Page 48 of Bears Behaving Badly
(ow!)
and stuffed him in the wall into a secret part of the wall and he has to stay small and slight he has to
(“Don’t come out unless it’s me or Annette!”)
listen to the baker he has tolistenso he can stay he has tobe a good kitso he can sleep in a bed and not a box and he will he will he can besogood but the baker is losing and what if the wolves hurt him, what if they rip up his snout like those other bad wolves did? The baker is smart and swift
(like me!)
but there’s only one baker he’s alone and they’re hurting him and and and he was going to bea bad kithe was going to help the baker because now the stench of blood and predator is everywhere the smell of something with sharp sharp teeth and long long claws and and and
Who is that?
* * *
While David tore the intruders to pieces (at least that’s what it sounded like) and Caro made sure Pat and Dev were all right, Annette jacked shells into her .12 gauge trench gun. Twenty-inch barrel, six-round mag, and a place to attach a bayonet, not that she’d ever felt the urge.
She eschewed buckshot; slugs had the advantage of range, greater accuracy, would shred their target at 1,800 feet per second, and could knock a full-grown werewolf off all four paws. Slugs would also, to use the technical term, incapacitate like a bastard.
Mama Mac gave thebestpresents.
Annette stepped out of the room, socked the gun to her shoulder, fired at the leaping
(sixty pounds, six-inch bite-wound radius, four feet at the shoulder, sees the gun but tries for my carotid anyway because he is a clear IDIOT)
werewolf, and moved slightly to her left as werewolf’s momentum carried him another eighteen inches while the slug rearranged his coronary arteries.
To her left came a choked snarl that was chopped short. David had pulverized the werewolf’s vocal cords as he went in for the final strike. While she’d run for the gun case, he had killed the other one before he’d gotten a dozen feet from the car, now parked haphazardly
(Pat’s herb garden! He’ll want to fight them all over again.)
at the far end of the yard.
“Oh, hell,” she said, popping the safety and inhaling. Blood, cordite, fear, blood, triumph, scones. “We live to bite another day, hurrah for us, but we’ve killed all our fresh leads.”
Welp, as Mama Mac would say, better them than us. Then she’d bake a Bundt cake.
I would love a Bundt cake.
“Pat!” she called. “Sound off!”
“I’m good, we’re all good back here! Well, not ‘good,’ exactly, because Dev is bad, bordering on terrible, but… Oh, never mind!”
“You okay, Annette?” David asked hoarsely. “You hurt?”
She turned to see David, all six-foot-plus of him, bloodied head to heels. He wiped his face with the back of a bloody hand, which was an exercise in futility but she’d let him figure that out on his own. His dark hair was sticking up like he’d used gore for mousse, and he was all powerful arms and broad chest and long blood-spattered muscles and, um, long…long…
Feet.
Do not gape at the man like a slack-jawed yokel, you slack-jawed yokel!Shifter nudity taboos were, by necessity, far more relaxed than anything in the Stable world. But it still wasn’t polite to stare, no matter how fine the Shifter in question was. Quite the opposite: it could be construed as a challenge.
“I’m all right. Are you?” She stepped closer, and there was no way,noway to stop herself from reaching out. So she didn’t. “Well, hell. At least one of them got his teeth into you.”
“Worth it.” Nowhestepped closer.Don’t read into it. Maybe he’s worried you can’t hear him from two feet away. He’s so considerate!“Are you sure you’re okay?”
She looked down at the spatter across her sweater. “None of this ismyblood, David.”
“That shouldn’t be as hot as it is,” he said, and cupped the nape of her neck and kissed her.Neither the time nor place, her inner Girl Scout primly pointed out, butdamn, the man had a nice mouth.Mmmmm…Skittles…
