I'm Not Afraid of Wolves (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 4) (5 page)

Now that I was alone, I needed to act quickly.

“It had to be wolves,” I muttered under my breath.

I quickly stripped off my dress, bra, and panties and stowed them down at the bottom of the stairs, right next to the door. It wouldn’t do to rip one of the four outfits I had here. I was wearing my favorite dress after all. Still, I wasn’t a nudist, so being naked made me feel exposed.

I closed my eyes and called to my inner beast.

It had been forever since I transformed. Luckily, my cycles weren’t dictated by the full moon like werewolves were, so I hadn’t had to do it in a very long time.

Here’s to hoping that I wasn’t rusty. I was frankly dreading the sensation, like I always did.

I felt the fur start sprouting down my spine and then spreading across my back. I fell to my hands and knees as the transformation changed the physiology of my feet. Bones rearranged and shifted. I felt my skin and tendons moving and stretching to accommodate this new form. My mouth pulled forward and widened as whiskers poked their way through my upper lip. My ears shifted to the top of my head. The shape of my eyes changed, and how I saw the world changed too.

I
became
a mountain lion.

When I said that I’d do anything to repair my relationship with Shane, I meant it. The actual way in which he brought up to me that he had become a mountain lion shifter is fuzzy—something about becoming friends with the guys at the bar and how they showed him a whole new world—but he had issued an ultimatum that I join him in this crazy, messed-up society of werecats or he’d leave me. He’d been the one who transformed me. It was a decision I’ve regretted every day since.

I closed my eyes in mourning for my lost humanity.

No time to think on the past; I had werewolves to kick out.

With liquid, stealthy steps, I moved up the stairs, ready to spring forward at any moment if there was so much as a creak that sounded out of place.

I was a big cat. I stood at about waist high and I weighed about the same as when human, which, when you’re talking about an animal, is pretty frightening. Still though, I wasn’t sure how I’d compare with grey wolves. At least I had the element of surprise working for me. They had no idea what I was. Hopefully my unfamiliar scent would throw them off. But now that I had theirs, they had another thing coming to them.

I reached the ground floor, my keen cat-ears picking up any hint of movement. They were still in the middle of the great room, scraping their claws against the floor, as if to terrorize my friends below. It had the appropriate effect, because I’d felt that same fear downstairs.

Now, though, I was ready to teach them a lesson.

Three…two…one…

Like a tensed up coil, I sprang into action, catching the closest wolf by surprise. I didn’t hesitate; I went for the throat, although I didn’t want to kill him. He screeched inhumanly as my weight took him down, crashing into a wall.

I had about another heartbeat before the other werewolves realized that they had a werecat on their hands, so I tackled another one, raking my claws across his chest. Blood spurted from the wound, only feeding my natural instincts to keep fighting.

The second werewolf went down just as easily as the first. His head connected with the edge of the wooden coffee table, and it knocked him senseless. I knew that Andrea wouldn’t be happy with the dent I made in the wall and the damage to her furniture, but I bet she’d be happier than the alternative.

From my right side, I was bodily thrown, hitting above the fireplace. The stonework dug into my back and scratched me painfully as I fell to the floor in a heap.

In any other ordinary situation, I would have just let the pain wash over me. It
hurt
, and every fiber of my being was screaming at me to stop, go get medical help. It had been so long since I’d been in a fight with another shifter, I’d forgotten how much it sucked.

I forced myself to my feet though, and I bared my teeth, giving them a cry.

Five werewolves watched me, shocked for a moment before baring their teeth with an answering growl.

If we were all the same species, we could communicate with each other in our animal language. I could figure out which one was Chad—if any of them were Chad—and teach him a lesson for threatening my sister.

As it was though, we were woefully only able to speak different languages, so I couldn’t pick up what they were saying to each other.

Better to keep them occupied as opposed to planning their next moves right in front of me.

I moved first, swiping at the face of the closest werewolf. My claws caught his skin, and I felt the flesh tear underneath them. That was going to leave a mark in the morning.

Without waiting to see his reaction, I lunged towards another werewolf, this one a female. She was smaller than the others and we traded blows for a few passes before my paw slapped her across the face, throwing her into the wall. She was still conscious, but backing away from me. So long as I kept an eye on her, she wasn’t going to be trouble.

Three more to go.

Claws raked my back and I yowled before using my teeth to tear my assailant off me. I snapped loudly as I circled him. This one was the biggest one, the same monster I’d seen in Emily’s room.

I could tell with certainty that he was the leader of the group. He just had that air about him that marked him as Alpha.

Another wolf came at me, but my paw connected with his jaw, spinning him around once before he landed in a heap.

I faced the leader and bared my teeth at him, yelling as loudly as I could in my cat-language.

