Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,35

Nathan said. “Keep an eye out for Rawley. I’m guessing you’ll know him when you see him.”

Nathan didn’t wait to hear an answer. He was already taking off down the promenade, sniffing the air for Alanna’s distinct scent.

On instinct, he headed outside and ran in the direction of the woods.

I always go to the water, she’d told him. He hoped that’s where he would find her.

10

Alanna

Every forest, to Alanna’s mind, was pretty easy to navigate. Her habit of always heading to the water first had always been instinct, even when she was little. She’d always found the sight and sound of a trickling stream or a rushing river to be comforting.

So as Alanna headed swiftly upwards into the depths of the mountain behind Black Bear Lake Lodge, she kept her ears and eyes open for the sound of water. She found patches of moss and followed them into greener and more lush land and finally found a narrow stream that became a wider, deeper creek. She stayed beside it, following it up and up, as far from the lodge as she could get, resisting the urge to go anywhere near town where John was maybe more likely to look for her. It depended on how well he knew her. She certainly hadn’t told him anything about herself. But Rawley might have plied Alex for information, she knew. And Rawley might have told John.

She had to be careful.

Alanna kept to the water and drank when she was thirsty and nibbled some lush grass. There was a lot of snow and her fur had thickened for the winter. The chill felt good. She felt like she hadn’t run around in the snow in so long and it was pleasant and almost made her forget the awful danger she was in. She hadn’t had breakfast that morning and when her stomach started to rumble, she went fishing and feasted on some trout, grateful that nothing was frozen over even this high up in the snow. The familiarity of her claws tearing through scales and flesh somewhat muted the throbbing fear in her mind.

“Hey there!”

Alanna jerked from her spot in a clump of dead leaves by the rushing creek bed. She looked up and blinked. The voice did not sound threatening and the human figure who smiled back at her didn’t look threatening either.

It was an old lady speaking, a shifter by the scent of her. She was wearing jeans and a parka and she stood with her hands on her hips grinning down at Alanna and her trout.

“Nice catch!” the lady said. She sighed and sat down next to Alanna.

It felt very strange to be hanging around a stranger while she was in her bear form and the lady was still human. But she was no threat to Alanna. So she only cast the woman a nod and continued eating her fish. She’d take off again in a minute, she figured. She wanted to get over the mountain if she could, hopefully before the next morning. After that…she wasn’t sure what happened after that. She’d go to Crockett River, she supposed. That would take weeks without money and Rawley had taken all of hers.

“I love trout,” the woman mumbled. “I live in a cabin, you know? Bit east of here. Long hike but I can walk to that fancy lodge if I feel like it. Boy, I was so mad when they bought the lodge from the old owners. I knew that family who owned it for a long time. And here come these young men with all their money. I thought they would be big jerks, you know? But they ended up employing a lot of shifters around here and they’re actually very kind. Give back a lot to the community too. Those Strauss brothers really won me over. Mmhmm.”

Alanna’s ears perked up. She wanted to know more about that. She wondered if the woman knew Nathan personally. She might never see Nathan Strauss again. It would be nice to get one last piece of him before she had to walk out of his life forever.

The woman stopped talking and hugged her knees, smiling softly at the creek that rushed by, the wind blowing her silvery grey hair around.

It was stupid to shift. She wasn’t dressed warmly enough. Alanna liked her human body just fine. She’d assimilated into human life enough that she really appreciated things like soft human skin and lips and the way her petite body looked in a cute