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  New books come out every Sunday

  Chapter 1

  The air was alive with flavor as my hands moved quickly and gracefully.

  My knife skills made the blade dance with the garlic as I minced it into the smallest pieces. One swoop of my bench scraper later and all the aromatics were together in the pan. They sizzled as they met the olive oil, and I only had a few moments to spare before they overcooked.

  I plucked the tomatoes off their vine and sliced them one by one. The slick sound of the knife cutting through their skin before rocking against the chopping board blended with the rush of traffic outside my window.

  New York City was busy as always. It was on nights like these that I was especially thankful for the solitude of my kitchen. It was my strongest belief that nothing was more comforting than the warmth of a lit stovetop while the world minded its own business outside.

  I added the tomatoes to the pan and mixed them around with the chilies, shallots, and garlic. A simple arrabbiata sauce, simple being the keyword. Simplicity was a blessing when the rest of life could be so complicated.

  As I flicked my wrist to keep the ingredients moving in the pan there was a knock at my window.

  I never hung the sign for my business outside my apartment on Sunday nights, but a few of my regulars always knew they could stop by for a quick bite whenever they saw the light through the curtains. I took the pan off the heat and went over to the window.

  Giggles and chatter from women’s voices came from the other side.

  “Good evening, girls,” I said as I pried the window open.

  Opening my window felt like sticking my head under a cold showerhead. The steam flooded from my apartment and escaped down the street.

  In an ideal world, the smell it carried would bring flocks of people over to my little apartment, and they’d buy as much food as they could fit in their stomachs. I’d serve hundreds of people every evening and make enough money to not have to work from home anymore.

  But I knew better than to take on more than I could handle. Twenty or so customers a night was enough for me. Besides, I didn’t think my fridge could take any more ingredients.

  “Hi, Roman,” the group of girls called back in unison.

  My apartment wasn’t that far away from a nightclub, so there was always a mess of drunk or high college students stumbling down the street where I lived.

  This particular group of girls, all zoology majors funnily enough, always stopped by on Saturday and Sunday nights. They were pretty with doll eyes and slim figures, but apart from that, there wasn’t much to say about them. Each one of the girls looked pretty much the same, but humans had a tendency to all blur into one.

  That’s what the other species thought of them anyway, but I never subscribed to that idea. I sometimes wondered what it must be like to be human, to be free of the politics and rules that came with being a shifter.

  “Same as usual?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  “You know it,” the chorus of bleached blondes chimed, and I was back in my kitchen in no time.

  I grabbed the loaf of focaccia bread I’d baked fresh that morning and cut it into the slices I needed. Each slice was gifted with a layer of my arrabbiata sauce, a few pieces of slow-roasted Calabrian chicken, and some mozzarella that I finished with a quick kiss from my chef’s torch. I closed up the sandwiches, wrapped them ready to go, and headed back to the window.

  “Here we go, girls.” I doled out the sandwiches one by one.

  The girls were all very drunk and practically stepped on each other to grab their food first. Within seconds they ripped open the paper wrapping and dug in. If there was ever such a thing as true love, then it was between drunk people and carbs.

  “All to your liking?” I asked, and a wave of satisfaction flooded through me as they nodded their heads and hummed noises that must’ve sounded very questionable to any passersby.

  “Are you even tasting it?” I laughed to myself.

  I wondered just how numbed their senses were, and whether I should take their enthusiasm for my cooking as a true compliment or not.

  The one with the shortest skirt stumbled closer to the window. She leaned her elbow on the window sill, cupped her chin in her hand, and looked up at me. Her eyes couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds, and her head wobbled from side to side.

  She reminded me of a bobblehead on a dashboard.

  “Roman, has anyone ever told you that you smell really, really good?” she slurred.

  It was clear she was trying to flirt with me. It was always something the humans tried, but I knew better than to give in to temptation.

  Besides, these girls could barely walk straight.

  “Like a garden,” the hammered girl continued as best she could. “Like herbs and… and…”

  “Apples,” I finished for her.

  Every shifter species had their own unique scent, and while shifters were better at noticing it, occasionally there would be a human who could pick up on the specific aroma. I was surprised this girl could smell anything at all through the haze of tequila that radiated from her and the rest of her group.

  “It’s from spending so much time cooking,” I lied and hoped she’d leave it there.

  I didn’t expect I’d have to actively try to hide my secret tonight, especially not from college students who were one sip away from drinking themselves into a different reality.

  “I like it,” she whispered back to me.

  Well, she probably thought she was whispering. What actually came out of her was a moderately loud mumble that made the girls behind her giggle. Another one stepped up beside her and joined her in staring up at me with big eyes.

