“I can do that,” she assured me before stepping slightly away from me. One moment she stood there a woman, my mate, my beautiful silver-eyed beauty. The next, she was on all fours, paws clearly a diminished version of the incredible pelt that covered the rest of her sleek, feline body.
“Holy fuck!” “Jesus!” “That’s amazing!” I couldn’t really distinguish who was saying what, but there was a whole lot of that shit going around.
“I will cut your fucking fingers off,” I growled as I noticed a hand coming close to my woman. I needn’t have worried though, Chantal turned her head, snapping her teeth at the idiot who dared to touch her.
Brace snatched his hand back and laughed like a maniac. “Sorry, sweetness, it was just so pretty I couldn’t resist.”
At that, my woman purred. Her cat moved over to him and brushed her fur quickly against his fingertips before she made her way back to my side. I watched, knowing her intention was just to be friendly. Still, I had to calm my inner beast at the awed look on Brace’s slack-jawed face. “Shit! That felt like touching the night sky,” he offered to the room when he was able to pull himself together again.
“Come near my woman, and I will end you!” The words sat heavy in the room as every man there took a solid step back away from us where before they had been leaning in, many tempted to try just what Brace had. Again, I needn’t have worried. My woman moved from each man, sniffed at them, and then allowed her fur to brush through limply hanging fingers. If they even appeared as though they would touch her on their own, or push for more, she moved away quickly. When she got near the doc, she sniffed, turned her nose up, and came back to my side. He scowled at her as she did so.
“Think you offended her earlier, Doc,” I told him. He just huffed and turned his back to all of us in order to down the drink he had left sitting on the table behind him. Some of the men, I noticed, were busy looking at their hands in disbelief. She really was something, all midnight and moonbeams. Chantal stayed in her leopard form once she changed because there was no way I could handle her shifting back in front of my brothers. Most shifters had no problem with nudity amongst us. That really wasn’t an issue for us. The problem, and one I knew she clued in on, was that I just had her fall into my lap. I’d only seen her fully nude once, there was no way I was ready to share that experience with anyone else just yet. Beyond that, I didn’t think Chantal was ready for it. She hadn’t lived among shifter communities since she had been trying to remain in hiding most of her life.
“Leopard blood, you said?” I attempted to direct everyone’s focus back on the men who abducted my woman and tried to skin her alive.
“Yeah, we were hoping you could bring your woman back to the scene, maybe see if she picks up on something we might have missed, trigger a memory that she didn’t realize she still held onto…” Mammoth told me. He didn’t take a step back from me as he explained what they needed, but he looked damn ready to. That was odd for him, as the bears were always so stoic.
“I get it.” My reassurance went a long way toward him relaxing in front of me. I glanced down at the beautiful leopard by my side. “You okay with that?” Her head bumped my hand once, and I took that to be her acquiescence of the request. “We’ll go get ready. Gonna need some clothes for my woman since she just trashed hers.” I pointed to the mess she left behind on the floor when she shifted.
“I’ll walk back to the room with you. Let me know what sizes she takes, I’ll nab something from the support shop stock,” Knox told me. We turned to leave the room, all eyes still on us as we left, same as when we had arrived.
“Feel like a circus freak right about now,” I grumbled, much to Knox’s amusement.
“It’ll pass. Just seems different to them. Not many mated pairs around here just yet. I think half those fuckers are hopeful as hell now that two brothers have fallen. The rest of them scared shitless that it will happen to them.”
Chantal made a noise that sounded an awful lot like what I imagine a cat snickering would sound like. “Think that’s funny, do you?” I asked. Her answer was a purr and a head bumping into my thigh as we walked.
“You’re one lucky fucker,” Knox told me as I opened the door for Chantal to go inside my room. Before I could even move inside, I felt a disturbance in the air momentarily, telling me she had just shifted back to her human form.
“I need a medium shirt and a size 6 pants.”
“Yes ma’am,” Knox called out and trotted off before I could thank him. I closed the door behind me as I entered the room and took in her natural beauty.
“Need to know what you were sniffing for when you scented each of those men out there before allowing them to touch you.”
She giggled. “Honestly?”
“Yeah, Moonbeam. Always honest.”
“Well, truth be told, I wanted to see if any of them smelled of the men who abducted me, but the real reason was just to piss off the doctor. He made me feel like a weird science experiment when he was in here and I wanted to give him a dose of his own medicine.”
I threw my head back and laughed at that. “Remind me never to piss you off, babe.”
The little minx winked at me and
