I'm Not Afraid of Wolves (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 4) by Erin Hayes

face was pinched into the deepest frown I’d ever seen on anyone. She was mentally catching up. I just needed to head that off before either of them got any ideas. There were a few items down here that could be used as blunt weapons, and I was too tired to fight them on it.
    “I’m not a werewolf, Sara,” I told her evenly. “I’m a—” I hesitated, because I hadn’t told anyone in years “—a mountain lion shifter.”
    That statement hung between us and their looks turned from suspicious to just plain confused.
    “A mountain…?” Sara started, but she couldn’t even say it.
    “A mountain lion shifter,” I finished.
    Andrea shook her head and cursed under her breath. “You’re crazy. You are absolutely—”
    I shapeshifted my hand into a paw, obvious enough to not be a wolf paw, but not monstrous enough to freak them out even further.
    “Oh my god,” Sara whimpered, cowering in the corner. “How?”
    “It was a big factor in why I divorced Shane,” I explained. I morphed my hand back so I could continue restraining Donnelly. “He turned me into a mountain lion. And I hated living in that world. So this… ” I twirled my finger around, indicating this messed up situation. “…this whole thing, you don’t want to be a part of it. Take it from someone who knows, and who has been running from that life for ten years. I’m going to get you out of here.”
    “Shane did this to you?” Sara asked, her voice broken.
    I snickered. “Yeah. I told you it was a bad marriage.”
    I resumed duct taping Officer Donnelly up tightly. Once I had his wrists bound behind him, feet and legs bound in front of him, and a couple of times around the torso, then I would feel comfortable about having him down here. If he transformed, I was reasonably sure that he wouldn’t be able to free himself. I didn’t gag him with the tape, only because I knew that we’d have to ask him where his truck was in order to get out of here. And if he knew where the other werewolves were.
    That is, if he’s with the werewolves, my thoughts nagged at me.
    Of course he was. Why else would he be out by the cabin after midnight? Also, I immensely hoped so, because otherwise, I’d be in big trouble with the law.
    If that were the case though, I’d deal with that later. We had bigger things to worry about.
    Like a pack of werewolves that now knew that there was a werecat among us.
    Sara and Andrea watched me, all too shocked at this turn of events. It made me regret the fact that I’d never told Sara about my deepest, darkest secret. She knew that my relationship with Shane had turned sour. She just never knew how deeply it scarred me. I focused intently on my actions, hoping that I wouldn’t freak them out any further by making too-quick movements.
    “Ugh, what happened?”
    We all looked over the couch where Emily was trying to sit up. She struggled for a bit and then winced as she laid back down. She grunted and finally put herself into a sitting position. “My head,” she whimpered softly.
    That was one less thing to worry about.
    Andrea sat on the couch next to her and checked her head and vitals. “We were attacked,” she explained softly. “How’s your head?”
    Emily grimaced and put her head in her hands. “Attacked?”
    Andrea licked her lips, indecision on her face. “Yeah, attacked.”
    And as she launched into a bad recap of what happened, I turned my attention back to Sara who was still watching me like I’d bite her at any given moment.
    “I never told you,” I said, “because I didn’t want you to think that I was crazy.”
    Her eyes bugged out of her head. “Crazy? Crazy ? Here I was, worried that you didn’t believe my story about werewolves, when this whole time—this whole time…”
    I did one more wrap of tape around Officer Donnelly. He was already pretty secure, but I needed something to do with my hands. “I wasn’t sure if you were on drugs or if you saw something and believed it—”
    She