Free Bearing the Black Ice (Ice Bear Shifters Book 4) by Sloane Meyers

set one down in front of Hannah. They ate in silence for a few minutes, hungrily devouring the food. Even though they’d had plenty of chili the night before, they both still felt like they were running on a nutritional deficit. It felt good to eat to satisfaction after the meager food options they’d had in the caverns.
    “I got you several outfits from Kenzie and Delaney. They’re both about your size. Glacier Point is the main town around here, and they have a few stores where we can buy you some clothes of your own. But Neal wants everyone to stay around the cabins for now, until we figure out what the Blizzards’ plans are for an attack on the new cub.”
    Hannah smiled gratefully as she swallowed down the last few bites of her food. “Thank you. I’m just happy to have clothes again that aren’t sweatpants and several sizes too big.”
    Alan laughed. “You looked adorable in my sweatpants.”
    “I looked like I was wearing a potato sack.”
    “You did not. You’re beautiful, no matter what you’re wearing.” Alan stood and kissed the top of Hannah’s head. “I need to go help guard Kenzie’s cabin for a while. You can stay here and relax. The shower here is awesome. The water gets very hot and the water pressure is great. I’ll be back in a few hours, but make yourself at home. I got a bunch of food by raiding the kitchens of the other clan members. And, if you like to read, I have a pretty big collection of books in a wide variety of genres.”
    “Sounds good,” Hannah said. “Don’t worry about me. I can entertain myself. And this cabin is like an amusement park compared to the empty, dark caves where the Blizzards left me for days on end. I’m sure I’ll find plenty to do.”
    Alan smiled and kissed her, on the lips this time. Then he took off in the direction of Ryker’s cabin.
    Hannah definitely wanted to take Alan up on the offer of a shower. She sifted through the outfits he had brought over for her and chose a pair of dark wash jeans and a soft gray long-sleeved sweater with a v-neck. She laid the clothes out on the bed and then went into the bathroom. After turning on the water and finding a towel, she looked at her reflection in the mirror while she waited for the water to heat up.
    She shuddered at the sight. She hadn’t seen her own reflection in months, and she hardly recognized herself. Her cheeks looked gaunt and hollow, and her skin appeared pale. She must have lost close to thirty pounds, making the outline of her ribcage easily visible. Her oily, dirty hair had lost its sleek black shine. Smudges of dirt appeared at random across her body. How could Alan look at her and see beauty? She only saw a starving, dirty shell of a woman.
    She sighed, and stepped into the shower. The first step in fixing this mess was to get cleaned up. She moaned out loud as the steaming hot water hit her skin. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had a hot shower. The Blizzards certainly hadn’t offered her any creature comforts while they held her prisoner all those months. And, before that, she had been on the run with her clan for so long. She might be part animal, but she was still a woman. She still loved a relaxing, warm shower. She grabbed a bar of soap from the side of the shower and started lathering up. It smelled like vanilla, the same way Alan had smelled in the kitchen earlier. Dirty, soapy streams of water ran down her body and disappeared through the drain, erasing the evidence of her long days and nights in Black Ice Caverns.
    Hannah wished that her lingering fears and worries could be washed away so easily. She didn’t know what the future held. She knew she had bonded to Alan. They hadn’t discussed it, but she was fairly certain that he felt it, too. There hadn’t been much point in making plans to become life mates, though, when they thought they were going to die in the caverns. Now, the prospect of an actual future stretched out in front of them. If this