Read Online Gray Back Broken Bear (Gray Back Bears Book 4) by T. S. Joyce - Free Book Online Page A

sympathy.
    He pulled the black ribbon through his fingers and gave her that ghost of a smile. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago. I was a cub at the time. I barely even remember what she looks like.” His voice sounded odd though—hollow—and she’d bet her flight feathers he remembered everything in great detail. His mind had always been like that. Sharp as a blade, retaining everything he learned. It’s how he’d survived out there in those harsh woods alone at such a young age. He would try something until he figured out how it worked, and then he never made the same mistakes twice. His mind was a steel trap, just like the one—
    Aviana closed her eyes against the vision of Easton screaming. Not now. Later, when she was alone. She couldn’t feed that memory now while he watched her with those bright eyes that missed nothing.
    “You’re hungry.” Easton stood so fast he blurred, and she gasped at his speed.
    Easton held his hands out. “Sorry,” he whispered.
    “I think you’re being gentle around me.”
    He nodded.
    “Is it in your nature to be gentle?”
    He shook his head slowly.
    “Then I think maybe you should be yourself and allow me to adjust.”
    “But you always smell scared. I don’t like it.”
    “If I get used to you, then I won’t be such a chicken anymore, and I have a feeling I’ll like your real self even better, anyway.”
    His eyebrows jacked up. “I assure you, you won’t.”
    Aviana snorted and laughed. “How do you know?”
    His eyes dipped to her lips as they stretched into a bigger smile. “Because I’m pretty damned sure no one on this planet can handle all of my…personality.” But now a smile was spreading across his face, and there they were—those dimples she’d wished with all of her heart to see.
    Before she could change her mind, she stepped forward and pressed her finger against one. She’d seen them a hundred times in his youth but had never revealed herself as a human, and couldn’t touch the tiny indentations as a bird.
    He inhaled a sharp breath as his pupils contracted to pinpoints and zeroed in on her. “What are you doing?”
    “I like to touch you. And I like when you smile big enough for me to see these.” She moved out of the way of a dresser and looked at his reflection in the mirror with him. “Your smile is my favorite thing about you.”
    “Are you broken, Ana?”
    The question caught her off guard, and she had to wait a moment before answering, just to steady her thoughts. “Not broken, no.”
    “Then why did you ask for me? Why did you come to my alpha for me? Why in the hell would you want to be mated to a man like me?”
    “Because my life doesn’t feel hollow when I’m around you,” she said honestly.
    He huffed a humorless laugh and looked down at the ribbon between his fingertips. “You make no sense.”
    “I wasn’t happy—”
    “Happy is just a word, Ana. It doesn’t really exist. It’s a state of mind people convince themselves they have so they can get through their existence one day at a time. You search for happiness, and when you think you find it, you work your whole life to hang onto this feeling as thin as air, and then you die. Happy is a bullshit word.”
    Shocked, she sank down to the bed beside him. She’d never heard him string so many words together. He’d never been vocal about his opinions when he was younger, and now it was clear how jaded he’d become. He was wrong, though.
    “Well then, I’ll make you happy and prove you wrong.” She stuck her tongue out at him and grinned.
    Easton cocked his head and stared at her smile again. It seemed to attract his attention easily. “Whatever your reasons,” he murmured, “I’m glad you found me.”

Chapter Nine
     
    Easton’s focus was dragged to Ana’s lips for the hundredth time. She smiled the more comfortable around him she became. She didn’t smell like fear anymore. Just vanilla.
    What was it about her lips? Right now, she was sitting