T-shirt before venturing back onto the street. The witch had been on the sidewalk, her scent strengthened with fear and perspiration, and he followed her trail down the block as it led closer and closer to the bears’ den.
“Wolf,” a gravelly voice said, and Henry jumped a foot in the air.
He whirled, ready to shift and attack, as the coldest bastard in the bears’ den appeared out of the shadows. Henry’s heart pounded against his ribs as Sasha, the Russian bear, frowned and folded his arms over his chest. “What is wolf doing here? Is late.”
For some reason, he didn’t want to share the witch with the bear, even though Sasha was head-over-heels in love with his own very pregnant mate. He would have made a joke about teddy bears but didn’t fancy getting his ass kicked by the Russian, since he was also a hell of a boxer. And Henry didn’t want to talk about the witch until he understood what she was up to. “Going for a walk.”
“Don’t make up stories,” Sasha said. His accent thickened until it became almost indecipherable. “You look like man on mission. What do you hunt?”
“I’m following someone,” he said finally. “There was…an incident over near the pack house, a girl in a run-in with the coyotes. I followed her here to make sure everything was okay.”
“Girl faced down coyotes?” Sasha smiled without humor, as though he approved of the witch. “Brave but stupid. She is safe, wolf.”
Safe? That meant the bear knew where she was. Henry’s wolf side needed to know what happened to her, whether she was actually safe. He clenched his jaw and faced off with the bear. “I’m not leaving until I see her. She ran away from them, and we need to know what caused the issue. The coyotes owe answers to Evershaw and our pack, so if she’s got issues with them, we need to know.”
Sasha didn’t look convinced. His clear eyes narrowed as a sheen of gold flashed across them. Henry stood his ground, unintimidated. He might not have been equal to the bear in terms of weight and heft when shifted, but Henry was a champion MMA fighter and could take the son of a bitch in human form without breaking a sweat. Or so he hoped.
The Russian finally heaved a sigh and tilted his head back the way he’d come. “Girl is safe at shelter. She is…very afraid. I am out searching for the trouble chasing her, so is good I found you and not… something else.”
“There’s something different about her,” Henry said. The girl was staying at the domestic violence shelter the bears managed? Was she afraid of someone for real? Could she have been dating one of the coyotes and the romance went wrong? His chest tightened at the thought. “She’s like…Deirdre. Evershaw’s mate. Or maybe like Smith.”
Sasha’s expression darkened. “Da, she is different. Smells wrong.”
Henry wanted to immediately challenge that statement—she didn’t smell wrong, she smelled… he couldn’t describe it. Intriguing. Different. Mysterious. But he clenched his jaw and swallowed back the curses that wanted to escape. He didn’t need to defend the girl. He just needed to know what the hell happened with the coyotes so he could advise Evershaw on dealing with Daisy, the coyote alpha, and her people. “Sure. Is she still at the shelter? I have to question her about what happened and how she ended up here in the city.”
The bear sighed and turned to lumber back toward the shelter’s reinforced vestibule. “Da. You can ask some questions but do not upset the girl or my girl, or we will have problem. Understand?”
Henry wasn’t stupid enough to challenge a bear bent on protecting his pregnant mate. “Yeah, I’m not going to be an asshole to either of them.”
“Must always ask with wolves,” Sasha said under his breath. “You are all assholes.”
Henry would have objected, but it was mostly true. He and the rest of the SilverLine pack had been misfits and misunderstood most of their lives, so they didn’t like outsiders showing up to judge them. If other people saw that as the pack being assholes… so be it. It was just another way to protect themselves from the rest of society, the rest of the shifters. Henry shrugged as he followed the bear. “I’d rather be an asshole than a bear.”
Sasha snorted and shook his shaggy head. He made some signal and the doors were unlocked when he reached them, a dull thunk revealing the