Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
Book Description: Fired from his job at the Supernatural Enforcers Agency due to his short fuse, Zane Matthews starts his own detective agency. Mostly it's cheating spouses with a little bit of underwear theft, and Zane spends his days trying to learn how to control his anger and get back into the SEA. But that changes when the beautiful and kind Sky Danvers walks into his office. She thinks she's being stalked, and his howling bear will do anything to protect her. Even if it involves attending yoga classes and eating tofu. But rare species are going missing across the country, and Sky is the rarest of them all. Can he save her, learn how to control his temper and prove that he's the man she needs?Trigger Warning: There is mention of abduction in this book but it reads more like a zoo situation. Still, take care of yourself if this is your particular trigger point.
This book was published in 2016. This is my first time reading it.
So this is book 5 of the
Supernatural Enforcement Agency series and I haven't read books 1-4
yet. I hope that's not going to be a problem. I don't much care if
it is because I'm not reading the rest.
We begin with a prologue and our
protagonist Zane is trying to get his former boss at the SEA
to investigate a series of underwear thefts. Gerry (a snake
shifter) isn't interested in panty-gate and tells Zane to report it
to the police department. Zane's inner bear doesn't take this news
too well and Zane flips it off, telling it that they wouldn't be in
this mess if the bear knew how to control its anger.
So, yay. Another shifter book where
the animal and human are somehow separate entities. I don't
understand these, y'all. ((Note from future me: I heard "his inner bear" did this and "her inner unicorn" did that so often I thought I was in one of those fucking Grey books listening to that bitch talk about her inner goddess.))
Zane has always had trouble controlling
his bear's rage and last year he was fired from the SEA for being
unable to control his temper. Things are better now because
Zane has discovered paintball. Every Saturday he runs around and
shoots random strangers with balls of paint and that keeps his bear
under control. Because we all know how much bears long to shoot
humans with balls of paint.
Zane is working as a PI now,
exclusively taking shifter clients. He's hoping to find a case to
take to the SEA as a way to get his foot back in the door. I have no
idea why he thought stolen underpants was the way to go but whatevs.
There's a knock at the door and a
stunning blonde woman comes in. Something about her elicits a
protective response in Zane immediately. She introduces herself as
Sky and tells Zane that someone is following her and she's scared.
He can't get out of his chair fast enough. He takes her delicate
hand in his and promises to protect her. As soon as he touches her,
Sky knows that he's her mate and her inner unicorn paws at the
ground.
Yes, gentle readers, we have a unicorn
shifter. Bet that comes as a complete fucking surprise since the
title didn't give it away or anything.
All of a sudden it's 8 months ago. I
know this because the book helpfully says “Eight months ago”. But we're still in the prologue. What are you doing, Price?
Zane is pissed at
his lawyer who managed to keep him from jail but couldn't save him
from community service or restitution. Zane had been charged with
stalking, assault and dangerous inability to control the inner bear.
So.....does
everyone know about shifters in this universe or are they in some
kind of special shifter court? ((Note from future me: humans are aware of shifters in this universe. They're living in a town with a larger than average shifter population and the court was, indeed, a special one run by some kind of shifter agency.))
Zane had been hired
by his highschool girlfriend Melissa to get some dirt on her
ex-husband who was trying to stiff her out of alimony. Zane followed
the guy around for awhile and then confronted him which ended in Zane
shifting and mauling the dude. Sounds like a peach. Our prologue
ends with Zane asking Juliet (a vampire) how he can get his job back. She
tells him to get some kind of real job and prove he can control his
temper.
Chapter one starts
and I have no idea if it's still 8 months ago or if it's present
time. Price really could have handled the above without actually
transporting us confusingly through time. We find ourselves in a
dive bar. The bartender Blake (a grizzly shifter) is eyeing a
patron at the bar warily. The guy has been drinking steadily for
hours and Blake can't get a read on what kind of species he is. He
thinks feline but he isn't sure because something about the guy is
majorly off.
Blake tells us that
the bar is not a nice place. It's in a bad part of town and
frequented by male shifters who only wanted to fight or fuck (or
both). Human females with a bad-boy complex came through here in
droves looking to be picked up by one of these dangerous bad boys.
Several humans have tried to pick up the bad ass but he's not
interested.
A bunch of people
file in and someone jars the arm of the bad ass. A brief fight ensues.
