Free An Alpha's Thunder (Water Bear Shifters 3) by Sloane Meyers Page A

Caroline felt cold steel against the side of her forehead, and she knew the man had pressed a gun to her temple.
    “Make one move toward me or my colleague and the girl gets her head blown off,” the old man yelled.
    “Caroline?” Lance said, not dignifying the old man with a response just yet. “Are you okay?” His voice sounded tight and worried. Caroline just shrugged. She wasn’t exactly okay. She was terrified and she couldn’t seem to find her voice at the moment. But she didn’t want to say anything that would rile up her captors.
    “Oh for fuck’s sake, Lance,” one of his crew members said. “You know her? Why didn’t you warn us there was a girl involved?”
    “Yes, I do know her. She’s the one who tipped me off that these guys were here. But I told her to get out of here before something like this happened. I guess she’s not very good at listening, though. Seems like she doesn’t want to run from a fight.”
    Caroline thought she detected a note of pride in Lance’s voice, and she couldn’t help but smile at him. He smiled back briefly, then turned to look at her captor with a steely grin.
    “Look, dude, if you want to live, you better let that girl go right now. Because if you don’t, I swear on my father’s grave that I’m going to rip you to shreds.”
    The older man just laughed. “I hope you’re ready to bury your girl, then.”
    “Thanks for the warning about the girl, Lance,” another one of Lance’s crew members said.
    “Oh, come on,” another one of the crew members said. “Don’t tell me you all haven’t been itching for a fight anyway. This just gives us an excuse to make it a bear fight.”
    “So you are bears,” the older man said, sounding pleased. “Thank you for taking the guesswork out of that for us. Now, we won’t feel guilty at all for killing you off.”
    The older man nodded at the younger man, who grinned and pulled out a gun. “Who wants to be the first dead bear?” he asked, sounding very pleased with himself.
    “There won’t be any dead bears here this afternoon,” Lance said, his voice calm. “And if you want to live, I suggest you put that gun down.”
    The younger man just laughed. The bartender, apparently worried that he was about to witness an all out gunfight in his bar, finally piped in. “Hey, guys, I don’t know what your beef is with each other, but take it outside. This isn’t the place for a gunfight.”
    Lance briefly glanced over at the guy. “Sorry, buddy. I don’t want to mess up your bar, but I doubt these men are going to negotiate to head outside. I suggest you duck down behind that bar top for your own safety.”
    The bartender sighed, but did as he was told. Caroline did her best to take slow, steady breaths. She didn’t want the older man to feel her fear, but it was getting harder to remain calm. She had never been this close to a gun, let alone two of them. She had a feeling that she wasn’t getting out of this bar without witnessing someone die, and she could only hope that one of those dead people wasn’t her or someone on Lance’s crew.
    The older man suddenly jammed the cold barrel of the gun against her forehead, making her wince from the force. “Who’s first?” he asked Lance. “You, or the girl?”
    Lance didn’t say anything in response. Instead he looked over his shoulder at his crew members, and said something in a low voice that Caroline couldn’t understand. Then he turned back around and held his hand up, palm facing Caroline. The expression on his face looked strange, almost animal-like.
    “Don’t try any funny business,” the younger man said, although his voice sounded a little less confident than it had before. “Guns can kill bears just as well as humans, you know.”
    Lance didn’t respond. Instead, he balled his hand into a fist and stuck it high in the air.
    “Now,” Lance yelled out.
    The next thing Caroline knew, she was thrown backwards, along with the two men holding her