Wanted Bear: Glowstone Guardians Bear Shifter Romance, #2

By Jodi Hawkins

You can't escape justice... or love.

His luck's finally run out.
For three years bear shifter Deacon Beale's wits have kept him one step ahead of capture. Falsely accused of the worst crime a shifter can commit, he's left his clan and past behind forever to live a hunted life. Glowstone Park was supposed to be nothing more than another temporary hideout for a bear on the run. But when his past catches up to him in the form of confident, curvaceous Annalise Frye, he's not sure he wants to run any more.

She's caught more than just a bounty.
Bounty hunter Annalise's reputation as a professional is beyond reproach. To her, Deacon is just a job, a name on a list, nothing more. Then the animal in her recognizes him as her fated mate, and her detached demeanor is challenged beyond any limit she's ever tested. He's so much more than a bounty to her, but there's still a target on his back.

Together, or not at all.
There's only one way to prove his innocence, but it will put both of them in mortal danger. Can Deacon let Annalise tie her fate to his, knowing she risks everything for him?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jodi Hawkins
• Release date: Jun 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536507041

Book preview

1

After years of strictly small-time jobs, Annalise Frye was breaking into the big leagues. Or at least, she would if she could land this bounty. It wasn’t like she was hurting for cash, but it would be nice having a few months expenses banked instead of a few weeks. Then there’s the rep, she thought. I pull this job off, and I’ll be the first name on Sam Henderson’s call list instead of the last.

She’d worked hard to gain the trust of her boss, but he tended to hand off the larger jobs to his bears rather than her. This riled the animal inside her something fierce, but the human part of her knew it was a matter of proving herself. The fact that she was a woman didn’t help any either, and that riled the human part of her even more.

The info packet on the target was slim, but Annalise knew better than to judge her work by the weight of the envelope. Especially this job. She spread the pages and photographs out on the passenger seat of her SVU and reread the few details she had.

On the surface, her target wasn’t anything special. Bear shifter, late twenties, on the run for three years. His crime: murder. All pretty standard stuff, certainly nothing she hadn’t dealt with before. It was the more specific circumstances that made her cautious.

First off, her target wasn’t just some rogue bear. His name was Deacon Beale, and he was born a shifter. That made things a little tougher; born shifters were naturally more dangerous, having lived their whole lives sharing their body and soul. She should know. The surly animal inside her had been part owner of her spirit since birth, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Second, he was the son of the former White Pine Clan Alpha. Normally Annalise’s employer shied away from political jobs. Dealing with clan politics was a pain in the ass, and it put their reputation as an independent hunter company at risk. She didn’t anticipate too much trouble from the White Pines on this job, though. Mainly because her target had murdered his own father with silver and then fled clan justice. The clan had almost fallen apart, according to her sources. Only the target’s younger brother stepping up and taking charge had saved them. Since then the White Pines had been shrinking steadily, with former clan members refusing to talk about what was going on up there in that forest. She didn’t know much about bears, but she figured when your boss gets killed, plenty of folks might cut and run. Couldn’t blame them if they did.

Last of all—and the thing that gave her pause—was the fact that the info packet had optioned a kill order rather than a capture. She’d been doing this a long time, and she’d never had a kill order. She’d never had to kill, not even in self-defence. The thought of it had almost made her decline the job, even considering all the zeroes on the bounty reward. If the order had been a mandatory kill, like a mad shifter job, she would have declined for sure. Not my thing.

She knew that at least a few of the targets she’d brought in would have been executed. Deacon Beale here would definitely fall into that category. Killing an Alpha outside of a challenge, using silver? Beyond the pale. She shook her head. She was good enough at what she did that she could capture him. Let the White Pines extract their own justice. Inside her, the beast that shared her soul panted its agreement. She wouldn’t execute a shifter, unless she had no choice.

She had to wonder about the man. He’d been on the run for three years, no sign of him. Then through dumb luck someone saw him on TV, walking past a camera while the Alpha of the Glowstone bear crew was answering questions. Apparently some psychos had tried to go bear hunting in Glowstone. Dumb fucks. Even she knew to be careful around bears, especially on their home turf.

She grabbed the picture that she’d printed from the screen capture. Black hair, scar that ran along his jawline from his chin to his ear. His eyes were what had caught her attention, though. Intense. Not the hunted, wary eyes of someone on the run. Inside her, her animal raised its head, and she recognized the arousal that flared in her. Something about this guy…

She shook her head. Last thing she needed was to start daydreaming about a target.

Her GPS guided her onto the road leading into Glowstone Park. The trees were almost all coniferous now, and the road was a tunnel through an ocean of green and brown forest. She’d had to scrape frost off her windows that morning, and the pavement was still slick with morning ice. The studs on her tires clicked out the miles to her target. Winter’s here, damn near. Her animal was fine with that, and so was she. Winter was her favourite season, and not just because it was easy to track in snow. It was just plain fun.

Her belly rumbled and she reached into her cooler bag, pulling out one of the five sandwiches she’d bought at the last gas station. Her sharp teeth tore open the plastic and then bit into the salami and cheese sub. She devoured it one-handed, controlling the SUV on the slick pavement, then reached for another. The glutton inside her never seemed to be satisfied. She didn’t care, usually. Maybe sometimes, when she tried on a pair of skinny jeans. Nothing convinced the animal that it was OK to pass up a meal. Her human side knew there was always more money, more food, but the animal part of her was convinced that starvation was one missed meal away. It was a good part of why she worked alone, not having to split the take. The one benefit of being a lone tracker: always just one share of the bounty.

The trees seemed to loom over the road, and it almost made her claustrophobic. She was in a tricky spot here in Glowstone Park. Her shifter nature technically permitted her to be here without any explanation required, but she was here to retrieve a bounty, and from all accounts, that bounty was part of a nascent clan. The polite thing to do would have been to ask permission, but she wasn’t here for a friendly visit.

They called themselves the Glowstone Guardians, she’d read. Annalise snorted. She’d never understood the goofy names other shifters used to describe their social bonds. It was always either literal, like the White Pines who lived in, you guessed it, a white pine forest, or something either macho or silly. At least they aren’t werewolves, she thought, remembering a particularly lewd pack that went by the moniker Knotty by Nature.

This wasn’t the usual way she would have hunted Beale. She was deviating from best practices, going into the bear’s den like this. Normally she would have stalked him, tracked him down, found the best place to lay in wait and take him, but the fact that he was part of this clan meant she needed to do this differently. If she just grabbed him, she’d have angry bears to deal with, and even her beast couldn’t win a fight against multiple grizzlies. On the other hand, the clan obviously didn’t know what he had done, or they never would have accepted him. Their loyalty to him probably wouldn’t survive her handing over her information to their Alpha. Nobody would hide a murderer, especially not one with no sense of loyalty to his Alpha.

Her GPS abruptly stopped showing the road she was on. Useless. She turned it off and navigated by memory. The surly old bastard who’d given her directions had been relatively clear, and soon enough she came upon the log gate he’d described. It was impressive, if a little crude and over the top. Kind of thing bears like. Big and heavy and brutal. She pulled over and got