“
Leave! And don’t you dare come back!
”

There was no way that he’d be able to understand what I was saying, but he got the meaning of what I was trying to convey. His red eyes narrowed before he snapped to the other wolves in his pack. Two of them that were hurt the worst whimpered back at him, but he hissed at me.

They understood my warning.

They all got to their feet and trotted up the staircase to the second floor, to leave through the windows through which they had entered. Why leave through the door when they made such a grand entrance?

The last one, the leader, gave me the side-eye one more time before padding up the stairs.

I caught his drift though.
We’ll be back with more.

I just hoped we had enough time to regroup and figure out our next move before that happened. When I got back downstairs to the basement, I was going to order everyone to pack their bags because we were leaving.

It appeared that our vacation was going to be cut short.

A few seconds later, my ears pricked at the sound of a low hiss in the distance, followed by metal crunching.

No! Nononononono.

I ran to the front door. I controlled my transformation enough to turn my right paw into a human hand, and I unlocked and opened the door. I ran outside to the Jeep, which I saw had all of its tires punctured and losing air, quickly. We only had one spare tire. There was also a huge dent in the hood, and I knew that meant the engine was damaged somehow.

They made sure that leaving in a car wasn’t an option.

Dammit!

Rustling in the distance perked my ears. Those bastards were running away. Maybe they had cars nearby and I could take one to civilization. Maybe call the police. Maybe call Officer Donnelly and join the Witness Protection program.

Except no one would believe our story.

Still, I bounded after the noise, running as fast as my four legs would carry me. I was injured and sore from the fight, but I willed myself to keep moving. On the slim chance that I could catch up with them, we could find a way out of here. I’d make sure they would listen.

I reached a clearing before I stopped. I realized that I was too far from the cabin. If these bastards got the idea that they could lead me away from the house and circle back, I just fell into their trap.

Then again, I could be wrong and letting our only lead get away.

Indecision tore at me as my painful injuries finally started sinking in. I hadn’t thought I’d gotten
that
hurt from the fight, but apparently I had.

Only one way to find out how bad it was, even though I didn’t want to do it. But I couldn’t just show up in the basement as a werecat. Or even transform there. I was pretty sure that Sara and the others were holed up in the basement until I came back, so there was no chance of them seeing me in my birthday suit.

And I felt oh so sore after everything.

Decision made, I transformed back into a human. The fur disappeared, my face and muscle structure shifted back to being that of a woman. I rolled my head on my neck, glad that my body felt familiar again. It felt like I was sloughing off the skin of a predator and I was always glad to reconnect with my human side.

Being a werecat, you could lose that connection. I felt like myself. Exposed, but at least human. As a bonus, my scent would change and they couldn’t smell a mountain lion anymore.

Unsteadily, I stood on my legs and went to my full height, wincing as my muscles and torn skin fell back into place. As a human, I was more familiar with
where
it hurt, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.

My shoulder ached and the angry stings on my back indicated that I had a few good scratches. My right eye was also swelling shut.

Wonderful. It must look like I had gotten into a car wreck. It certainly wouldn’t look good for my mermaid performances for a few weeks.

“This is not the vacation I’d been hoping for,” I muttered.

I stepped forward in a ginger, timid motion. At least I still had my balance and my bearings. I’d take it.

I jogged my way back to the cabin, careful not to make too much noise but also quickly as I was reasonably sure that the werewolves had had the same idea I did about circling back to the cabin. I had to hurry.

When I neared the clearing where the cabin lay about forty feet ahead of me, the sound of a twig snapping forced me to skid to a halt, my heart pounding in my ears.

At first, I didn’t see or hear anything. And then, a familiar voice cried out, “Who’s there?”

I covered my eyes as a flashlight shone on me, blinding me momentarily. I recovered just enough to peek around and feel the sense of dread and embarrassment hit me all at once.

Officer Donnelly. Seeing me naked in the forest. He was
here
, which meant that his huge truck wasn’t too far away, our seemingly only chance of getting back to civilization alive.

I was almost relieved, when I realized that he didn’t seem too flustered to see me running naked through the woods after midnight. Then I realized how odd of a coincidence it was that he’d be here at the same time of night when we were attacked by werewolves.

He’s one of them.

He lowered the flashlight. “Christine, was it?” he asked, confused.

I didn’t answer. I grabbed the closest rock next to me, and, without thinking about the consequences of hitting an officer of the law, I chucked it at him, aiming for his head. I was a pitcher on the softball team in high school, and while that had been over a decade ago, I still had a mean pitch.

It connected with his temple and the big man dropped like a ton of bricks.

I breathed heavily for a moment, panicking that I might have just killed the park ranger, before bending down and throwing his huge, muscular arm about my shoulders. It was the second time tonight that I was dragging someone.

