Page 68 of Murder Mittens

My uncle sighed. “Well, yes. You’re huge. Thank you for not beating my family within an inch of their lives, because I know full well you can.”

My entire family eyed Sebastian with interest.

“I don’t mind a mock fight after we come back from our trip,” the lion replied. “It’s good exercise and practice. But to answer your question, we’re Barbary lions. Some call us Atlas lions. Outside of the lycanthropes, we’re extinct except in zoos, and it’s unlikely the population will recover, although conservatory breeders are trying to help the species. They actually monitor our general behavior to see how they can improve conditions for the lions and if there are any breeding pairs that might be able to survive in the wild. They’re not at that point yet, but the goal is to release twenty breeding pairs into the wild in the future. Unfortunately, there’s not that many lions left, so it’ll be a while. And genetic diversity is an issue.”

“I seem to have caught an endangered species. Nice.” I debated taking a nap on Sebastian. “Are you full yet? I want to take my new car out for a spin, and we have to head off to the next spa. And I have presents to unwrap tonight in our room.”

“Presents implies you’ll unwrap more than one. You are not good at unwrapping more than one.”

“I’m going to try for two, but I’m expecting to be rewarded for stepping outside of my comfort zone.”

“You are such a cat,” Sebastian informed me before dislodging me from his person and getting to his feet. “Tell your family goodbye while I load the car?”

“Sounds like a plan. Goodbye, family! I am running away now.” I got up, grabbed my lion by his suit jacket, and held on in case the mob of brothers swarmed me and tried to make me stay longer. “I love you, please do not check in with me for at least a week, and I’ll let you know when I’m moving on to the next spa, where I’ll spend an entire week whining I have to send my lion back to work. Also, I’m quitting my job and finding one that won’t drive me to homicide. I’m relying on the lion to feed me until I find a new job. You can help me move for Christmas. That is a present. Helping me move is like twenty presents, at least.” I tugged on Sebastian. “You could give them your house keys and address, and they could move all of my stuff into your house. Then I can call my landlord and move out. I’m month-to-month. Then they can make sure my place is okay, too. I’m a defenseless woman, I’m not sure I can handle such horrible tasks.”

Sebastian twisted around, stared at me, and raised a brow. “You just hate moving.”

“Passionately.”

Shaking his head and grinning, Sebastian pulled out his keys, pulled off two fobs, a car key, and a house key, and he handed them to my uncle. “The dark blue fob controls the alarm system, the other one will get you into the garage, and that key will get you into the house through the garage. My piece of shit is so old it doesn’t have an alarm system. However, it’s mostly sound, so if one of the kittens learning to drive wants to work on fixing it up, they can have it, just send me insurance information on the kid so I can add them until I can transfer it. It would make the Corvette faint from shock and horror.”

Uncle Henry took the keys. “I’ll make sure everything gets moved safe and sound, Harri. Have a good time, and if you indulge in any behavior that might result in a litter of kittens, try not to kill your lion. We’re not sure if he’s lynx tough yet.”

Sebastian chuckled. “She hasn’t won an arm wrestling match against me yet, so there’s some hope for my survival.”

“Never underestimate a lynx during mating season,” my uncle warned.

“I’ll try not to do that.” Sebastian slipped out of his jacket and left me to my family, who converged before I could escape. “I’ll get the car ready while you tell your family goodbye properly.”

“You are a very bad man, Sebastian Sumners!”

Thirteen

I fail to see how this is revenge.

The Corvette drove like a dream. The engine growled, purred, and did everything I expected a sporty car to do, and when I hit the gas—or the brakes—the car meant serious business. I almost pitied Sebastian, who handled my exploratory driving with grace, punctuated with alarmed although infrequent hisses.

Everything we needed for the week fit into the trunk, including my prized box of cheese and other goodies. A few extra presents from my family had also found their way into the vehicle.

“Are you hissing at me because I’m learning this car doesn’t need me to apply my full bodyweight to the brake in order to get the damned thing to stop? Because honestly, I had to, and it was getting pretty unsafe to drive. It didn’t understand how to go well, either. I’ll get used to it, I promise. By the time we get to Chicago, I will be a master of every road I see, zipping along in my pretty red Corvette.”

“I’m hissing because I gave your family the keys to my house, and my bedroom has a shameful number of your pictures just about everywhere. Fortunately, none of the pictures implicate you in bounty hunting, but there is one where you were wearing some fuckwit’s blood, and I forget about it. And I don’t have my spare keys with me. I have to go back to work to get them out of my office.”

Crap. “Which fuckwit?”

“One of the ones who wanted you to be their mate and didn’t want to give you an option in the matter. Your violent refusal offered me hope, as earlier that week, you’d spent an entire hour with me in a coffee shop talking business, and you only hissed at me once. I got several purrs out of you that day.”

Oh. That fuckwit. “Yeah. He was a wolf. It’s fine. I’ll just tell the bastards I gave you the picture as a challenge or something. With my makeup skills? They’ll believe it’s fake blood. You should see what I do for Halloween. Once, I showed up with no face, just exposed bone and flayed muscle and blood. I made people faint. It was amazing. Once I finished laughing, I stole their candy, wrote messages in lipstick on their foreheads, and had a great time. They got revenge, but I’d gotten them so damned good it was worth tolerating.”

“Dare I ask what sort of revenge they got on you?”

“They filled my fridge with cans of whipped cream. That’s it. Just cans of whipped cream. They stole my food and replaced it with whipped cream. One of them took mercy on me and left some hot chocolate out. I had to go bum food off my mother for a week because they cleaned the whole place out, and I was between paychecks. They knew this, too. They waited for a slim week to get their revenge. It was also in the middle of January.”

“I fail to see how this is revenge.”

“Well, I had to go to my parents’ place every day several times a day if I wanted food, but the hot chocolate with whipped cream part of that week? Quite nice, actually. I gained five pounds, but I was a little thin anyway.”

“So, you’re saying, their version of revenge was treating you with something you like but making you go home for a week to be properly fed?”