Page 5 of August

“I think she’s my soulmate too.”

Jupiter didn’t say anything for a moment, then he said, “Can you track it?”

“Yeah.” He jogged toward the entrance, his gorilla suddenly the happiest fucker on the planet. “Is the park safe?”

“Yeah, but if Ginny’s your soulmate and she just fled, she’s in a world of trouble. The jackals are looking for her.”

He snarled. “I’ll find her.”

“Stay put, I’ll meet you there.”

Nathan smiled at August. “I’m going to hit up supplies to get the arm replaced. Again. Good luck, I hope you can track your soulmate and catch up to her fast,” Nathan said.

“Thanks, man.”

Alone in the employee lot, August rocked on his heels, his gorilla itching to get to her.

He’d found his soulmate. Her name was Ginny.

Now he just had to find her. Again.

Ginny paced in the apartment that she’d been confined to. Her head was still spinning after so much had happened in the last few weeks.

First, she’d managed to escape her home territory, but she knew she couldn’t stop until she was far away from her grandfather. She’d stayed in her shift and run for several days, stopping to rest only when she absolutely had to.

And then tragedy had struck when she’d gotten caught in an animal trap. She’d thought she was going to have to shift in front of humans to save herself, but the humans had shot her with a tranquilizer dart and stuffed her in a cage barely big enough for her to stand up in her shift.

She’d been trapped for weeks. She wasn’t actually sure how long she’d been in the cage, but it had been too long. Someone had finally reported the humans hoarding animals, and thank fucking goodness, because they’d been trying to sell her as some kind of exotic dog.

And then, she’d been taken to an animal shelter where she’d overheard she was going to be put down because she was a wild animal and not native to the area.

Thankfully, miraculously, a shifter and his human mate were volunteering at the shelter and had taken pity on her, bringing her to the Amazing Adventures Safari Park. She was several states away from her pack in New Jersey, but that didn’t really make her feel safe.

In fact, she could feel just how unsafe she was.

But the damn shifters wouldn’t let her leave the park.

You have to understand that he’s dangerous, she’d told Alistair, an alpha elephant who’d come with a few of the other alphas to talk to her earlier that morning. He won’t stop until I’m dead. You need to let me leave so no one else gets hurt.

You’re safer here with us, Alistair had said. We can keep you safe, I promise.

She wanted to trust him, but there wasn’t safety for her. Not here, not anywhere.

She could feel a noose tightening around her neck, and it was even worse now, hours later. Something bad was going to happen, and she was definitely on the chopping block.

She paused her constant back-and-forth across the apartment, which had seemed spacious at first but now felt like a prison cell. Was that an alarm?

Moving to the front door, she leaned forward and rested her ear on it. If she opened the door, she’d see one of the lions placed as a guard to “keep her safe,” but in reality she felt like the male was there to be sure she didn’t skip out of there and run away.

Run away. Like she was a wayward child.

She was an adult and should be free to leave if she wanted. She felt ungrateful in some ways. Mercer had set her free from the animal shelter and stayed her death sentence at the hands of unwitting humans. But he hadn’t set her truly free and neither had the other alphas. Their kindness had come with conditions, mainly that she stay the hell put and follow their orders.

Listening intently to the world outside the apartment door, she faintly heard an alarm.

“Yeah? This is Javan,” the guard said, answering a walkie. The alarm stopped when he spoke, which told her the alarm was on his walkie. “I’m at the apartment. How many paddocks? Damn. No, everything’s cool here. I’ll run a quick perimeter check right now, though. Thanks.”

There was a click as he put his walkie back in the holder and then the rush of his feet as he ran down the walkway.

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