Black Storm [Panther Key] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Scarlet Day Read Free Book Online

happy with her. He still couldn’t believe his luck at having detected her scent while checking the perimeter of their property before the storm. Then again, maybe it hadn’t been luck. Blake had recognized the bear shifter as still immature, not yet ready to produce offspring. If he had taken her, he would have had his pleasure and left her unharmed, relatively speaking, but that wasn’t even the worst that could have happened to her.
    It wasn’t even the other clans he knew were out there, waiting for their opportunity to claim her. He had known that would happen since his encounter with the bear shifter. He didn’t think the unknown loner would come back, but he knew there were other unscrupulous members of the other clans who would try to forcibly mate with Kate if they detected her scent. Their goal would not be to find their true mate, but only to use her to produce shifter offspring. They wouldn’t care that keeping Kate from her true mates would render her unable to shift and leave her cat trapped inside her. The thought disgusted Blake. He and his brothers would protect Kate with their lives to keep her from ever facing that horrible fate. He didn’t even want her to know of that danger. She had been through enough already. No, the thing that really worried Blake was the fact that Kate was Jesse’s daughter. If the wrong people ever found out the legendary bloodline survived, they would stop at nothing to prevent it from ever rising again. But he’d be damned if he’d let any of them touch a single hair on his Kate’s head.
    An angry growl tore from Blake, and the glass of water he had been holding shattered in his hand. He looked down, surprised, since he hadn’t even remembered he had been holding a glass and certainly didn’t realize he was clenching it so tightly.
    “You okay over there, brother?” Blake looked behind him to see Drake looking at him with arched eyebrows.
    At least Drake showed some degree of concern. Jake just shook his head and rolled his eyes.
    Blake let out a huff and turned his attention back to his hand. He turned the water on and rinsed the blood away. The glass had cut into his palm, but he was already healing. It was one of the benefits of being a shifter. They could heal from injuries quickly, although there were some things they couldn’t survive. Like Kate’s father.
    He and his brothers had just been kids when Jesse had been killed, but he still remembered how devastated their dad had been. Jesse and their father had been like brothers. Blake couldn’t even imagine losing one of his own brothers. The way Jesse had been killed, added to the fact that it had been their father who had found his body, made the loss that much more horrible.
    When Jesse had failed to show up a week after he had called to say he would be bringing his new love to meet them, their father had gone looking for him. He’d searched every road between their house and Jesse’s house. He had finally found Jesse’s motorcycle on a seldom-used back road, crashed into a ditch. Their father had followed Jesse’s scent from the ditch and through the densely forested woods. It had led him to a gruesome scene.
    Jesse’s body had been stretched out in a small clearing, his chest ripped open. His heart was gone. His head, severed from his neck, had been impaled on a stick that had been forced into the ground like a spike. The message had been clear. Jesse’s bloodline had been cut, its very heart ripped from existence.
    The knowledge of what Jesse’s murderers were capable of was putting every nerve Blake possessed on edge. He could sense his brothers felt it, too. It probably explained the mess the kitchen was in and the smell of food coming from the oven. Jake tended to cook when he was stressed. Drake got quiet. And Blake…he tended to break things. Noses, arms, a few ribs. Not his own, of course, and only if the person causing the stress really deserved it. Jesse’s murderers definitely deserved