Page 25 of Were-Geeks Save a Kitten

“Merowwwww! Mew, mew. Whimper. Meow!”

What was that?

Yordan wasn’t the only one looking. The panther reacted as any feline mother should. It sniffed, cocked its ears, and turned its whole head to where wolf McNabb should be standing right now. Except there wasn’t a wolf there. Instead, Yordan saw a large kitten squatting miserably in the sand.

What the fuck?

Not only was it a kitten, but it was one of those Scottish floppy-eared things. It wasn’t even a proper cat! Was that The Scot?

Couldn’t be. He’d never fought directly with McNabb before, but he’d heard the tales. The guy was a big gray wolf. He was sure of it.

Except right now, he was a mewling, pitiful gray kitten. He had big, limpid eyes and ears that fell in adorable little folds. If Yordan weren’t so shocked, he’d be laughing his ass off. Or cursing because the damned kitten was about to get eaten.

The panther dashed forward, dropping its head down as it sniffed then opened its mouth.

No!

Yordan and every wolf on the beach started barking, trying to distract the creature, to no avail.

With a grumbling kind of purr, the panther put its mouth around McNabb’s neck and lifted the kitten up by his scruff. Well, hell.

The Scot dangled from the panther’s mouth like a naughty kitten with his feet hanging down and his shoulders up around his folded ears.

Talk about a sight Yordan would remember for the rest of his life. It was downright hysterical until he realized the panther was taking the kitten back to its lair or den or wherever mamma cats took their kittens.

Too bad this cat was a lake monster. Its home might very well be under the freezing water. That was not going to work for The Folded-Eared Scot. But what the hell was Yordan going to do about it? And what the fuck was McNabb doing? Was he in pain? Was he trying to wriggle free?

It looked like The Scot was swinging back and forth, harder and harder. Enough to make the panther slow down as she tried to fight his momentum.

Weird.

And then Yordan watched the cleverest use of insta-shift he’d ever seen in action. Right at the moment of farthest arc, the kitten was covered in the golden glow of a shift. McNabb was shifting back to human with all the change in weight and dimension that entailed.

It never would have worked for Yordan. He took too long to change. But the insta-shift meant that the panther was abruptly carrying the weight of a full-grown man, who looped an arm around the creature’s neck rather than go flying back out into the half-frozen lake.

The panther toppled sideways onto the sand with its neck stretched out from the pull of McNabb’s human weight. And bam, there was a perfect target for Yordan and any puppy within reach.

Perfect, if one ignored the fact that The Scot’s back was ripped open by the creature’s teeth. McNabb’s kitten scruff had become human flesh. God willing, it had been McNabb’s back and not his neck.

Either way, Yordan couldn’t deal with it now. He took the opportunity McNabb had sacrificed his back for and attacked.

Success.

He ripped out the monster’s neck, and just as the creature’s lifeblood began to drain away, the thing splintered into a thousand pinpoints of light and disappeared.

Gone. Back into the lore that created it.

In its place lay The Scot, who was a bloody, shivering mess.

Marsha got there before Yordan did. He needed to shift back to human before he could help. And honestly, he was supposed to stay wolf just in case the lake decided to throw a third monster at them.

But the discipline was hard. McNabb was on the ground with blood staining the sand like sick ink, and there was nothing a wolf could do to stop it.

Yordan made room for Marsha, splitting his attention between watching the surrounding area and seeing if The Scot was in his death throes.

“Are you all right?” Marsha gasped. “What do you need?”

The Scot opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out. Instead, there was the telltale shimmer as he turned back into a kitten in all his bedraggled, floppy-eared glory.