AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Had it stolen his footwear? Dragged him out the window and stolen his things? Maybe it wasn’t human under those pants? I was assuming so based on the clothing, but with so much gore, I couldn’t have sworn to it. It was, however, not much less terrifying to imagine a cougar doing battle while wearing my Tom’s pants and shoes than a half man-half beast.
Either made my head spin.
They grappled, snarling and snapping, tearing bits of flesh away and starting whole new rivers of blood with each bite or slash. They were in my backyard, but they weren’t quiet—why were no neighbors out watching or calling for help.
Probably for the same reason I wasn’t outside.
But surely the sheriff would be here soon?
The fight grew more heated, their growls freakishly like a large house cat, but nothing else about them anything like that sort of a cute kitty. No, they were going to fight to the death.
Frozen to the spot and apparently unable to leave it to go find my phone. I searched my mind and had no idea where I’d left it, since we’d come into the house so entangled in one another’s arms. Where was Tom? Had he gone for help? But even one day into knowing him, I could not believe that. Of course, how could I believe that a wild cat would hold him down and strip off his clothing only to put it on itself.
How did any of this work?
I didn’t know and wasn’t sure I ever would.Please let me wake up. Even if I’m in the closet, dreaming, whatever is really going on can’t be worse than this.
But of course, whoever I was praying to did not answer because as horrible and frightening as this was, it was reality. And I really did know this. I just didn’t understand it. It was time to do something. I couldn’t just watch two cougars, or whatever they were, kill one another in my backyard while I cowered like a coward under the windowsill.
I forced myself to my feet but never looked away from the battle outside. So I didn’t miss it when his pants tore away giving me a glimpse of man parts before everything became cat parts. This was so out of my realm of reality.
Mom’s disappearance, which was probably committed by an ordinary evildoer, had been my only extreme experience before now.
And then the one no longer in pants turned toward me, and his eyes fixed on me with such horror, the reality sank in. The eyes weren’t blue, but they were Tom’s. I’d know them anywhere. And he was a half, no a whole…mountain lion?
And I was not dreaming.
Under other circumstances, I’d be asking him a lot of questions right now, but under other circumstances, he would not be doing battle with another mountain lion. But what did I know? Maybe he did this three times a week.
Could I live with that?
Maybe, maybe not. But what I could not live with was the other cat about to close his massive jaws around my man’s throat and sink his fangs into it.
Not now, not ever.
I catapulted out the window and flung myself on top of the other cat with a shriek that muffled against his scruffy fur.
ChapterFourteen
Tom
My mate’s shriek died off, but the enemy had heard her. Or felt her since she was currently clinging to his back and trying to bite him with her tiny white human teeth. While he was craning his head left and right in an attempt to use his much larger and sharper ones to do the job he came here to do.
To kill the princess and end the prince’s line so his boss could take over a country that according to the report had less than a hundred-thousand citizens. I wouldn’t let him do that to anyone, but harming my mate held a special kind of pain that he would discover as soon as I got her out of the way and into safety.
The distraction loosened his grip on me and allowed me to wrap him in my front paws and push him back, sending Emmalise sliding off his back onto the ground. I growled, trying to tell her to run and hoping she’d understand, but she lay stunned, far too near for my liking. This lion’s only goal was to kill her. That’s what he was getting paid for. And what he’d be executed for failing at. These jobs were not set up by people with a forgiving nature.
Not at all. If he didn’t complete the job, he’d never have a day of peace, and the ones he had left would be few anyway. Our outfit in special forces had specialized in his kind of criminal. That was why when we were called before Congress, we could not report on a single action we’d taken. Not that it mattered. Our unit wasn’t dissolved for laziness.
I tightened my grip, sinking my claws through the pelt and into the flesh of the hit-cat, silently pleading with my mate to get up and move, but she was still on the ground, still appearing in shock, her eyes wide, gaze fixed. I couldn’t tell if she was physically hurt, but my lion decided to go on as if she were. With a roar the likes never heard from a mountain lion before, he wrenched the cougar onto his back and opened our jaw wide. The other lion had been about to rip out our throat, but it was much more satisfying to be on the other side. Sinking my teeth into his flesh and ripping it open, warm salty fluid filling my mouth.
The older lion struggled mightily for the better part of a minute while his blood pumped out of his destroyed arteries, gradually slowing to twitching. Then, as his limbs stilled, the change came over him, and we were about to see the person behind the attack. The man who had been hired to kill my mate. The one my lion had found guilty and delivered a sentence on.
Normally, I’d have a real problem with such things, but since he was fighting me right until the end, ready to kill us or anyone in the way of his contract to murder our mate, I didn’t see anything wrong with it.
“Th-that’s the mayor.” The soft voice came from behind me where my mate stood, shoulders slumped, hands wringing in front of her. “I don’t understand any of this. But that’s the mayor. You saw him, sitting in the diner this morning? Was that just this morning? I-I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
And I was about to make it worse by shifting right in front of her, but the way she was talking, she knew who I was anyway. Moving away from the bloody corpse, I changed back to the man she’d met before. A man who had in all our previous contact been wearing clothing. But with what lay before us, I didn’t think my nudity was the biggest elephant in the yard.
