BEAR NECESSITIES (Halle Shifters, #1)

“Goddamn it, Bunny. That was the last piece of bacon.”

This was starting out to be a really great day. Alexander “Bunny” Bunsun grinned and swallowed the crispy, greasy, salty bit of heaven. “Yes. Yes, it was.” And it had been delicious. The extra-special flavor came from the amused frustration in his cousin’s eyes.

Ryan sat back with a low growl. “And you ate all the cantaloupe.”

“Yes I did.” He sat back and rubbed his stomach. Damn, but the food here was good. He’d have to keep this place in mind the next time he traveled this way, especially if Chloe decided to make Pennsylvania her permanent home.

Ryan snagged the last grape with a warning glare, popping it into his mouth. “At least you left me something.”

“Quit your bitching. You got four eggs, all the sausage, six pancakes, all of the green melon thingies and an entire pot of coffee.”

“Green melon thingies?” Ryan chuckled, wiping his hands on his napkin before dropping it onto his empty plate.

Bunny rolled his eyes and signaled the waitress. He never could remember what they were, but they were always put in salads with the cantaloupe and made it taste funny.

The hell with it. Let Ryan laugh. Bunny wanted to pay his check and get back on the road. It wouldn’t take them more than a few more hours to get wherever the hell they were going, and he was determined to enjoy every moment of it, despite Ryan.

They paid the check and headed for their Harleys. He pulled on his jacket against the early fall weather. The cool had come early this year. It was late September, yet it felt like November.

He had to hope that whatever was wrong with Ryan’s little sister could be fixed fairly quickly. He’d had to skip his yoga for two days now, and he was feeling the lack.

Chloe Williams had moved to get her degree in veterinary medicine from the Halle branch of the University of Pennsylvania, and slowly but surely, the cheery little girl who’d gone off to find a home had lost some of her sparkle. She refused to discuss what was going on, only that she had some personal troubles that she didn’t feel comfortable talking about with her brother or her male cousins. Bunny figured that maybe there was a problem with the sheriff she’d been dating for a while. If that was it, he’d see to it that the man fixed it before more than a day or two passed. Either that or he’d fix the man who had caused her grief.

He blew out a frustrated breath. A part of him hated that he’d left home. He had a life to get back to. Hell, he wasn’t even sure why he’d come on this little trip at all. There was this sweet little she-Bear who’d been giving him the eye

recently. He’d been tempted to have a taste, but something, some nagging sense that something wasn’t right, had sent him on this trip with Ryan instead. It was weird. He’d never gotten the feeling that he needed to be out and moving quite like this before. It was almost a compulsion, and Bunny knew he’d regret it to his dying day if he didn’t follow it.

Bunny shook his head and strapped on his helmet, shaking off the feeling that he needed to go now. Whatever the hell was wrong with him, he had every intention of returning home and finding himself a nice, sweet fuck. The dreams he’d been having since they left home had him so goddamn horny, he’d considered jacking off, despite Ryan being in the next bed over. Bears had good hearing and Bunny didn’t feel like living with whatever humiliation Ryan would come up with if he heard that. So he’d held off, and now he was one cranky-ass Bear. It didn’t help that each of the dreams featured a woman who alternated between looking like a dark-haired angel and a kick-ass heroine from one of his manga/anime fantasies. He was the only one in the family who had an obsession with the Japanese style of drawing and animation, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d been in love with it since the first time he read Sailor Moon and Tenchi Muyo! He had the whole Sailor Moon series on DVD, in the original Japanese (with English subtitles, of course). His family just laughed and indulged him at Christmastime, and he ate it all up like a greedy child.

Unfortunately, no real woman could stand up to the fantasies he’d been having. He shook off the desire to have something a little out of the ordinary. With any luck, the she-Bear would be waiting for him, preferably naked under a trench coat and sitting on his doorstep. Bunny gunned the motor and eased into traffic, whatever it was that was driving him appeased now that his wheels were turning.

This was starting out to be a truly shitty day.

