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  Her eyebrows curve in amusement. "Are you having a painful period?"

  I shouldn't have said anything.

  "Not my period but... urgh, did you find anything?"

  She shakes her head, a smile curving her lips. "No, but I'll let you know when I find something."

  I nod stiffly and turn to leave. "Thanks."

  Before I'm out of the door, she clears her throat. "I've got some extra strong pain killers and a hot water bottle, if you want."

  I don't turn back. "No, thanks. Not that kind of problem."

  If only she knew...

  My office is just like I left it, except that my in-tray has grown and had babies since I last stepped foot in this room. A few cases, Lily said. They're either all very long and detailed, or she's unable to count. Fun. At least this is a familiar task, something to get lost in, something to keep my mind off other things.

  I sit down in my comfy leather chair and pull the first file from the pile. A woman wanting to get rid of her husband. I smile. And she wants him to suffer. Nice one. I put her on the priority stack.

  The next three are business people wanting to have their competition eliminated. Low priority. They usually pay well but those cases are boring. There's no passion behind their motives, just cold calculations and maybe a touch of jealousy. Relationship murders are far more fun.

  A man wanting his father killed. That's not unusual, but this time, it doesn't seem to be about an inheritance. The father is homeless, so I doubt he's got much money for the son to get. Why then would you want your own father murdered? There's no information on that in the document, so I put it on the priority stack, hoping that I'll get the time to deal with that case. It's unusual, which makes it mine.

  After an hour, I've got three neat piles in front of me. High priority, low priority, and one breaking-and-entering pile for Benjamin. We're getting more and more of those requests every month. Ben is making a name for himself, or better, for Meow. It's a nice side business that gets us some extra money while also keeping the boy happy. He's not one for killing, but he excels at getting into places he shouldn't be in.

  I feel a lot better now that I know what I can focus on in the coming days. A few fun, simple jobs, none of them connected to the Pack or other crime organisations. Just how it should be. Killing people for money. Wonderful.

  I can deal with that.

  What I can't deal with are the two men who've just entered the house.

  Chapter Four

  Gryphon and Lennox wait for me in the living room, as if they know that I'm no longer holed up in the attic. Well, both of them have exceptional senses, so I'm pretty sure they're aware of where in the house I am.

  I feel like getting some tea, but then I'd have to make tea for all three of us and it would make them stay longer. I don't want to be around them for too long. Just the thought of those men makes heat pool between my legs. I hate it. Hate it so much. I'm clinging onto self-control as hard as I can, but my body is rebelling, fighting me at every step. If I let go, I'd dry-hump them on the sofa, then rip off their clothes and take them both at once. But that's not something Kat does. That's not me.

  "You look a lot better," Gryphon observes when I enter the room. Lennox is spread out on one of the sofas, acting as if he lives here, but Gryphon is on the edge of his seat, as if he's not quite allowing himself to be comfortable.

  I sit down opposite them, putting as much distance between us as I can. Even so, their scents fill my nose, causing tingles to race over my skin. My mouth waters at the thought of them being so close. I could get up and kiss them. Devour them. Make them mine.

  I pinch my thigh. Enough.

  "How are you feeling?" Lennox asks. His eyes are fixed on me, observing my every move. I wonder if he can sense my arousal. Ryker knew immediately, he could smell it, but Lennox is a wolf, he's not supposed to be interested in females of another species. That wouldn't be good for evolution after all.

  "Good." They don't need to know the details. "How have you been?"

  This is ridiculous. We're behaving like we're random friends meeting up after a long time. I should stop this, change it, but I don't know how. How do you behave after you've been brought back from the dead? How do you thank the people who helped you? How do you accept that you weren't able to save yourself, that you had to rely on others?

  "Bored," Lennox says and pulls a crisp from one of Bethany's bags. The crunch of it disappearing into his mouth almost makes me jump up and shout something ridiculous like 'eat me instead'. Maybe I should go back upstairs and chain myself to my hammock. Not let myself be around men until it's all over.