Eventually Blake realizes the bad ass is no longer in the bar but he
doesn't know where he went. Blake's pissed because the guy owes him
for four beers so he follows his scent out of the bar. There's blood
in the alley and Blake can smell a tiger and a bull shifter. The
scent of the bad ass ends there and Blake wonders what happened to
him.
Now we're back with
Zane in anger management class. It's not going well. He pretty much
just ends up getting angrier in each session and fighting with
someone in the parking lot. After he gets kicked out of the classes,
he starts his own PI agency but things aren't good at first. Cases
are scarce and he's barely making any money.
Now we're with the
guy who fought the bad ass in the club. His name is Booker
and he's a gorilla shifter. He tells us that the bad ass from the
bar was a sabre-tooth tiger shifter which explains why he was so
“primitive” and hard to identify. Booker is hot on the trail of
a mammoth shifter now.
Back with Zane.
I'm getting whiplash. This is all one chapter, y'all. He's at a
party trailing some guy whose wife wants to catch cheating on his
diet. Juliet the vampire is there and he tries to get his job
back but she tells him he hasn't proven himself yet. A guy named Christian rocks up and tries to swerve on Juliet but she is super disinterested.
Now we're in some
bookshop. An enormous prehistoric penguin shifter gets kidnapped
by Booker. He's really on a roll.
Back with Zane.
WILL CHAPTER ONE NEVER END??? His secretary Mercy is a dove
shifter. And a stripper. There's a combination you don't see every
day. Nothing really happens. He's on the case of a missing
crocodile (pet, not shifter) and Mercy is bitching about being moved
to the day shift at the strip club because she's 30.
How does she work
in the strip club if she's Zane's secretary?
The chapter finally
ends and the next one is labeled as Chapter Four.
What the fuck?
Okay, I went back
and looked and there was no Chapter Two or Three. It went from One
to Four.
WHAT KIND OF HELL
AM I IN???
Chapter Four tells
us that Zane found the crocodile and then went to go see Melissa. He finds another shifter in her home and he can smell sex. When he confronts her about it, she gives him some big song and dance about the shifter being her cousin and he just finished having sex with some random woman. Zane doesn't buy it but she puts her hands on his face and tells him he has nothing to worry about. They need to be discreet until her divorce is finalized but after that she's all his. Suddenly he believes every word she says and turns to goo. He leaves, dreaming of their lives together.
Now we're with Sky.
She's a yoga instructor at a gym mostly frequented by shifters. The
co-owner of the gym is an elk shifter named Erik and he's
pretty much disgusting. He hits on women and fat shames anyone who
isn't a size 0. He's tried to corner Sky multiple times, even coming
into the women's locker room while she was changing. He asks her out
for drinks after her class and she turns him down. He throws a
little fit but finally walks off and leaves her alone. Sky heads for
the bus.
While she's waiting
for the bus, she senses someone watching her. She finally makes out
a pair of binoculars coming from the roof of the gym. She assumes
it's Erik and doesn't worry too much about it. I feel like a normal person would be worried about it which really makes me wonder about Sky.
Binoculars actually
belong to Booker who is watching Sky in preparation of kidnapping
her.
Back with Zane.
He's finally getting that underwear job so maybe our time warp is
about to end. The lady who hired him is paying him in pies. It's
all very stupid. She takes in laundry for the shifters in her
neighborhood and someone keeps stealing bras and thongs off the line.
Back with Sky.
She's noticed she's being followed and calls the cops but they can't
seem to catch the people doing it. She wonders if it's her
possessive ex Ethan (wolf shifter) who can't seem to let her
go.
Back with Zane. He
finds the underwear thieves. It turns out to be three teenage possum
shifters who are selling the underwear to their friends. He gives
them a good bear scare and then takes them back to the lady who hired
him to let her decide on their punishment.
Back with Sky. I'm
seriously getting whiplash here. How long is this fucking book?
ARRRGH. I'm only 23% through somehow. Sky's landline is acting up.
One end of the receiver falls apart and she finds a bug in it. Not
the insect kind – a listening device. She's surprised that someone
is actually tapping her phone. And that someone has gotten inside her apartment to
tamper with it.
We're back with
Booker. It turns out he's been kidnapping rare shifters to auction
them off. His tip says that Sky is the rarest of them all but he has
no proof. No one has ever seen her shift (her ex Ethan has but
Booker doesn't know that yet). He's starting to think he's wasting
his time on Sky. He gets a tip about a Sivatherium (extinct animal
that was a cross between a giraffe and an okapi) and decides to
follow up on that instead.
