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An absolutely horrid sound left it—high pitched and frantic—as we hit the ground. Its massive weight pinned me, but as quickly as it happened, it lessened.

The tiger hadn’t gotten off me, and it took a moment to realize what had happened as I shoved the no-longer-furry form off me.

Had the stun gun forced a change? It was like the tiger couldn’t hold that shape anymore, having been thrown back into a human body.

A moaning, incoherent, barely conscious human body.

Which made me recognize that this human was actually pretty damn good-looking…

He had long, black hair, braided back, and sharp features. His eyes opened and closed at random intervals—and not together—like he was still trying to work them out, but when theydidopen, I got the thrill of enjoying some of the darkest brown eyes I’d ever seen.

Wait, no, don’t ogle the dangerous tiger-man.

I patted to the side for a rock and held it up, above him. I heard Kelvin in my head telling me to swing. This tiger might have been feral, unable to help us, if he could have ever done so, but I knew he seemed to want me dead.

Except… I couldn’t. As I saw him shaking his head, I felt too terrible.

Instead, I held the rock like a threat. “Are you done yet? I told you this wasn’t what I wanted.”

He blinked slowly, his gaze seeming to lock on me. “You’re not going to kill me?” The words were heavily accented, though I couldn’t tell where the accent came from. Maybe something Mediterranean?

“I told you already—I’m not here to hurt or kill you. You need listening skills, too.”

He stared at me for a long, tense moment. The truth was that I didn’t know how long a stun gun would affect him. It meant he might just manage one good swipe that took me out before I could do a damn thing, but this was too important.

The answers he gave us could mean the difference between saving the Weres or losing them all—including Galen. That was worth this risk.

Instead of lashing out, however, the man started to laugh. It was a deep, full belly sort of laugh, the kind that makes it impossible not to laugh at least a little right along with them.

And sure enough, after a moment of staring at him like he was a fucking nut job, I joined in.

Maybe we werebothnut jobs.

We laughed so hard it was nearly a hysterical cackle at the end and I dropped the rock to the side. What the fuck was this?

Another roar—closer this time—echoed through the tree line just before a huge, hulking beast.

Yeah, Galen sure knew how to make an entrance, didn’t he? I wasn’t sure if it was that he saw I was safe or if the entire sight forced him to skid to a halt, but at least it made him take pause.

Here I was, naked, straddling another naked man, both of us laughing as though we’d just heard the funniest joke in the world while being high off nitrous.

He paused, then shifted back to human—and fuck, did he look good like that—then crossed his arms. “What the fuck is going on here?”

He didn’t curse much, but this was probably a pretty fair time to whip one out…

“Long story,” I said, then looked down at tiger boy and collapsed to the side, laughing again.

Fuck, was life weird.

Chapter Fifteen

I ate a bite of the cooked meat—though I didn’t ask what sort of meat it was—as we all sat around the firepit.

The tiger—named Alpho, as it turned out—had started the fire and left before returning with something that looked vaguely like an animal but without the fur, skin or head, I couldn’t tell what kind. He’d put it on the spit and roasted it.

Galen remained in his human form, and the wound at his shoulder had mostly healed. It had been a gaping hole—a sharpened stick in a pit, from what Galen said—but he didn’t seem to hold a grudge against Alpho.

Galen had packed an extra set of clothing in his bag which meant we had something to wear. I hadn’t replaced the last set I’d taken from my personal bay, which meant I had to share what he had. He’d put on the pants and given me the shirt and boxers. Wearing his underwear felt oddly intimate.