  "Me too." Gryphon finally leans back in his chair and crosses his arms behind his head. "I saw Little Kat earlier today though. She's happy with my aunt, but she asked for you. Don't suppose you want to accompany me there to see her?"

  "Not today," I hedge. "There are other things I need to do."

  Lennox perks up. "Like attacking the Pack and killing everyone?"

  Despite myself, I have to laugh. "I take it that's on your to-do list?"

  He nods enthusiastically. "But I'm not stupid enough to do it. We need to do something about them though. There have been reports of Pack shifters disappearing off the streets. Ryker has told us that his cats aren't seeing as many shifters as they used to. I think the Pack leaders are pulling everyone back to regroup, but I bet they're planning to go on the offensive soon."

  "Then we have to be ready for that." I'm glad we've moved onto familiar territory again, although I can't help but look at his lips, wet from his tongue licking away some salty crisp crumbs. Ovaries, behave. I don't have time for this.

  "Have you had time yet to look at the stuff we retrieved from their lab?" Gryphon asks.

  I shake my head. "Bethany is looking at some cloning files she found, but that's all I know so far."

  "I'll make some coffee," Lennox says with a sigh and gets up from the sofa. "This is going to take some time."

  "Tea for me, with lots of milk."

  He grins. "I know. Gryphon, how do you take it?"

  The moment of truth. How a person takes their tea says a lot about them. Lots of sugar? Sweet and indulgent personality. Lots of milk? Probably some cat genes. Nothing at all? Boring, serious or psychopathic.

  "Milk and sugar, but make the tea strong."

  Mmhm, that's a hard one to interpret. Is that a siren thing or a Gryphon preference? I never had the chance to find out more about his kind. He's said sirens are in control of the Pack, but he seems to have an aunt here as well as a sister. Are they on our side? The Pack's? Neutral?

  By now, I doubt he'd ever betray me, but I still need to find out his situation. Family can be one of the best ways to manipulate someone into doing your wishes. I've used that method often enough myself. Until now, I didn't have a family, but now I have Little Kat, and my employees, and maybe even these men. Just as friends, obviously, associates. Fucking Ryker was a mistake that was only down to my heat problem. And Lennox.... let's not think about that. He's not talked about me being his wolf's mate again, so I'd rather keep it like that. It's too complicated, too emotionally stressful.

  "Penny for your thoughts?"

  Gryphon's eyes roam my face. I keep my expression neutral. "Just thinking how quickly things have changed."

  "Very true. Look at us, waiting for Lennox to make us tea. Never thought I'd ever be served by a wolf."

  "Watch it!" Lennox shouts from the kitchen. "I'm not a service dog!"

  I snicker. Lennox has always hated being called a dog, and now he's doing it himself. Things really have changed.

  I turn to Gryphon. "Fill me in. What did you find? I need all the info you got."

  "As I said, this is going to take a while. We've started going through the files we retrieved, but a lot of it is written in sciencey jargon and even your colleagues don't always know what it's supposed to mean."

  I huff impatiently. "Enough of the preamble, start telling me the important
stuff."

  He smiles in amusement, but then his expression changes to something else, something darker. A shiver runs down my back at the intensity in his gaze. "Do you want the gentle or the brutal version?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I can tell you the truth without making you feel bad. If I give you all the details, however, it might upset you. Some of the things we found in the lab aren't for the faint of heart."

  "I'm definitely not faint of heart," I protest, but secretly I appreciate his warning. I'm a clone. I'm not really what I thought I was. There might be more of me, there might be answers I don't want to be true. But when have I ever retreated from a problem? Besides drowning my worries in catnip?

  "Give me the full version. Don't try to protect me from the truth. I need to know."

  He nods and clears his throat. "Alright then. You were the first clone, and the one who survived for the longest. Which is surprising, given how many they terminated because they weren't perfect enough. You'd think that the first would be the worst, in a way. The least perfected. Maybe they wanted you as a control subject to compare to future versions."

