Free Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) by Lynn Red Page A

that sort of scenting could go a long way to hide the smell of a body. “Muskrat?” he said under his breath. “No, no... too sickly sweet. Buffalo?” Again he shook his huge head, shaggy hair falling around his shoulders.
    His eyes weren’t the best, but when three figures emerged from the forest to inspect what had just happened, he squinted against the moon.
    “Squirrels,” he said, immediately remembering the curious little guy who had popped out of the forest earlier, and stared at him for a second. “Two small ones, and one that looks like a mutant.”
    “If he won’t do anything to preserve the forest,” the shrill, and very angry, voice squawked again, “I’ll do it for him! That stupid Erik Danniken won’t know what to do when Celia Maynard plays hardball!”
    Orion shook his head in disbelief, still staring upriver as another torrent of leaves circled his outcropping. That’s when he noticed something different about the river.
    The current was weaker. Not much, but it was enough to note.
    “Without water,” the strange, incredibly angry creature shrieked, “this town’ll dry up! It’ll die! It’ll rot in hell!”
    “Wouldn’t it not rot?” It was the squirrel speaking up, in a markedly smaller voice that Orion could barely pick up with his super-sensitive hearing. “Not being wet, I mean. Wouldn’t that make it—”
    “Shut up! If I wanted your opinion, Billie, I would pound it out of you! I’ll flood the whole place! I’ll turn that stupid alpha into a waterlogged puppy!”
    The squirrel fell silent and the leader of this unsanctioned water control team stomped around on top of one of the logs she’d just forced into the river. “This is my moment! Celia Maynard hasn’t ever had a moment before, except when she screamed at that jackass alpha in the middle of that stupid art show! Don’t ruin it for me!”
    Listening to the circus unfold, Orion stuck his hand back in his pocket and dragged the smooth worn stones out again. One by one, he rubbed his fingers over each, then dropped it in the weakening river.
    “Sorry,” the squirrel said. “I was just...”
    “Celia Maynard is going to save this forest! All of the woodland shifters will be safe from the townies spreading outward like a bacterial virus!”
    “Uh, wouldn’t that—”
    “Shut up!” Celia barked. “Beavers, squirrels, ground hogs, possums, we all deserve better than a Subway store on every corner and Red Box kiosks! We deserve our woods, and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them safe!”
    The second squirrel, the one who had yet to say anything, began to clap. The giant, angry squirrel who kept yelling, turned on her heel and he saw her tell-tale, well, tail.
    Beaver , he realized, as the scent hit his nose again. Trees being dragged from somewhere, damming up a river, very beaver things to do. It didn’t make much sense, admittedly, but then again, beavers rarely did.
    Orion counted the stones he dropped. Five, six, seven... And then he paused.
    Number eight wasn’t like the others. He squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger, dropping all the rest of the rocks at once. This one had a bunch of barbs. That wasn’t normal. He held it up in the moonlight, and stared in wonder at the fire dancing in the stone.
    “A diamond earring?”
    A quick glance back toward the excitement revealed Celia and her two squirrels hopping off the freshly delivered logs and probably going to get some more.
    Orion stared again at the strange little stud he’d found. Was this what he’d been looking for? A hint of his... he didn’t want to think mate because that meant he’d have to deal with his own fear, his own anxiety, about dragging someone into his brutal world.
    On the other hand, there’s no denying love. There’s no denying fate. He’d been doing that for far too long, and failing spectacularly at it. Maybe it was time to give up on his charade and get on with life after the Devils.
    He brought the stud to