Tabby limped out of the woods, her right rear paw dripping blood. How she’d managed to slit her pad open she had no idea. She was usually careful not to run in places where campers or kids tended to go, since the litter on the ground could be dangerous to Wolves. One broken bottle could result in severe bleeding, causing shifters serious problems if they couldn’t shift. She’d have to make sure she had a little chat with one of the local kitties. Maybe one of them could find out if some of the college kids had been running off into the woods for beer and sex. If so, she might have to request permission to move to different hunting grounds.

She was grateful the Pumas had granted her the right to run in their territory. Hell, she was grateful to the Pumas, period. If it hadn’t been for Gabe Anderson, the Marshall’s Second and sheriff of the small town of Halle, Tabby would have been forced to move on again. It wasn’t every Pride that would allow a Wolf to live among them, even on the

say-so of someone as high up in the Pride hierarchy as the Second, but Halle had turned out to be a lot more open to the idea than she’d ever thought possible. She was just grateful the rest of them had agreed to give her leave to stay on a trial basis.

Alpha, Beta, Marshall, Omega; those were the primary rulers of a Pride or Pack. The Marshall’s Second fulfilled similar functions to the Beta did for the Alpha, but without the broad range of powers a Beta enjoyed. He was the right hand man of the Marshall, the one who enforced Pack or Pride law and helped see to the physical well being of its members. The Second, in many ways, had the ear of the Prides and Packs in ways the rest of the leaders didn’t, as he straddled the line between ordinary member and leader. Some Prides and Packs lumped the Second in with the rest of the leaders; such was the case in Halle, were Gabe had as much say as the Beta, Marshall and Omega. She never wanted to leave Halle. The town was warm and inviting in a way her old Pack had never been. The Alpha of the Pumas, Dr. Max Cannon, was a hottie. His alpha female Emma, called a Curana by the Pumas, was a tough cookie with a heart of gold. She’d asked Gabe what Curana meant, and she’d been told it was an altered form of the word çuçuarana, the Portuguese word for cougar. The rest of the Pumas were, for the most part, really nice people. She felt at home here, something she hadn’t felt in a long time. She’d made friends and built a life for herself. She never

wanted to go back to the Pack that had shoved her out so long ago.

But no matter how nice the Pride members were, they weren’t Wolves. They weren’t Pack, something she was reminded of every full moon since she’d been granted leave to stay.

She was still Outcast.

She made it to her car and changed into the clothes she’d left on the hood. The shift caused the cut to bleed even more freely until it closed, leaving a sore spot on the bottom of her foot she felt after she put her sneakers on. She dug her keys out of her pocket, eager to get back to her apartment and the caffeine her roommates would have waiting for her.

“Well. Look who it is.”

Tabby tensed at that hated voice, the one fly in the ointment of her happiness in Halle. He’d stayed downwind, or she would have noticed him approaching before now and moved a hell of a lot faster. “Gary.” She turned to find her nemesis and his two best friends standing naked behind her. They must have shifted and run from somewhere else. There was no other car here, and none of their clothes littered the ground.

“Outcast.”

She held back her Wolf’s growl with difficulty. She was terrified. This wasn’t the first time the other Wolves had confronted her, but this was the first time they’d managed to catch her alone. From the gleam in Gary’s eye, if she

didn’t get away, she’d be in a world of hurt. “What do you want?”

Gary grinned, his fangs sharp, his eyes going from hazel to light brown. He rubbed his hand up and down his growing cock suggestively. The other two moved to flank her and she knew she was in deep shit.

As an Outcast, technically Tabby was fair game for any Wolf who wanted a bit of sport. So far, very few Wolves had made their way to Halle. Most of the shifters who attended the college were local themselves, and therefore part of the Halle Pride. She’d stayed out of the way of those who weren’t part of the Pride, especially the Wolves. She’d been terrified of what would happen if she approached them. The Alpha of the nearest Pack wouldn’t be any help. She’d seen him once from a distance, and he was large and scary looking. Rick Lowell had the coldest blue eyes she’d ever seen. Tabby was too afraid to approach him, to try to become a part of his Pack. He’d take one look at her and know she wasn’t worthy of a home.

