“Hey, let go!” I demanded, summoning anger to replace the fear curdling the contents of my stomach. Fear cripples you, but anger helps you fight, and I now knew without a doubt that I would soon be fighting. “You do not want to know what happened to the last cat who pissed me off.”

Okay, technically all I’d done was scratch the end of his nose with my partially Shifted teeth, but the cat before that…He’d gotten his brains splattered all over both me and several square feet of dry brown grass.

In response to my blatant but evidently unbelievable threat, the stray rolled his eyes—an oddly human gesture for a cat—and tugged urgently on my sleeve.

What he wanted was clear. It was also not going to happen.

“Uh-uh!” I shook my head. “No way in hell am I going to wander off through the woods with the first tom who rubs up against me.”

The stray growled fiercely, and my pulse thundered in my ears. My nose picked up a sudden surge of the stray’s scent in the air. He was pissed, and likely scared, and his body was releasing extra pheromones to warn everyone near him. Which would be me. Only me. All by myself.

However, even if he was trying to help me, I couldn’t leave Marc and Jace behind, especially when one or both of them might be injured.

He pulled my sleeve again, hard this time. “You can’t just grab strange girls and start dragging—”

But apparently I was wrong, because he planted his rear feet firmly in the ground and gave my jacket a mighty yank. I had to brace a hand on his shoulder, curling my fingers in thick, unfamiliar fur to remain standing. The next tug moved us several feet, me hunched over and tripping in the meager moonlight, him stepping quickly and confidently, even moving backward.

“Stop it!” I shouted on purpose this time, hoping Marc and Jace were close enough to hear me. But my words gave the stray no pause. The time had come for more offensive measures. Damn it.

I drew the knife from behind my back, slamming one finger down on the button. The blade popped out with a satisfying metallic thunk. “You’re not giving me many options here,” I warned as his eyes lit on the blade, gleaming in a stray beam of moonlight.

He growled again, and for a moment, neither of us moved. Then he braced his front paws on the ground and jerked me to his right by my arm. I stumbled, off balance, and only remembered to swing the knife up at the last second. But that was a second too late.

His left paw arced toward me and slapped at my hand. Even with his claws retracted, the powerful shot knocked the knife from my fist and left my whole arm numb and tingling.