Free Bear Meets Bride (Online Shifter Dating Agency Romance) by Sasha Winter Page A

fallout comes down from on high if they disagree.”
    Jake’s initial response to the Nana situation was to prefer calling in an old favor from a neighboring force to go and check on her, but after hearing Tom’s suspicions that it might be related to the killer bear shifter, he conceded to letting him go. The look on Jake’s face told Tom that his boss was starting to worry he was taking the case too seriously, but he took his escape anyway and sped off as fast as the snow would allow him.
     
    ***
     
    Visiting a hospital should’ve felt a whole lot better than another laboratory table sporting a dismembered corpse, but Tom took little pleasure from this, though not in the way Jake was suspecting. He was taking this case more and more personally, and his apprehension over what it could all lead to was quickly being replaced by anger.
    Nana was one of the most thoughtful and inoffensive people you could ever hope to meet, and thinking of her as a target for this poor excuse of a shifter, or any criminal for that matter, reminded him of why he had chosen to become a cop in the first place: to protect good and innocent folk.
    He found her still in the emergency ward and was relieved to find that the effects of her attack were mostly psychological. There were no scars on her face to ruin the wedding photos, with the only claw marks being on her right shoulder and upper chest. The nurse told him that she was semi-coherent now and improving fast, though he was advised to go steady on the questioning and not to cause her distress—she had suffered some shock as well as being found shivering in the cold without any outdoor clothing. In addition to the claw marks, the team had found bruising to her ribs and a lump on the back of the head that were typical of a physical beating.
    When first left alone with her, Tom could not find the words to begin. Nana had her eyes closed and gave no sign that she had heard any of the exchange with the nurse or that she knew a friend and colleague was present. Would she start to hate him for being a bear shifter now too? The thought was distressing, but he contained his emotions.
    “Nana,” he said gently, then waited patiently for her to come round, seeing that her brows raised slightly at the sound of his voice.
    “Is that you, Tom?” she asked, uncertain, being without her glasses as well as suffering a concussion.
    “It’s me, Nana,” he replied, not quite avoiding a shaky tone to his voice. “You’re giving us quite a scare. Don’t you know this place will go to the dogs without you?”
    “Tom, I…I don’t think they understood what I was telling them.”
    “That’s okay,” he said. “Can you remember it clearly?”
    “I can…I’m tired and don’t think I could stand without falling, but I know what happened.”
    “Was it the bear shifter?”
    “Yes, but he was in his human form. I heard him gaining access to the house but he attacked before I could dial 911.”
    “He broke in? Are you sure?”
    This wasn’t what he was expecting. So far the killer had lain in wait for lone walkers and attacked in bear form. Going to the trouble of breaking into someone’s house in order to find a victim suggested a more extreme level of desperation that didn’t make much sense—unless he had targeted Nana for a strategic reason.
    “Did he…did he try to molest you at all?” Tom asked, wondering if there had been other motivations for entering the home.
    “No,” Nana replied, “he just grabbed me and started to shift into his bear form straight away. So he could kill me—I could tell, he had bloodlust in his eyes—but my jewelry Tom… my silver jewelry.”
    “It stopped him?”
    “It burned him, though I didn’t understand it at the time. My necklace saved me; steam got in his eyes. He let go but then couldn’t see me. I got out, but…but he was thrashing about like a crazy thing, going from man to bear. I remember the pain in my ribs but don’t remember anything