Page 19 of Brandon’s Mate

The woman slicing limes stopped for a second, her hand tightening around the knife. Her snort was too quiet for anyone but a wolf to hear. Kitty noticed she was wearing a scoop-neck tank with the bar logo on it, too low and too tight, with a push-up bra.

And somehow it didn’t look like she was enjoying showing her stuff.

Kitty looked around with her best bimbo smile. “Sorry, no. Not that this doesn’t look like a super-fun place to work.”

If you liked dive bars that smelled of stale beer and full-of-shit crows.

There was no sign or scent of Brandon, so she walked up to the bar and fished her phone out of her pocket. She swiped across it to display Brandon’s photo, and stepped between the bar stools, talking to the bartender. “I’m looking for this guy. Heard he might be in town. You seen him?”

The bartender flicked a glance—not toward the alpha crow, but over towards the two panthers sitting at the table.

Interesting.

Maybe the Crapper wasn’t the biggest threat in here. Just the most obvious.

“Don’t know,” the bartender said, hardly even looking at the picture. “Lots of people come in here.”

Considering there were only 497 people left in town and probably 487 of them were completely intimidated by the crows, Kitty doubted it.

The Crapper came over to her, crowding way too close, and grabbed her forearm to pull the phone over so he could see it.

He had a grip like iron, and he was holding her hard enough to bruise a normal girl.

There was a beat of silence as he looked at the phone. Then he said, “Why, it’s our friend Ray.” His tone was anything but friendly. One of the panthers in the corner stirred slightly at the name. They knew something about Brandon—she just had to find out what.

As soon as she got rid of the Crapper.

He’d pulled back just far enough to look Kitty up and down, his mean little crow eyes lingering on her cleavage.

He did not let go of her arm.

Kitty was really starting to want to bite his hand off.

Still looking at her tits, he asked, “Why’d you come all the way out here lookin’ for that loser, darlin’?”

His scent was hot and thick and violent, like burning feathers.

Brandon was clearly undercover, using a false ID. And he’d done something to piss this guy off. Kitty could feel the crazy in him, the desire to hurt. His grip on her arm tightened.

Bite his face.

Kitty shushed her wolf and smiled at him.

Then she half-turned, putting her other hand on her stomach and exaggerating her Tennessee accent. “Well, you know, he put a li’l bun in the oven, and my daddy and my brothers started sharpenin’ the knives to cut his dick off.”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder, making her eyes big and innocent.

“So I figured I better track him down, ‘cause if he bleeds out on the ground he can’t pay the bills for little Junior here. And what would I do with a man who’s got no fun parts?”

The other crow spoke up from the end of the bar. “Plenty more dicks in the sea, right, Caleb? Why’n’t you ask if you can suck that sugar off her tits?”

Caleb the Crapper gazed down at her with eyes as black and hard as obsidian. “I don’t need to ask,” he said, tightening his grip even further.

Sure, why ask when you can just take? Asshole. Kitty glanced over to see where the bartender was, but he’d made himself scarce. She must have been mistaken about him—apparently he was a chicken shifter.

Luckily she could take care of herself.

“Actually, you do,” she said pleasantly. “And the answer would be a rousing ‘hell no.’ You can let go of my arm now.”