We all know there's a dark web, a deep web, a super-duper secret web, a fifth column, a shadow government, black market cheese and underground wrestling, but there's also a foster care system set up for vulnerable/dangerous minors. And not just any minors: shapeshifters. And not just shapeshifters: traumatized shifters who would be incredibly dangerous to others even without PTSD. Like any underground organization, it runs parallel (but unnoticed) beside the foster care system for "Normies". And while shifters only make up a small percentage of the population, that's still a lot of orphans to keep track of. Enter Annette Garsea, caseworker for the Interspecies Placement Agency, who was once in the foster system herself after her parents were killed in Yosemite. Like all such employees, her caseload is ridiculous. She's currently responsible for thirteen were-children, from the four-month-old werewolf cub orphaned by a fire to a twelve-year-old werefox with a penchant for shoplifting. Her charges have to be protected from their circumstances, an uncaring world, and themselves. Her newest charge, Caro Daniels, is a sixteen-year-old werewolf arrested for felony assault and, to make things extra puzzling, is selectively mute. Does she have family? If so, where? And how could she track and administer a jaw-dropping beatdown to an adult werewolf in his prime? One who has no idea who she is? One who would have lost the fight if David Auberon hadn't popped up? Annette doesn't know, but means to find out. Caro is under her wing now, and God help the fool who gets between her and any of her charges. And that includes David, the bearshifter private investigator who has a knack for turning up at exactly the wrong time and saying exactly the wrong thing. He doesn't see Caro as a vulnerable teen who needs protection, but as a predator who should be locked up. He's been on the girl's backtrail for a week, doesn't like anything he's found, and thinks Annette is dangerously naive. Worse than naive, actually--he worries she's in deep water and doubts her ability to swim. For her part, Annette's not interested in the jaded mutterings of the appealingly scruffy P.I. Solitary bears make her nervous, and the man's practically a savage, old-school in all the wrong ways. She's going to solve the mystery of Caro, and if there are doubters on deck, that's fine. She's dealt with them before. It's amazing how many forget what happens when you get between a werebear and her charge: you have to face down 600 pounds of furry fury with a bite force of 1200 psi. And because life isn't complicated enough, hanging over their heads at all times is the constant fear of discovery by the wider world of homo sapiens, the most rapacious predators in the history of the planet. After Annette and David get their HEA, two more books will follow, showcasing Normie allies and unfairly maligned apex predators like werehyenas, a despised suborder with an unfair rep for being cowardly giggling weirdos (they are the Bellatrix Lestranges of the were world).
