The Bear's Arranged Mate: A Bear Shifter Romance Novel Read Online Free Page A

For a moment, she thought she had misheard Caroline, that perhaps there was something she had missed – but when she brought the gun out and held it in both hands, she knew there wasn’t any confusion.
    Caroline wanted her to kill the heir to the Clawgrove Tribe. And, by default, her soon to be husband.
     
    *
     
    Sarah tried to keep her mind focused as she scaled down the incline of the mountain, sliding on the loose gravel and scree, which kicked up dust into her mouth and coated her skin and hair. She was already sweating and breathing hard by the time she reached the bottom of the valley floor and looked back up the way she’d come – she was making good time, but now with Caroline’s gift she wasn’t sure what she was heading towards. Questions came rushing back, and she felt a pang of nausea sweep over her like an undulating wave.
    Why had Caroline given her a gun? And what did she mean that she needed to kill Connor? None of it made any sense. It was all too sudden, too surreal, for her to grasp it. She wanted to laugh. It seemed ridiculous.
    She knew that the Clawgroves and the Greybacks had a tumultuous history. But blood hadn’t been shed in almost five hundred years. If it had, it would have started the war all over again – and now Caroline, the current matron of the Greyback Tribe, was actively trying to bring it about? Sarah shook her head again as she started to jog through the underbrush, but her cheeks filled up again and she felt tears streaking from the sides of her eyes and had to stop.
    “What are you thinking?” she half-panted as she sat down by a small stream. Mosquitoes buzzed their protests, and the prehensile lapping of the water helped to calm her down.
    She hugged her chest again, counted each rib with her finger, like a meditation. She could smell the pine sap in the forest, a sticky kind of odor that saturated everything. In another time, she would have been able to appreciate it as beautiful, but now it all seemed dark and foreboding. She got the distinct impression she was being watched.
    She had to think clearly – everything depended on it.
    So far, she knew only two things: that she had been preparing for a marriage proposal that involved tracking down her mate, the heir to a Former enemy of her Tribe, and two, that for some inexplicable reason her cousin now wanted her to kill that man.
    What if Patrick gave the same orders to Connor? she thought suddenly. Maybe this wasn’t a marriage proposal at all. It was some cruel joke, some horrible game that played a member of each Tribe against each other. She started to hyperventilate and dug her fists into the soft ground to try and calm herself down again.
    Patrick had seemed quite genuine – he had even mentioned that he’d known her as a child. Sarah couldn’t detect any malice in the old man, but neither could she completely ignore Caroline’s gift of a gun. There was a dangerous game being played, and she wasn’t even sure what the rules were. It was nearly impossible to trust anyone. Even myself , she realized with a sudden hint of sadness.
    Once more, she checked her knapsack, wondering if Caroline had planted something else to give her a clue as to what to do next. Nothing, just the few items she had chosen to bring with her that were permitted. Fondly, she touched the moleskin journal haphazardly stashed in the back of the canvas and pulled it out. No , she thought. There would be time enough for reflection later – this was the immediate world. Gently, she stuffed it back and pulled the pistol from the waistband of her pants.
    It was a semi-automatic Glock. She’d handled the type before, a bit of mandatory firearm instruction at the Estate, but to actually have it in her hands now felt like a bad omen. It was too heavy. Unlike the firing range, she had been given it with a very specific purpose in mind. Her throat swelled and she tried to swallow around it to no avail.
    She tucked the gun deeper into her knapsack