Puppy Problems: A Reverse Harem Werewolf Romance (Her Secret Menagerie Book 3)

by Katelyn Beckett

  He was smart enough to run after the first, not wanting to tangle with a bunch of pissed off werewolves. Who could blame him? We weren't dragons, but no one cares to play with a wolf after they've gotten teeth in them once.

  I limped over to Xavion and dug at his chains until I managed to get him free. Still hobbled, the wolf managed to stand and walk, though it was slower than was ideal. I huffed at him, rested my shoulder against his, and nodded to the bear cub. Already, Lillian was digging at the ground and bleeding all over it. Though I had to doubt her intelligence for giving a fae queen access to her blood, the priority was getting free of this circle of stones.

  More magic, a little more, and we'd all be free of this mess. I just hoped she'd manage to bring Sadie with us. There was no way to ask her, no time to beg her to alter the spell. Lillian tipped her head back and howled at the top of her lungs. A portal opened into a forest that I recognized, would recognize anywhere in the world, and I felt a shiver of joy as I loped toward it. Everything stung as I moved, but we needed to go and I wasn't about to hold the group up.

  Xavion moved as best he could. We hurried through the portal together and collapsed in a heap outside it, right next to the lodge out in the woods. The pine in the air, the pumpkins on the porch, the chill that stole across everything; we were home.

  And a dragon stood on the other side with us, a wolf in her claws, raising the brown mutt with the white socks high into the air. Her eye was on the stones below, enough to smash the battered wolf's body to pieces.

  Leo got there before the rest of us had a chance to react. His snarl echoed the trees as he latched onto the dragon's elbow, leapt, twisted, and landed with a hunk of meat in his mouth. Alashia screamed her fur and threw Sadie across the clearing. Her Light bless it, it was toward us. Xavion saw it, threw himself forward, and caught her with his body before she broke all to pieces on the ground.

  I hurried to hobble over to her, whining quietly in the back of my throat. Sadie's eyes were exhausted, confused, but she looked up at me and panted. Her tongue was spotted with blood, but I didn't see a definitive source. Maybe she'd simply bit it while fighting a dragon.

  Maybe we were stupid enough to deserve each other.

  I ran my tongue over her muzzle, trying not to hurt her, and began to wash her face. Gabe and Lillian entered the fray with the dragon, but Xavion was beyond helping. I stood over my fallen mate and my fallen pack brother, ready to die to protect them.

  That wasn't going to happen.

  Carrie Ann was going to see to that.

  The arthritic Dane, the queen of the property, stalked out the front door and looked at the dragon. Then, she considered Sadie, Xavion, and I in a pile across the way. I didn't speak dog, but I wished I had. The bugling scream the old lady let out brought the attention of the rest of the dogs. Howls shot out across the property, chain link rattled, and the rescue came to save us.

  Cats of every color. Dogs whose names I didn't know, and so many that I did. They streamed out of their enclosures with one focus in mind: to fuck up that big, red dragon that had hurt their long-time caretaker. And if Sadie could have seen it, she'd have probably cried.

  It was Bosco who ended up at the head of the pack, more serious than I'd ever seen him. The boxer mix hit that dragon's flank like a Mac truck, his brick of a head perfect for the impact. Matilda and Lady were next, followed closely by the rampaging Carrie Ann who, I swear, was screaming orders to the rest of them.

  The dogs spread out, tearing through the remnants of my confused and stunned pack. Cats leapt and dug in, climbing the dragon and leaving rakes and bites in their wake. Blood went everywhere as they, like piranhas, attacked the enormous dragon who had dared to threaten their home and their guardians.

  Silently, I promised those that would survive as much steak as they wanted for the rest of their lives. Never had I heard of pets doing something on this scale and I had to wonder if we'd somehow influenced their intelligence. Not only had they understood what they saw, they were acting on it. They were attacking. They were winning.

