My mother cried the day I was born.Not from joy. From fear.You can never be a girl, she whispered, holding me like I was already something to hide. I will protect you the only way I know how.That promise became my whole life.For twenty three years I was the roughest, meanest fighter in my father's camp. No one questioned it. No one dared. Every man who tried got put on his back and left there.It kept me alive. It kept my father afraid of me.It also kept me hidden. Because the truth was simple. If they ever found out I was a woman, I wouldn't be a fighter anymore.I'd be property.Then a rogue started looking too long. Getting too close. And I knew my time was up.So I ran.Straight into enemy territory. Straight into Kagiso, the beta everyone feared and no one crossed.He caught my scent. Every part of him went still.Mate.Then his whole face twisted into disgust.The moon goddess had just given her most devoted general... a short, scrawny man with wild curly hair and a face full of freckles.He hates it. He hates me. But he can't reject the bond, not without breaking the one thing he believes in more than anything else.So now I'm trapped in his pack, under his watch, hiding a secret that grows harder to bury with every pound I gain back, every curve I can no longer hide beneath these clothes.I'm not scared of him.I'm scared of what happens the day he finally realizes what I really am.Because when he does, will he still want me?Or will I become exactly what I ran from?

My father died catching me. Thirty five feet above the ground. Last night of the season. He stepped between me and the ground and gave me everything he had left. I survived. He didn't. Now I have a circus full of eighty people who need me to hold it together. A mother who has gone silent. An injury I'm hiding from everyone. And a rigging report that says accidental death when my gut says something else entirely. Someone tampered with my father's circus. And I am going to find out who. But first I need a catcher. There is one name left. Zane Wilder. He comes from the Nox. The most feared circus in the world. A place that produces extraordinary performers by any means necessary. No softness. No family. No mercy. He is already in my big top when I arrive before dawn. Dark. Dangerous. And looking at me like he is calculating exactly how much weight I can hold before I break. He notices the shoulder I am hiding in four minutes. He fixes the wrist wrap I have been doing wrong for four months. And he checks my rigging at three forty five in the morning because he wants to know what is above me before I get there. I have not trusted anyone with my weight since the night my father died. Then there is Theo. Warm where Zane is dark. Easy where Zane is difficult. The kind of man who brings you coffee before you know you need it and makes you laugh when everything is falling apart. Two men. Two completely different kinds of dangerous. And someone out there who does not want me to find the truth about what happened to my father's rigging. The net is there. None of us are using it.