Evermore by Rebecca Royce Page A

lack. The drug-addled werewolf mind proved a constant issue. Men and women who would never have behaved dangerously before using the toxic substance were like different werewolves when they did.
    His mate hadn’t noticed him yet. Her blue eyes were huge, her face flushed in terror, and the stick in front of her might let her stop one of her attackers, but not both. Why didn’t the lovely woman shift?
    It was then he noticed what else she had in front of her…a very pregnant belly. His mind stuttered at the vision. His mate was pregnant? Homer took a deep breath. He would have to deal with her gestational state after he saved her life.
    At least it made sense why she couldn’t shift. Females didn’t during the time they carried a baby, which was agony for them, particularly during full moons. Females showed their babies their first gift of love and didn’t shift for nine months. A shift ended the pregnancy so they endured the pain.
    Usually, from what little he understood, the male somehow gave his mate strength to endure during the process.
    “Hey.” He called out to both his mate and the two men who no longer would be breathing in a few moments. “I don’t think I like anything about what I’m seeing here.”
    Goon number one jerked around to look at him. “You’re going to want to get out of here, pretty-boy. We’re both soldiers. We want this woman. We’re going to take her. Why do you care? She’s trash.”
    Homer had been discounted his whole life by idiots like the one in front of him. He knew he didn’t look threatening. His blond hair, green eyes, and smaller stature did leave the less observant with the idea he wasn’t deadly.
    Whatever the two men in front of him thought, they wouldn’t be capable of thinking for much longer. “Every able bodied male alive was a soldier. Our time in the war does not give us permission to abuse or terrify a female. I’m going to give you two seconds to run.”
    “What do you think you’re going to do?” Number two, taller and also fatter than his counterpart, sneered. “Talk us to death?”
    “Times up.” He looked straight at his mate. “Stay there, don’t move.”
    Even before he’d known how to fight, Homer had been able to shift. Fast. The process took him half the time it did his fellow werewolves. What he knew from his years of working for the most elite soldiers was a fast shift made for a lethal werewolf. Plenty of lethal werewolves had slow shifts but a fast version automatically meant strong fighter.
    He saw the horror on the face of the male who would soon be dead. Seconds before he struck. Homer wasn’t interested in torturing them—although he’d learned how to do that in the war. He didn’t want to terrify his mate. Dispensing with them fast seemed the best option. Two sharp tears to their necks. The second one saw the first one go down didn’t even run or shift. The drugs made them slow and stupid.
    Although they were certainly fast enough to have caused his mate to smell terrified.
    Homer called the shift once more and returned to his human form. With two dead werewolves on the street, they couldn’t stay there very long without drawing attention. Not that the police were anywhere to be found. In his pack, he’d be perfectly justified with what he had done. Hell, Robbie might even be mad he didn’t leave them for him to kill himself. Who knew what the rules were in the city?
    When he’d returned to his fully human form, he approached his mate. She trembled, still holding her stick out in front of her as though she could do anything with it.
    “You’re not going to need that.” He pointed at her would be weapon. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
    His mate’s shaking increased and the dark circles under her eyes concerned him. She was pale and her scent spoke of exhaustion and possible infection. He didn’t like her pain one bit and if he hadn’t had years of training to keep himself under control he might have swept her off