  Coldness spreads through my veins and I want to make him stop talking, but I need to hear this. There's no hiding from the truth. Not knowing would be worse.

  "How many?" I ask hoarsely.

  "Counting the embryos that never came to full term, fifty-three."

  I swallow hard. Fifty-three versions of me.

  "Little Kat, she was called K8 by the woman in the lab. I thought there might only be eight of us," I whisper, unable to hide my emotions from Gryphon. The walls around me are crumbling.

  "They only named the ones K plus a number who survived past their first year. You're K1, then there were six other children before Little Kat. There seems to have been two other girls after her, but I've not been able to find any information on their whereabouts. The children must have been kept somewhere else, not in the lab."

  "They weren't at the Pack headquarters either. I lived there and never saw anyone who looked like me. I would have been able to smell them, their cat shifter scent, even if I hadn't recognised them for some reason. They must be in another building that we don't know about."

  Gryphon nods. "We're going to find them, but they know now that we're onto them. They'll likely hide the clones, making it harder for us to seek them out."

  "Children," I correct. "Not clones. Please."

  He gives me a tight smile. "Of course. Children. According to the data, the youngest would be about three, and the oldest sixteen. Maybe we should focus on the oldest first. If they raised her similarly to you, she'd be out there, doing hits and working for the Pack."

  I shake my head. "Unlikely. If she'd be running around town, I would have noticed, trust me."

  "That means they either keep them locked inside or she's not in this town." He sighs. "I may be able to use some of my contacts to find out if there are any cat shifters in other cities controlled by my people, but that's going to be neither easy nor quick. I have to be careful, they cannot know that I'm working against them."

  "Do it. We need to have a chat about your family at some point, but first, continue with what you found out."

  Lennox uses that moment to return with a tray. He didn't just make tea, he also made some finger sandwiches. I'm keeping him. Service dog indeed.

  I snatch a salmon sandwich and take a big bite. I've had a lot of catnip biscuits already, but they don't really sate my hunger, they just made me happier.

  "Well done, mate," Gryphon mutters while chewing on a cherry tomato.

  Mate? Are they that close now? Has Gryphon told the others about what he is?

  "Go on," I remind him, ignoring that he's trying to eat.

  "Alright. Seven children. We have Little Kat, so there's still a way to go. I think you should talk to her, make sure she doesn't know anything else that could help us. She's recovering well, getting some meat on her bones again, and she's getting better at having normal conversations."

  I nod. "Can you take me to her later today?"

  "Of course."

  "Tell her about the doctor," Lennox encourages. "The woman we killed."

  "Grandma Doctor. It's a pity we don't have her here for interrogation and a lot of torture, but that can't be helped. Lennox found some intelligence on her in the upstairs offices. She's been with the Pack since she finished university, recruited by a scientist called Professor Lakefield. Not sure if he's still alive or what's become of him, but he seems to have been the first to experiment with cloning. Grandma Doctor is actually called Jacqueline Fitzroy, she's got a PhD in genetics and wrote a couple of papers on human evolution. Of course nothing she has published mentions shifters, but she quit academia pretty quickly after she got involved with the Pack. Together with Lakefield, she researched how to make shifters stronger, while also removing some of their free will. They didn't have collars back when they started; shifters were controlled by blackmail, threats to their families and brainwashing. Inventing the collars made Fitzroy one of the most important people in the Pack. I've seen her bank accounts. She was probably the richest woman in town."

  "We may have syphoned off some of that money," Lennox adds with a chuckle. "Before they realised that she's dead."

  Good. It's not really making me feel better about what that woman has done, but at least she'll keep Meow running for a bit longer. And it would be kind of ironic if we used her money to bring the Pack down.

  "So she invented the collars and started the cloning experiments?" I clarify.

