Page 4 of Bear Facts

Leo stepped forward, his face as hard as Graham’s ever was. “Just because you’re too chicken-shit to take who you want doesn’t mean you can stop us from doing it.”

Shane put himself in front of Brody, who was still trying to be relaxed, and met the Lupine straight on. “This isn’t the old days, dog-breath. You don’t grab a female and sequester her until she’s too tired to fight you. Especially not in this Shiftertown. Unless you want all your limbs broken. By her. And by me.”

“Eric is trying to keep them for his Shifters,” the Lupine next to Leo argued. “We need mates, and Eric doesn’t want us to have them.”

The other wolves surged forward, the statement logical to their hungover brains.

Brody tried to patiently explain. “The ratio of men to women in this Shiftertown is like five to two. We outnumber them, my friends. Whether we like it or not.”

Apparently, these wolves did not like it. “We don’t mind sharing,” one quipped from the back.

“Oh, right.” Shane couldn’t keep quiet and let Brody negotiate. “So not only are you going to tell every Shifter woman in this town they’re fair game but that you’re going to pass them around?”

“Yep,” the second wolf said, as Leo remained in a silent stare-down with Shane. “We’ll cut you in, if you’re with us.”

The others growled in serious agreement.

“Graham will never go for that,” Brody pointed out.

“Fuck Graham.” Leo took a step back from Shane, claws sprouting from his fingers. “He’s done as leader. We’ll take his mate, and we’ll take Eric’s, and then every other female in this town. They’re ours.”

Shit.

These weren’t just a bunch of disgruntled Lupines, Shane realized. This was insurrection.

“You heard what Graham said.” Brody’s tone was too unworried for Shane’s comfort. “If we need to bring him back out here, he’s not going to go easy on you. How about you go home, sleep it off, and think about it once you’ve had breakfast?”

Something Shane wasn’t going to get, he had the feeling.

The Lupines surged forward. “You’ll never make it to Graham’s place,” Leo promised. “You’ll be dead.”

In a heartbeat, the group surrounded Shane and Brody and attacked them in force.

Chapter Two

Shane found his arms full of half-shifted wolf as Leo leapt at him. Shane roared his anger, which became a bear snarl as he began to change.

Shane’s long-sleeved gray shirt ripped as brown fur exploded on his arms, and his jeans split at the seams to release his powerful back limbs.

Damn it. I really liked that shirt.

Cloth fell in shreds to the ground as a thousand pounds of grizzly filled the space. Leo realized he was in the grip of razor-sharp bear claws and now scrambled to get away.

Shane tossed him aside. He suppressed his instinct to tear out the wolf’s throat, because Graham would kill him if he did that, and Eric probably wouldn’t stop him.

Then the Guardian would stick his sword into Shane’s dead body to release his soul, and his family would hold a ceremony to send him to the Goddess. Nell would be very upset. She and Brody would go after Graham in revenge, and the whole Shiftertown could erupt into war.

Therefore, Shane suppressed his bear’s urgings and settled for throwing Leo to the ground and spinning to face the onslaught.

More Lupines came at him, less worried about the balance of power in Shiftertown and more interested in venting their spleen. Shane and Brody, now also bear, stood together in a solid wall of fur, fighting off wolves with swipes of their huge paws.

Leo, on his feet again, launched himself under Shane’s reach and latched his teeth into the fur on the side of Shane’s neck. Shane roared his displeasure, swinging his massive head around in an attempt to dislodge the wolf. The stupid thing held on, as Lupines could do.

Three others lunged at Shane, separating him from Brody. Shane’s irritation quickly became rage, the berserker bear he’d been trying to suppress bursting to the surface. When it took over, it wouldn’t matter that this little battle would cause Eric, Graham, and Nell to confront one another as enemies, and that the safety of all Shifters hung in the balance.

Shane’s bear just fought.

Yet another wolf jumped on Shane, five of them trying to take him down. Shane spun his huge body, throwing off a couple of wolves with his momentum, but the other three, including Leo, grimly hung on. Brody was having the same problems and couldn’t help.

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