Katagaria were animals who could take human form and they followed one basic law of nature: kill or be killed. If anyone or anything threatened the pack's safety, it was put down.

So Vane, who had caused the Daimon attack, had been sentenced to being beaten and left for dead in the swamp. Fang was with him only because their father had hated both of them since the hour they had been birthed and had feared them since the day their preternatural powers had been unlocked by their pubescent hormones.

More than that, their father hated them for what their mother had done to him.

This had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for their father to be rid of them both without the pack turning on him for the death sentence.

Their father had seized it gleefully.

It would be the last mistake his father ever made.

At least it would be if Vane could get their asses out of this damned swamp without being eaten.

Both of them were in human form and trapped by the thin, silver metriazo collars they wore around their necks that sent tiny ionic impulses into their bodies. The collars kept them in human form. Something their enemies thought would make them weaker.

In Fang's case that was true.

In Vane's it wasn't.

Even so, the collar did dampen his ability to wield magic and manipulate the laws of nature. And that was seriously pissing him off.

Like Fang, Vane was dressed only in a pair of bloodied jeans. His shirt had been ripped off for his beating and his boots taken just for spite. Of course, no one expected them to live. The collars couldn't be removed except by magic — which neither of them could use so long as they wore them — and even if by some miracle they did get down from the tree, there was already a large group of gators who could smell their blood. Gators who were just waiting for them to fall into the swamp and provide the gators with one tasty wolf meal.