Grayslake: More than Mated: The Right Spot (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Bianca D'Arc Page B

her.
    Which was good, considering he’d just found his mate.
     

 
     
    Chapter Nine
     
    Patty came awake the next morning at an unfamiliar noise in the distance. She stretched, still half asleep, when the noise came again, waking her more fully.
    The bed was rumpled and she grinned when she recalled exactly how it had gotten that way. Mario wasn’t in the room. She listened closely, but she couldn’t hear him anywhere in the house. He was a cat, of course, so he might just be too quiet for her to hear, but she got the feeling he wasn’t in the house. It had an empty feel to her that she couldn’t quite define in words.
    She threw the covers off as the sound came again. It was a loud clunk. As if someone was throwing furniture around next door.
    In the house Maryann and Greg had been in until yesterday.
    Shit.
    It sure sounded like someone was ransacking the place to her sharp shifter hearing. No time to dress. Patty grabbed a sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself like a loose toga as she headed for the door.
    Within a minute she was out in Mario’s backyard, peering over the fence through the thick bushes. And there he was. Mario was wearing a pair of jeans, his feet and sexy chest bare. He must’ve just thrown on his jeans when the sounds next door woke him. As an ex-soldier and cat shifter, he probably slept a lot lighter than she and her bear half, which really liked to sleep.
    Mario was sneaking around, silent as the cat that shared his soul, peering in the windows, spying on the men she could see only as shadows moving around inside the house. Even as she watched, Mario deliberately rapped his knuckles against the side of the house, just once.
    Was he trying to force a confrontation with the guys inside? Did he not realize these guys were probably drug dealers, or worse, thugs who worked for drug dealers, who could be armed? Then again, as an ex-mercenary, Mario was probably familiar with more forms of firearms and explosives than she’d ever even seen.
    But he wasn’t carrying that she could see. He was wearing jeans and nothing else. And he was going to take on at least two thugs who were, in all likelihood, armed to the teeth.
    Crazy cat.
    Even as she watched, the two guys burst out of the house, and sure enough, they were leading with big, black, nasty handguns.
    Patty had seen enough. She threw off her sheet and shifted into bear form. If those hoodlums thought they were going to hurt her cat, they had another think coming.
    Growling deep in her throat, she bounded over the fence, snagging the top of the overgrown shrubs with her back feet, but she didn’t really care. The gunmen looked at her, distracted, and Mario moved faster than she’d ever seen anyone move—and that included the Abrams brothers—and shifted into his cat form, his jeans landing in a pile behind him as he leapt on the gunmen.
    He swiped at them with his paws, keeping his claws hidden, packing a punch with his furry forelegs that took both men out with quick, precise blows to the head. He knocked one on the temple and one got it in the back of the head, but the result was the same. Both men went down, out cold.
    Without breaking stride, the cat landed on his four paws and slunk toward her, slowly. Deliberately. He didn’t look pleased, but then, neither was she. Her heart was still racing, fear for him having dictated her movements without conscious thought for the past minute or two.
    Seeing the bad guys on the ground, calmer thought was beginning to return. She had underestimated him. She’d seen firsthand now that the cat had mad skills. He had known exactly what he’d been doing before she interfered.
    Then again, she’d provided a timely distraction. It probably would’ve been harder for him to sneak up on the guys without her intervention. She had nothing to feel sorry about. She’d helped. Hadn’t she?
    And, oh, good lord in heaven, his cat was gorgeous. Gigantic. Sleek. Sexy. And just…beautiful.
    He