Somehow we're on
Chapter Eight now. Where the fuck did Five, Six and Seven go? WHAT
IS HAPPENING?????
Chapter Eight has
this sub-heading: Present day – all caught up now.
Good to know.
We're back with Sky in Zane's office.
He's all big and alpha and snarly and it's turning her on big time.
He questions her about her issues and then gets some general
information from her about her life. She tells him about Ethan. He
keeps huffing and growling and it's getting her hotter and hotter.
She thinks it because he's her mate but I think she's just horny.
You know.
Horny.
Because she's a unicorn.
I give up.
Anyway, she tells us she feels her
vagina sitting up and quivering in interest.
Um.
I'm 43 years old and my vagina has
never sat up without me.
That's just weird.
Sky goes off on some fantasy about
unibears running around and the image is pretty darn adorable.
We land back in Booker's head. He's
found the odd shifter he was tipped off about but it turns out she's
nothing more than a regular giraffe. She saw his face, though, so
she has to die.
We're back with Zane. He's sweeping
Sky's apartment for bugs and so far he's found three. She's scared
and that has all his protective hackles up. She finally gets around
to asking him about his fee and he falters a bit. He's in this for
other reasons now and he tells her to pay whatever she can. She
tells him that's a poor way to run a business and he tells her that
they can come to some kind of arrangement. She raises her brows at
him and he blushes, telling her that sounded way filthier than he
meant it to.
Yeah right.
Zane wants to confront Ethan but Sky is
no longer sure it's him. It doesn't seem like something Ethan would
do. She describes him to Zane as an asshole with a bad temper and
Zane is chagrined to find that Ethan sounds a lot like him. Sky
tells him about Erik and Zane finds him to be a real possibility. He
calls in a favor with the SEA and asks for them both to be checked
out. The background checks yield nothing useful.
Zane gets new locks for Sky's apartment
and beefs up her security. He wants her to either leave town or move
in with him but she balks at that. He's standing in her apartment
thinking about how she has him.....ahem.....eager enough to "hammer
nails through wood" with just his.....ahem......little cub, if you know what I mean.....when
he notices a red SUV parked outside of her apartment. It's the same
one he saw earlier in the day when they were shopping for locks.
Zane heads outside and yanks the otter
shifter right through the window of the SUV. Sky is behind him and
she quickly tells Zane that the otter is her neighbor's boyfriend.
It turns out he was at the mall earlier to buy a ring and he's been
sitting out in the SUV working up the nerve to propose. So that was
all useless.
Zane goes to yoga class with Sky that
evening. He's there to keep an eye on her and also to sweep the gym for bugs. He ends up finding several more and disables them all. He
also overhears Erik talking about how he wants to......ahem.....floss Sky's teeth with his little elk if you know what I mean. Zane's bear doesn't care for that at
all and Zane is inclined to let his bear handle it.
We interrupt those festivities to
listen to Booker whine about the auction and how getting Sky isn't as
easy as he thought it'd be. None of the bugs are working anymore and
now she's hanging around with a 6'10” bear all the time. He
doesn't even know for sure if she's actually a unicorn or just a
stupid horse. He's had a tip on a gigantopithecus (think King Kong)
in NYC so he decides to head up there and see if he can bag it. Not
sure I'd take on King Kong but whatevs.
We take a side trip into Juliet's head. She's been invited on a date by Christian and goes out of curiosity more than anything else. Something about him makes her uneasy so she calls a friend to keep an eye on him.
We're back with Zane and his bruised
knuckles. It had started out mild – he had pinned Erik up against
the wall and told him to leave Sky alone. Erik had started sobbing
and apologizing and Zane had let him go in disgust. But then Erik
called Zane a.....ahem......baby exit, if you know what I mean.....and Zane didn't care for
that much. Erik's lucky he only got punched.
((Side note: Price completely forgot
Melissa's name during this chapter and referred to her as Melanie at least twice.
Sigh.))
Sky suggests dinner and ends up taking
him to a vegetarian place. Zane is highly suspicious of everything
on his plate. He sniffs it and licks it but doesn't seem to actually
be able to eat any of it. The image of him suspiciously licking his tofu is darling. Sky is amused at first but then she starts
to feel bad for him. He's obviously trying not to tell her that tofu
sucks but she can tell he's not into it.