  “What do you do when you’re not cooking?” the other girl asked. Her hand came up to fiddle with the side of my apron. “Like for fun?”

  “This is my fun,” I said and gently plucked her hand away.

  My hand was so big around hers, it reminded me just how much power we werebears had over humans without them ever knowing it.

  “Sorry.” I realized I was holding her hand for an uncomfortable amount of time, too lost in thought to let go, and I brought my hands back to my side.

  “Don’t be sorry,” the girl said, and the rest of the group giggled again.

  Human girls always seemed to do that when they were together. I thought it must be a secret call or something like that.

  “Do you want to come out with us?” the first girl asked. “The night is still young.”

  “Not for me. I’m exhausted,” I said, and it was true.

  My neck cracked from stiffness every time I turned my head. I needed a shower and to lie down.

  “Pretty please,” she begged.

  A man with less willpower wouldn’t have been able to say no.

  “Go on,” I motioned with my hand to the street behind them. “Go enjoy yourselves and stay out of trouble.”

  “Fine,” the two girls by the window sighed but eventually stepped away.

  “Goodnight, Roman!” all of them chanted as if they were a part of some weird fan club for my culinary skills.

  They stumbled off down the street and around the corner, and their laughs and yells reached me for about a minute afterward.

  The night air was nice, but I had to return to the stove and whip up some more sauces in case more of my regular customers came around.

  I made a jerk sauce, garlic aioli, pesto, and another arrabbiata. My wrists ached a little, but it was a welcome and rewarding feeling to have at the end of the night. I was halfway through adding mandolin-sliced potatoes to a pot of hot peanut oil when there was another knock at my window.

  Usually, I was capable of telling which regular customer was on the other side by their knock, but this one was unfamiliar to me.

  I wiped my hands on my apron and went over, and the smell that struck me as I opened the window was unmistakable.

  A wereraccoon. There was no doubt about it.

  Earthy and woody, like a cheap men’s cologne. It was a male, short like they all were, and his head barely came up to my windowsill. His hair was a spiked mess and there were smudges of dust caking his face. Upon closer look, I noticed he was wearing baggy work pants and had a hard hat in his left hand.

  It was unusual for shifter species to have jobs so close to humans, but I guessed for wereraccoons it was more understandable.

  They didn’t have their own designated territories so they had to make do with whatever community they could find safety in. As long as they didn’t reveal the secrets of the shifters, there wasn’t much of a problem, but him being at my window potentially created a problem for me.

  Shifters weren’t supposed to fraternize with other shifter species. I was already taking a huge risk by running my small business out of my apartment. This wereraccoon wasn’t the first shifter to come to my window, and I personally had no problem with interspecies interactions.

  In fact, some of my regulars were shifters, but with each new face came the danger of shutting me down or worse, reporting me to The Boss. I needed to handle this new customer with care and just enough suspicion to cover my ass. If I could smell what he was, then he could definitely smell what I was.

  “What would you like?” I asked.

  We stared at each other for a long second, and it seemed he was as unwilling to mention what we both knew about each other as I was.

  “I saw some girls walking past with these sandwiches,” he said with a wavering voice. “They said you sold them.”

  “I do,” I said. My face was still and my tone was even. I wasn’t about to give away any information that wasn’t completely necessary.

  He dug deep in his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. His hands trembled as he handed it to me. Only then did it occur to me that the creature was afraid of me. Afraid of what I was.

  “Can I have like five of what they had?” he requested.

  This small man wasn’t a threat, he was just ravenous as raccoons always were and needed a late-night snack. “Coming right up,” I said and counted the cash. He’d paid five dollars too much, so I gave it back to him. His mouth opened slightly, like he hadn’t expected my honesty.

  “Thanks,” he muttered in disbelief, and he pocketed the money.

  Back in the kitchen, I put together five more Calabrian chicken sandwiches and prepped a jerk pork sandwich for who I knew to expect later that night.

  Within moments, I was back at the window and handed the sandwiches to the wereraccoon who struggled to hold all of them without dropping one.

  He breathed in the smell of the fresh ingredients, and, as he did, his trembling eased. He muttered a quick “thanks,” and then was off down the street in the opposite direction the girls had left.

  Not even a second after my hand was on the window to close it again, that familiar voice I’d been expecting pierced the air.

  “Not closing up, are you?” he asked me.

  I looked down to see the werewolf who came by almost every night, in his human form of course. He was tall and wiry, with hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in weeks. Despite his unkempt appearance, he was nice enough, and I’d served him enough times to know that he wasn’t going to cause trouble.

  All he’d ever wanted from me was food.

  Besides, the constant smell of pot radiating from him was so strong, I hadn’t been able to smell that he was a shifter until I’d already served him a few times.

