The Cougar's Pawn by Holley Trent

cactus.”
    He blinked. Hissed.
    “Ingrates.” She turned her back to him and caught her friends staring at her, slack-jawed. “I can explain,” she called out.
    “That’d be nice,” wide-eyed Miles said, nodding.
    Ellery jogged toward the door. “I didn’t mean to—”
    “Let’s explain one thing at a time,” Mrs. Foye interrupted. She nudged the women back into the house. “Right now, I think the demons are the more dangerous party.”
    “Dangerous is subjective,” Hannah said. “Maybe you’re blind to it, but I’m sure not. I mean, they’re all equally dangerous in my book. Men who turn into wild animals, and demons? And a woman who wades into it and comes out unscathed? Um,
hello
?”
    Ellery cringed. Put like that, she actually sounded competent. “Are you okay?” Miles shouted over Hannah’s grumbles.
    “Yeah. Are you?”
    “Just scared. What’s happening? Are they going to let us go home?”
    “I think that—”
    One of the Foye brothers hopped onto the porch and shut the door before Ellery could get the words out.
    She huffed. “Okay then. Well. I guess the party’s over.” She started for Mason’s house with its unattended baby and hot stove, letting out some crazed laughter as she went.
    This could only happen to me.
Kidnapping and demons and surly Cougars … At least the Wolves had some graciousness.
    She called over her shoulder, “Your mama needs to teach y’all some manners. Used up all my dang energy with that, and I didn’t have much to start with. You could at least be a little appreciative.”
    “Thanks for the help,” the Foye she thought was called Hank called after her.
    “Whatever.”
    Wrong Foye. Yep. Mason was a furry asshole indeed.

CHAPTER SIX
    Mason grabbed his clothes and set off after Ellery without a word to his brothers.
    Hank shouted, “What was that about a humidifier?”
    “Shit.” Mason turned on his heel toward his mother’s house. She reopened her door as he approached the steps. “Mom, do you have a humidifier? Nick is congested and the witchy one thinks it would help.”
    Mom gave him the silent, long stare treatment.
    “What?”
    She swallowed. Rolled her eyes. “It’s in the attic. Keep an eye on the girls for a moment, and I’ll go get it.”
    The ladies eased away from the door as Mom pushed it in and edged around them, but their stares were locked on Mason.
    Sighing, he stepped into his jeans and fastened them.
    He knew his brothers had moved in closer without even having to turn and look. He could feel their animalistic energy lapping against his, even in their human forms.
    Sean leaned against the stair rail and crossed his arms. “Thinking your pick might have been a little hasty now, huh?” He smirked.
    “Go on and yuk it up.” Mason concentrated on tying his bootlaces.
    “I don’t think you can handle a girl like that. Shit, I’m not sure if any of us can.”
    “But I’m sure you’d like to try, huh?”
    Sean shrugged and looked at the doorway. “There are always consolation prizes.”
    The blond—Hannah—charged at him. “You fucking—”
    Mason grabbed her by the waist before she could land a blow on his jerk of a brother and set her on the other side of the threshold. “Don’t let him rile you up.”
    Her eyes went comically wide. “I’m trapped in an episode of the goddamned
Twilight Zone
, and you’re concerned about
him
riling me up? No, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact we got forcibly snatched and driven to the middle of nowhere only to learn that our captors are some kind of oogy-boogy shapeshifters and that my
fucking
best friend is apparently a witch or a sorceress of some kind.”
    Sorceress
.
Ha.
She did kind of look like one, with all the twigs in her hair, though.
    Hannah poked him hard in the chest.
    “Ow.”
    She rolled up her sleeves. “Just
ow
? I’ll make you hurt worse than ow, dude.”
    “It’s all right.” Mom squeezed through the clump of bodies and held out the dusty