Free Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance) by Lynn Red Page A

feel so good.”
    From the other room, King bellowed. “You... you drank it all? ALL of it?”
    “What’s he talking about? Or, roaring about, I guess?” Jill asked, not paying much attention to either of the bears, as she put a sack of apples into the bottom drawer of the enormous, extra-wide fridge she’d ordered for the place.
    Moving from her completely normal Santa Barbara apartment to these row houses was a little bit of a culture shock for the normally quiet, usually home-bodied Jill Appleton. Signing the lease papers put a lump in her stomach in a way she hadn’t felt since a college pregnancy scare, and then once again when she bought her Jeep. That Wrangler was the first new car she’d ever owned, and if she had anything to say about it, would be the last.
    But, once she settled into the idea, and realized that financially there wouldn’t be any hardship – thanks to the secretive help from her boss, who was the only person outside of Tripp, the terrible date who turned out to be a good guy who had seen the bears be, well, bears – everything was fine.
    Hell, better than fine. Way, way better. She had Rogue and King, she had her job, and she had her life back. After the terror of running from those GlasCorp mercenaries, and escaping with a dislocated shoulder and a few broken ribs, she was glad for every day she had. She’d even mostly gotten over having shot that mutant bear to death.
    Beside her, Rogue started making a sound very similar to that of a cicada rubbing its wings on its sides. Only, the noise was coming from his teeth. And, when Jill turned to look at one of her two mates, she saw his eyes going slightly golden, the hair on his arms beginning to grow little by little.
    “Rogue?” Jill put a hand on his trembling shoulder. “Are you okay? Seriously, did you take something? Medicine can do weird things, even to someone as big as you.”
    “N...n-n-no,” he finally managed, teeth chattering. “Didn’t take... anything”
    “Something’s going on,” she said. “Unless you’re getting wildly aroused by the way I’m putting coffee creamer away, I—”
    He lurched forward, gripping the countertop.
    Squeezing a little harder on his shoulder, Jill felt the muscles under his shirt harden, thicken, into iron bands, taut with power. “Seriously, I’m starting to worry. Talk to me, Rogue.”
    Off in the living room, King was still grumbling about someone having drunk all of his coffee without asking. He was stomping toward the kitchen – not angrily, but because it was hard for him not to stomp on the hardwood flooring – and as soon as the footsteps went from thumping against hardwood to patting against the tile in the kitchen, Jill heard King let out a single, booming “HA!”
    “King!” Jill shouted, over the lurching, groaning, slightly thrashing Rogue. “What’s wrong with him? Why are you laughing?! You’re not the one who laughs. You’re serious all the time. I’m not sure my heart could take it if you suddenly started in with a bunch of jokes.”
    “Serves him right,” King offered, with a grim look on his face. He set his coffee mug on the countertop with a heavy thunk of ceramic on granite. “Bastard drank my coffee.”
    To exhibit what he meant, King lifted the mug and turned it upside down over the sink. With exaggerated slowness, a single drop of almost syrup-thick coffee slid down the side of the cup and dropped into the metal basin with an audible report.
    “That’s... coffee?”
    King narrowed his eyes. Rogue’s were still rolling around in his head, and the hair on his arms and the tops of his feet had become a 1970s club fashion choice of coarse golden fur. “He’ll be fine.”
    “Fine?” Jill was starting to get worried that somehow caffeine was going to kill one of her mates, although the other was just looking on with a slightly irritated, but mostly bored, expression. “He looks like his heart is gonna explode. How do you make this shit anyway?