Of course he's not into it. When's the last time you saw a fucking bear opt for tofu?
After dinner they head back to Sky's
apartment and Zane sweeps for bugs again. Sky checks her machine and
there's a profane/threatening message from Ethan. Zane overhears it
and gets all growly. She tries to calm him down and he seems amused
by her efforts. He kisses the inside of her wrist which gets her all
swoony and then he tells her to go take a shower so she prances off
to do as he says.
What the hell was that?
Sky gets better acquainted with her
right hand while in the shower, if you know what I mean, and then
shaves her southern pelt into a pretty little heart. She has big
plans to seduce Zane but when she comes out of the bathroom in only a
towel there's a gator shifter on her couch instead. He introduces
himself as Wayne, a friend of Zane's and shows her SEA ID.
We weirdly land in the head of the
sabre-tooth tiger shifter for just a bit. He's being held in a cage
and he's pretty pissed about it. Some asshole comes in to take all
their pictures and ends up dropping his keys while trying to wrestle
the giant penguin into submission. Sabre snags them.
Back with Zane and his bloody hands.
He's given Ethan a bit of a beating. We actually learn nothing else
and ALL OF A FUCKING SUDDEN IT'S FUCKING CHAPTER 16.
We're back in Sky's head. It's pretty
full of thoughts of Zane naked so there's not a lot of room in here
for us. When she looks at him, she sighs. And not just any sigh.
I'm going to direct quote this bitch.
“She awoke in the
morning to find Wayne gone and Zane snoring on her couch looking like
a giant, drooling angel. Unicorn sigh. Which was like a regular
sigh but more mystical.”
Fucking book.
Sabre ends up killing most of the
personnel at the.....I have no idea where they're being held....a
lab?.......a warehouse?.....no clue. But anyway, he kills a bunch of
people before they manage to subdue him again. The bodies get dumped
by the docks and the SEA comes to investigate. Nothing really
happens except we meet a bunch of new characters that I actually
think are the characters from the first four books. I don't care
enough to learn their names.
Zane has to work an actual job to make
actual money so he takes Sky along on a stakeout. They chat while he
watches the house of his subject. She asks about his parents and
he's carrying a lot of pain around that subject. He gets so upset
that he almost goes full bear (claws and fur pop out) but manages to control it. She pats
his head and calls him a good boy which amuses the hell out of him.
It's Chapter Nineteen now. I fucking
give up.
At 3am Sky wakes up to find a huge bear
in her kitchen eating a stack of pizzas. She tries to talk to him
but he's a fucking bear and doesn't speak English. Finally he shifts
back into human and she doesn't even hide the fact that she's
checking out his little cub. Which apparently isn't very little.
Zane ignores it. He's frustrated about all the tofu he's had to eat
and he rants for a bit about how he's a fucking bear and he wasn't
meant to eat so many vegetables. Luckily Sky finds it adorable and
she moves closer “aware of the weapon he was packing
downstairs.” Yes, it actually says that. It's a direct quote,
y'all.
Sky decides to let him see the true
nature of her beast and she shifts. Zane is stunned. He thought she
was just a horse all this time.
We take a hop into the head of some
kind of rare tortoise shifter. She's about to be kidnapped by
Booker's men when a masked man rocks up and takes care of that
nonsense. I get the feeling this masked superhero-esque shifter is a recurring character in this series. Later, Juliet is frustrated that they can never seem to find the guy.
Now we're in Booker's head. He wants
the auction moved up. He's tired of this nonsense. He's been doing
this for ten years and never had a problem but this year he's losing
men left and right. The giant penguin does nothing but cry. The
mammoth in the cage next to hers has it bad for the penguin and causes all kinds of trouble.
The King Kong thing (which happens to be a woman) is boring and not
likely to bring in much money and Sabre has a definite
psychological disorder (Booker's assessment, not mine. I think Sabre
just doesn't like being kidnapped much.).
Zane takes Sky paintballing next. She
enjoys it and he finds her enthusiasm immensely sexy. Nothing
happened.
Another section about the auction not
going well. Shoot me now.
More Juliet being suspicious of Christian. Impale me on a spike.
Back with Zane and Sky. They decide to
shower after the paintball game and....somehow....instead of getting
clean, things get absolutely filthy.
We finally have our first sex scene!
