Tara has never met a fight she couldn't win, a crowd she couldn't own, or a bed she couldn't leave by morning. She likes it that way. Attachment is a leash, and leashes are for creatures with fewer teeth than she's got.
At The Sleepless Drum, a brothel and tavern in the gaslit streets of Whitechapel, she's alpha of the dance troupe, seven feet of spotted shifter who takes what she wants and moves on. When an elf catches her eye, Tara claims her as the season's conquest and dismisses the elf's succubus companion as irrelevant.
That miscalculation costs her everything.
Collared, shrunk, and stripped of her voice and her name, Tara is remade into a simpering servant whose collar forces smiles from her. But the minotaur who owns the Drum still calls her by her real name, and the cursed dragon woman understands her better than Tara ever expected. Neither of them will give up on her. All they need is one heartbeat of freedom. Tara has to trust that it's enough.
