Page 36 of Night Returns

The thought of Mosa feeling anything for me, anything positive, had fresh flames of need racing across my flesh.

"You gonna fuck that bitch?" one of the guards asked as he moved from a spot behind the tree. “Sure feels like you want to. Would loosen that pussy up for my giant cock.”

I pretended surprise at his appearance while suppressing my feelings of outrage over the lewd suggestion. I had felt the man a quarter mile out, same for the second guard still concealed a few trees to my right.

“Let the two of us go at her together if you really want her punished," the second guard said as he finally left his hiding spot. “She smells like she could take it in more than one hole at a time.”

“Maybe all three,” the first guard laughed.

At the end of my leash, Mosa growled. Bending down and shaking her by the scruff of her neck, I growled back.

It killed me to treat her like that.

"This one's mine," I said, pulling my phone out and flashing the screen at the nearest guard. "But I believe this particular bitch is yours."

It was one of the pictures of Mosa after she had brutally smashed her face against the van floor multiple times.

I slid the phone back into my jacket. "Well, one of Henric's bitches, at least. So why don't you be a good little pussy and give him a call."

Both of the cat shifters snarled, but they weren't alpha. That's why they were at the perimeter of Henric's property, I figured. The malevolent bastard kept his outposts staffed with males who didn't mean much to an asshole like him if they didn't survive past the point of raising the alarm.

From everything that Mosa had told me, only Henric mattered to Henric.

The first guard pulled out his phone and dialed someone who wasn't Henric. I growled my displeasure at the delay. I had no idea how long I could hold Kalchik's form, having only used the ability when I was under severe pressure.

Unlike the story I had previously fed to Mallory about surviving after the rancher died, the first time I took another person’s form was a little more than six months after Winston passed away from pneumonia. I didn’t know much about the world outside the ranch, and didn’t have money of my own. Turns out there are things called mortgages and taxes and all that. Even worse, some of them need paying monthly. That wasn’t happening with Winston dead and no one but me knowing about it. Eventually, the local sheriff showed up talking about a foreclosure and giving thirty days notice to pay up or vacate.

I answered the door scared shitless and wearing the rancher’s face, not knowing how the hell I had done what I did. Later that same day, I went to the bank with a key his safety deposit box still looking like him. I cleared out the box’s contents, which included some gold bullion because Winston didn’t trust paper money very much. Then, instead of paying the mortgage, I got back in his old beater of a truck and left town for good.

The second time was when I walked out of a county jail looking like the crooked deputy who had tossed me in a cell because his girlfriend palmed my dick at the roadhouse where I was having dinner.

I hadn’t encouraged one iota of the woman’s attention, certainly didn't enjoy it, and tried like hell to explain to the deputy that I didn’t initiate or welcome the contact. The man threw me in cuffs anyway and booked me on a drunk and disorderly charge when I didn't have so much as a drop of alcohol in me. I left him naked in the cell, his hairy ass up in the air and his little dick hanging limp and sad between his legs.

"Send me that photo," the guard said after ridiculously whispering to Henric that I had showed up with a bloody picture of Mosa on my phone.

"Sure thing," I smiled, fangs showing as I swiped at my screen then tapped at the icon to share the image with his phone.

Clover had managed to make the pictures do double duty, first to reel in Henric with proof I had Mosa at the same time I was sneaking her in as her wolf totem. Second, to start a virus spiraling through the phones of everyone on the guard's contact list—including the leap's leader. From each phone it reached, it would spread to more until the location of every member of the leap was compromised.

"Now, pussycat,” I growled again as I gave the male guard a hard shove in the chest. "Take me to my money."

CHAPTER23

MALLORY

“Remindme to never piss off Clover,” Taron murmured with equal amounts of reverence and fear. “She managed to get us all up in the leap’s internal communications.”

“Nope. It’s fun to piss that little wolfling off just short of her deciding to go to war against me,” I said in a serious tone as I performed a final weapons check. “We got a location on Justine yet?”

Taron’s mournful sigh had me nearly dropping the sawed-off shotgun I had just loaded.

“What?” I demanded. “Don’t you fucking tell me I sent my daughter onto that bastard’s land with Justine already dead!”

Taron raised both hands and vigorously shook his head. “There’s nothing on there about her dying. And we have confirmation on where they’re holding her. It’s just like Mosa thought—at the creek.”

His words didn’t calm me, especially not with the way his gaze kept going back to his phone. I lunged toward him and the device. That massive mitt of his shot out, the thick fingers wrapping around my forehead to hold me at arm’s length.

“You don’t want to see this,” he said.

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