Marked (Primal Obsessions #2) - Cara Wylde Page 0,4

started calling her name. She lived only a couple of trailers away.

“Krista!” I shielded my eyes from the intense sun. “Krista!”

Like a madman, I ran to her trailer and burst through the door. It was empty.

“Krista!”

I ran back outside. By this point, the women, men and children living in the trailer park had gathered around, watching me in stunned silence. When they saw I’d re-emerged from Krista’s trailer empty handed, they started whispering amongst themselves, asking about my woman and my cub. We were all bear shifters here, living by the forest, away from civilization. Nothing interesting ever happened in our small community, and the fact that two of us were apparently missing was a huge event.

“Brooks, what’s wrong? What’s gotten into you?” Lincoln approached me. He was wiping his greasy hands on a dirty rag. He’d been working on his car again, trying to figure out why the hell it had died on him a week ago.

Speaking of cars… I looked around me. Krista’s was gone.

“Her car is not here.”

Lincoln shrugged. “She must have gone shopping.”

“She took Milo with her.”

“Of course she did…”

Colt popped up out of nowhere. He hadn’t been at the pub with Lincoln and me, so I could only guess he’d spent the night with some random female.

“Dude, what’s up? How much did you drink last night?” He laughed. “You’re getting old. Can’t hold your liquor anymore.”

That was just as stupid as thinking I was having a heart attack earlier. Men like us never got drunk. But the feeling tearing me up from within was real. I pressed my hand to my heart again, my fingers digging into my skin.

“Something happened to them.”

“What?” Lincoln placed a dirty hand on my shoulder. “Mate, calm down. She went shopping, that’s all.”

“No!” The pain was starting to shift into something darker and much more dangerous. Defeat. Helplessness. Anger. “It doesn’t feel right. Something bad happened, I’m telling you. I can feel it.”

I looked deep into my friend’s eyes, and Lincoln finally nodded. He turned to Colt. They were both big and burly, though not as big as I was. Lincoln had short hair and a massive beard, and Colt had dreadlocks which he wore tied up high in a messy bun. I loved these guys to pieces, and I knew they would understand. I knew they believed me when I said that something bad had happened to Krista and my cub, because we’d been friends since childhood, and they knew my gut was never wrong.

“We have to find them.”

“Okay.”

“I feel like it’s too late already, but we have to try.”

“Alright, buddy. We’re with you,” Lincoln said.

We shifted right then and there. Our neighbors took a few steps back to offer us space. I got rid of my pants as fast as I could, and Lincoln and Colt did the same with their clothes. I tapped into my beast and allowed it to take control. I fell on all fours, feeling my body expand, fur sprouting out of my pores, my face growing bigger, my teeth turning into sharp, deadly fangs. My hands and feet morphed into immense paws that ended in razor sharp claws. I sniffed the air and letting the scent of my cub – blood of my blood – guide me, I launched myself in a mad run through the trailer park. Lincoln and Colt were right behind me. I could hear their massive paws hitting the ground as they kept up with me. Soon enough, we were on the road, following it to the nearest small town.

We did our grocery shopping there, and some of us even had jobs at the supermarket, the bar, and the drive-through. Krista herself had worked at the bar in town. Then she got pregnant, and I insisted she changed jobs and came to work at the pub near the trailer park, which was exclusive to bear shifters. It was safer that way. We tried to stay away from humans as much as we could. It was crucial to keep our community a secret from them. However, we were similar enough to them that we could mingle from time to time, for a couple of hours. That meant keeping our instincts in check, as well as our great strength, speed, and tendency to get angry very fast. Usually, our females were better at this. They could work with people for longer periods of time, while it was better for the males to opt for jobs that didn’t require as much human