  We never spoke much, but he seemed like an alright dude. I was paranoid for weeks after I first realized what he was, but when nothing happened, and he kept coming back and spending more money, we established an unspoken understanding.

  I wondered if that wereraccoon would become a new regular, but the sensible part of me hoped that wasn’t the case.

  “You got here just in time,” I said to the werewolf. “Shouldn’t be a long wait.”

  I went back into the kitchen and with pure muscle memory grabbed his prepared sandwich and scooped up some of my fresh-made shoestring fries into a paper bag. I salted them lightly and brought the order over to my shifter customer, and he took it with a smile on his face.

  I didn’t know his name, and he didn’t know mine. We exercised our friendliness to each other without threatening our safety any more than we had to.

  It was nice to see that we could exist near each other without struggle, despite what the rest of our separate species had to say about it. I’d always known there was more to life than rivalry, and I only wished the rest of the world would see that, too.

  “Thanks, dude,” the werewolf said and handed me the money. “This stuff is the highlight of my night.”

  I wanted to make a joke about him choosing my cooking over howling at the moon, but I held it back. A joke like that would be a step too far. We’d never addressed what we were out loud to each other, and we weren’t about to start now.

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  “See you tomorrow,” the werewolf didn’t stop to check the food before he left.

  He trusted that whatever I made him was good, and it was impossible to not feel complimented by that. He left somewhere into the night, and it was finally time for me to close up and clean.

  I cleaned as I went along, but there was always some more work to be done at the end of the night.

  I took a moment to breathe and relax before getting to it.

  The leftovers went into containers for tomorrow, and I made myself a sandwich for the night with ingredients that wouldn’t last until the next day.

  As I wiped the countertops, I daydreamed about the post-work shower where I could wash off the smell of onions and garlic, and that daydream turned into a much greater one.

  A dream where instead of an old apron, I was wearing chef whites, and instead of my tiny kitchen I was working in a five-star restaurant. I was serving food to the highest-paid supermodels, politicians, and astronauts who made terrible jokes like “your food is out of this world.” I didn’t have to fake laugh because I didn’t need to win their approval. I was the best chef in the country, and I didn’t need anything from anyone.

  I could leave the shifter life behind and finally start to live how I wanted.

  Other shifters, especially my own bear species, respected me because of who my parents were and where we sat in the food chain, but it never felt like enough.

  I wanted to be respected for something I did myself. I wanted something to be proud of, something I’d earned.

  A knock at the door shook me from my daydreaming, and I let out a sigh.

  No one ever wanted to see me this late, I doubted most of my relatives or former friends even knew where I lived. My parents never wanted to see me, and my brother was too busy learning the ropes to be our next leader to care about what I was up to.

  I searched my brain for a memory of myself ordering anything to be delivered, but I found nothing. I stayed still and hoped whoever was on the other side of the door hadn’t heard me moving beforehand.

  Just leave me alone, I thought.

  I controlled my breathing and didn’t make a sound, but it wasn’t enough.

  There was a second knock, and then a third, and soon enough it was clear they weren’t going anywhere. I took off my shoes and socks with care because moving around in my bare feet would be a lot quieter than the soles of my sneakers hitting the floor, and just socks would be way too slippery.

  I crept over to my knife rack and took the paring knife out of its slot because it would be easiest to conceal, and I hid it in the waistband of my jeans before heading over to the door.

  I cracked it open, just an inch, and tested the waters for danger.

  If whoever was on the other side was an imminent threat, they would undoubtedly push the door further open. If they were not a threat, or worse, a threat playing the long game, they would wait for me to open the door fully.

  Either way, I would get more insight into what they might be thinking.

  No force pushed the door open against me, and instead, all that happened was a deep voice speaking.

  “Roman Hunter?” the voice questioned.

  My breath stopped.

  They knew my name, but I couldn’t tell who it was from the voice alone. Every nerve ending was lit up like a million matches. My hand went to the thin knife hidden in my waistband.

  “Who is it?” I asked in as low a pitch as I could manage.

  “Open the door and we’ll tell you… This isn’t business that your neighbors need to hear.”

  We? Multiple. Not good.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door fully. My hand moved quickly away from the knife, but I couldn’t let them know I was armed, even if it was only a paring knife.

  When I pulled the door fully open, I was faced with two other werebears.

  The scent coming off them hit me instantly, but their sheer size and stature would’ve given them away even if that didn’t. They were older than me, I’d say around forty, with salt-and-pepper beards, and traps that made their necks look as thick as tree trunks. One was bald, and the other was balding, but they wore the same scowl on their faces.

  I was tall, six foot three to be exact, but these men met me at eye level.

  “Am I supposed to know what this is about?” I asked.

  “Can we come in?” the balding man countered.

 

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