Free Shepherd's Moon by Stacy Mantle

white against the darkness, and he looked dangerous despite the giant pastry he was holding.
    He’s never gone anywhere without that knife for as long as I could remember, which struck me as odd, because he’s never had reason to use it. Once phased, he has six-inch, bone-white fangs and razor-sharp claws that would do far more damage than a knife; and when he was human, he could out-fight anyone foolish enough to engage him. I should know after years of training with him. He may not be the most technically correct fighter, but what he lacks in technique, he makes up for in pure, effectual savagery.
    Like nearly all shifters and Weres, he exudes an animalistic aura, lending him a commanding presence that you can’t help but notice even in human form. Smooth olive skin that he inherited from his Apache father stretched over his high cheekbones and his amber eyes shined with the lure of a hunt. His long hair fell over his shoulders like a crest and was one smooth length of black. When he’s on duty, he wears it gathered at the nape of his neck in a thick ponytail, but not tonight…
    Tonight we were hunting.
    He grinned as I climbed from the car, greeting me with a condescending pat on the head before making a sarcastic comment about my choice of clothing.
    I knew it was coming. He always gives me a hard time about my standard wardrobe choices, which mostly meant jeans and tank tops every day. It’s difficult to take him too seriously, though. The jeans are comfortable and allow for easy movement. They also allow me to get dirty, a standard hazard when you work and live with supernatural creatures. If that means I’m not the poster board model for fashion, so be it.
    “Not that I’m complaining,” he said with a suggestive smile as he appraised me.
    “Oh, Billy,” I leaned into him, “you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it.”
    It’s also hard to take his flirting seriously. Shifters aren’t particularly self-conscious creatures, not even when they’re human, and I knew that if I chose to work naked, he wouldn’t have cared until the case was over. It isn’t anything he hasn’t seen anyway. There aren’t many secrets when you share your home with a shifter.
    I reached into my car, scooping the thick file packed with information on Azrael’s prior kills off the passenger seat, and handed it to him as he passed me the latte. He glanced at the name of the file and passed it back to me.
    “Case solved. We already got Azrael. Let’s go home.”
    “Not so fast,” I said. “Richard wants his Handler.”
    “Christ. It never ends…” He shoved a piece of the maple bear claw in his mouth. “I thought Richard said you were off the case for awhile?”
    “Richard can say what he wants. I’m a contractor, not an employee.”
    He considered my words, chewing longer than was necessary as he debated whether to take my side or his employer’s side. It wasn’t a long debate.
    “Better you than Brock. Besides, I would rather lose my job than my place of residence.”
    “Wise decision,” I muttered.
    Suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Hey, remember that case we were on last year? The one with the animal rights fanatics?”
    I nodded with a grimace. “When they set all those lab animals free? Of course I remember.” How could I forget? I still had nightmares about the poor creatures we’d had to track after the group released them into the wild. They had freed nearly forty animals.
    We’d only recovered thirty-four of them.
    The corporation doing the testing earned ninety-nine percent of the blame as far as I was concerned, but the radical group who turned them loose shared blame as well. Instead of freeing the animals, they had only succeeded in extending the animals pain. Unable to fend for themselves, some had starved. Others had kept stronger animals from starving.
    I want to save animals as much as the next person, but have never prescribed to the idea of letting lab experiments loose on the