Heart of the Bear (Hells Canyon Shifters Book 5) Read Online Free

eyes and shook his head. “Sorry, but that isn’t in the cards for you now. You’re a risk to my people. I have to take you back to camp until we can figure out what to do with you.”
    “Please don’t kill me,” she pleaded. “I just want to go home. I won’t tell anyone about your little bear cult. I swear.”
    “Oh, I believe you.”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah. You won’t tell anyone because you’re going to be here with me.” A smile stretched his face but didn’t reach his eyes.
    She shifted her weight from side to side like a football player and tried to bolt around him. Only problem was, her right leg was still cramped up, and she stiffened, then went down like a sack of stones.
    “That was terrible,” Jesse said, looking down at her with one ruddy eyebrow hitched high.
    Groaning, she rolled back and forth, holding her hamstring.
    “Here, stop that. Let me see.”
    “Don’t touch me!”
    “Don’t yell at me.” He gripped her leg with impossibly strong hands and ran his long fingers down the length of her calf until he cradled her foot in his strong grip. He pressed his weight there, and the pain diminished.
    It was then that she noticed the crimson rivers that streamed down his shoulder and arm. Her stomach clenched in on itself. She hated the sight of blood. Always had. “Don’t get your blood on me!” she cried out. “I don’t want to be a werebear.”
    Jesse snorted and bit his lip like he was trying not to laugh. She wanted to punch him.
    “I’m not a werebear. We call ourselves bear shifters, and you can’t become one from contact with my blood. Besides, I’d never try to turn you. You’d make a shitty werebear.”
    Her mouth dropped open, and she jerked her foot out of his grasp. “I would not.”
    “Please. You run like a duck, you pant like a horse, your only apparent defense is screaming, and you got a leg cramp after running half a mile. You can keep your humanity, princess.”
    “Stop calling me that.”
    Jesse bent and pulled her over his shoulder as if he was a caveman carrying off his cave-wife.
    Rae Lynn gasped in shock and flailed her arms and legs. “Put me down! I’m not going back there with you. You can’t do this to me!” Desperate, she finagled her multi-tool from her back pocket, opened the first mechanism she could, and jammed it into Jesse’s back.
    “Ow!” he yelled, loud enough to scare the roosting birds out of the nearest trees.
    He set her down so hard she fell backward onto her ass and yelped at the unexpected pain.
    “Did you just stab me?” He looked pissed, and his fare skin was turning redder by the second.
    “Take it back!”
    “Take what back?”
    “I’d make a fucking awesome werebear! I’m so sick of being insulted. I’m not an idiot, I’m not a stupid bitch, and I’m not defenseless!”
    His eyebrows shot up, and he reached over his shoulder and pulled the pocket knife from his back. “I didn’t call you anything but defenseless…and you stabbed me with a pair of miniature scissors?” He held the tiny weapon up, his hard expression morphing from disbelief to accusation.
    “And I’d do it again if you threw me over your shoulder like that a second time, you barbarian. I’m a person, Jesse. Grow some manners.”
    Jesse’s hands clenched at his side, and the red color that had crept up his neck landed in his ears. “Will you please accompany me back to my clan so we can assess if you’re going to run screaming to the police about what you’ve seen here today?” He gritted out each word like it pained him.
    She lifted her chin and tried to look as dignified as she could from her seat in the dirt. “No.”
    “Raah!” he yelled and threw her multi-tool into the woods.
    “Hey, my mom gave me that.” She stared at where it had disappeared. “It was special to me.”
    Jesse huffed an irritated sound and pulled her upward, then shoved her shoulder and angled her back toward the camp she’d escaped.
    “At least tell me