Southern Shifters: Werelock (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Mina Carter Page B

would probably be hungry when he woke.
    Sliding out from under his arm, she slipped from the bed. After a quick trip to the bathroom, she grabbed his shirt again and pulled it on. Being surrounded by his scent made her cat purr and she padded downstairs to make breakfast.
    Her kitchen was light and bright with a cosy breakfast nook that looked onto the garden. It was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with the place. Humming to herself, she bustled around the room. Luckily she kept her pantry well stocked so she had bacon, eggs, milk… all the fixings for breakfast.
    The little voice in the back of her head screamed at her as she grabbed bowls and pans, warning her not to fall prey to the fairy tale. She didn’t need the warning. Hale wasn’t any kind of prince charming. He might not have handed her over to Lance but that didn’t mean they were riding off into the sunset together and living happily ever after.
    An image of their wedding day played in her mind. Of throwing the bouquet and turning to kiss her handsome husband… She blinked, suddenly realizing she’d lost time. How long had she stood here looking at the bowls? Hale must have worn her out more than she’d thought. Her stomach rumbled as she dropped the bacon into a hot pan. It sizzled, filling the room with its delicious smell. She measured ingredients for pancakes and beat the mixture. She loved pancakes, always had. They were her favorite breakfast food.
    Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to fall into good memories. One of the few she had of her parents before they died was of her mom making breakfast on a Sunday morning. Even now, she remembered the little song her mother used to sing and the smell of her father’s tobacco.
    Sadness tinged her mood. Smells… she could remember smells, but she couldn’t recall their faces anymore. Oh, she knew what they’d looked like. Both had been into photography so she had plenty of photos of them, and her as a baby, but she couldn’t remember what her dad looked like when he laughed, or her mom when she concentrated on her sewing.
    Her hackles rose, the skin between her shoulders crawling as her cat went on high alert. She snapped her eyes open, convinced someone was watching her from the window, but there was no one there. No hulking figure with glowing eyes. Not even the damn postman.
    But still the feeling persisted. Reaching out, she picked up the nearest thing to hand and plastered herself against the wall by the window. She held her breath and ducked forward, peeking out quickly before she hid behind the curtain again. No one in the garden.
    Her gaze latched onto the back door. Crouching, she did her best impression of a ninja as she scuttled to the other side of the room. If ninja’s were short, blond women who wore their boyfriends T-shirts. Well, Hale wasn’t really her boyfriend, but werelock-who’d-been-hired-to-find-her-and-had-decided-to-save-her-for-himself-instead was a bit of a mouthful so boyfriend it was.
    She looked stupid, but finally reached the wall by the door and peered out. No one there either. Lowering the saucepan in her hand, amusement curved her lips. Then she laughed at herself.
    A saucepan. Really? She was a predator with natural weaponry, and she picked up a damn saucepan to defend herself?
    Talk about ridiculous.
    Her nose twitched. Was that… She looked to the stove to see smoke starting to rise from the pan. The bacon…
    “Shit. No, no, no, don’t you dare burn,” she cried out as she raced to the stove to try and salvage breakfast. Before she could scrape the burnt bits of bacon from the bottom of the pan, the back door burst inward and the kitchen filled with snarling werelions.
    Brogan werelions.
    Lance had found her.
    Snarling with rage, she did the first thing she could think of, grabbed the pan off the stove and showered all of them with hot fat and burnt bacon. 
    “Aaaargh!”
    “What the fuck!”
    There were male screams and swearing as they dried