Stella woke up to a sharp noise.
She and Nate had gone to bed together, in her own room, the two of them pressed close together under her gauzy canopy. They’d made love slowly, gently, Nate moving inside her and Stella feeling as though their hearts were commingling along with their bodies. Her orgasm had been a slow, sweet thing, rolling through her body and leaving her poised on the edge of sleep.
She’d been sure that she was going to sleep the night through, solid and restful, with no bad dreams.
But something had woken her up.
Beside her, Nate sat up. “What was that?” Stella whispered.
“Stay here,” he said, slipping out of bed. He’d insisted on taking the outside, even though Stella had pointed out that she did tend to wake up in the night and she didn’t want to disturb him by crawling over him while he was asleep.
“I’ll wake up if you get up no matter what,” he’d replied. “And I want to be between you and anything that might happen.”
So he was sleeping on the outside. And it looked like something had happened.
Stay here. But what about Eva?
Suddenly caught up with worry about her daughter, Stella got up and followed Nate out into the hall. Eva’s door was closed, thankfully, and when she eased it open, she could just see her daughter sacked out in bed, hair a messy tangle on the pillow. She breathed easier.
Another noise downstairs. Then a sudden male shout: “Stop right there!”
What Stella did next probably wasn’t smart. She should’ve stayed up in her room, waiting until everything was safe. A few days ago, that might have been what she did.
Because she would’ve been afraid.
Well, she wasn’t afraid anymore.
She went downstairs—slowly, paying attention, and ready to shift and run if she had to, but purposefully.
She thought she knew what she’d find.
There was a crash. Stella bolted the rest of the way and almost tripped as she burst into a scene of utter chaos.
Todd had broken in, all right. But he hadn't come alone.
Stella had thought that they'd scared Todd's wolf pack away, last time. But he must have done something to convince them to come along, because there were three—four—five of them here, and Carlos and Nate were caught up in a full-on brawl.
Everyone was in human form, for now. Stella held back, staying on the stairs. She didn't know how to fight, and even her lynx form was too small to be really effective if everyone else shifted.
Nate, on the other hand, clearly knew exactly what he was doing.
He and Carlos were standing facing away from each other. Todd was yelling something—staying back from the very fight he’d started, Stella noticed; why hadn't she ever realized what a coward he was?—and three of his buddies rushed Nate all at once.
Nate ducked smoothly under a wild roundhouse punch, and caught one of the men with a solid blow to the solar plexus. He fell back, groaning. The other two lashed out simultaneously, but Nate suddenly wasn't there—he'd shifted! His panther form was well below their blows, and they were teeteringly off-balance for a second. One of them actually clipped the other one with his fist.
Nate shifted back in a flash, rather than staying as a panther and attacking with his teeth and claws. Stella was glad. A fight with the shifted wolves would be serious and damaging, and she didn’t want Nate to get hurt.
Not that it looked like there was any danger of that, actually.
A quick movement that Stella couldn't follow, and one of the wolves was staggering back, his hands to his throat. Nate turned slowly to face the remaining pack member, whose name Stella vaguely remembered as Ryan.
Ryan called over his shoulder, while keeping careful eyes on Nate, “Todd, get your useless goddamn ass over here. You said this would be easy!”
Carlos, meanwhile, had dispatched the wolf he'd been fighting with, and had turned to stand at Nate's shoulder.
“I thought it would be,” Todd growled. “The sister and her boyfriend are out tonight, there weren't any stupid snow leopards around at all—”
“Clearly there's someone around.” Ryan glared at Nate. “I'm gonna teach you a lesson.”