  Alashia tired of the creatures around her feet. She roared down at them, the sound knocking some of them back. Carrie Ann scrambled back, one leg giving out on her as she went. The old dog landed on her ass directly in front of the dragon. I had to watch. I owed the dog that much. How often had she been the walker for the pups, letting them grab her ears to pull themselves up when they fell? How many times had she clambered into bed with the rest of us, worried about a thunderstorm or on too-cold nights?

  There was nothing I could do but watch. But in that moment, I was there with her.

  The dragon drew a breath, flame pouring from her nostrils as she did. Gabe raced to get there in time, but it was too late. My cousin was too far. I was too far.

  Tres wasn't.

  A tiny, terrier-sized form raced across in front of the dragon and jumped, twisting like a fish in mid-air, and dug his teeth into the dragon's right nostril. Blood sprayed across the battlefield, followed by a terrible gout of fire that shot just past the crippled matriarch of the house. Imperial to the core, the old Dane never even flinched as volcanic-hot flame vaporized a tree a hundred feet to my right but didn't touch a hair on her body. Or on Tres's, though I expected that he may have burns around his face from the bite he had committed so deeply to.

  I hadn't met the dog yet, but I promised myself that I was going to. Tommy's new pet screamed insults at the dragon as Matilda barked at him. Alashia flung her head, sending cats flying into the trees. All but one managed to cling to their branches. Lillian slid across the dirt to catch the cat in her jaws. The animal yowled, but seemed well enough once it was back on its feet.

  Up the dragon reared, pushed beyond her limits for tolerating this place. The dogs tried to drag her down again, but she drew another breath and seemed intent on burning them all to a crisp before she left.

  The ground shook beneath me as a shadow left the portal that remained open. Black as night, touched with a sprinkle of white and a crescent moon upon his forehead, the dragon stalked out of the hole in the fabric of reality and set his sights on the dragoness who had wanted to have a word with him so very much.

  I had never thought I'd be glad to see Eskal again in the flesh, but wartime makes strange bedfellows.

  "I was told you wanted to speak with me, Alashia," Eskal said, showing all of his teeth with every word.

  The bloodied dragoness stared at him, caught between terror and hatred. Distracted, she never saw the cat climbing her back. It was possible that she never even felt it, because that cat was one of the smallest we'd ever seen in the rescue. The animal sank its claws into her right eye and ripped until she flung it free, screaming in agony.

  Lillian, again, managed to catch that same damned cat before it hit the ground. This time, when she put it down, the animal rubbed around her ankles and I could practically hear the purr under the dragon's shrieks. It didn't help that Lillian was incredibly allergic to cats, but I assumed we would need to find some way to remedy that in the future. That animal wasn't going to leave her alone.

  Eskal moved, politely enough, through the terror of dogs and cats. At least, he was careful not to squish anyone. As he crept upon her, he chuckled. "I made a mistake, but it was worth it. You made too many to live through this. The wolves will hunt you. You are being dragged to the depths by dogs, for all the gods sakes. Mere mortal animals, Alashia. Who were you but a jumped-up whelp with a hatred for me and my children?"

  Blind in the side he approached from, he snapped his jaws on her neck and flung them into the air with one massive down sweep of his wings. Above, fire shot across the sky once, twice, three times. What happened up there was more than we could help. If a dragon fell upon us, it was all that we could do to avoid it. The dogs and cats slowly split their ranks, one group moving to protect Sadie, Xavion, and I. The other took to Lillian, Gabe, and Leo. Carrie Ann curled up next to Sadie's head, the leg that had crumpled under her dragging the ground, and d
ared me to tell her to go back inside.

  I wasn't stupid enough to take that dare. Sometimes, even old mutts like me know better than to boss around a dignified older lady like her.

  Eskal and Alashia met above us once again, fire flashing, another scream shattering the silence of the clearing. I couldn't possibly tell who was winning or what was happening up there. Even a wolf's eyesight isn't that good.

