Free Perfect Mate by Jennifer Ashley Page B

Shane and the . . .
Ah.
    Cormac opened his eyes. “He was here. In the club with us. The guy at the next table.”
    Nell’s eyes also came open, and she looked up and back at him. “I remember. He was
     sitting alone, and Shane bumped into him. Nearly spilled his beer. Please don’t tell
     me he’s out for revenge because a Shifter almost spilled his beer.”
    “I don’t think so. This was well planned. The guy didn’t just happen to have a syringe
     full of tranquilizer in his pocket.”
    “But why Shane?” Nell’s voice rose toward panic. “Or is he a hunter who’ll take any
     Shifter?”
    “Hunting Collared Shifters is highly illegal. Even the human cops wouldn’t look the
     other way for that. Too touchy.”
    “Then he wanted Shane specifically.”
    “That’s my guess.”
    “Why?”
    Cormac closed his arms more tightly around her. “We’ll find him, and we’ll ask.”
    “Do you remember what he looked like?” Nell said, worried.
    “Yes. Every detail.”
    Nell looked at him in surprise. “Every detail? I barely noticed the guy.”
    “Habit I picked up growing up. I notice everything around me at all times, every scent,
     sight, sound, feel—taste if necessary. I learned to live like an animal long before
     I understood what it was like to live as a human. I was nearly twenty before I found
     the rest of my clan.”
    Life had been . . . interesting. The true bears had given him a wide berth because
     he’d smelled wrong.
    Cormac had wandered alone, a cub calling for someone, anyone to help him, and realizing
     finally that there was no one to come. He’d learned survival on his own, hunting and
     killing his own food, eating it raw.
    “I’m sorry,” Nell said.
    “What I learned comes in handy,” Cormac said without self-pity. He released her from
     his arms but took her hand. “Let’s use it to find your cub.”

Chapter Seven
    The human employees still inside the club went bug-eyed when Cormac walked in naked,
     but the Shifters didn’t notice. Nell noticed, but then, she’d become hyperaware of
     Cormac. His scent was on her and hers on him. Scent-marked—the first step in the mating
     game.
    Cormac became bear again to sniff around inside, and he was joined by Jace in his
     Feline form. Jace and Cormac hunted around the tables, while Graham looked on, his
     human girlfriend watching with her fingers steepled at her lips.
    They found nothing at the table. The guy had left no trace of himself but his scent.
    Nell vaguely remembered the man nursing a bottle of beer while she’d sat at the next
     table trying not to pour out her heart to Cormac. But the bartender confirmed that
     the table had been cleared a long time ago, any beer bottles left there now in the
     gigantic pile in the recycle bin.
    “We could get fingerprints from the chair and table,” Brody suggested. “See if he’s
     got a record, anyway.”
    Cormac shifted into his human form as Brody spoke. “Then we’d have to involve the
     police.” He looked at Nell. “You want to do that?” Cormac knew from experience that
     getting human police interested in Shifter problems complicated matters more than
     they helped.
    “We don’t have to,” Nell said. “We have a secret weapon.”
    Cormac raised his brows, unsure what she meant, but Brody relaxed. “Diego and Xavier,”
     he said. “I’ll call them.”
    ***
    “Take it easy,” Joe said. “You’re groggy.”
    The Shifter-man’s eyelids fluttered as he tried to open them, then Shane gave up and
     slumped back into the chair—the sturdiest chair Joe possessed.
    Joe had been driving out to his cabin, keeping with his plan to kill the bear there
     then decapitate him, when his cell phone buzzed. The man on the other end had been
     Miguel, the Shifter who’d hired him.
    “How’s it going?” Miguel had asked.
    “I got one,” Joe answered. “You’ll have proof in the morning. Twenty grand, right?”
    The voice took on a Shifter snarl. “I want