How to Flirt With a Naked Werewolf - Molly Harper [82]
I grunted in frustration and looked up to Cooper’s giant cousin. “Samson?”
Samson cast a longing glance at the fight but shook his head. “I told you, Cooper doesn’t want help. Besides, I’ve got scars you wouldn’t believe from jumping between the two of them.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” I huffed, stalking into the clinic. I saw that while Cooper and Maggie fought it out in the parking lot, Dr. Moder was loading Noah into Eli’s shiny red SUV, covering him with blankets. I glanced around the waiting room for the most viable solution. Since they didn’t have industrial-grade sedatives in the waiting room, I grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall, pulled the pin, and made my way outside through the crowd.
Getting as close to the wolves as I dared, I squeezed the trigger and shot a dusty white cloud over both of them. The two wolves yelped, separating. Maggie recovered faster than Cooper, who was slumped on the ground and seemed to be bleeding from his neck and one paw. She lunged for him again, but I let out another puff of white dust. When that didn’t deter her, I beaned her with the heavy red canister. The pack let out a collective gasp. Maggie whined and wobbled to the ground.
Even as I did this, I wondered what the great burning hell I was thinking. This was not normal behavior for me. Years with my parents had schooled me in the art of passive resistance—letting them rant and rave about my poor personal choices and then doing whatever I wanted to anyway. I did not shout or make threats. I sure as hell didn’t put myself between angry supernatural creatures. What was Cooper doing to me?
“What the hell was that?” Maggie growled, phasing and rolling to her human feet. She pushed her lean, naked form into a crouch, growling at me. She pressed her fingers to the purpling lump growing on her forehead. “Who do you think you are, interfering in pack business?”
“Back off,” I warned her. “You’ve made your point. Now, back off. You’re not the reason he came here tonight. Your grandfather’s going to the hospital, and Cooper’s going with him. He can’t do that if he’s handling your little hissy fit.”
Maggie sneered and advanced on me. Being shot with freezing-cold fire-suppressing chemicals again probably wouldn’t improve her mood, but at this point, I’d sort of cornered myself, and the fire extinguisher was my only weapon. I supposed I could always hit her with it again.
“Maggie,” Eli grunted, his tone far more authoritative than I would have thought possible. “Don’t.”
“Nobody wants either one of you here,” Maggie snarled, ignoring Eli. “You think you’re special because Cooper brought you home to meet the family? What a joke. He doesn’t care about his family. And he doesn’t care about you. When he’s done with you, he’ll run. That’s what Cooper does.”
At the moment, Cooper was on the ground and seemed to be struggling to phase back into a human. Maybe he was more seriously injured than I thought. I tried to keep my voice cool, detached, as I backed toward him, fire extinguisher at the ready. “Look, I’m not going to get into some sort of feminized pissing contest with you. I don’t do that. I don’t like being rude or making a scene. Not because I’m not good at it. I learned from my mother, who’s made a lifelong hobby of making public officials cry. You’re a rank amateur, even if you can turn into an apex predator. Now, step off, you hateful little bitch, or—”
I don’t remember much after that, because Maggie punched me so hard that I felt my jaw somewhere in the back of my neck. Behind me, I heard a bellowing roar and barely registered the sound of claws skittering over the frozen ground. The fire extinguisher slipped out of my hand, falling to the concrete with a loud clang. I swayed on my feet but stayed upright, managing to swipe an upper cross into Maggie’s chin. She let out a snarl and hit me again, right in the eye.
I took some comfort in the fact that it was my head smacking back on