fast, waiting for him to call, or running headfirst into danger against overwhelming odds to fight by his side. That wild Andrea once got arrested. We had gone away for a romantic retreat and while I left the hot tub in the courtyard of the hotel to use the bathroom, some floozy had attached herself to Raphael, not taking no for an answer. When I returned, instead of beating a swift retreat she suggested we should all have fun together. I had dunked her a couple of times. Unfortunately, I was pointing a gun at hotel security at the time, and the sheriff’s deputies showed up. Raphael ate it up. I was finally acting like a mated shapeshifter: irrational, possessive, and head over heels in love.

I didn’t know if that part of me was my hyena side or just that uncompromising fifteen-year-old girl that lives inside every woman, but now wasn’t the time to let her out. I had to stay rational, so I could apologize and try to mend things between me and Raphael.

Cutting Edge occupied a sturdy building on the northern edge of Atlanta, about an hour from the Keep. The Beast Lord, also known as Kate’s sugar woogums, had chosen the location, and he pretty much picked the closest place to the Keep that was still within city limits. Curran didn’t like to be without Kate and Kate didn’t like to be without Curran.

The door was unlocked. Great. I walked in. Ascanio looked up from his broom.

Despite having very few clients, Cutting Edge had an excess of employees, partially because Kate kept hiring them. According to her, Ascanio Ferara was an intern. In reality nobody with a drop of sense would hire him as an intern or anything else, except maybe as a traffic jam generator. If you stood him on a street corner, sooner or later some female driver would wreck.

Fifteen going on thirty, with glossy black hair and green eyes, Ascanio was beautiful. Not just pretty, not just attractive, beautiful. He had that whole fallen angel thing going—there was a devious, sly mind behind that innocent face and pretty eyes.