Read Southern Shifters: Inked By The Bear (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Black & White Series Book 2) for Free Online Page B

Do you know what happened to him? To the wolf who was with him? To Gus’s birth parents?”
    Behind her, Gus tensed, as though bracing himself for something unpleasant. “Luke,” Gus said, the warning clear in his voice.
    Martin waved Gus to silence. “Go on,” Martin urged Luke.
    “I don’t know everything I need or want to know, but I think I know enough. For instance, I don’t know what happened to your bear specifically, but I know what happened to our wolf. Poachers, not legit hunters. I can’t…” He shook his head and tightened his jaw before continuing. “I won’t go into what they did to him, but the arrows were enough to tell us how he was killed. I’ve been searching for not only a way to keep our bloodlines viable, but also to search out the poachers who had been killing in the mountains. The human authorities can’t help us. They can only do what their laws allow. We abide by slightly different laws, ones that if we work together, we might be able to solve a few of the deaths that have occurred over the years.”
    “We never found Rex. Not…” Martin shook his head and looked down. “Not all of him, at least. Like your wolf, we found arrows. Bastards didn’t even take the evidence.”
    “I bet if we put them together, they’d be identical arrows, too.”
    “I heard tell of another family of bears who were killed in the mountains, but those were by gunshot,” Michael said. “And I was a kid.”
    “Word travels fast among the packs and clans whenever there’s a shifter killed by any means other than another shifter. Over the years there’ve been several bears killed by bow and arrow and a few by shotgun. Guns you can explain away as hunters and maybe even stray ammunition, but not a bow and arrow. Not to take down a bear.”
    “You have a theory,” Gus bit out. “You have another goddamn theory and you’re just doling it out, little by little. I told you I thought it was poachers who killed my parents. I told you I’ve heard things, seen things, but you’re just… Fucking spit it out, Blackwood.”
    “I’m careful. I don’t know what they already know, and I’m not about to put myself further in harm’s way without going through this point by point, bit by bit. So, yes, I have another theory.” Luke stood and stomped toward Gus. “I have a lot of them about a lot of things, but this? Yeah, I have one main thought. It’s not a pretty one and it once again involves someone from Bex’s mother’s past.”
    Bex watched as the two shifters stood toe to toe, breathing fire at each other. She watched as her new uncle and cousin slowly took up residence at Gus’s sides. She watched as pain and sadness, fear and determination… As anger changed the look on Gus’s face with each word that passed through Luke’s lips.
    She watched, as though she stood outside herself, as all eyes turned to her once more. She had no idea what Luke was talking about this time. She had no idea who Luke was talking about this time. The longer he stayed on her porch, the longer he talked, the more confused she became and she decided enough was enough. “Look, I’m lost. For twenty-four years, I only had a mother, and snippets from conversations I didn’t understand.” She drew a circle in the air, encompassing everyone standing on her porch. “I’m new to all of this. You’re all new to me, and I’m lost. The only people from my mother’s past that I knew of was her fiancé and his family, primarily his father. That’s all. That’s it.”
    Luke’s gaze locked with hers. He smiled, feral and predatory, and fear slithered up her spine. “Bingo.”

 
     
     
    Chapter Five
     
     
    Gus sighed.
    Bex left the porch and walked toward downtown with his Aunt Mary. For all intents and purposes she was his aunt and just as she had with Gus all those years ago, she wanted to know everything about Bex. Gus couldn’t blame her. He wanted to know everything about Bex, too.
    He wasn’t sure Bex