Book 1 - Page 69 (1/2)

”Broke my f-”

”Ladies present,” chided the man who held me in an implacable grip that was as gentle as a mother holding her babe. His voice had the same soft drawl that sometimes touched Adam's voice. ”No swearing.”

”Broke my freaking nose then,” said the first voice dryly, if somewhat m.u.f.fled-presumably by the broken nose.

”It'll heal.” He ignored my attempts to wriggle out of his hold. ”Anyone else hurt?”

”She bit John-Julian,” said the first man again.

”Love nip, sir. I'm fine.” He cleared his throat. ”Sorry, sir. It never occurred to me that she'd have training. I wasn't ready.”

”It's water under the bridge now. Learn from it, boy,” my captor said. Then he leaned down and, in a voice of power that vibrated down my spine, said, ”Let us chat a little, hmm? The idea is not to hurt you. If you hadn't struggled, you wouldn't even have the bruises you do now. We could have hurt you much worse if we had wanted to.” I knew he was right-but it didn't make him my best friend.

”What do you want?” I asked in as reasonable a tone as I could manage, flattened, as I was, on the floor beneath a strange werewolf.

”That's my girl,” he approved, while I stared at the floor between my couch and end table, about two feet from my left hand, where Zee's dagger must have fallen when I went to sleep last night.

”We're not here to hurt you,” he told me. ”That's the first thing you need to know. The second is that the werewolves who have been watching your house and the Sarge's have been called off-so there's no one to help you. The third is-” He stopped speaking and bent his head to take a deeper breath. ”Are you a were? Not a werewolf. You don't smell right for that. I thought it might just be the cat-never had a cat-but it's you that smells like fur and the hunt.”

”Grandpa?”

”It's all right,” the werewolf answered, ”she's not going to hurt me. What are you, girl?”

”Does it matter?” I asked. He'd called Adam ”Sarge”-as in ”Sergeant”?

”No,” he said. He lifted his weight off me and released me. ”Not in the slightest.”

I rolled toward the couch, and grabbed the dagger, shaking it free of sheath and belt. One of the intruders started forward, but the werewolf held up a hand and the other man stopped.

I kept moving until I was crouched on the back of the couch, the dagger in my hand and my back to the wall.