Free Forbidden by Cathy Clamp

aggression? Pain? Blood? No, there was definitely something wrong here. The thing was, she couldn’t seem to reach her Alphas in her head. Maybe the Alpha here was just strong enough that she couldn’t get through his magic.
    Hopefully they were listening in.
    The door behind her opened. She pretended not to notice and continued to fill out the generic form that requested information about where she had been and what her skills were. It was like a job resume for a Sazi employment agency. Even without looking, she could now recognize which cat was which by the smell. The police chief was a cougar—not a predator to be messed with. The mayor was one of the smaller mountain cats, maybe bobcat or lynx. She didn’t know all the great cats by smell, but she’d know him in the future. She tapped the pen at the bottom of the form after signing it and passed the clipboard back to Chief Gabriel. “Okay, I think that’s it. Is there anything I need to fill out for the school, or will they give that to me on Monday?”
    She wanted to give the opening to the mayor and chief to see if they knew her background and what had been set up by her pack. She had graduated from an online college with a degree in teaching and was certified to teach in Texas. She’d been told it would be easy to transfer her credentials to Washington. Her pack had applied for her to take a position working as a teaching assistant since she could gather a lot of information easily through talking to people. The town leaders should know that. But pack leaders who weren’t in touch with their pack might not have a clue what was going on.
    Chief Gabriel nodded. “Yeah, the administration over at the school does their own paperwork that has to be filed with the state Board of Education. But before we do that, we figured we should … chat with you.”
    The word had a high-pitched snarl at the end and the stink of aggression filled the air. Claire looked up sharply, frowning. Her muscles tensed involuntarily as she looked from one man to the other. “Is something wrong?”
    The chief filled the room with magic enough to sting her skin. “Well, not so much wrong . It’s just that you don’t really look like a Sanchez. I don’t know a whole lot of blue-eyed, blond Mexicans.”
    Ah. So that’s where this was going. She was immediately suspect because her skin wasn’t the right color for her surname. Fortunately, that was the first thing her pack leaders had schooled her on. But it was hard not to be antagonistic, just by their tone. “The preferred term is Latina for a woman or Latino for a man. They’re pretty sensitive about that where I come from, since a lot of people aren’t specifically from Mexico … but just for the record, there are actually quite a few fair-haired Mexicans. Still, to answer what I presume was a question, I was legally adopted by my pack leaders after the plague. I lost my parents.” In a manner of speaking it was true, so there would be no scent of deceit for the cats to pick up.
    Most Sazi she’d met let the topic go after that, but the moment the police chief opened his mouth, Claire knew he wouldn’t be one of them. “Sorry for offending you. So what was your surname before the plague? What pack were your parents attached to?”
    He wanted to check her out further. Why? In the packs, the plague had become a dividing point. Before and after. After was all that mattered for those who’d survived. It wasn’t information she was willing to give him, so she gave a sad smile and shrugged. “I was an attack victim. I’d rather not talk about it.”
    That had better be the end of it. It was the height of rudeness to ask an attack victim to relive their first change. Most were formerly human, many didn’t survive it, and those who did were usually mentally scarred by the experience.
    Like her.
    She brought her