14. Chapter Fourteen

"What the fuck?" I hissed, turning away from him and growling in the direction I had felt the intrusion. "Heath, we're going to have company."

"Is someone coming?"

"They stepped into my borders, then disappeared," I growled. "Which means they can be anywhere."

"Let's get inside," he said, grabbing my elbow. "Jacky, let's go."

I nodded and followed him inside, locking the doors. Rian was awake and frowning as I stormed through my living room, closing up my large windows, which I rarely ever did, but today, they were more a security risk than a comfort.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Heath launched into questioning before I had the chance.

"Are there any fae who have the power to hide from werecats?" he demanded, heading straight for the young fae. Rian was an adult, but the timeline made me think he wasn't probably much older than he looked, in his twenties, but he was probably in his thirties or forties, at most.

"I…I don't know," Rian answered as Heath got in his face. Fiona woke up from the commotion, her eyes fearful.

"Someone came into my territory, then disappeared," I hissed in frustration. "They definitely entered, and it wasn't as if they walked back out. They got into my territory, then dropped out of my…sight. That might be the best way to describe it. I have a feeling whoever it was is headed here."

"Do you have a safe room?" Heath asked, frowning as he looked around. I shook my head in return, and he sighed. "Upstairs might be safest or a closet. Something without windows we can defend might be the best."

"Why don't you go out there and try to track them?" Rian was frowning between us. "I can keep my mother safe."

"Do I look like an idiot to you?" I asked, wondering what he was thinking. "Split up and leave someone who is loyal to his father as protection? And a werewolf who can't Change as fast as I can? Speaking of, Heath, I'm going to Change."

"I'll open up your gun safe and try to arm everyone," he said as I started stripping. I watched him run out of the room as I threw my clothing to the ground.

The Change was a brutal process. Every bone in the human body had to move into a new position, change, sometimes literally breaking to complete the process. The entire skull had to reshape itself and become a different creature, and fingernails became retractable claws. Some of my senses grew sharper in this form, like smell and hearing, while others grew worse, like taste and touch.

As a werecat, I could do it quickly. I ranged between twenty seconds and a full two minutes. When it took me over a minute, which was rare, it was because of other factors, like exhaustion or pain. Normally, I could do it in roughly thirty seconds, which I was grateful for. Most of my family took a minute or two, while werewolves took anywhere between five and thirty minutes.

The amount of pain was the same, I just did it faster.

When it was over, I was a four to five-hundred-pound monster of a saber-toothed cat, one that had been extinct for thousands of years. There was a reason werecats couldn't blend in the way werewolves could. Wolves had evolved, certainly, but not nearly as much as the feline. Saber-toothed cats were extinct. There was nothing in the modern world that looked like me or my kind of moon cursed.

I didn't move from my place once I was finished with the Change, letting Fiona and Rian look at me with fear and interest. Their fear was strong enough to cloud the room like a persistent fog, inescapable, but there was enough courage that they didn't cower or shake. They also didn't come any closer, just looked at me as if they needed to memorize what I looked like.

"Jacky, I'm going to pack your clothes in a bag just in case we need to run," Heath said as he walked out with every firearm I owned. I had started up a strange collection over the last three years, grabbing one or two here and there. Dirk had added a few of his own to my gun safe. "Landon already brought me a go-bag just in case, so we're ready to move." He carefully handed out the firearms. Rian explained to his mother how to work the safety on hers while he held onto the shotgun Heath thought he would do best with. Heath carried a rifle, but it wasn't one of mine.

"Where did that come from?"I asked, tilting my head to the side and directing the words to Heath. With my telepathy, if I was careful, I could send my speech to one person, and if it was needed, I could scream it into the heads of everyone around.

It was this power Brion had given me when I had met him, removing a problem I had faced as a werecat. We didn't have the magic of werewolves, which made us solitary hunters and unable to communicate.

"Landon brought it for me," he said with a smile. "It's one of my favorites, and we both assumed you would be using your werecat form, so I would probably be on two legs."

"It makes the most sense," I reminded him.

"Of course, it does," he replied, chuckling. "The werecat form will always be packed with more muscle than a werewolf."

"You're sleeping with a woman who's more powerful than you?" Rian looked at Heath, obviously picking up one implication. "And is she doing that thing my dad gave her?"

"Yes, she is," Heath said, raising an eyebrow at me. "You're not letting them hear you?"

"Didn't see a reason for them to," I said, doing the closest thing to a shrug I could in this form. I sent that to everyone in the room, and Fiona gasped, and Rian's brows came together. I stared at the fae. "I can still communicate, but I'm more dangerous and effective in this form."