I'll give this to Price, she
writes sex better than she writes dialogue.
It's Chapter Twenty-Three now. I've
stopped trying to figure this numbering thing out. Price tells us two weeks have
passed. Maybe that's what happened to the missing chapters. Sky
gives us some pretty pervy details about her sex life with Zane that
I'm just going to skip. Let's just say that yoga opens up some
pretty odd possibilities.
Zane is supposed to meet Sky after her
class but he doesn't show up. He doesn't respond to her texts either
which is unusual. In fact, just a few days ago, he answered a text
while in the middle of battling an alligator so it's strange that he's not responding. Sky doesn't seem too
worried about this for some reason. She just takes the bus home.
Once she gets home, it seems to sink in how weird it is that she
hasn't heard from him. She's got some kind of tracking thing on her
phone that finds his phone (and he has it to find hers) so she uses
it and finds out that his phone is in the park.
We skip to Zane. He's tied to a tree
with silver chains which diminishes his powers and physically hurts
him. Melissa has somehow overpowered him and captured him. He gets
some kind of flashback to being in a similar situation and he
suddenly realizes Melissa did this to him once before. In high
school.
Melissa admits that she's a witch and
she enchanted him all those years ago which is why he's always been
willing to run to her aid before. She needed someone big and
powerful at the time to make sure her life was as easy as possible.
Her touch can persuade him of anything but
lately it's been wearing off so she needs to recast it. She tells
him that he won't remember any of this when it's done and he won't
want Sky anymore either.
Zane is going crazy at this point but
the silver chains keep his bear from emerging. Melissa is just
standing there bad guy monologue-ing all over the place with a giant
bear shifter chained to a tree. Seriously, does no one notice this? What's wrong with the people in this town that they are willing to overlook some woman tying a man to a tree?
Melissa tells him she married her ex because he had more money than Zane
could ever hope to make but she got tired of him and decided it would
be nice to have Zane again. He's “hot and great in bed, super
protective and easy to manipulate”. Melissa's plan is to recast
the spell and then.....ahem....take Zane's seed.....to make sure he
stays loyal to her forever. She thinks a cub will do that.
Sky rocks up at this point. She tells
Melissa to leave Zane alone. Melissa tries to zap her with some
magic but it has no effect. Because Sky is a magical being? I don't
know. Price doesn't explain it. ((Note from future me: Later Sky tells Zane that magic has no effect on her because she's magical herself.)) Sky shifts and her unicorn beats
the absolute crap out of Melissa. Melissa goes down and Sky goes to
nuzzle Zane against the tree. She mostly just succeeds in poking the
hell out of him with her horn and he tells her to get her “horniness
under control”.
Okay. That was kind of funny and I
probably would have made the joke myself if Price hadn't.
Sky shifts back and stands there having
a conversation in the park with Zane despite the fact she's 100%
naked at this point. Zane doesn't mind but in these parts, she'd
definitely get arrested for that. Apparently people in this town are very used to nude people being out and about since it has such a huge shifter population. She's surprised that he's not
clawing at the tree in fury right now and he tells her that he's
distracted by her boobs. Plus she makes him feel calmer.
Before the section ends we find out
that Booker has been having Sky trailed and the spy has seen her
shift. They know she's a unicorn for sure now.
Zane and Sky go to the SEA to report
Melissa for crimes against shifters or something. They're
interrogated separately and Zane has to deal with all of his agent
friends coming in to laugh at him for being under a spell for 15
years and not knowing it. When he finally gets done, he finds out
that Sky has gone to the coffee shop across the street. Which just
seems super dumb. I hate it when authors make their characters do
dumb things they'd never, ever do just to make it easier for their
plot.
Sure enough, Sky gets grabbed and
drugged and abducted.
Zane goes crazy when he realizes she's
gone. He immediately shifts and goes running through the SEA offices
in fury. The polar bear shifter in residence wrestles him down and
sits on him for an entire hour until he calms down enough to shift
back. Stupid Zane. An hour is a very long time that you could have
been looking for Sky. The SEA has looked into things and
surveillance cameras picked up the van she was taken away in but the
van was stolen and later found under a bridge so that lead goes
nowhere. Zane tells them that she's a unicorn and one of the agents
begins to put things together.
Sky comes to in the warehouse or
whatever it is. Booker tells her the buyers will be here in 30
minutes so she should try to make herself as presentable as possible.