  It was there, in the darkness of the night, we waited to see which way the battle would turn. For sometimes there is nothing that you can do other than sit back and wait for the result of something terrible to come your way.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Xavion

  "Stay still for another moment," he whispered, his talons careful not to rip my muzzle apart. "I've almost got it."

  Another dragon shriek echoed overhead. The battle had gone on for hours, it seemed, though the sky said it had only been minutes. Iyadre, one of Eskal's flight, worked to open the band around my muzzle. Slowly, he picked the metal apart bit by bit. At last, something snapped and I could yawn again.

  "Why aren't any of you helping him?" Hudson asked, holding Sadie on his lap.

  Our mate was still a wolf, exhausted and beaten beyond comprehension. He ran his hands over her coat, his skin touched with grey after all we'd been through. As far as I knew, Hudson hadn't even been released by the hospital yet, but there he was.

  Iyadre shrugged. "It isn't our way. If he can't take care of it himself, when he was the one that challenged her, maybe he shouldn't have done it. He can. He'll be fine. Eskal's been in worse fights than this. If we'd known she was after us, we could have settled it in minutes."

  "We didn't know how to get in touch with you. Verizon doesn't exactly have coverage in other worlds."

  I opened and closed my muzzle several times, trying to get the pins and needles out of it. The expanse of the rescue network's overflow animals stood at attention, staring up at the battle above. Our dogs, those that belonged to the family, had gathered around us. I wasn't sure if it was to protect us or to look to us for protection. Maybe it was a little bit of both. I didn't want to be alone on that battlefield, either.

  Most people would have run from the scene, but fleeing seemed like a bad idea. You never knew where a dragon was going to come down and if so many of us were weaving around the trees, running like idiots, it was likely someone would get hurt. Staying one spot, though, that let Eskal aim to land away from us or drop her somewhere that wasn't on the lodge.

  Of course, it also opened us up to Alashia burning us all to a cinder, too.

  "None of you made any deals with the fairies, right?" I panted; my face still sore. The important thing was that I got that question out.

  Sadie stirred when I asked and my heart plummeted, though she made no answer. I didn't think she was in any shape to do so. I couldn't sense any mark on her, and the fae queens usually left some sort of tracker on their victims. Though, it was possible that they hadn't planted one on her yet. I stirred, my body screamed, and I forced myself up to my feet.

  All I wanted to do was check on her and see if I could find any mark, any runic fae letter that would give such a thing away. Carrie Ann lifted her head and snorted at me, warning me away from my own mate. A low, angry rumble started in my throat. A dog wasn't going to dismiss me from my mate's side, not with everything else going on.

  The dog's eyes narrowed, staring me down. Her nuts were even bigger than mine were if she thought I was scared of her. I started to command her away and all my willpower gave out as I flopped forward, too tired to fight even a mortal canine.

  Trees crashed in the darkness. No one tells you how loud a single tree falling is, but when so many crunched beneath a falling body, it was near deafening. I flinched, pushed my head against the dirt, and hunkered down. Iyadre looked up, his gaze followed by his flight mates; Vadriq and Nariti.

  It took a solid minute or two before Eskal landed in the clearing. The black dragon was covered in wounds, bleeding all over the place. His flight mates ran to help him, support him, I wasn't entirely certain. Gabe and Leo followed them, Lillian bringing up the rear. Even injured, I noted that Eskal was incredibly careful not to step on the animals that had saved us before the dragons had shown up.

  Somewhere, out in our forest, Alashia lay dying or dead. That was no way for someone to go. I gathered my feet under me and gave Hudson a look over my shoulder, twitching an ear backward. He nodded and off I went, disappearing in the night and grateful that the kids weren't back at home. They'd been through enough for one day.

  My walk took me longer than I wanted it to, but how was I going to complain? I was free. I was moving. And that was a hell of a lot better than I had been when Queen Nerida had me tied up.

