Free Autumn's War (The Spirit Shifters Book 4) by Marissa Farrar

boy.”
    “Okay, okay. The leopard is Ollie Pritchard. He doesn’t want shifters to be seen as the good guys. He likes us being bad. He’s just trying to get us behind him. We don’t all want to be seen as some kind of spiritual beings. We want to be seen as bad-asses.”
    “Are you serious? Do you think you look bad-ass now?”
    The naked boy cowered and cried into his arm.
    So there was some guy who was trying to lead shifters astray. What the hell did he think he was going to achieve?
    “You need to go and apologize to Madison, right now.”
    “Who?”
    “The woman you’ve been terrorizing.”
    He sniffed. “Oh, right.”
    Chogan nudged the other guy with his foot. “You, too.”
    He turned back to the car and motioned with his finger to Madison, who still stared at them with wide eyes, glassy with fear. She shook her head and held Billy closer.
    Of course Madison would be frightened. She’d seen Chogan shift from wolf to man.
    Damn it. She was locked inside the car, with the keys. He had no way of getting in unless she opened the door. He could always break it, but then they’d have to ride in a vehicle full of broken glass, and anyway, that wouldn’t do anything to help conquer Madison’s fear. It would only make matters worse.
    He bit down on his impatience and frustration. The old Chogan would have smashed the window and to hell with whatever she thought, but he’d changed. He wouldn’t go through his whole life playing the role of the bad guy.
    Behind him, he was aware of Nadie running out from between the trees. She carried the bundles of clothing the others had discarded right before they had shifted.
    “Please, Madison. We would never hurt you. You don’t have a reason to fear us.”
    He noticed her eyes run up and down his body and realized he stood completely naked before her. He felt no shame at his nudity, and her cheeks grew pink as she must have realized he’d caught her looking. She would feel more comfortable if he were fully dressed.
    “Just wait one minute.” He held up a finger to demonstrate his words and then turned and jogged back to where Nadie waited with his clothes. Peter and Sahale still stood around the two young men, making sure they didn’t run off. Quickly, he tugged his jeans back on, threw his t-shirt over his head, before jamming his feet in his boots and pulling on his jacket. He pulled his long hair out of the back of his t-shirt and jacket, allowing it to fall in a wave of darkness around his face.
    He went back out to the car. Madison still hadn’t driven off, and this gave him hope. She could have done so at any time, and that she stayed meant she wanted to be around them. Chogan didn’t know if it was him in particular she wanted to be around, but she’d stayed for a reason. Deep down, she wanted to be convinced.
    He placed his hands against the roof and ducked down to peer through the window. She looked back at him, her stunning green eyes wide, her skin a perfect porcelain pale, and her beauty made something stutter in his chest.
    No, he wasn’t interested in women. He only had one woman he was interested in, and she was still in love with his cousin.
    “Please, Madison,” he repeated. “We’ve had plenty of opportunities to hurt you if we wanted to. But we didn’t, we helped you.”
    “But … but you’re a wolf!”
    “I’m a shifter, yes, and so are the others. That doesn’t make us dangerous, though. It makes us strong and powerful, and as you just saw, even more able to protect you and your son.”
    At the mention of her child, she glanced down at him. Billy had pulled away from her slightly now, his head turned to look out of the window toward the scene outside. Peter and Sahale had taken the opportunity of Nadie’s arrival with their clothes and shifted back. They had yet to dress themselves.
    The boy let out a squeal of laughter and one hand clamped to his mouth, while the other pointed. “Mommy! Those men don’t have any clothes