STORY EXCERPT

“You’re all wrong. These shifters can be reasoned with. They don’t deserve to be trapped and killed like animals. They’re human, too.” There. Robbie finally said his piece. He readied himself for a kick or punch, but Johnny did something worse. His brother only laughed at him.

“We’ve already drawn first blood. Killed many of their friends. You think they’d show any of us mercy? Didn’t you see the pieces of our family members we brought back?”

“I’m not one of you, and besides, Leon and everyone else started this. If we left them alone—”

Johnny gave him a kick in the stomach, making him gasp. Robbie forgot what he wanted to say.

“Don’t be stupid, little brother. You smell just like us. What’s going to stop them from mauling you to death?”

Johnny made an excellent point.

“To your hiding places!”

Just as his brother said those words, a roar came from the left side of their campsite. Something huge, brown, and furry came at his brother. A werebear. Johnny backed away slowly, grabbed his rifle towards the bear, and moved a few steps back.

“No!” he yelled just as the shifter stepped foot into one of the traps the hunters left behind.

The net closed around the shifter and brought him up high into the trees. Johnny let out a whoop. More growls emerged nearby. More werebears emerged from the bushes. Some were in animal form, the others remained in human form, but they were armed with guns. These bear shifters looked pissed as hell.

Shock reflected on Johnny’s face. Johnny must have underestimated these shifters. Robbie thought he heard the sound of a motorcycle engine.

“What are you all standing around for? Kill them all!” his brother yelled.

Shots were fired. The werebears roared, clashed with the hunters.

Robbie tried to work at the knots behind his back. He’d been in this position plenty of times.

“Yes,” he said to himself, and he loosened the strings. Hearing a snarl, he gulped, spotting a werebear approaching him. Robbie worked at the knots faster. The werebear looked at him like free meat.

Did he really smell like the other hunters? A quick look showed him the shifters had quickly decimated the rest of the hunters. Robbie didn’t really feel anything for the deaths of the others. His own family treated him like shit his entire life. These hunters enjoyed taking lives. Some even relished torturing their victims.

They weren’t good men.

“I’m not one of them,” he told the werebear.

The shifter didn’t listen but only raised one massive paw equipped with sharp ebony claws. He swallowed. One swing aimed at his jugular and he was dead. Maybe dying wasn’t such a bad thing. Everyone else was dead.

To the right of him, he saw Johnny’s retreating back. Johnny passed by an injured hunter, begging him for help, without a second glance. Shouldn’t a leader stand his ground? He guessed his brother valued his own skin more than that of his comrades.

The werebear let out a snarl. He shut his eyes. Nothing. Robbie opened them.

A red blur rammed into the werebear, the movement too fast for his human eyes to track. He widened his eyes at the familiar sight of the muscled red wolf. Seeing the scars that covered Dawson, his chest tightened. Those must’ve hurt.

“Dawson, what’s going on? Why are you protecting that human?” one of the werebears asked, coming forward between Dawson and the bear shifter about to kill him.

This werebear was huge, stood maybe six

feet tall, had a black beard, and wore some kind of biker jacket. Noticing the other werebears stop to watch them, it didn’t take a genius to figure out this guy was their leader.

The werebear who intended to kill him transformed back to human and jabbed a finger at him. The bear shifter looked from the leader back to Dawson.

“This one deserves to die. My brother died trying to save him, thought he was some kind of victim, but he’s one of the hunters. He’s just playing the role of bait.”

Robbie’s hands might be free, but his legs weren’t. Ropes still tied him to the tree. He couldn’t move. Every inch of his body was paralyzed. One wrong move and he was dead.

By some miracle, he found his voice. “I didn’t mean to. They made me. I never wanted any part of this.”

The werebear growled at him. “Shut your lying mouth.”

“He’s shaking. Maybe he’s telling the truth, maybe he isn’t,” said the werebear leader. “What’s this human to you, Dawson?”

Dawson shifted back to human. Robbie couldn’t help it. He stared at the impressive specimen of a man. Robbie ignored the ruin, the scars that threaded across Dawson’s skin. Dawson was easily six-foot-plus, every inch of him made of hard muscle.

Robbie blushed for no reason as he moved his gaze away from the impressive package between Dawson’s legs, to those six, no, eight-pack abs, that massive chest. Like the color of his animal’s fur, Dawson had short, dark red hair. A face made of hard angles. Seeing the pure, undiluted hatred blazing in Dawson’s golden eyes made him back away. Robbie forgot he was still tied to a tree.

“He’s mine.” Dawson practically growled out the words. Dawson looked to the werebear leader. “Blaine, give him to me. I’ll kill anyone for him.”

All the hairs on his arms rose. Robbie had a feeling Dawson meant every single word. Some kind of aggressive energy emanated from the werewolf, all of it directed at him, at every one there.