  "Yes. Once she'd got a working prototype of the collar, she realised that while it helped control shifters, it didn't work when they were in their animal forms. She basically had stronger humans with the collars, but she wouldn't be able to get them to do their bidding when shifted. That's when she started thinking about other ways to control shifters, starting at the very beginning of their life. Cloning the strongest, then adjusting their free will and obedience levels. That was her aim, creating an obedient shifter who had great intelligence but obeyed every single command."

  I shiver at the thought. Being forced to do someone's bidding without even knowing that it's wrong, without having the choice to resist... I can imagine nothing worse. They tried to control me all my life, but I fought back, didn't let them turn me into their slave, even though my resistance was often painful. Yes, in the end, I always did what they told me to, but on my own terms. The times when I secretly spent time with Lennox under the bridge, when we stole away to the market to steal some sweets, those were the moments I truly felt like myself. That doctor tried to take that away from other children like me. If she wasn't already dead, I'd make sure that she'd die a horrible, painful death. Preferably with a collar around her neck, as a reminder for what she's done to others.

  "Are you okay?" Lennox asks softly and I realise that I've balled my fists, squashing my sandwich into mush. I force myself to relax and nod, putting on a brave face.

  "Did they succeed?" I ask, dreading the answer. "Little Kat wasn't under their control once we took off the collar, so they hadn't got there by the time they created her. What if they managed to succeed with the final two?"

  "I don’t know," Gryphon says quietly, looking at the sandwich in his hands. He's not taken a bite yet, waiting for the story to be over. "We didn't find anything about them, not a single file. It's as if they made sure that everything about those two children was kept secret. Maybe that means they succeeded. Maybe not. Who knows, and we can't exactly ask her or any of the other people in the lab. They're all dead." He sighs. "If that Professor is still alive, he'd be well into his eighties by now, but it's worth a try."

  "I'm already on it," Lennox interjects.

  "Don't you have to work for your employer still?" I ask him. "Or are you with us the whole time now?"

  He quirks an eyebrow. "Would you like me to leave?"

  I quickly shake my head, the thought of him being gone making me strangely anxious. It must be
the heat thing, it's making me all emotional. I can't work like this. I need my emotions to stay in check, but right now, they're all over the place.

  "I've asked for some time off. Surprisingly, they said yes. I doubt they're going to leave me be for long though, so I'm kind of expecting them to give me a new order any day now. Still, I'll try and help out as much as I can."

  I meet his eyes, realising how much regret he's hiding. "If you wanted, could you leave?" I ask gently. "Would they let you go for good?"

  He looks away. "I'm not sure. I've not been brave enough to find out yet."

  I'll add that to my list. Making sure Lennox can leave his employers, whoever they may be, preferably to join Meow. And me.

  No, stop it, heated ovaries. Not me. Just Meow.

  Chapter Five

  As soon as Gryphon and I are out of the door, I ask him about his family.

  "How is it that your aunt and sister are here, but you've said you've left your family?"

  "My sister left before me, officially to go to university. She only stayed for the first semester, then decided she wanted to become an artist. It was a clever plan, really. My dad disowned her and sent her away. Now, she's got as much freedom as she wants and doesn't even have to pretend to be something she's not."

  He sounds a little bitter. "Why didn't you do the same?"

  "The siren community is very traditional. Men are in charge. If I'd tried to leave, it would have been a public embarrassment for my father, so he'd probably have killed me and pretended I'd died from natural causes. My sister was never intended to have a role of authority anyway, so losing her wasn't such a big deal."

  "Was it the same with her aunt?"

  "Not quite. She was a big believer in my family's cause until her husband died. That completely changed her. I've been told she went crazy for months, totally unstable and unpredictable. Since her husband had been an important man, they didn't get rid of her, but gave her a little house and a pension far away from where she could give them any embarrassment or trouble. To be honest, I'm still not sure if she pretended to be crazy so that she could get away or if she actually was. Nowadays, she's as sane as you and me."