I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do once I got him back to the cabin. But I did know that when he woke up, he had a bunch of questions to answer.

One of them being where the heck he’d parked his truck.

I pounded on the door to the basement. “It’s me!” I yelled, a little too gruffly. “Let me in!”

I heard a scuffle on the other side before the door inched open and Andrea’s wide, frightened eyes peered at me. “Christine?” she stammered. “Are you okay? Who’s that? And
why are you naked
?”

Damn.

I’d forgotten to put my clothes back on. It was amazing what adrenaline and fear could do to make you forget about everyday conveniences. Like clothes. From the moment I dropped the park ranger with a rock, my only objective was to get back to the basement and get everyone out of here.

I didn’t even think about the clothes that were at my feet.

“This is Officer Donnelly,” I said, nodding towards the unconscious man whose arm I had slung about my shoulders. As if that explained anything. “And I’m naked because…”

My voice trailed off because I had no idea how to finish that statement. Thankfully, the door flew open and Sara launched herself at me, sobbing big tears. I let go of the park ranger and held my sister for a second.

“Christine!” she cried. “I thought you’d—you’d…”

“I’m fine,” I told her quickly. “Let’s get him inside and we need to figure out where his truck is. We don’t have much time.”

She helped me drag him into the basement, and just before we shut the door, I grabbed my clothes. Everyone had gotten a pretty good look at me so far, but I wasn’t going to spend the rest of the night without clothes on. A girl had to have priorities.

Emily was still lying on the couch, unconscious. I hoped she would be all right. But that also meant that we had two people who were otherwise unable to move at the moment.

I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the sink and started dabbing at anything that was bleeding on me. I doubted there was a first aid kit down here, so the best that I was going to be able to do was clean up my wounds. I couldn’t see out of my right eye too much, but I thought it was fine.

So much for keeping my favorite dress clean.

“What’s that park ranger doing here?” Andrea said.

“I think he’s with them,” I said as I snapped my bra into place and pulled my dress over it. “I caught him outside in the woods.”

“With
who
?” Andrea demanded, at the same time Sara asked, “What were you doing out in the
woods
?”

“The werewolves,” I explained quickly.

“
Werewolves?”
Andrea exclaimed.

“And I chased the werewolves out into the woods, Sara,” I continued, my single-track mind moving a million miles a minute. “Andrea, do you have anything to tie him up with down here? Like rope or duct tape?”

“Werewolves?” she repeated.

“Duct tape, Andrea!”

She gave herself a visible shake. “There’s duct tape in that drawer.” She pointed to the cabinets. I opened it and rummaged through it. Luckily, I found an almost-complete roll of the silver tape. Perfect. I was going to use all of it to tie him up. I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Christine, what’s going on?” Sara asked. “How did you chase them out in the woods?”

I sat Officer Donnelly up and pulled his arms behind his back. He was so muscular, his triceps nearly got in the way of me binding his wrists. I didn’t want to think about how nice and strong and attractive those arms were. Especially now.

“I think they’re circling back,” I said, “and—”

“
How did you chase them
?” Sara asked. She stopped. “I mean, there were lots of wolves.”

“I caught them by surprise.” I knew, fleetingly, that the jig was up.

Sara swallowed. “You’re one of them.”

I stopped wrapping the tape around the park ranger’s wrists and sighed. “Not exactly,” I said at length.

But it was too late. I saw the terror in Sara’s face, the betrayal that she thought that I was one of the monsters that was hunting her. It was true that I was a monster, but I wasn’t one of
these
monsters. And I had to make her see that. I had to make both of them see that.

Andrea’s face was pinched into the deepest frown I’d ever seen on anyone. She was mentally catching up. I just needed to head that off before either of them got any ideas. There were a few items down here that could be used as blunt weapons, and I was too tired to fight them on it.

“I’m not a werewolf, Sara,” I told her evenly. “I’m a—” I hesitated, because I hadn’t told anyone in years “—a mountain lion shifter.”

That statement hung between us and their looks turned from suspicious to just plain confused.

“A mountain…?” Sara started, but she couldn’t even say it.

“A mountain lion shifter,” I finished.

Andrea shook her head and cursed under her breath. “You’re crazy. You are absolutely—”

I shapeshifted my hand into a paw, obvious enough to not be a wolf paw, but not monstrous enough to freak them out even further.

“Oh my god,” Sara whimpered, cowering in the corner. “How?”

“It was a big factor in why I divorced Shane,” I explained. I morphed my hand back so I could continue restraining Donnelly. “He turned me into a mountain lion. And I hated living in that world. So
this…
” I twirled my finger around, indicating this messed up situation. “…this whole thing, you don’t want to be a part of it. Take it from someone who knows, and who has been running from that life for ten years. I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Shane did this to you?” Sara asked, her voice broken.

