Sugar and spice, and everything nice.
Finally he made a mistake. He moved lower to reach my rib cage, but wasn’t willing to back off of me for fear of my escape. Instead, he turned, placing his left hind leg within reach of my muzzle.
I lunged. My teeth sank into his leg, an inch above his paw. I withheld nothing, giving in to my instinct to bite through to the bone. Marc deserved only my best effort. After all, that’s what I was getting from him, in a bizarre, gently insistent kind of way.
Marc yowled and tried to jump away, hissing in pain and anger.
I refused to let go. It took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from snapping his bone. My canines met around his leg. My back teeth sank through fur and into muscle. I growled, my claws gripping the ground for stability. Blood flowed into my mouth, threatening to choke me if I didn’t swallow. Still, I held on.
Marc turned on me, with that peculiar feline flexibility, and roared almost directly into my ear. But I didn’t let go until he nipped my shoulder just hard enough to draw blood. I’d had a potentially crippling grip on his leg, and he’d held back from hurting me. Some might call that sweet. I called it poor judgment. I only played for keeps, and if Marc wanted to play with me, he’d have to do the same. I was finished making exceptions for him. I’d moved on, whether he realized it or not. And hopefully he would now.
Four more shapes burst through the thick undergrowth, all large and black, the edges of their fur melting into the shadows. Daddy’s other loyal tomcats had come to rescue his right-hand man from a tabby half his size. If I could have, I would have laughed. As it was, I could only huff, but that was good enough to make my point. Marc hobbled off, settling on the ground several feet away to clean his wound, pausing to glare at me periodically and to growl.
As I washed Marc’s blood from my face, Ethan approached me warily, his head hanging low. He sniffed the air as he came, as if he wasn’t quite sure it was actually me. If my scent didn’t convince him, one look at my eyes would. Cats can communicate anger through their expressions just as people can, and I was really good at looking pissed off. I’d had lots of practice.
My appetite was gone, along with any peace I’d gained from my run in the forest. I shot one last contemptuous glance at Marc, then turned my back on them all and jumped over a tangled clump of brush and vines, landing silently on a bed of pine needles on the other side. I was too tired to run, and the walk back to the house took much too long to suit me. The sights and sounds I’d rejoiced in half an hour earlier now grated on my last nerve. Each owl’s hoot seemed to scold me; each rodent’s squeak mocked my plight.
At the edge of the trees, I sank my teeth into my neat pile of clothes, managing to get everything but my panties. I hesitated, uncomfortable with leaving my underwear exposed on the lawn, but abandoned it in the end because I didn’t have any hands and was too pissed off to try Shifting immediately.
Luckily, I didn’t need hands to open the back door, because it was equipped with an oblong handle, easily depressed by cat paws. As long as someone was home, we never locked the doors, because a cat has no place to carry keys. Also, we figured that anyone stupid enough to trespass deserved to be eaten and probably wouldn’t be missed.
I’m kidding, of course. Mostly.
Pawing open the screen-door latch, I trudged into the back hall. The tiles felt cold and smooth against my paws, and the air-conditioning ruffled my sensitive facial whiskers. The only sound other than the whistle of air through the vents was the hum of the refrigerator. It sounded oddly mechanical to my cat ears.
I padded into my room through the open doorway and dropped my clothes on the carpet. Still fuming, I jumped onto the bed and curled up with my tail wrapped around my body. I was hungry and thirsty, and too mad to Shift. Great.
And it only got better when Jace leaned around the door frame, waving my panties from one finger like a white flag. I growled at him, but he only laughed. He knew I wouldn’t hurt him in human form, because that wouldn’t be playing fair. But then, neither was waving my underwear around for the whole world to see.
“You want them back?” he asked. I bobbed my head, and he laughed again at my approximation of a very human gesture. “Come and get them.”
He stepped into the doorway, wearing nothing but a pair of black bikini briefs, and I was suddenly glad to still be a cat. Anyone else might have looked ridiculous in so little material, but Jace was temptation personified. If I’d been human, he couldn’t have mistaken the look in my eyes for anything less than lust. But as a cat, while I had a healthy appreciation for what lay, rather obviously, beneath that tiny triangle of cloth, I was distanced from it by the boundary of species. Jace was much less a possibility than he would have been had I not been sporting fur and claws.
“Come on, if you want them,” he repeated, and I cocked my head, trying to look curious since I couldn’t just ask why he wouldn’t bring them to me. It worked. “Marc said he’d use me as a scratching post if I ever went into your room unchaperoned again.”
Aah. Yes, that sounded like Marc, though he would never have said it in front of me.
Jace grinned, eyes glinting suggestively. “He didn’t say anything about you coming into my room.”
I snorted air through my nose at him and thumped to the floor, landing more delicately on four feet than I ever could have on two. He held out my panties, and I padded over to him, taking the waistband between my teeth. I blinked up at him.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “You really did some damage to his leg, you know.”
I bobbed my head again. I did know. I’d meant to.
“Your father’s going to be pissed. Marc was supposed to make a run up to Oklahoma tomorrow to check out a report we got yesterday about a stray.”
I blinked again and yawned, dropping the underwear on the floor. So Owen would go instead. Or Parker. I didn’t really care about my father’s plans to patrol the territory, unless they meant taking prying eyes away from me. Of course, by injuring Marc, I’d inadvertently guaranteed that he’d be around to watch me for a while. Great job, Faythe. That was me, always careful to plan ahead.
“Shift back,” Jace said, smiling down at me. “I’ll get you something to eat.” He closed the door without waiting for my response. Not that I could have said no. But it would have been pretty satisfying to nudge the door closed in his face.
The Shift back to human was harder than it should have been, and took longer than normal because I couldn’t help thinking about Marc and dwelling on my own anger. I could still taste his blood, which made me simultaneously hungry and furious, a decidedly bizarre combination.
Jace’s last comment ran through my head as I Shifted. He’d said a stray had been reported in Oklahoma, well within the boundaries of our territory. That made at least two such reports, that I knew of, in the last two days. What was going on?
Strays are humans who became werecats after being scratched or bitten by one of us in cat form. Not every bite or scratch produces a werecat, but in spite of centuries spent observing the process, no one seems to know for sure why. Or why not. But there are plenty of theories.
Some werecats believe the size or severity of the wound is directly proportionate to the chances of “infection,” if that’s even the right term. Others, mostly the older generation, believe that transmission is more likely to occur under certain phases of the moon. I’d even
