Gray Back Alpha Bear by T. S. Joyce Read Free Book Online

it bolted forward. There was another Gray Back.
    Chills rippled across Gia’s skin as the new bear blasted into Easton’s side, bowling him over completely. The others backed off, shaking their heads, clawing the dirt, just on the outer edge of the new battle between the silver bear and the smaller one. The new bear was important.
    Easton hit the ground hard and stayed there, fighting with less and less ferocity as the smaller brawler slashed at him with its six-inch black-as-pitch claws. He bit her leg and got a few swipes in, but the fire was dying from his eyes by the second.
    Creed shrank back into his human skin and, naked and bleeding, he barked out, “Easton, Change back. Now!”
    The smaller bear pushed off Easton’s exposed chest and shrank back into a very familiar form.
    “What the hell?” Gia huffed on a baffled breath. “Willa?”
    Willa held her bleeding arm and stomped her foot. “Son of a mother-fluffer, you pickle-dick weasel-chode! Fuck, Beaston. You broke my arm!”
    Easton was human again and scrabbling up from the ground. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll fix it,” he rushed out.
    The scarred-up red bear was pacing a protective tight circle around Willa.
    Willa shoved him back with her good arm. “Matt, if you aren’t going to Change back, someone has to set the bone.” She arched her glare to Easton. “You owe me another knife!”
    Easton felt her arm gently, then said, “Don’t look. It hurts less if you don’t look.”
    “No, asshole, it hurts less if you boys would stop fighting about every damned—ooow!” she screamed as Easton pulled down and jammed her arm back up.
    Gia stumbled forward as Jason Changed back beside her. Willa was a bear. Willa was a badass, brawling, get-in-the-middle-of-them-boys-and-wreck-shop grizzly bear. “That’s why you don’t wear your glasses anymore?” Gia asked in a higher octave than she’d meant to. “Because you’re a bear shifter?”
    Creed’s chest heaved with every breath, and he looked fit to kill someone, but he jerked his head to Willa. “Gia, meet the last member of the Gray Backs. You know her as Willamena Madden, but we all know her as Willa the Second.”
    “Second. Like, second to the alpha in the crew?” Gia pursed her lips as her world turned upside down. Again. Tiny, sarcastic, nerdy Willa was second in a crew of renegade monster bears. She gripped her hair like it would keep her mind from exploding.
    “That baby will kill you,” Easton said in an emotionless voice. “I don’t want it to kill you. You seem nice.”
    “What do you mean?” Gia asked, panic flaring in her chest. She didn’t want to die.
    “Beaston, you’re scaring her for no reason,” Jason griped. “People have babies every day.”
    “Don’t call me that,” Easton growled out. “And don’t call her Bombshell. She doesn’t like it.”
    “How do you know what she does and doesn’t like?” Creed asked.
    “Because I saw her face when Jason called her that!” Easton spat red and spun for the woods. He stopped and muttered over his shoulder at Willa, “I’m sorry.” With another glare for Creed, he made his way to the tree line and disappeared into the woods.
    “Am I going to die?” Gia asked. “Is it impossible for humans to have shifter babies? I thought it was okay. Cora Wright’s Web site said it was possible.”
    Creed grabbed her shoulders and leveled her a look. “You aren’t going to die. Easton had a bad experience, but he’s wrong. My biological mother was human, and she was fine.”
    Gia sighed and gripped his wrists to keep his hands on her. Losing his touch seemed scary right now. Looking around, she muttered, “You realize you’re all naked, right?” Naked and bleeding.
    “Hey, Willa said, rubbing her injured arm. “Remember that time I told you no one bleeds more than a Gray Back? Now do you believe me?”
    “Why didn’t you tell me you were Turned?”
    Willa rolled her shoulder, apparently at ease with nudity