Read Online Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) by Lynn Red - Free Book Online Page B

creep. I told you as much, right?”
    I nodded.
    “I just got that feeling in my guts like he was up to no good. But this guy? It’s weird. I met him once, talked to him for about thirty seconds, but I got the feeling that there’s a lot more to him than meets the eye. There’s a good soul in that bear’s body.”
    Staring down at the ravaged remains of my lunch, I reached out and tried to calm my trembling hands with another drink of tea. It didn’t work, but it was a good effort.
    “I’m just scared, I think.”
    Dean shrugged. “It makes sense. I mean, you got burned once, right? But think of it this way. How many shitty relationships did you watch me go through?”
    I snickered. “I dunno, about thirty?”
    He wrinkled his forehead. “Something about like that. Did you see me panic and get scared?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “Exactly. I got down, I felt beat up, and I felt like there wasn’t anyone who would ever want me. And you know what?”
    “You were right,” Malia said, interrupting.
    Never – not once in my life – had laughing ever felt so good, or so desperately needed.

-7-
“The only part about hunting I like is the finding part. That’s what makes it all worthwhile.”
-Orion
    ––––––––
    H e counted the days.
    Every single one that went by without his seeing neither hide nor fur of Mitch or the Devils, Orion kept count of them by digging a notch in the side of his boot. Every day that passed without him figuring out what to do about the broken heart he suffered? Those days he counted with a notch in his mind.
    That’s where it hurt the most. That’s where he was most likely to remember.
    He counted the nights, too, like this one. A big, fat, yellow moon hung in the sky. In one way it was a comfort to see, but in another it was almost like the thing was mocking him. After all, moons are meant to be shared, watched with someone you love.
    But for Orion, love was something that he’d run from his whole life.
    There were a couple of women he’d seen that he really liked. A couple he’d probably loved. Every single one of them, he’d run off because he was scared of what would happen if Mitch, or the rest of the Devils, found out.
    They’d harass him, they’d gang up on him – because they had to if they wanted to stand a chance in a fight – and then when they couldn’t actually hurt him , they’d hurt her .
    This girl though? Clea? She wasn’t like them. She would’ve died to save that cub. That’s not the kind of girl Orion needed to worry about. Then again, she’s also not the kind of girl he could find .
    “I promised to find her,” he said, dropping a pebble in the water. “And here I sit, wondering how.”
    He’d been a hunter all his life. That’s what his actual job was in the Devils. He hunted people who didn’t want to be found. He caught people on the run. He made people pay who deserved it. And others, like Ricky? Those that the Club wanted to murder who he knew didn’t deserve it? He’d always found a way to let them escape.
    But he couldn’t find a damn girl. All he needed was one clue, one tiny hint.
    That single piece of evidence eluded him.
    Orion dangled his legs into the Jamesburg River, exactly one and a half miles downstream from where he’d met her . He went back through every day for the last nine days, hoping to find some trace of her – a forgotten shirt, a lost bandana – anything. He could track her, hunt her down, make her his.
    Of course, that was all predicated on finding something in the first place, which he had so far completely failed to do. And for a bear? That was pretty embarrassing.
    Not like he had anyone to be embarrassed in front of, though, not since running from the Devils.
    His constant companion was his paranoia.
    Every stick that cracked, every fish that broke water in the river and plopped back in made him look around nervously, convinced that something was coming. Nothing did, but he never quit looking