“The cops are on their way,” I said, trying to keep the pulse hammering in my throat from pushing me into the shift that prickled my skin. I didn’t have the control to keep myself even a little bit human, and there was enough rage and adrenaline pouring through my bloodstream that if I shifted, I might well be fully feral, and that wasn’t going to make the situation any better for anybody.
“Good,” came Elliot’s response, although it was a low and threatening growl. “You should probably keep that fuck-head from bleeding to death on my carpet.”
I wondered which one of them—if either was—was Buettner. And who the other dickhead was.
I stepped closer to the man sitting on the floor, his eyes unfocused.
There was a lot of blood.
“Fuckin’ cut my fuckin’ arm,” the man slurred.
I wanted to make some sort of snide remark about the fact that he deserved it for having broken into someone else’s house. I didn’t. Aggravating anyone—especially the guy with the crowbar—was a bad idea.
Because I knew Elliot was weak—a lot weaker than he looked right now, thanks to what was probably a lot of cortisol rushing through his system.
I walked to the kitchen, grabbed a towel, and threw it at the guy on the floor. “Put this on your arm and put pressure on it,” I told him. Judging from the spray and quantity of blood, he’d hit a vein or artery. I wasn’t sure if I’d feel bad if he bleed to death on the floor—although I was already annoyed about having to get blood out of the carpet.
“Shawano police!”
Elliot and both men twitched, although I recognized Smith’s rough voice.
“In the back!” I called.
The guy with the crowbar looked at the door, then turned and sprinted through it, stumbling and falling down the few stairs that led into the garden, then dragging himself back up.
“Joel, man!” the guy bleeding on the floor wailed.
“Guess your buddy isn’t very loyal,” Elliot growled.
Smith and several uniforms swarmed into the room, although both of them recoiled from Elliot, one of them raising his gun. I stepped between him and Elliot without thinking, sucking in a breath as my brain caught up with the instinctive action my body had taken.
“Put that down, Hanson,” Smith all but spat. The uniform, his pale face flushing, lowered the gun.
“The other guy ran out the back,” I said, the words clipped by the anger I tried to stifle.
“Rickers, go,” Smith ordered.
The other uniform—the one who hadn’t pulled a gun on the victim—nodded once and clambered through the broken doorway, snapping on his flashlight and heading out into the yard, presumably following the footprints through the snow.
Then Smith turned to the quaking man bleeding by the door. “So,” he said, his tone oddly flat. “You thought you might compound those threat and attempted homicide charges with breaking and entering and assault? Or were you just planning to jump directly to murder?”
The bleeding man on the floor looked up, his expression resentful. “Wasn’t gonna kill him,” he whined. “Just scare him.”
I felt a low growl rumble in my chest, and Smith put a hand on my arm. I knew he was telling me to calm down, and I didn’t want to. I had to, though. Growling at a crime scene might already have been enough to out me as a shifter, and the fact that I was here at all probably meant that the whole department would know by the end of tomorrow that I was gay and living with Elliot Crane.
I didn’t actually care if they did. I wasn’t terribly keen to start finding threats in my locker at work or nasty notes left under my wipers about being an animal or a ‘homo,’ as had happened once at one of my jobs in college, but if that was what happened, so be it.
Elliot wavered a little—just for a second, and he quickly regained control, but I’d seen it. I stepped closer to him, wanting to give him support, but his expression darkened, and I stopped myself from reaching out. He clearly didn’t want me to.
“Mr. Buettner, not only have you broken and entered, but you have assaulted and threatened the same man youalreadyassaulted and threatened while out on bail. This is not going to go well for you.”
Buettner said nothing, just stared sullenly at the floor.
“Hanson,” Smith ordered. “Take this piece of trash out to the car.”
Hanson the gun-happy cop reholstered his weapon and roughly hauled Buettner to his feet. “Come on,” he half-grunted. It bothered me that I couldn’t tell if the man’s annoyance was directed at Buettner, at Smith, or at the fact that he had been ordered to arrest someone for threatening a shifter.
As soon as Buettner and Hanson were out of the room, Elliot stepped into my body, his weight hitting me hard enough that I staggered a little. Just a little, though—I recovered quickly, then wrapped Elliot in my arms, careful of his injured side and shoulder.
