Bear Necessities (Bad Boy Alphas): A Post-Apocalyptic Bear Shifter Romance Read Online Free Page A

words—he was going on about some tournament he had won in England, a feat probably meant to impress her, since he was Scottish and she English—but she was paying far more attention to the woods around her.
     
    Her father had taught her to track. Not just to hunt, which often involved tracking an injured, bleeding animal through the forest, if you were unskilled enough not to make the first shot a kill shot, but to actually track. He had taught her the difference between animal prints. She could even differentiate between a chipmunk and a squirrel print. Her father and his men had taught her the names of all the plants, their medicinal uses and their dangers. He had taught her how to care for herself out in the woods—how to build a shelter, make a fire.
     
    She was thinking these things, and how they would come in handy when she escaped, paying attention to the sounds of the men in the distance—she could tell they were still on the hunt and hadn’t found any wolves, or wulvers, or anything else for that matter—the sound of a stream off to her right, the crackle of branches to the left, a small animal, a fox or perhaps a rabbit, when she heard something that made her pause and rein in her horse. It was a familiar sound, one she’d heard a hundred times—the sound of an injured animal.
     
    “Lady Blackthorne?” Alistair reined in his horse, glancing back at her inert form with a frown.
     
    Her ears were as attuned as the horse’s. She had heard something to their right, off in the direction of the stream, but the sound was gone now. Alistair spoke up again and she waved at him to be quiet. It wasn’t a gesture he was used to heeding and he bristled and blustered at her boldness, making it impossible to really listen.
     
    “Please,” she insisted, holding up her hand for him to stop. “I thought I heard something.”
     
    “Twas nothin’, surely.” Alistair winked. “Not a wulver, a’course. Wanna hop up ‘ere wit’me, lass?”
     
    He patted his bare thigh with a wink.
     
    “No, thank you.” Sibyl shook her head, averting her eyes and frowning, still listening for the sound. She might be willing to bat her eyelashes to get her hands on a longbow, but she wasn’t willing to indulge this man’s fantasies that she was afraid of imaginary animals.
     
    “Ye sure?” he offered again, leaning forward in his saddle so he was eye-to-eye with her. “I promise ye a good ride.”
     
    Sibyl’s hand itched to smack him across the face and thanked God she was out of arm’s reach. Just seeing the smug, self-satisfied look on his face made her realize, even if she was chased, caught and killed by whatever roamed these woods at night—even the fantastical “wulvers”—she couldn’t marry this man. She preferred being eaten by wolves.
     
    A long, baying howl rose up around them and Sibyl sat up straight in her saddle, eyes wide, not from fear, but in surprise. That wasn’t just a wounded animal, it was a dangerous one. A wild dog—or perhaps a wolf. She knew the sound of a pack call well enough. Her father had taught her about the way canine packs hunted. Often one would lure a victim down a path where the pack waited, and then an ambush would ensue. He’d warned her never to follow a lone canine anywhere, even if it pretended to be hurt.
     
    “Surely you hear that!” she exclaimed hotly, meeting Alistair’s amused gaze.
     
    Sibyl urged her mare onward, but Winnie didn’t move. She might have been old and slow, but she wasn’t stupid. The horse knew what she’d heard and so did Sibyl.
     
    “Aye, I did,” he agreed. “Ye think it was a wulver, then?”
     
    “No.” She scowled at his persistent attempt to try to scare her into his lap. “But it was a pack call. There’s an animal in trouble.”
     
    “And how’d ye be knowin’ that, lass?” His fair eyebrows went up in surprise and Sibyl could have kicked herself for saying it. He liked his women beautiful and dumb, and so far