"And yes, she's stronger than me," Heath confirmed, checking his ammunition. No one said anything as he put on a holster and tucked in a sidearm, then strapped on a hunting knife. I stepped forward to sniff it, wondering what metal it was. "It's steel, so the iron will cause them problems if I need to use it. All the ammunition is steel-cased instead of brass," he said, catching my intentions. "The fae use silver more than anything else, which is going to be troublesome for us, so I figured we should use something problematic for them."

I nodded, liking his thinking. I wouldn't have considered the nuances of the ammo we used. As it stood, most fae died with a shot to the head or two to the chest, just like humans. Not that I'd ever had to kill a fae. It was never particularly high on my to-do list. In fact, it never even registered as something I would do until last night.

"Rian, do you have any traditional fae weapons?" Heath asked, looking up from his rifle for a moment. He was, for some reason, taking it apart and looking it over, then putting it back together.

"Um…like a sword?" Rian looked at Heath as though he was crazy. "No, my dad didn't give me swords or anything."

"He left Rian with us because my son can make portals to and from the fae realms like his father," Fiona said, keeping her composure fairly well, considering the circumstances. "But he's received self-defense training and can fire a weapon accurately, so it'll be fine."

"He really doesn't expect me to do that, does he?" Rian asked, looking at his mother with fear. "He knows—"

"It will be fine," Fiona said sharply before her expression softened, and she patted her son's cheek. "Your father and I both have faith in you."

"That's a shame about the sword," Heath said, going back to his rifle. "Fae weapons work the best on fae."

"Why are you messing with the rifle?"I asked, only half-listening to their conversation. I was focused on my land, watchful and waiting for any sign my intruder was going to pop back up. I needed to know where they were because, without me, the entire group was essentially blind to whatever risk was outside my home.

"I was planning to check it once Landon gave it to me but didn't think we'd have this much excitement so early. It's good to look over the condition of your firearm before you rely on it. Does Dirk have access to your gun safe?"

"He does inventory every two weeks,"I answered, turning away from him. I looked at one of my closed windows, wondering who or what was out there. They had gotten into my territory only ten minutes before. Unless they were on a road, it could take them fifteen or twenty minutes to get to Kick Shot. If they went on foot, even longer.

While I wasn't paying attention to Heath, he finished putting his rifle back together, then I felt his hand on the back of my large head. We didn't often touch each other in our animal forms, but I leaned into it, and he scratched me behind an ear. It was a friendly touch, letting me know he was right there beside me, even if I didn't need the reminder. There was something nice about having him armed at my side. We had fought together before, and I liked having someone beside me who knew my strengths and weaknesses, especially when that person was Heath Everson.

"So, we're just waiting for someone to show up?" Rian asked.

"Yes," Heath answered softly as I nodded. "Why don't we move the couches to the windows? And the dining table as another layer of protection."

"Use any of the furniture to barricade the doors as well."

Rian struggled to pull things around. None of the fae I had ever seen had super strength, and he fell into that belief. Still, I'd only had a crash course on the sidhe, and Hasan certainly never told me much about the other species of fae out there. Some of them might have been able to lift my couch on their back as Heath could, but Rian wasn't one of them.

There was no real way to completely barricade my windows, but the back door was blocked, and furniture was placed near the front door, just in case. I was the reason it wasn't fully barricaded yet.

"They might try to negotiate with us, and I want to have that option,"I said as Heath moved the chairs there.

"We're not going to hand Fiona and Rian over, right?" He looked back at me in shock for only a second, then he shook his head as if he had missed the obvious, which he had. "They could tell us something useful, and we'll know how willing they are to get what they want. There's a chance they don't want to fight us at all, whoever they are."

"Exactly," I agreed, bumping my shoulder against him. It didn't move him as much as I expected.

When everything was done, I had Fiona and Rian sitting on my bare living room floor with only the coffee table beside them. Heath and I stood between them and each door that led to the outside world. I guarded the front door while Heath guarded the back door, and he had the rifle. He could shoot over me if he needed to. The only way his rifle was going to be fatal to me was if he shot me in the head or the heart, or I bled out from a bad hit to the gut. I trusted him not to make any of those possibilities a reality.

We spent twenty minutes in complete silence, only the sounds of our breathing giving away that anyone was even in the home.

Then I felt magic close to my home, and four people appeared in my territory, in the woods surrounding my house. Instinct told me what magic I felt. Each one felt unique, but there was an underlying current to each of them that matched. They were bundles of magic, and the sensation was like seeing clouds of color and glitter in my mind's eyes. I could envision what their magic felt like, in some sort of weird synesthesia only werecats had. It told me nothing about what sort of magic they could use or what risk they posed to me, but I knew exactly what they were.

"Fae,"I said, sending it to everyone in the room. "They're here."