She starts to give him trouble but stops when he threatens to kill
the giant penguin if Sky doesn't cooperate. The mammoth pretty much
loses his fucking mind at the idea. I hope those two get a happy
ending.
Not like that. Get your minds out of
the gutter.
Sabre fills her in about what's going
on. He gets tazed for his trouble but he just smirks at Booker which
pisses Booker off. I really like Sabre, y'all. I wonder if he gets
his own book.
What am I thinking? I'm not reading
another one of these. Holy fuck.
We're back with Zane and the SEA agents
that I suspect were books 1-4. Juliet is also back. She's
pretty high-ranking in the organization and it could be because she
has the ability to make shifters do her bidding. They're all outside
of an abandoned arena and Juliet is pretty sure Sky is inside. I
have no idea if she's right or not because Price hasn't ever told me
where this holding place is.
Zane and Juliet intercept a couple of
the buyers and steal their clothes so they are now in disguise. For
all the fucking good that does. Every shifter in that place is going
to sniff out Zane pretty quick and I'm guessing the vampire isn't
hard to identify either. How many vampires are running around this
stupid town? ((Note from future me: Apparently they're pretty common in this place too.))
Oh. Price actually address this issue
by saying Juliet douses them both in cheap perfume to hide their
scents. Okay. I'll give her that one. Although I find it hard to
believe that perfume alone could fool a bunch of shifters.
They snag the couple's invitation and
rock up to the area. Zane's bear is howling inside him right now.
We're back with Sky. Buyers have been
parading past her for awhile now and she's not liking it much. From
most of them, she senses lust and figures they want to fuck a
unicorn......
Oh, my God. I can't stop laughing
right now. No one else is going to find this funny either. But in
my crochet groups people constantly post things that start with “Has
anyone ever.....” and the ending is always really stupid. “Has
anyone ever made a blanket with blanket yarn?” I always want to
strangle them because, of
course, someone has at some point, right? So my standard
response (in my head) is that unless that sentence ends with “fucked
a unicorn” then the answer is always going to be yes. And here we
are. It makes me happy.
Anyway, she senses that most want an
exotic pet for sex (you shouldn't have sex with pets, people) but a
couple of them are giving off vibes that they want to barbecue her
instead. Those people worry her more. She's really hoping someone
will buy her as a pet for a spoiled little princess instead.
She and Sabre are attracting the most
attention and he's just a madman about it. I fucking love this guy.
He's made it very clear to everyone who approaches his cage exactly
what kind of mayhem they'll be buying if they purchase him. The
smart ones are giving his cage a wide berth but Sky notices a few
women who are more than a little hot for the bad boy.
Sky is keeping an eye on Sabre. She
feels like he has some kind of plan going on in his head and she
intends to piggy-back that plan if she gets the chance. She has
nothing. She sees a vampire and a huge guy in a ridiculous suit
heading her way and doesn't recognize Zane for half a second in his
bad wig. But her unicorn goes nuts and she realizes he's found her.
Zane and Juliet approach her cage and
they have a quiet conversation. Juliet wants to take down the entire
organization of course and tells Zane not to kill anyone while she
takes a look around. Zane makes no promises. Sky tells him she
loves him and that pisses him off royally. He thinks she's saying it
because she's given up and she doesn't trust him to get her out of
the situation alive. He tells her to take it back and then say it again
later when he has his mouth......ahem......in her southern hemisphere
if you know what I mean.
Sky tells him she's heard the guards
mentioning a control room. Maybe if he can get in there and turn off
the power, the locks on the cages will open. He doesn't want to leave her. He's
been giving all the buyers a nasty growl if they even look at her and
he wants to stay there and do that. She encourages him to go,
though. They need to get out of there. They are wickedly
outnumbered at this point. If only she knew that they only had to
let Sabre go and everything would probably be okay. Between him and
Zane and maybe the mammoth, I think things would tilt in their favor.
Juliet gets herself captured. Stupid
vampire. Apparently the little wristbands everyone was given as they
walked through the door has some kind of tazing device built right in
and it's strong enough to subdue vampires. It turns out Christian is the head of this little criminal empire and he's planning
to keep her for his own personal pet.
We're back with Sky. Booker and his
goons have let Sabre out. Sky is expecting something dramatic but
Sabre just gives them an evil little smile. He winks at her as he's
led away and this gives her hope.
