Well-meaning friends drag archaic jaguar shifter Matteo D'Cruz back into the human world. Almost trapped in cat form, the recalcitrant male narrowly dodges execution as a feral. Even so, his final end doesn't concern him overmuch-until he meets the thrill-seeking Dakota Gorman, a latent shifter female.Matteo helps trigger her first transformation into a magnificent jaguar, and in turn, she schools him on the twenty-first-century woman. Hopeful for the first time in decades, Matteo embraces a possible future with the formidable jaguar queen. Tragically, their intimacy nearly forces him back into cat form, which would put him on death row.Unwilling to selfishly ask Dakota to wait for him, a desolate Matteo resigns himself to torture and watching her mate another. Instead, in a vicious plot to weaponize shifter DNA, a rogue military faction snatches her, carving Matteo's heart from his chest. He will bring her home-but at what cost?