  Trees exploded out from the center of a crimson mass, like a starburst. I managed a trot, barely, and paused just outside the ring of wood, waiting for her to rise up from the center like a cobra and strike at me.

  It didn't happen. I stepped toward her carefully. The timber beneath her groaned and popped as she lifted a paw, reaching for a tree to try to help herself up. I flattened my ears and skinned my lips back from my teeth. Neither of us was in the shape to fight, but I had it if she wanted it, the idiot.

  "Kill them," she gasped. "Kill them all. Take what's mine. Prove to them that they're wrong."

  I wasn't stupid enough to make my presence known as the injured sky lizard flopped around like a fish out of water. I hated her. Everything she'd done to us was her own stupidity. If she'd just left Sadie alone instead of getting into some ridiculous vendetta with her, her life would have been just fine.

  But.

  I knew what it was like to be driven to do stupid things. Look at what I'd done for love and to protect my kids. Hell, I'd gone for a full-grown dragon and gotten carried off into the sky just because I hadn't been smart enough to run away with the rest of the pack. Alashia fell back into the pile of wood and I watched as countless little barbs drove into her scales and the flesh underneath it. If I didn't do something, she would die out here.

  Good. All the better. It meant protecting my pack, making this whole thing right. The quiet would be good for us. Sadie could rebuild her interests. We could get the factory underway. Life would go back to normal.

  That didn't mean that my conscience would be clear.

  I padded toward the fallen dragon and snorted. Her head twisted around, snake-like on her neck. Huge fangs snapped at my face, missed, and the dragon collapsed once more, weak and pitiful.

  "I don't know what your problem is, but this stops now," I told her. "You've caused enough pain and suffering. You sold me to the fae. You hurt my mate. You could have killed my kids."

  "Fewer ground-pounding idiots to deal with," she snarled, smoke curling from her ruined nostril. I didn't know how she was still breathing through it.

  I sat down, my back aching. "He beat you. Isn't that the law of your people? First blood wins in a duel like that?"

  "It wasn't a sanctioned duel!" Alashia growled. "He didn't announce himself, didn't tell me he wanted to fight. He waited until I'd be attacked by countless other predators, then he made his move. He's a coward, a yellow-bellied weakling that doesn't deserve the eggs he has."

  My head tilted to the side. "This is about the eggs? Still?"

  The dragon looked at me. Were those tears in her eyes? Alpha females were typically fertile. If she wanted eggs, why didn't she just plop some down and hatch them? I was baffled. Unless she couldn't. Was that what this was over? Was that it?

  "That nest is our future, mongrel," she spat. "Eskal Vervain holds no rights to them other than they were his mother's. And who cares about something like that? She was an idiot not to hatch them when she had the chance. He was a fool for hatching them in a place that kills. And to have some human do it-"

  I snapped at her snout. More smoke shot out of it, murder in her gaze. I spoke before she could. "They're his eggs. He can do whatever he wants with them and it's not
a damn bit of your business. You're insane. I don't know why he let you live, other than maybe he feels sorry for you. These are our forests. If you aren't out of here by dawn, I unleash the dogs to feast."

  The murder was replaced with fear, enough that I could almost feel it. She hissed at me, a final rebellion, then got to her feet and began to stagger through the woods. I watched her go until her massive body was nothing but swaying trees in the distance, disappearing down a trail that was a favorite of ours.

  Then I heard the scream back the way I'd come. Adrenaline hammered my exhausted heart, trying to send me into a panicked run back toward the pack I loved. I wasn't up for it. My trot would have to do, though it didn't eat up the ground as much as it needed to.

  By the time I got to the clearing, the dogs were being warned back by armored fae guardians. A number of them were creatures that I'd never seen before, though the ornate plate metal they wore marked them as I'd called them. None of us were in any shape to do battle, but we didn't seem to be the targets of the attack.