Zane has managed to take out a security
guard. He puts on the uniform including a handy bullet-proof vest
and a utility belt. He easily finds a control room but it's full of
people – three humans, a snake shifter and a jaguar shifter. The
jaguar seems suspicious of him but no one else pays him any
attention. The control room overlooks the area floor and Zane
watches as Sabre is brought out. The snake shifter mans the
microphone and begins giving the potential buyers stats about Sabre.
They leave out the murdering part. Sabre is encouraged to shift and
he does so with a dangerous little smile. Zane can't figure out what
he's up to.
Bidding is insane and Sabre is
eventually sold to some woman for over 10 million dollars. Through
it all he's just smiling in a way that Zane can't understand. He
makes his way downstairs to the holding area hoping to get a chance
to talk to the guy. Sabre is now cuffed in his cage with his buyer inspecting her merchandise. Zane wishes someone would give Sabre
pants because he's apparently impressive down below (Zane calls it a
motorboat – wouldn't a yacht be more impressive here?) and he
doesn't want Sky to catch sight of it. Is he afraid she's going to want to take a sail?
Zane steps up close and kind of nudges
Sabre to clue him in that something is about to go down and then all hell breaks loose. Zane shifts and starts taking
people down left and right. Sabre can't shift because of the silver
handcuffs but it doesn't really hinder him much. He starts killing
everything within reach.....and laughing the entire time. I love
this guy, y'all. He's the only reason I'm sitting her voluntarily
reading this book on a Friday morning. Eventually Zane shifts back
to find the keys to the cuffs. Sabre is generally enjoying himself a
little too much and Zane growls at him not to play with his food.
Sabre is a little suspicious of Zane
until he explains that his girl is in one of the cages. Sabre finally
speaks and asks Zane what he wants him to do. Zane tells him to just
make a little mayhem as a distraction and Sabre smiles.
Back in the cages with Sky. The
penguin is led away and the mammoth is about to lose it. Sky notices
that he's close to shifting which is incredible because they've all
been drugged to keep it from happening. His anger about someone
touching the penguin is pushing him past the drugs though. Sky takes
advantage of that. She casually starts wondering what might happen
to the penguin and gets a little graphic. The mammoth is enraged and
shifts. The guards don't know what to do. The cage isn't going to
hold him but they can't tranq him this close to auction time. No one
will want to buy an unconscious animal. Sky encourages the mammoth
to break out and save his girl.
Back with Zane. He's pretending to be
a security guard again while Sabre is just tearing the fucking place
apart.
Wait. Shouldn't he be naked? He shifted earlier so he should be naked now. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR FUCKING STORY, PRICE! This crap annoys me more than anything else.
Zane gets back to the control booth intending to get power shut
off. The jaguar shifts and attacks. Zane shifts too but he's slow
and the jaguar has his teeth in Zane's stomach before he can react.
Zane is hurt and bleeding and he thinks it might be a catastrophic
injury but he can't stop. He can't get the jaguar off him so he
starts ramming the cat into the control panel. Eventually he hits
the right thing.
Back in the cages, Sky has pissed the
mammoth off to the point he busts out of his cage. She's thrilled
until the guards start shooting him with a metric crap ton of
sedative, having no choice in the matter now. He starts crashing around and luckily falls on Queen
Kong's cage. She shifts and begins literally tearing people apart.
Sky is hopeful. And then her cage opens and she realizes Zane has
turned off the locks.
We're back with Christian and Juliet.
He's calling her darling and describing how he's going to keep her
captive forever as kind of a forced bride. She's not liking it much
but he keeps tazing her so there's not much she can do. Suddenly she
smells someone coming. Someone dangerous and sexy (her words, not
mine). The door splinters open and Sabre is there. Christian about
wets his pants. He tries to go for his gun but Sabre shifts and
makes quick work of destroying Christian. Juliet enjoys his screams.
Meanwhile, the captive shifters are all
free now and boy are they pissed. Zane walks through the place
seeing murder and mayhem going on all around him. He should probably
get out of that security uniform before he's mistaken as a bad guy.
Then again, he should be naked because he shifted in the control room.
He's pretty badly injured but determined to find Sky. He's scared to
death that something might have happened to her.