“But—” the other werebear protested, but Blaine raised a hand.

“Why?” Blaine asked Dawson.

“He’s responsible for giving me these.” Dawson pointed to one ragged scar on his left cheek.

“Shit,” the other werebear muttered, then gave Robbie a creepy smile. “Looks like you’re about to become wolf chow, human. After he’s done with you, you’ll wish I tore out your throat.”

ADULT EXCERPT

 “Well?” Dawson asked.

Dawson only wanted to wash the stink of the dead human hunters’ blood off him. After skinning the rabbit and putting it in a pot, he thought Robbie would be done showering. He’d been living on his own for so long, never had any guests in his home but his brothers, so he didn’t know how to act.

Barging into the bathroom might just be his best decision yet. Robbie flushed. The human looked completely lost for words. So. Dawson hadn’t imagined Robbie’s reaction earlier. His human did want him, scars and all.

“You don’t have to point it out,” Robbie muttered. Fire returned to Robbie’s chocolate-brown eyes. That only made Dawson’s dick rock hard. “Can you move so I can leave?”

“Why would you want to do that?” Dawson turned, pressed his human up against the wall.

Robbie let out a breath as Dawson rested his dick over the curve of Robbie’s belly. Dawson wanted his human to feel how hard he was for him.

“Did you join me in the shower to s-seduce me?”

Robbie’s entire face and neck were red. Cute.

“Seduce?” He let out a laugh. “Don’t you know, little hunter? We shifters simply see what we want, take what we want.”

“I’m no hunter. Just a fool.” Robbie lowered his gaze. “I should’ve freed you earlier. Six months ago, I was scared as you were.”

Dawson tipped Robbie’s chin with his fingers. Told his human the truth. “After my brothers found me near death, I chose to forget that night. Doing that made me forget the important details. Like the fact you were the one who cut the ropes binding me.”

He let his anger get the better of him. Dawson kept thinking about his perfect revenge, what he’d do to the human who pretended to be bait. Except now, he was beginning to believe Robbie didn’t play his role willingly.

Robbie shook his head. “I was a coward, always was. My family called me a defect because I couldn’t bear to take another life.”

An outcast. Dawson knew something about that. Ever since he’d gotten his scars, he’d been living on the fringes of life. He no longer wanted to show his face in public, only went out to work in the kitchen of the bar.

“Why were you tied to a tree again?”

“As punishment for setting you free. They’ve used be as bait for plenty of other missions,” Robbie said in a small voice. “That’s all I’m good for now.”

Dawson could hear the regret, the fear in Robbie’s voice. Couldn’t be fake. His wolf would know. This human was telling him the truth.

Robbie’s lip trembled. He traced Robbie’s bottom lip with his thumb. Dawson wanted to wipe the sadness in Robbie’s eyes, to make him forget the horrors he’d endured over the past six months.

Robbie widened his eyes. “Are you going to kiss me now?”

“You want that?” Dawson needed to hear Robbie’s admission from his own lips.

Robbie nodded. “I do. I know it’s wrong to want you but I can’t seem to hold myself back.” Robbie looked at his dick and asked, “Why do you still desire me even after all the sins I’ve committed against you?”

“Sins can be forgiven.”

Dawson couldn’t wait any longer. He clasped the back of Robbie’s neck and claimed his mouth. Sweetness exploded on his tongue. Dawson wanted more. It didn’t help that Robbie rubbed his tempting body, his dick against Dawson’s.

Mine. The thought filled him with calm. His possessive wolf rose up inside him. Dawson would put his scent all over Robbie, claim him over and over again. That way everyone else in Greenflower would know this human was taken. Was his. Only his.

He thrust his tongue down Robbie’s throat, pleased his human sucked down hard on it. Dawson pulled his mouth away, only to find Robbie panting. Both of them were.

“Wow,” Robbie whispered. “That was amazing. Why are you stopping?”

“I’m not.”

Dawson left the shower to grab the lube from one cabinet above the sink. He didn’t miss the way Robbie studied him. He watched for the signs his human wanted out. Maybe Robbie would change his mind.

His beast hovered close to the surface, on the verge of breaking out. Once they started down this path, Dawson knew there would be no return.

“That took long.” Robbie pouted.

“I was only gone for a second.”

The little wild cat gripped his shoulders and climbed him like a tree. He rested one hand over the curve of Robbie’s ass as the human wrapped his legs around his waist.

“Am I heavy?” Robbie asked, sounding concerned.

“You don’t weigh a thing.” He uncapped the lube, slid two slicked-up fingers into Robbie’s ass. His human groaned as he pushed another digit in him. Dawson growled in approval. He couldn’t wait to be inside Robbie soon.