Kerrigan curled her lip and looked at McManus as though he were covered head to toe in shit. “What a pussy.”
He gave a deep, rattling growl, probably meant to be intimidating, but all it did was make Juliet and Kerrigan snort and turn their noses up.
Rowena, much more tactfully, cleared her throat to get his attention. “We're handling a bit of an internal crisis right now, Ranger McManus. Your business here is...?”
McManus opened his mouth to answer, but another roar sounded and like meerkats, they all looked down the driveway to see a familiar black truck rolling up. Uriah barely got the door open before his bear hit the ground running. The roar that tore out of him might as well have been a battle cry.
“Shit,” the ranger hissed. It was impressive, the way McManus leapt up and over his truck to give himself time to change, but Uriah wasn't deterred by something as trivial as a half-ton pickup.
He flipped it like a pancake with one massive paw to get at the lion rising up from a pile of shredded clothes. From one minute to the next, a full on battle happened in the front yard.
The level of violence was unlike anything Ivy had ever seen, the roaring, snarling, and vicious yowls made Ivy’s skin crawl.
Blood splashed across the green grass as teeth and claws came into play; Uriah clearly doing his best to kill the intruder, McManus struggling to evade the bear's brutal advance.
As a group, the girls skittered out of the way when McManus gave a twist of his flexible spine and slipped out of range, leaping and bounding away, using the oak by the house as a spring board to land on the first-level roof.
Uriah came up on his back legs with a furious bear bellow, eye level with the golden lion.
“Get your bear, Ivy! Get your freaking bear before I lose my shit!” Rowena shrieked, stepping away from the knot of witches to fearlessly shake her fist at the two beasts. “The first one of you bastards to wreck my house is cursed!”
Fearing Rowena's rage more than the two shifters duking it out, Ivy hustled to get between her coven leader and her mate.
The bear took a swipe at the lion, but McManus danced out of the way, the roof giving an ominous creak beneath his enormous weight.
“Uriah,” Ivy called out to him, not daring to get too close when he was so riled up. “I need you, Uriah. Please, you can kill him later if it's really important to you, but if he breaks the roof, Rowena will make sure you never get another erection. Ever. I have a problem with that.”
The bear curled his lip but took two lumbering steps back and reached down to grab her up like she was a doll, snuggling her against his hairy chest while he kept both eyes focused on McManus.
Uriah backed up with her all the way to his truck, not setting her down until the truck was between them and where McManus was still perched on the roof.
Uriah began his shift while Ivy looked over her shoulder to see Rowena shaking her fist at the lion. “Get your hairy ass OFF. MY. ROOF!”
McManus didn't obey until Uriah fully shifted and hopped into a pair of pants that he'd jerked out of his truck. Uriah's aggression was still out in full force, but his hands on her were gentle when he cupped Ivy's elbows and bent his head to search her face.
“Are you alright?”
Ivy tried to stem the wobbling of her lip, bombarded with too many shocks and emotions all at once.
“No, but not because of him. He showed up just a few minutes before you.”
Obviously worried, Uriah ran his hands up her arms, drawing her in to hug her up tight. McManus made the mistake of opening his mouth, and the muscles beneath Uriah's skin turned to stone.
“What the fuck, Uriah?” McManus demanded with a furious wave of his arms. “I came down here to do my job, and you bust medieval on my ass for no damn reason?”
“Wrong,” Uriah growled, his voice having dropped an octave or two. “You are not here. You are not anywhere near my mate.”
McManus gave a blink, seeming unconcerned about the bleeding puncture marks on his shoulder and upper arm where Uriah had taken a chunk out of him. Red ribbons streamed down the Ranger's skin, dripping off his fingertips into the grass.
Ivy did her best not to stare at the rest of him, all naked and completely unconcerned about it, but when he set his hands on his hips and took a wide stance, it was unavoidable. She looked and saw his enormous cock dangling like a battering ram between his powerful thighs.
Uriah was plenty big, but even soft, McManus was bigger. Ivy glanced over to where Juliet stubbornly looked everywhere but at the naked shifter. When she caught her coven sister's eye, Ivy let her brows hike up to express her shock and amazement that Juliet wasn't dead after having taken that monster for a ride. Juliet scrunched up her nose and rolled her eyes up, her cheeks almost as violently pink as her hair.
“Since when do you have a mate?” McManus asked, clearly confused as he stared at where Uriah had Ivy tucked protectively to his side.
Uriah kept her tucked tight under his shoulder. “Officially? As of three days ago.”
“And you came blasting out of your truck like an asshole because you thought I was here for her? Why?”
As McManus continued to show nothing but surly confusion, Ivy could feel Uriah slowly starting to relax.
“Warren showed up on my doorstep this morning, thought she was human, and made noise about the pride stepping in. I pull up after getting a ‘9-1-1 get here now,’ text to find the whole damn coven out in the front yard and you standing here What else was I gonna think?”
The naked lion gave a pissed-off chuff. “I dunno, buddy, maybe you could have ASKED FIRST!? I can't believe you flipped my truck. My WORK truck, asshole.”
“Why are you here?” Juliet interrupted rudely.
McManus blew out a sharp, frustrated breath. “I’m here as a fuckin’ courtesy because a coven in Vermont was wiped out a week ago, and my alpha wanted to make sure the same didn't happen to the only coven in our territory?”
A chill of a whole new kind tripped up and down Ivy's spine, her concern mirrored on Rowena's face when she looked to her coven leader. “A coincidence?”
Rowena shook her head and glanced at Astrid, who nodded in silent understanding, and hurried back inside to get her cards. “I don't particularly believe in coincidences. Gentlemen, perhaps you should come inside. Pants are required, Abel.”
The lion scowled, his hands still perched on his hips, still waving his dick around. “I'd love some pants, Rowena. Unfortunately, douchebag over here completely overreacted and made me shred my only pair.”
Uriah opened his mouth to no doubt fire off a few choice words, but Rowena hissed impatiently, muttering spells under her breath as she waved her hands through the air.
McManus's truck flipped back over with a screech of metal. Pieces of glass swirled through the air and zoomed back into place as the windows reformed. The dents and damage to the metal body popped back into place with loud bangs, and even the shredded pieces of Abel's clothing pieced themselves back together, the pants forcefully flying through the air to smack him in the face.
Sometimes Ivy forgot what a powerful witch Rowena was. It was easy, especially because Rowena chose to make her living sewing charms on pillowcases to ensure the person sleeping on them never woke up with anything less than perfectly styled hair.