Now she wished she’d been able to find the courage to ask. Maybe she might have to earn her way into his Pack. Maybe she would be safe from the advances of Wolves like Gary, but it would have meant leaving Halle and placing every aspect of her existence in the hands of someone else again. And that was the last thing Tabby wanted to do. At least here in Halle the Pumas were fairly laidback. She didn’t bother them, they didn’t bother her. They were friendly, but distant, and she liked it that way.

Tabby shivered. Three against one were not good odds. She had her keys in her hand, but the car was locked. If she hit the button to unlock it, they’d be on her before she could get the door open.

But there was the other button…

Bravado was the only way she could see out of this. She knew some of the Pumas had been out running the night before. With luck, one of them would wander by and stop Gary before he did what he so obviously wanted to do. “Fuck off, Gary!”

He glared at her shout. “You think anyone is gonna come and save you, Tabby?” He sneered the nickname, his idiot Pack brothers laughing like a group of hyenas. “You’re Outcast. Your ass is mine.” He took a step forward, his eyes shifting to brown.

Wolf’s eyes. Just what she’d been waiting for.

Tabby hit the panic button on her remote. The car horn began blaring, the lights flashing. The trio slapped their hands over their ears, their faces screwed up in pain, their sensitive ears assaulted by something that wouldn’t bother their human senses.

Taking advantage of their surprise, Tabby hit the button that unlocked the car door and scrambled for the handle.

“Stop her!”

She got the door open and herself inside before any of them reached her. She slammed the door on the fingers of one of Gary’s goons, his scream almost as loud as the alarm. He pulled his fingers free and she got the door shut,

locking it before Gary could pull the driver’s side door open.

He began punching the glass. She flinched, but kept moving, sliding behind the steering wheel. She started the car, screaming when Gary’s third punch cracked the glass.

She took off, peeling out of the gravel-strewn parking lot, her tires kicking up stones. She fishtailed before getting the car under control, heading straight for the road back into Halle.

Back to safety.

Tabby was shaking like a leaf. This was the closest Gary had ever come to laying hands on her. He and his goons had been content before with taunting her or egging the storefront where she worked. She’d been careful to never be alone. How could she have been so thoughtless? Still, she hadn’t thought they’d resort to… She shuddered again. She didn’t even want to think about what she’d just escaped from.

Tabby needed help. She just hoped Gabe and the other Pumas would listen to her, because if they turned her away, she had every intention of running until her paws gave out.

“Wow. Your life’s a mess, sweetheart.” Julian Ducharme popped another kernel of popcorn into his mouth and grinned. “Good thing you have someone like me around to help.”

Tabby snorted. She wasn’t the only outsider who’d drifted into Halle recently. Julian had come into Living Art Tattoos a month ago and managed to endear himself to each and every one of the girls who worked there. Even tough Cyn, the owner, had taken a liking to the friendly Bear with the heart of gold. “And how do you think you can help me, hmm?”

He put the bowl down and wiped his greasy hands on a paper towel. The movie they’d been bickering over continued in the background, neither of them paying any attention to it. Although she did risk a peek when Aragorn was on screen. Viggo Mortensen was hot in The Two Towers. “First, I’m going to do something about that sore foot of yours.”

She winced. She couldn’t hide the slightest amount of pain from Julian. It freaked her out sometimes. The first time he’d said something, she’d gotten a splinter not seconds before. He’d frowned, turned her hand around and pulled the splinter out before she could even say “ow”. “I think I stepped on a chunk of glass or something.”

“Or something,” he muttered darkly, pulling her bare foot onto his lap. “This will only take a sec.” One finger smoothed down the ball of her foot and Tabby, who was outrageously ticklish, felt…nothing. “Wiggle your toes.”

There was no pain. “Dude. You rock.”

Julian grinned and stood, heading for her apartment’s kitchen. “I know.”

She shook her head.

“When are your partners in crime due home?” He turned on the faucet, the sound of the water muffling his voice, but she still heard an odd note in Julian’s voice. She tried to bite back a snicker. She knew exactly how he felt about at least one of her roommates.

