Free Spike's Day Out by Zenina Masters

Chapter One
     
     
    Sicily paced restlessly. The box she was in was far too small to shift out of, but then, holding her in her shifted form was what her captors had in mind.
    Her small toes scrabbled around and she settled for hunching in the corner in her defensive posture. She tucked her head down and pulled her legs in, leaving nothing but a ball of spikes. They were coming back and she needed to be on her guard.
    Her captors didn’t bother with delicacy. They gassed her and tumbled her out of the box and into a bag for transport.
    Sicily remained in a ball, pretending to be unconscious. They swung the bag around and dropped her on a pile with several others. She could identify a skunk, a badger, a flamingo and a wolf by their energy traces on her spikes.
    Her inner clock told her that it was a few minutes from the Shifter Council trackers bursting in. Sicily hoped that they were on time. She had a party to attend and she could only play the victim for so long before she got bitey.
    She counted down in her mind and waited for the retrieval. Life as perpetual bait was tedious.
     
    It was two hours later and she had to fake waking on the table they had her on. She snuffled, and when a hand touched her, she pulled in tight.
    A chuckle came from a human voice and hands rolled her from one side of the table to the next. “You may as well come out, Jarok. We know who you are.”
    She tensed even more when she heard them call her by the name of the only other hedgehog she had ever met. Unfortunately, James Jarok was dead.
    He had died months earlier, his body found at the lion compound out in the desert. She had stood next to his wife and daughter during the belated funeral and offered them what comfort she could.
    Attraction and repulsion were the hallmarks of a hedgehog. Other shifters couldn’t resist them and they were equipped with enough self-defence techniques to keep themselves safe under normal circumstances.
    “Come on, Jarok, unfurl and things will go easier for you.”
    Since her body was exposed and they could start poking at any moment, she unfurled and shifted to her human shape.
    She looked at the two shifters in their human forms and raised her eyebrows, “My name isn’t Jarok.”
    She sat on the bench as daintily as possible; her cascade of ash blonde hair draped over one shoulder.
    The men stared at her and they looked at each other. “Who are you, miss?”
    It was amazing how acting like a lady turned men into gentlemen, if only for a moment.
    “Spike. My name is Spike. Why am I here?” She looked around at the dingy warehouse she was sitting in. “Where are we?”
    The men were still stunned.
    She sighed and prodded them. “Can I have a jacket or something? It is cold in here.”
    She shivered and their gazes fixed on her exposed nipple as it tightened. To help her case, she broke the line of their gazes with crossed arms and shivered again. “Please?”
    One of the men took his shirt off and draped it around her shoulders. She wrinkled her nose at the scent of bear. “Thank you.”
    The shirt fell nearly to her knees, and as she stood to put it on properly, she was only even with both of the men’s chests.
    “Why am I here? One moment I was talking to that nice transporter and the next I was in the crush box.”
    They were still looking at her as if they didn’t know what to do with her. They looked at each other and finally made a decision. They lunged at her, she ducked and they collided.
    After that, she punched, kicked, clawed and snapped her way through them until they were both out cold. She frisked the bare-chested fellow and snagged his phone, making a quick call.
    “Hey, Toby. I need a site-to-site transport. I have two bears here who need containment.”
    “Spike? Where the hell are you?”
    “I have no idea. Let me open this warehouse and check.” Spike walked with the wall on her right until she found a door. She slid it open and looked around. “Holy snowballs. I am in