“Yeah. Get the fuzzy ones.” Something told me she’d like those. “My shoes won’t fit her, so once I get her sizes someone will have to go shopping.” Until then, she’d have to go without underwear, because I was not sharing mine. There was a limit to my generosity, after all. Fortunately, she didn’t have enough up top to need a bra for comfort.

“Anything else?”

“Nope. Hurry, please.” Jace took off down the hall at a jog, bare feet silent on the hardwood, and when he reached the top step I remembered the last crucial detail. “Jace!” I hissed, hoping not to wake the rest of the lodge.

He stopped, one hand already on the banister. “Yeah?”

“Please don’t wake up my father. Or Michael.” Nothing in the world could make my father’s firstborn keep a secret from him.

“No worries,” Jace said with that irresistible grin, his blue eyes sparkling like the sea at midday. Then he bounded down the steps, and out the front door a moment later.

“Get her name,” Marc said, his voice the very essence of authority. “You need at least that by the time everyone wakes up, if you don’t want to get us all in serious trouble.”

“I know.” Boy, did I know.

My hand was already on the doorknob when Dr. Carver spoke up for the first time. “You really believe she didn’t know how to Shift?”

I met the skepticism in his eyes with certainty in my own. “Yes. I don’t know why yet, or how it’s even possible, but I believe she has no memory of ever having Shifted. Her reactions are too genuine. She was legitimately scared to Shift.” Which I knew because I’d heard her heart beat harder and smelled fear in her sweat as she’d prepared for the transformation.

My eyes were drawn to Marc’s when I felt him watching me. He knew what I was thinking: that Elias Keller might well have stumbled upon the first female stray in recorded history. At least, the first verifiable female stray in history.

But neither of us said that. My reputation wasn’t solid enough for me to start spouting the werecat equivalent of conspiracy theories and alien-abduction stories. I’d need concrete proof before making such claims.

“Go on,” Marc said, telling me with his eyes to keep quiet.

I stepped back into the tabby’s room and closed the door, and the first thing to catch my eye was not the small girl still huddled beneath a blanket in her corner. It was the window over the closest twin bed. Or rather, the first rays of sunlight peeking through said window.