Read Online Feral Pride by Cynthia Leitich Smith - Free Book Online

at-home visit, too. Wereopossums are known to be skittish. But not when cornered or when there are young to protect. Things could’ve gotten ugly fast.
    If anything happens to any of them, so help me, I would kill again. There was this human woman, a hunter, on Daemon Island. Rich, like all of them. A sorceress. She shot Yoshi. He walked away with a scratch, but she was shooting to kill. No, worse than that. She was shooting for trophies. Werewolf heads above the mantle. A werebear-skin rug in front of the fireplace. A Tasmanian weredevil stole.
    I didn’t mean for it to happen. I started out a broken-down wereopossum. I was caged and useless. The arctic asshats had taken away my crutches. They separated me from all the other captive shifters except Noelle. She was caged alongside me because they planned to breed her.
    Noelle’s explosive sex appeal, along with the threat of a quickly spreading fire, triggered my first transformation to Lion form. I hauled ass into the jungle to rescue the hunted. What I didn’t know was that they’d constructed and camouflaged Burmese tiger pits. I pounced to stop the hunter-sorceress from firing again. She fell into one of the traps. I’ll never forget her scream or the way it cut short. She was skewered like a pincushion. One of the sharpened sticks went right through the back of her neck and exited her throat with a chunk of tongue on it.
    An accident, sure, but it was still my responsibility. I don’t regret what happened. Not exactly. She was a murderer. I acted to defend the others. But, bottom line, I’ve taken a mortal life. On some cosmic level, I’m in the minus column. The freaking least I can do is not drop a bleeding angel of the Lord God.
    “Careful around the corner,” Aimee nags as I turn into Nora’s room. There’s a photo of her son on the dresser. Ferns hang in the windows. Notes from the Sanguini’s cookbook are scattered all over her desk. The Moraleses became Quincie’s guardians last fall after her uncle died. They were willing to let her stay here, so long as Nora moved in to serve as the responsible adult. It’s the only bedroom in the house with an attached bath.
    “Should we have moved him?” Aimee asks. “We shouldn’t have moved him.”
    It’s too late to worry about that now. Joshua’s out of it, muttering about “brushing the warhorses” and playing Pictionary with someone named Idelle.
    “Wait!” Aimee whisks away Nora’s lacy bedspread, embroidered with bluebonnets. The sheets will be trashed by blood regardless. The mattress, too.
    As I lay down the angel, Aimee rushes to the adjacent bathroom for fresh towels. Yoshi hasn’t come back yet. Kayla’s getting dressed. I already threw my clothes back on.
    “Joshua?” It’s Quincie’s voice, from downstairs. She marches through the door before Aimee or I can reply. Preternaturally fast. Quincie’s eyes are red. Her Wolf’s down, now her angel, too. “I’ll take care of him,” she announces with fangs barred. “I’ll —”
    I slap her face. Hard. “Snap out of it!”
    Aimee charges out of the bathroom.
“Clyde!”
    Quincie lifts me by the forearms. A full mane sprouts from my head. My saber teeth descend. “Mif o’ ’op o’ ebrythin’ else, ooo loose or mole, we are oyally kewed.”
    “What was that?” Quincie turns to Aimee with a raised brow.
    “He’s trying to say that if on top of everything else, you lose your soul, we are totally screwed,” my girlfriend translates. “Or maybe ‘royally screwed.’ But his throat has shifted too far for him to articulate it.”
    Quincie sets me aside — like I’m nothing — and rushes to Joshua. She takes her guardian’s hand. She brushes his dreadlocks out of his eyes. He’s a holy being. A lesser vampire, a soulless one, couldn’t touch his blood-stained skin. Not without being destroyed. Quincie is special.
    Whatever. I made my point.

DOWNSTAIRS IN THE KITCHEN, Clyde and I try to sell Kayla on the idea that