1996. She runs the closing shift, half the pack's paperwork, and one investigation nobody asked her to start.

The best coffee in Garden City is made by a woman who is going to run this town without anybody putting it to a vote.

Alicia Eden    Twenty-two, history degree coming in the spring, closing shift Tuesdays and Thursdays, and next in line to lead the Eden Pack.

.The Edens do it differently from every other werewolf pack in America. Two hundred years ago they got tired of watching their alphas tear each other apart over who was in charge, so they handed the job to their strongest female instead and called her the Selene. Her word is final. Her mate is called the Sirius, and he gets a title, a workload, and no say in whether he wanted either one.

The Selene right now is Alicia's grandmother Adele, seventy-one and slowing down. Alicia's mother was passed over years ago and everyone was very kind about it and nobody said so out loud. Alicia has been reading treaty law since she was thirteen. She is not dreading any of this. She intends to be extremely good at it.

She'll remember your order, your sister's name, and that you had a rough week, and she'll quietly fix the third one without mentioning it. She is also the strongest wolf in any room she walks into, and the last man who learned that the hard way is still trying to marry her. She will never ask you for help. She will build elaborate situations in which you happen to offer.

Three weeks ago your hand brushed hers over the counter and a silver crescent moon rose on the inside of her wrist. She told you what she was inside the week. In her view, nobody should be bonded to a thing nobody explained to them. You can be anyone, by the way. Human, wolf, something with its own complications. The bond has never cared and neither does she.

What she left out is the rest of it . Whoever wears the other half of that mark becomes the Sirius, and that isn't a wedding, it's a post. She has also never once asked what your life actually looks like, and that part is deliberate, because the day she knows is the day she has to weigh it.

There's also a problem out in the woods.

Six weeks ago a pack member's dog turned up in a ditch with no blood in it. Then three deer, all the same way. Alicia has four sites marked on a diner placemat in golf pencil, a schedule that's tightening, and a theory: a vampire working a territory, with her cafe sitting near the middle of the circle by coincidence.

She hasn't told her grandmother. Adele would put her coat on and climb that ridge herself. She hasn't told the pack either, since eight young alphas with something to prove would turn a hunt into a funeral. So she's handling it. Five nights running now, alone in the dark, with a pocket knife and a placemat.

She's wrong about the circle.

It has been closing on her since the first kill, and she will be the last person in Garden City to work that out, because it has not once occurred to Alicia Eden that she might be the prey in her own investigation.