Read Online Chance Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire 6) by T. S. Joyce - Free Book Online Page B

painted on the walls and dart boards of our faces or something.”
    “I burned those.”
    Chance growled.
    “That was a joke. No dart boards, but he did have an impressive stash of silver bullets.”
    “I can’t just date who I want,” he said abruptly. “I have to pick a safe choice for my pack, a mate who will blend in and get along with the girls. One bad member, and the pack goes to shit, you understand?”
    “Right. You don’t want to date a bad apple. I feel like we’ve already covered this so don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you.”
    Chance looked out the window as if he was judging the merit in an escape attempt. “You’ll meet my alpha.”
    “You want me to meet Lincoln McCall? No thanks. I want to live.”
    “You’ll meet him and explain who you are, and he’ll know what to do.”
    “Know what to do about what? I’m not a threat to you. I just destroyed every last text the Hell Hunters had collected over the centuries.”
    “Yeah? Then what is that under your hand?”
    Heat flushed her cheeks at being busted. “These aren’t Hell Hunter texts.” She dropped her gaze. “I was researching you.”
    Chances boots scuffled loudly as he approached, and he pulled the book out from under her hands. Locking his arms against the table, he went quiet as he read. “Holy shit. Em, do you know what this is?”
    “Well, yeah. I was going to give them to your pack after I was done reading them. Between this one and the other two books, it’s a complete history of your kind. And not only werewolves, but each animal shifter. I found your ancestors, and I wanted to…”
    “You wanted to what?” Chance said, dragging his gaze away from the book to her.
    Clasping her shaking hands, she answered, “I wanted to know more about you.”
    “To hunt me?”
    “No! God, Chance, I’m not hunting you. Not anymore. I wanted to know more because I like you and I’m confused by all of this. I feel like everything I know about werewolves is a lie, and I was trying to research the truth so I won’t be part of the problem anymore.”
    “Oh.” Chance frowned and sat slowly across the table from her. Gently, he closed the book, rested his palms on top of the old hardback and said, “Then ask me.”
    “Ask you what?”
    “Everything. Ask me what you want to know and hear it from an actual werewolf.”
    “Okay,” she said, sifting through the million questions she wanted to ask. “My uncle said you were evolving. It’s what brought my dad to the belief that he had to revive the Hell Hunters. He said your bite used to kill people, but now it doesn’t.”
    “Vera and Kate think it isn’t werewolves evolving, but rather humans becoming immune to the venom that used to kill them. Now we use the bite as a kind of claiming mark, like other types of shifters do.”
    “What’s a claiming mark?”
    Chance cleared his throat and dropped his gaze to the corner of the book he was pulling at. “During sex, if a male chooses a mate and she chooses him back, he marks her.”
    Warmth dumped into the apex between her thighs at the imagery. “Marks her how?”
    “By biting her on the back. It’s a mark that says no other shifter can go after her.”
    “And do females mark males?”
    A wicked smile spread across his face. “Sometimes.”
    “Right.” She clamped her thighs tightly together, but her sex pulsed once, the little beggar. “And how do you choose a mate?”
    “The animal handles that part. He starts a bond that is hard to ignore.” Chance’s eye ticked. “It doesn’t always work out. Dalton bonded to a human mate before, and she didn’t choose him back. She lost a baby and bailed.”
    “Lost a girl baby?”
    Chance nodded.
    “Because girls don’t survive. Or at least they didn’t until Vera fixed that.”
    Another nod.
    “Chance, in my dad and uncle’s eyes, Vera was part of the problem. She was on the list.”
    “Vera was? Why?”
    “Because she’s fixing every single