Being the Synod’s resident ballbuster hasn’t made Sylva the most popular of her kind, but it’s worth the opportunity to lead her people and help those who are like she once was: isolated, powerless, and afraid. But words fail her when her aversion to violence requires a protection detail—a tall, dark, and brooding bodyguard who has no problem fighting with hands, fangs, or claws. Harrison has spent his adult life protecting his kind—and guarding his broken heart. When he’s tasked with keeping Sylva safe from her former pack, the job should be nothing he can’t handle. But the closed-off, pacifist female makes him want things he thought he’d lost long ago. Sylva fights her battles with words, but to stay alive, she needs to take lessons from a shifter who’d rather draw blood than speak. Harrison knows all too well that words can be as sharp as knives, but if he can’t convince his charge to trust him, she’ll be the one hurt worst of all. They say opposites attract, but in this case, if they can’t meet in the middle, it will get them killed.