The Cougar's Trade

Book excerpt: Cougar second-in-command Hank Foye has been thrust into an unwanted mate match by the goddess La Bella Dama, and saying no is out of the question. As stubborn as he is, not even Hank wants to suffer her curse for refusing. He simply doesn’t understand why she’d pair a powerful shapeshifter with a quiet human nurse. Miles Bennett knows she’s a liability in a world where shifters fight each other to lead and roam. Orphaned young, she’s not afraid, though, to take a chance on surly Hank and walk his path with him if it means she’ll finally belong to a family again. But she’s not going to make it easy for him. She’s deserves better from him than benign neglect, and he knows it. She may not have been the mate Hank wanted, but sweet Miles is the embodiment of everything he thought he couldn’t have. Nothing makes sense anymore—not his goddess, not the local Cougar dynamics, and certainly not his feelings. How can Hank lead a group of restless shapeshifters if he can’t even get his own house, and heart, in order?