Kirastasia found herself mesmerized by the monster’s hellish gaze, those twin portals of Hades’ fire and molten metal. She felt their intense heat as a physical presence against her snowy fur. Even his words were flames, dancing sensuously dangerous through the air between them, hypnotic, alluring. The young heiress, so accustomed to feeling rapture at the sight of a new pretty trinket, was quite taken aback. The cocky hunger on her lovely face faded into an expression of breathless fascination. Oh my. Perhaps the girl had finally met her match—

But wait—

Only the briefest scrape of daggers swished through the fine ice-white hairs of Kira’s nape. She sensed the very tips of the beast’s claws reaching for her flanks. And then a flash of phoenix feathers burst to life before her stunned maple gaze, Rom rocketing out of nowhere to slam into the challenger and somehow knock the devil away from his heinous goal. Her pert little muzzle shut itself tight. Her pulse fluttered frantically in her throat like the wing beats of a trapped bird. Rom pushed the fishnet punkette backward and let scathing acid-tipped arrows fly from his maw, words unleashed in her defense, and Kirastasia was trembling and this was all going too fast and where had Carnival come from? The snowbird turned her blank stare toward Malignant’s current Queen as if swimming through a dream. Or a nightmare. “Carnival . . . ?”

Soon both of her packmates were glaring at the savage stranger, forming a protective wall before the brindled princess. And from her vantage point of safety, with a ringing roar in her brain and her heart trying to escape her chest and her feminine form shuddering like a leaf, Kira finally understood what was happening to her. She was afraid! This breathless wild awful WONDERFUL emotion singing powerfully through her veins was a fear she had never experienced in all her life!

A high, shining laugh jumped from Kira’s smiling mouth. All at once the lass was doubled over with mirth, tears glimmering in the corners of her luminous eyes. “Now you’ve gone and done it, handsome stranger!”