Free Mating Dance by Bianca D'Arc

you?”
    She seemed to come to her senses. “Happier
than I’ve been in a long time,” she admitted, her gaze still
holding echoes of defeat.
    “That’s good to hear because you’ve made me
happier than I’ve been in a long time too. I’m not willing to give
that up so easily. Are you?” he challenged.
    She shook her head, but her expression
looked agonized. “I just don’t see how this can possibly work out.
I’ve been found. He’ll tell others, and then, we’ll have no peace
here whatsoever. For your people’s protection, I’ll have to leave
and take my troubles with me.”
    “Honey, you’re one of us now. You’re part of
our community. We’re not going to let anything bad happen.”
    “You keep saying that, but I just don’t see
how.” She shook her head, her expression pitiful.
    “For starters, we’re circling the wagons.
Brody and Zak are downstairs, and Big John is on his way here.
We’re going to have to tell him about you, so he understands what
he’s up against. He’s not going to be happy, and he’ll probably
growl a bit, but don’t worry. He’s a good guy under the Alpha
bluster. He’ll do the right thing.”
    She cringed, but she was listening. “And
then what?”
    “Then I believe I’m going to have a little
chat with the reporter.” Tom was looking forward to it. He’d kill
the man if he refused to leave. Nothing was off limits when it came
to protecting his mate.
    “No, Tom! You can’t. It’ll only be worse if
you try to scare him off. He’ll know for sure then that I’m here.
Right now, he’s still wondering. He doesn’t know for sure. We need
to keep it that way as long as we can.”
    Tom considered her point. “Okay. So maybe chat was the wrong word. What if our reporter friend found
himself confronted by a bear? Or two? Or maybe a whole bunch of
us?” Tom started to grin, imagining the fun of running the reporter
out of town on a rail without ever speaking a word.
    “That actually sounds like a really good
idea,” came John’s voice from behind Tom’s back.
    Tom had heard the Alpha’s deliberately heavy
tread on the stairs and wasn’t surprised by his presence. Nell and
Brody were right behind him, and they all trooped past Ashely and
Tom into the apartment, moving into the living room.
    Ashley stepped back from Tom, leaving his
embrace and wiping at her eyes. She seemed to be in a state of mild
shock, her gaze following the small crowd that had just invaded her
home. She walked toward the living room, but Tom caught her
hand.
    “We do this together, Ash,” he whispered.
“Remember, John’s growl is worse than his bite.”
    “I heard that,” John groused from the living
room.
    “Damn shifter hearing,” Tom joked for
Ashley’s sake.
    Together, they walked into the living room,
hand in hand.
     

Chapter
Eleven

    Tom wasn’t exactly happy to have to explain
about Ashley’s problem to John, but though the Alpha growled a
bit—as predicted—it wasn’t really that bad. In fact, as soon as
John became aware of the full extent of the situation, he was as
supportive of Ashley as Tom could have hoped.
    “So what can we do to deter this reporter
from asking any more questions?” Brody asked once the facts had
been fully explained. “If it was the old west, we could run him out
of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, but somehow, I don’t think
that would go over too well in this day and age.”
    “I liked Tom’s idea,” John said. “We could
go bear on his ass and scare him off. Where’s the guy staying?”
    “Zak discovered he was camping on National
Park land, not too far away,” Brody supplied as John grinned.
    “That’s just about perfect,” John said,
looking a lot like the cat who swallowed the canary, no matter that
he was a big assed grizzly shifter.
     
    * * *
     
    Ashley sat with her sisters, waiting for
word of the men. Brody, Tom, Big John and a few of the others had
gone off in search of the reporter’s campsite a few hours