Guardian Bears: Marcus by Leslie Chase Read Free Book Online Page B

she’d have thought it was unbelievable. But here, in the street, it was very real. Cal was lying on the ground, flat on his back and unmoving apart from the slow rise and fall of his chest. She was glad of that - if Marcus had killed him, there’d be all kinds of trouble for both of them.
    “We’d better go,” she said, trying to focus on the immediate and leave worrying for later. “We shouldn’t be here when he wakes up. And I’d better have a look at that arm of yours.”
    It wouldn’t be the first time she’d patched him up after a fight, after all. And someone had to.
    He looked at her as though he was surprised by the invitation, and then nodded. Picking up the knife Cal had dropped, he frowned at it and then threw it away before following her home.

    * * *
    M arcus made a quick phone call to Lewis before sitting down to let Lisa tend his wounds. He couldn’t just leave Cal lying there unconscious, no matter how much he deserved it. He didn’t go into details, just let Lewis know the basics before hanging up.
    That done, he put the Serpents out of his mind. Sitting at Lisa’s kitchen table as she fetched her first aid kit, he half smiled at the old memories it brought up. He’d gotten into more than his fair share of fights growing up, and she’d been there afterward when he needed help.
    Not when it was the other boys at school, those fights had never gone so far and Marcus had usually won them anyway. But there were always older guys hanging around, the one’s who’d ended up with the Serpents, and he’d never been one to back down from bullies.
    “You didn’t have to do that,” Lisa said, breaking into his reverie as she rubbed an antiseptic wipe over the cut on his forearm. He looked at it critically and knew it would heal up fine in a few days. He’d always healed fast, after all.
    “I wasn’t about to let him hurt you,” he replied, shrugging. “I’d never let anyone hurt you.”
    “I can take care of myself. I’ve had to, since you left.”
    Marcus winced at that - her words stung more than the cut did. “I never meant for you to be alone.”
    “Then why did you have to leave?” Her voice was tight, full of carefully controlled emotions, and her hands trembled as she cleaned his wound. “You could have been here, with me.”
    “I had to,” he started, and then stopped. It was hard to put his reasons into words, especially when there was so much he couldn’t tell her. So much that had to stay secret while he worked.
    “Lisa, I had to figure out who I was, who I am. You know I never fit in around here, and the military gave me a chance to grow and be someone good. If I’d stayed here, I wouldn’t have amounted to much more than another thug in the Serpents, I think.”
    She grimaced at that, rubbing the wound with a little more force than necessary. “But now you’ve come back and you’re hanging around with them anyway.”
    “I’ve got my reasons for that,” he said. “I just can’t talk about them, not yet. I promise I’ll tell you what’s going on when I can.”
    Taking out a gauze strip, Lisa dressed the cut carefully, with the tenderness he remembered, though her voice was still tense. “You are always keeping secrets from me. I don’t like that.”
    Marcus sighed. “I don’t like it either, but I don’t have any choice. I’ll tell you what I can, when I can.”
    It hurt him to deny her, but there had always been things he needed to keep from her. From everyone. How could he share that he was a bear shifter? He’d never trusted anyone with that secret before he joined the Army. Even then, he’d just had the good luck to be spotted by people who already knew about shifters.
    Spending years in a special unit with others of his kind had been the best thing possible for him, and had taught him so much about his abilities and what he could use them for. But one thing that they’d always stressed was that he couldn’t share the existence of shifters with