“Cyn said she was going to stay late, work on some paperwork.” Cyn owned Living Art and was Tabby’s boss, as well as one of her roommates. “Glory had a date, so I have no clue when she’ll be back.” Glory also worked at LA, doing piercings, and was her other roommate. The faucet stopped and Julian came back. He shook his hands at her, spraying her with water. “Hey!”

He flopped back down on the sofa and grabbed the popcorn bowl. He studied the screen, tilting his head. She waited to see what outrageous thing would pop out of his mouth this time. “Why is it that Orlando Bloom can look good as a girl and a boy?”

Tabby picked up a kernel and threw it at him. “Legolas isn’t a girl.”

He turned, raising one black brow, his full lips quirking in a smile. “Isn’t she?” He tilted his chin toward the screen, his expression turning devilish. “You think Aragorn doesn’t want a piece of that, Arwen or no?”

Tabby put her feet up on the coffee table and stretched out. “Yeah, and when Aragorn lifts Legolas’s kilt, he’s going to find the special surprise inside.” Julian choked on the popcorn and started laughing. Score one for me. She stole the bowl out of his lap and settled in to watch the movie.

“This is it? This is what Chloe left Oregon for?” Bunny walked down the street, pausing to peer into the window of a store. It was very…pink inside. A group of women sat on an old sofa, drinking tea and laughing, while a short, dark- haired female rang up purchases on an old-fashioned cash register. He shuddered and looked up at the sign. Wallflowers. Should be called Hen House. He moved away before any more testosterone could be sucked out through his pores.

Ryan chuckled. “She loves it here and swears we will, too.”

Bunny shrugged. “Whether or not I stay is still up in the air.” He paused, looking in another store. Comic books. Much more his style. I wonder if they have a good manga section? He was always on the lookout for a good store, and if he was going to stay here—

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Ryan grabbed hold of his collar and pulled him away from the glass. “I swear, it’s like those French pigs and truffles. If there are comic books around, you’ll sniff them out.”

Bunny rolled his eyes, but allowed his cousin to pull him away. He made a mental note to come back later without the two-hundred-and-twenty-pound wet blanket. “I swear, Ryan. You’re getting old.”

“I’m twenty-seven! And you, asshole, are twenty-eight!”

Bunny put his hand on his heart. “But I’m young inside.

Where it counts.”

Ryan shook his head and let him go. “And this is why you’re not allowed out on your own.”

Bunny just grinned and followed his cousin down Main Street, Halle. They’d find Chloe, who hadn’t been either at her apartment or the diner she usually worked at. Her problems would be over, whether she liked it or not.

Then he’d be going home.

Now if only he could figure out why his Bear growled every time he thought of home, he’d be golden.

Tabby stared out the window of Living Art at the sunny spring day and sighed. “Today is going to be another shitty day.”

“You’re just saying that because your roots are showing.”

Tabby turned to her friend Cyn and growled, the sound deep and feral and in no way human.

Cyn laughed. “Hon, if I was afraid of you, I’d never have hired you.”

Tabby rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the front window. “We haven’t had a customer all day.”

“Mondays.” The women looked at each other and echoed, “They suck the big fat hairy one.” Very few people came in for a tattoo on a Monday afternoon.

Glory, the one who handled all the piercings at Living Art, twirled in her chair. Her long blue hair flared out around her. “Preaching to the choir.”

Cyn shook her head, her dark hair startling with its new hot pink stripes. “And then there’s Saturdays.”

The three women exchanged a look and shuddered. Saturdays had become something of a pain in the ass for the three women. Gary and his friends had stepped up their harassment of Tabby since the incident in the woods, often enough that the police had been called out to the store twice now thanks to the catcalls, thrown eggs and worse. She was pretty sure Gary was responsible for the graffiti they’d found on the window one Saturday morning. The spray-painted “Cunts” had caused Cyn to break out in foul- sounding Hispanic curses. It was turning into a problem that not even the hunky Sheriff Anderson could deal with. While he might be a Puma, he was only one Puma, and since it wasn’t affecting the Pride, she didn’t feel comfortable discussing it with Dr. Cannon or his Curana. She wasn’t Puma, she was Wolf, and her problems weren’t theirs.

