WERECATS EMERGENT by Mark J. Engels

Teenaged Pawly discovers her secret werecat heritage after unexpectedly morphing one Halloween night. Desperate to find an outlet for her and her twin brother’s growing bloodlust before they go feral, Pawly’s blended human-werecat family begs a Chicago-area drug cartel for help. Her uncle Ritzi, meanwhile, scrambles to develop an alternate way the twins might satisfy their lethal urges. Resuming his deported father’s scientific research, Ritzi draws notice from an elder werecat representing a rogue state keen on the twins’ potential. When a cartel enforcer is found savagely mauled following the twins’ first job, Ritzi insists Pawly and her brother enlist in the rogue state’s service to ensure their safety. But their father, a Navy sailor critically wounded in recent combat, would rather die than risk being separated from his children again—which Pawly soon realizes is *no* idle threat.

Category: Fantasy – Paranormal & Urban

Born in an ethnic Chicago neighborhood following her family’s escape from Cold War-era Poland, were-lynx Pawly flees underground to protect her loved ones after genetically enhanced soldiers led by rogue scientist and rival werecat Mawro overrun her Navy unit in the Gulf of Oman. Pawly’s family seeks her out in a desperate gambit to return to their ancestral homeland and reconcile with their estranged kinsmen. But when her human lover arrives to thwart Mawro’s plan to weaponize their feral bloodlust, Pawly must face a daunting choice: preserve her family secrets and risk her lover’s life or chance her true nature driving him away forever.