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“Now,” he said. “You first.”
He shoved the gun against her. She nearly lost her balance.
“Neil, no,” she said, panicking. “No. Baby. Sweetheart. We could be so happy, here, in a little house—”
Out of nowhere, an enormous brown blur knocked both of them off the wall and onto the ground of the parking lot.
Cora hit the asphalt hard and skidded a couple inches. She smacked her head against the blacktop, the wind knocked out of her. She stared at the sky and tried to breathe, but she couldn’t force her lungs to inhale for seconds on end.
It happened, she thought. I jumped. I’m dead.
At that thought, the panic stopped.
Then suddenly her lungs were working again and she gulped in air, coughing, breathing and sputtering, trying to roll over despite a pain shooting through her chest. At last she got onto her hands and knees, in the parking lot.
I’m definitely alive,she thought. This fucking hurts.
“Cora!” called a familiar voice, and she looked up to see Hunter, racing toward her, human and naked as the day he was born.
She coughed again in response, and then he knelt down next to her.
“No, no, come on,” he said. “Lay back down. There you go. You’re gonna be fine.”
“What,” she managed to gasp out, “the fuck?”
“We followed your scent the second we realized you were gone,” he said.
He eased her onto her back, and then held her hand, kissing it. Cora looked down, past her feet, where she could see Ash, also naked, standing over Neil, who was face down on the asphalt. In one hand was Neil’s gun, and in the other, Neil’s phone.
“Backup’s on the way,” he called.
Cora squeezed Hunter’s hand.
It had worked.
* * *
Cora had a broken rib,a minor concussion, and two shifters who refused to leave her bedside until she was released from the hospital.
“The district attorney thinks Neil’s going to try for an insanity plea,” Ash said.
Cora made a face and sipped orange juice through a straw.
“The judge denied bail, though,” added Hunter.
“Good,” said Cora. She was still mad, but the thought of Neil in an orange prison jumpsuit made her feel a little better.
He was probably in there with shifters, too. Let him call them animals to their faces.
Over her hospital bed, Ash and Hunter exchanged looks.
“I wish you’d told us up front,” Ash said.
Cora closed her eyes.
“I know,” she said.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Hunter said.