She’d traveled for years as a wolf, living off the land, before arriving in Halle six months ago, half-starved and ready to reenter the human race. She’d passed out in the backyard of a woman named Sheila Anderson, and that was the luckiest break she’d had in years. Her grandson, Sheriff Anderson, had quietly found her a place to stay, food to eat and a place to work. She now apprenticed under Cyn, had

gotten her driver’s license and a car, and almost had her GED. It was weird to think that she owed all that to a Puma lawman and his bossy grandmother who weren’t even Wolves. She didn’t want to cause him or his family any more trouble than she had, despite the fact that every time he found out about one of the little stunts Gary and his friends pulled, his jaw clenched tighter. Life had been good right up until the Asshole Pack had found her. She still didn’t feel comfortable asking the Pride for help, and the Poconos Pack Alpha, Rick Lowell, was still a freakishly scary man. Rumor had it his new Luna, a Puma who’d lived in Halle, was even scarier. She’d never met the Puma Luna and had no intention of doing anything that might get her attention. She shook her head, catching sight of her lime green bob in the mirror behind the register. She grimaced as she noticed the dark roots starting to show again. “Gah. Cyn? Hair emergency.”

Cyn laughed. “C’mon, honey, we have time. Have a seat.” Cyn grinned, pulling out the crème bleach. The tattoo parlor had once been a beauty parlor, and Cyn had opted to keep one of the sinks in place to do the girls’ hair. “Glory, keep an eye out front.”

“Will do.” Glory flipped her hair over her shoulders and smirked. “Make sure to get all those roots or she’ll look like she needs to be mowed.”

“Lucky bitch.” Tabby leaned back in the chair as Cyn began applying the lightener to her roots. “Wish I had naturally blonde hair like some people!”

Glory’s giggles almost drowned out Cyn when she clucked her tongue. “Tabby, you are the only woman I’ve ever met who makes a lime green bob look sexy.”

“That’s because I’m the only woman you’ve ever met with a lime green bob.” When she’d first met Cyn and Glory, her hair had been long, scraggly and depressingly brown. She’d taken one look at their hair and nearly cried in relief. Finally, some people she could relate to, who understood her! She wasn’t some evil little troublemaker; she was just someone who was different. Cyn had offered to do her hair and the rest, as they say, was history. She’d sported the lime green ever since, and damn if she didn’t rock it, even if she did say so herself.

Cyn ignored her. “So, who cares if it takes a little work?” “Luscious alert!” Glory sounded positively giddy.

Tabby and Cyn peeked out from behind the curtain as a man walked past Living Art. He paused, looking in the window at the flash—the artwork depicting their most popular tattoos—they’d taped up. He was an absolute to- die-for hunk of a man. His light brown skin glistened over muscles that made Tabby’s mouth water. He was bald, and from this distance she couldn’t tell if it was a style choice or nature that made him that way. Some sort of tattoo circled the biceps closest to the window, but Tabby was too far away to tell what it was. Something about the way he moved had every one of her senses sitting up and begging. “Dibs.”

Cyn poked her. “Bitch. What if he likes the taste of Mexican instead of Hushpuppies, huh?”

Tabby giggled. “You are so bad.” “What?”

“You heard me.” Tabby looked back to find the man peering in the window. One dark brow rose as he caught them looking at him, a smile flirting around his luscious- looking mouth. Oh, the things she would love to have that mouth do to her.

Tabby ducked back behind the curtain. “Shit. I think he caught us.”

Glory darted behind the curtain. “Ohmigod!” She collapsed, laughing. “Oh shit.”

“You think he’ll come in?”

“I don’t know.” The sound of the bell brought on a quickly smothered giggle. “Oh hell. Glory?”

“On it, but now I’m calling dibs.” Glory rushed out before either Tabby or Cyn could protest.

“Greedy bitch.”

Cyn bopped her on the head with the brush. “Look who’s talking.” She picked up the bottle of bleach and a comb. “Now lie down and hold still. I have some roots to kill.”

Tabby sat back in the chair and wished that she’d waited five more minutes to ask Cyn to fix her hair. It could have been her out there checking out the hottie instead of sitting in Cyn’s chair getting bleached.