Back with the mammoth now. He's
shifted back to human form and he's high as fuck singing “I'm a
little tea pot”. The penguin is doing her best to take care of
him and get him out of there but he's way too high. Sky appears and
encourages them to flee. Mammoth says he wants to kill
Booker and every man who touched his penguin. Wow....that sounded
super dirty. The penguin is all aflutter at this. The flutter gets
worse when mammoth tells her he loves her. The two hadn't met before
captivity but being in a cage beside each other for more than a month
forms some pretty strong bonds.
We're back with Zane. He and the
jaguar have stopped being pissed at each other. The jaguar is
focused on saving the life of the human he loves who has been
horribly injured in the melee. He tells Zane to get Booker.
Christian was in charge on paper but Booker really runs the show and
he's responsible for everything that happened to the captives. He
tells Zane that Booker is on the roof waiting for a copter and soon
he'll be out of reach.
Zane reaches the roof before Booker
boards. He scents Booker as a gorilla and is a bit concerned.
This brings up a question I've never
pondered before in my life. Who do you think would win in a fight?
A grizzly bear or a gorilla? I'm conducting a poll on Facebook and
so far most people are betting on Booker in this fight. I think Zane's
pissed, though, so that changes things slightly. What he needs is
Sabre.
Booker seems really confident and Zane
doesn't recognize why until two bullets slam into him from behind.
He goes down in agony, already pretty badly wounded from the jaguar.
Booker kicks him in the face and starts working him over. For the
first time Zane realizes he's in a fight he might not win.
He senses Sky an instant before he sees
her. He's terrified she'll get hurt but then she impales Booker
right through the chest with her horn. Zane is almost more shocked
than Booker but far less dead. Sky shifts back to check on Zane who
definitely needs a hospital at this point. He tries to tell her he
loves her but she won't let him do it. She says he can't say it
until her mouth is south of his hemisphere if you know what I mean.
But then she gets all sappy and tells
him all the reasons she loves him and he pulls her in for a hug. She
lands on him and the pain actually makes him cry but he figures he
can play it off as tears of happiness.
Suddenly everyone is on the roof. The
high-as-fuck mammoth is there with his penguin, Sabre shows up
carrying the weakened vampire, a bunch of SEA agents start flashing
guns around. All's well that ends well.
Somehow we're on Chapter Thirty-Seven.
I have no idea where the rest of them went. Maybe the person who
numbered these things was high-as-fuck too. Some time has passed.
The SEA took all the credit for bringing down the shifter trafficking
ring. Assholes. It was Zane and Sabre who did the damn work. The
SEA just showed up at the end.
Sky has been given the bonding mark
which apparently means Zane bit her and said “mine” and that's
all it takes for the predator class. Sexy. Sky's people do some
kind of ritual that involves a full moon and nakedness but they have
to wait for that. Full moons don't exactly appear on demand. Zane
is apparently a horrible patient – refusing to take meds and
pulling off bandages and not at all interested in limiting
his....ahem....physical activity.
Juliet offers him his job back but he
turns it down. He tells Sky about this meeting
while....ahem.....playing her fiddle, if you know what I mean....and she can barely even
concentrate on the conversation long enough to ask him any questions
about it. It turns out that Zane likes working for himself better
than he liked working for the group. Sky jumps him before we can
learn much more and things get very, very descriptive.
The Epilogue lands us with Juliet.
Everyone involved has been questioned. The captives are all released
after giving a statement and more than 200 people were arrested and
awaiting trial. There is just one problem keeping the case from
being closed.
Sabre.
He refuses to give a statement to any
of the agents and they won't release him until he does. He's mostly
behaving – no one's died – but Juliet isn't pleased. She goes
down to question him herself. She tries to use her mystical ability
to cower him into submission and he pretty much just laughs at her.
He seems to find her really amusing. She's frustrated as hell at her
inability to control him. He sniffs her and it pisses her off.
Sabre tells us that the vampire is his mate and then the book ends.
Oh, man. I bet he's book six. I'm
going to look.
He's book six.
And it's on Kindle Unlimited.
I'm trying to tell myself I'm not going
to like him as a main character. He was fun as an ancillary
character but surely he can't carry an entire book.
Right?
Please.
Oh, fuck it. I'm reading book six.
So this book wasn't our usual shifter crap. It had an actual plot and only two super-descriptive sex scenes. I might have loved it if I hadn't been distracted by the chapter numbering and if I had cared about Zane or Sky. I didn't really care about either of them. Sabre carried the book for me so I'm going to give it more stars on Goodreads than it probably deserves.
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