Resisting His Mate

By Lynn Burke

Warrick Keaton eludes a forced pairing with one of his kind. No one is going to choose his mate for him, not when he wants nothing to do with being tied down to a woman. He never expects fate to intervene in the form of a freezing, barely alive female. With his independence in jeopardy, Warrick fights his inner hawk's desire to stake a claim on her.

Clare Byron longs to escape her domineering ex-husband, a jealous bear shifter determined to keep her prisoner. She seizes the opportunity to run and lands in the arms of another alpha—exactly what she doesn't want or need.

For Warrick, Clare is everything he's ever wanted in a mate and all that he's run from.

For Clare, Warrick is freedom in a way she never dreamed possible—the one man who will own her heart yet give her wings to fly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynn Burke
• Release date: Mar 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393411840

Lynn Burke

USA Today Bestselling author Lynn Burke is a CrossFit and coffee addict. Her three spawn dictate how often she can be found hunched over her Mac, typing as fast as her fickle muse cooks up hot stories.

Book preview

Resisting his Mate

Resisting his Mate

Lynn Burke

Copyright © 2021 by Lynn Burke

All rights reserved.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review or article, without written permission from the author.

Visit my website at authorlynnburke.com

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Author’s note: This short story was originally part of Evernight Publishing’s Bad Alpha Anthology published in 2015.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Bonus Material

About the Author

Also By Lynn Burke

1

Aspray of frigid river water washed over Clare. She choked, spitting and coughing the liquid from her lungs. Grasping the log keeping her afloat, she kicked her legs in a fight to keep warm blood flowing through her tingling limbs.

Her ex-husband had kidnapped her a few weeks earlier, and while the immediate threat of fleeing Denny’s basement prison lay behind her, the early spring elements and water masking her escape proved just as deadly. Hypothermia crept closer, but Clare wasn’t ready to step onto dry land yet.

At least an hour had passed since she submerged herself with the intent of hiding her scent from Denny and his band of bear brothers. Shifters, the lot of them. But Clare hadn’t found out until after marrying into the sleuth of bears what sort of man—creature— he was. He’d refused to tell her why he’d chosen to marry a mere human, and within a month Clare realized she’d made an awful mistake. It had taken her two years to escape him and the state of New Hampshire to grant her a divorce.

Brow furrowed, she tightened her grip on the drift wood to keep from slipping beneath the freezing water’s clutches. Her left cheek throbbed with the memory of Denny’s fist. Swollen and doubtless bruised, her face felt like the punching bag he’d often mistaken her for.

Bastard took what didn’t belong to him.

Teeth chattering, Clare closed her eyes, comforted by the familiar voice she’d heard since childhood. Denny had said his inner bear spoke to him all the time but claimed she was bat-shit crazy.

During her sham of a marriage, she’d overheard the men speaking of other shifters to the south, enemies who spent their summers on the edge of the sleuth’s territory. She’d never learned who or what the other species were, but when faced with the south- rushing river earlier in the afternoon, she’d jumped in, hoping to find refuge.

A rush of wings sounded. Clare coaxed her eyelids open and struggled to focus. Head lifted, she scanned the skies. Flickering blue- gray through the trees on her left grabbed her attention as another stinging blast of ice-cold water lashed at her face.

Ever since she was a child, Clare had loved birds. A self- taught ornithologist, she’d become a guide for various bird watching tours in the White Mountains. She caught a second glimpse of the bird through the dense forest, identifying him as a northern goshawk.

The hawk’s flapping broad wings brought him into the open, and he headed upriver, straight toward her. An unnaturally wide wing span made him a freak of nature, a threat to her five-foot-eight body.

Clare huddled against her log as he swept overhead, low enough she could have reached out to touch the barred white and gray feathers of his underbelly. After a sharp bank, he returned, legs reaching for the other end of her log.

Fear coursed through her as the hawk’s long talons dug into the bark. He tucked his wings close and peered at her with reddish- brown eyes similar to her own in