Page 19 of Hellcat

"Sorry," she said, her lower lip trembling.

"No apology, poppet." His tone was so gentle. "Clari, Daunte, do you mind?"

The beta male and female got up. "All right, kiddos. Come on. We'll play in the garden for a bit, then bedtime."

"No way am I going with the babies," Niamh stated, pouting like the teenager she was.

To Tania's surprise, Rye told her, "You can stay."

"Hey, that's not fair!"

No amount of protesting from the other children helped; Ace firmly told them, "Go with Daunte and Clari now," and they scampered.

The moment they left, Ian cursed. "It's my fault."

"Chill, it's all our faults. We should have been more cautious."

Tania felt uncomfortable, clearly under the impression the pack was looking at her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You've been marked."

The words were foreign to her, but she could tell they had significance.

"What does that mean?"

"Have you looked at your social media recently?"

She had, just an hour ago, before posting the food. Tania pulled her phone out, and her mouth fell open. What the hell? She had hundreds of notifications.

"We posted about Ian's food. You posted about Ian's food. It was the same, and someone made the connection."

She didn't understand why that was a problem until she opened the app.

Shifter banger.

Disgrace.

Betraying the human race.

Are you letting them all fuck you? Good on you, slut.

And on, and on, and on. Endlessly.

"You don't need to read all of it," said Ace.

"I don't...why..."

"We're...popular with humans. For that reason, our pride has always been on the radar of shifter haters, but they can't really do much to us, other than send the occasional insult our assistant deletes. It'd be too dangerous to attack us, even with a hundred regular humans. It looks like some extremists shared your information online. I'm so sorry, Tania."

She was trying to compute all that information but her brain refused to comprehend it.

"So, can your assistant delete mine?"

"Of course," said Ian. "I'll get him on it right away. That's not the issue."

Thatwasn'tthe issue? What now?

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