I snickered. “Yeah. I told you it was a bad marriage.”

I resumed duct taping Officer Donnelly up tightly. Once I had his wrists bound behind him, feet and legs bound in front of him, and a couple of times around the torso,
then
I would feel comfortable about having him down here. If he transformed, I was reasonably sure that he wouldn’t be able to free himself. I didn’t gag him with the tape, only because I knew that we’d have to ask him where his truck was in order to get out of here. And if he knew where the other werewolves were.

That is,
if
he’s with the werewolves,
my thoughts nagged at me.

Of course he was. Why else would he be out by the cabin after midnight? Also, I immensely hoped so, because otherwise, I’d be in big trouble with the law.

If that were the case though, I’d deal with that later. We had bigger things to worry about.

Like a pack of werewolves that now knew that there was a werecat among us.

Sara and Andrea watched me, all too shocked at this turn of events. It made me regret the fact that I’d never told Sara about my deepest, darkest secret. She knew that my relationship with Shane had turned sour. She just never knew how deeply it scarred me. I focused intently on my actions, hoping that I wouldn’t freak them out any further by making too-quick movements.

“Ugh, what happened?”

We all looked over the couch where Emily was trying to sit up. She struggled for a bit and then winced as she laid back down. She grunted and finally put herself into a sitting position. “My head,” she whimpered softly.

That was one less thing to worry about.

Andrea sat on the couch next to her and checked her head and vitals. “We were attacked,” she explained softly. “How’s your head?”

Emily grimaced and put her head in her hands. “Attacked?”

Andrea licked her lips, indecision on her face. “Yeah, attacked.”

And as she launched into a bad recap of what happened, I turned my attention back to Sara who was still watching me like I’d bite her at any given moment.

“I never told you,” I said, “because I didn’t want you to think that I was crazy.”

Her eyes bugged out of her head. “Crazy?
Crazy
? Here I was, worried that you didn’t believe my story about werewolves, when this whole time—this
whole
time…”

I did one more wrap of tape around Officer Donnelly. He was already pretty secure, but I needed something to do with my hands. “I wasn’t sure if you were on drugs or if you saw something and believed it—”

She came over and pushed me, catching me off guard and knocking me to my butt. “You!” she cried through gritted teeth. “Out of all people,
you
were doubting that?”

“I was in denial,” I told her coolly. “I knew that you believed in what you saw. I just hoped that you wouldn’t have the same fate I did.”

She crossed her arms. “And what fate is that?”

“A lifetime in hiding. I don’t know much about werewolves, but even though werecats are pretty solitary, there’s a huge pecking order and you’re constantly on your guard. I imagine it would be worse with werewolves. I
hoped
you didn’t face that, Sara. I wanted you to have a happy ending.”

Because I wasn’t going to have one.

I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. I’m sure I looked like a mess. Now that the effects of my transformation and the tension had left my system, I was starting to feel my aches and pains again. I hoped my scrapes and scratches were scabbed over by now.

But I probably could consider this dress ruined.

“You could have told me,” Sara said softly.

I looked up at her and my gaze softened. “I realize that now.” I pushed myself to my feet. “And if we get out of here alive, I won’t ever doubt you again.”

The corner of her mouth turned up. “Likewise.”

“So, now that we’ve established that werewolves are indeed real,” I said, “you have to tell me if you feel the need to morph or turn into one.”

She shook her head. “No, I feel fine. That was a part of it though: Chad said that I had to do something in order to make this transformation permanent. And to be
his,
forever.” She shuddered.

“Is he one of the werewolves out there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I ran through each of the werewolves’ faces in my mind, trying to figure out which one was Chad. “Was he the big one? Is he the alpha?”

She considered my question and then shook her head. “I don’t know if he’s the alpha.”

I thought about my own situation with Shane and his friends before I realized what they were. There was one that he always deferred to, and while cats don’t have that pack mentality that wolves do, there was an order to it. That friend was the leader of our werecat group. And he was dangerous, even more so than living with Shane.

But I didn’t say that out loud. One step at a time.

“We’ll get out of here,” I promised her.

“Some vacation this turned out to be,” she scoffed.

“I went into this knowing that nothing was ever simple with you,” I said with a mischievous grin. “This is all just a part of the fun.”

That last part was true, and I only realized as I said it. For the first time in
years,
I felt alive. I may have hated this aspect of my life, but at least it was interesting and kept things in perspective. It was such a strange sensation, like the werecat inside me was pacing, happy to be out of its literal cage.

“Where…am I?” a voice croaked, interrupting us.

We both turned our heads to see Officer Donnelly waking up. Just in time too. Because I was going to ask him some questions and hopefully save all of our lives.