He paused for another bite of his lunch. “Last year, my son and one of our volunteer staff members were attacked coming out of a local bar. Unfortunately, Mitch lost control and, well, not all of the attackers made it. Even though there were plenty of witnesses and surveillance video that clearly showed it was self-defense, we still had to fight our way through to keep him from being charged.”
Chuck paused again, this time for a drink of water. “There was a lot of negative publicity that caused friction with the humans in the area. So, even though we are legally within our rights to force the Hunters off our land, it’s really in our best interest to try and handle the situation as diplomatically and with as little violence as possible.”
“Okay,” I murmured, reaching for another cold drumstick from the foil bag. “But bunnies?”
Chuck snickered. “Well, technically, it’s wabbits.”
Scowling at him, I considered whether or not to throw my chicken leg at the infuriating Alpha but finally decided not to and took another bite. It was really good chicken.
Smirking at my indecision, Chuck winked at me. “Seriously, they’re a non-combat team called the Warrior Wabbits.”
“Mmhmm,” I huffed, narrowing my eyes. I was pretty sure he was pulling my leg, but I wasn’tabsolutelysure. I mean, once you were dealing with werewolves, was anythingreallytoo much to believe?
Before I could push the issue, an immense shadow blocked out the sun over our blanket. Looking up, I gasped, my chicken leg was forgotten, rolling off the edge of the blanket when I dropped it. “Holy fucking fuck!”
Chuck watched me as I stared up into the sky, his expression caught somewhere between amused and smug. “Oh, look,” he deadpanned, still staring at me. “It’s a dragon.”
To say I was gasping in shock would be a gross understatement as the air around us began to swirl, the beast’s massive wings beating down as it circled. “But…and..”
“Uh-huh,” Chuck agreed, clearly enjoying himself as the dragon placed the large vehicle it gripped in a massive talon on the grass less than a football field away. The bus bounced lightly on its wheels as it was released. “Excuse me for a minute.”
“But..” Yeah, I still hadn’t caught up with the scene unfolding around me.
My jaw dropped as Chuck strode toward the bus, waving his arm toward the creature that was somehow still floating in the air a few hundred feet off the ground. It dipped one blood-red wing and then the wind began again as the huge wings extended and the dragon rose, fading to little more than a speck in the sky in less time than I could even have imagined. That’s assuming I’d been able to imagine any part of the scenario in the first damn place.
Stunned, I stayed where I was, frozen to my spot on the blanket when the bus gave a loud backfire, then a second before settling into the low rumble of a diesel engine. It puttered across the field, stopping next to Chuck who hopped onto the running board and stepped in through the open door before the bus began moving again.
Slowing to a stop a short distance from the blanket, I stared – what the hell else was I going to do -as a stream of perfectly normal looking humans began to flood out of the bus without paying me any notice and formed perfect lines of twenty, standing at attention. Or, what I’d seen called that in movies, anyway.
When the last line was in perfect formation, Chuck popped back out of the bus with a huge smile on his face. “Jules! Come here! I want to introduce you!”
The lines and lines of soldiers didn’t look my way or even twitch, so I drew in a deep breath and rose to my feet. Seriously, the dragon was gone and rabbits aren’t exactly scary, right? I had just reached Chuck’s side when a sound came from inside the bus. I glanced over my shoulder and then did a doubletake that nearly sprained my neck.
While the beings lined up in front of me looked like every other human, behind me was a six-foot brown rabbit wearing black trousers with a pink pinstripe, his ears hung at an odd, lopsided angle, and in one furry paw he was clutching a sparkling silver flask engraved with the wordcoffee.
I sucked in one deep breath and then everything went dark.
ChapterThirteen
Chuck
Pete’s surprising level of drunken coordination was the only thing that kept Jules from hitting the ground when he suddenly went limp.
“This hot mess is yours?” Pete snarked, hefting Jules slightly in an obvious suggestion that I should relieve him of the dead weight interfering with his flask-to-mouth curls.
Before I could formulate an appropriate response for the wise-ass rabbit, Jules’s eyes fluttered open and widened as he stared up at the humanoid rabbit.
“Chuck?” Jules whispered, not taking his eyes off Pete.
“Yeah?”
“I think maybe we should call the doctor.”
I snorted. “He’s not an illusion, babe,” I assured him, slipping my arm behind Jules’s back and stabilizing him while he found his feet.
“He’s not?” Jules’s voice wavered slightly as he continued to track Pete’s face.
“No, he’s not,” Pete snapped, his eyes narrowing. “He’s also not deaf, so how about you stop talking like I’m not here?” He slammed a swallow from his flask before shoving it into his hip pocket. “And you’re welcome for me not letting your melon impact the ground, by the way.”
