Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears #3)(33)

“Not like this. Clinton is convinced ladies in the trailer park are some kind of jinx. He was really bad before Audrey battled for her place here. He has bounced from crew to crew, and it ain’t the crews’ faults he can’t adjust. His head is a mess, and his bear matches. I know he hurt your feelings back there, but trust me when I say he has been downright tame about you being in the trailer park. About you being claimed.”

“That does make me feel a little better. I thought he just hated me.”

Kirk snorted. “He hates everyone on the outside. On the inside, though, he feels more than he lets on. Most days, you’ll want to shoot his ass. But he’ll have one day in ten where he does something that makes him seem almost…redeemable.”

“You’re wrong, *,” Clinton said as he strode around them. “I ain’t redeemable, f*ck you very much.”

Kirk didn’t even flinch at the vitriol in his voice. The muscled, sandy blond-haired man stomped away in front of them but slowed, then stopped. He turned, his eyes sparking with anger, but he dropped his gaze to the ground and growled, “You hear him?”

“Who?” Kirk asked.

Clinton jerked his light gray eyes to Alison, then back to the ground. “You should cover up your mark.” He hesitated another moment, then spun and strode off down the trail toward the trailer park.

Kirk set her down immediately and backed her into the brush behind a thick trunk of an Aspen. He peeled off his shirt. “Here, put this on,” he murmured low, checking the trail around the tree.

“What’s happening?”

“Someone’s yelling up ahead. Sounds like your partner.”

“Shit,” she whispered as she struggled into his light gray, oversize shirt. It hung down to her knees. Finn could not find out about her mark. She had only known him for a couple of weeks, but he was anti-shifter, plain as day. And if he was a by-the-book cop, he would turn her into their superiors the moment he saw her claiming mark, no matter that they were partners. And she had no doubt in her mind that law enforcement would make an example of them. It would be the first shifter offense they enforced. She and Kirk could both be locked up.

“Holman!” Finn yelled through the woods.

Kirk cupped her cheeks and lifted his brows as he leveled her a look. “It’ll be okay. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.” He leaned down and kissed her, pushed his tongue past her lips once, then disengaged and rested his forehead against hers. “You feel different.”

She closed her eyes and sighed as a feeling of utter safety slipped over her again. With a smile, she whispered, “So do you.”

“Holman!”

She let off a human growl and made her way back to the trail. Finn was coming in and fast. Harrison followed at a distance, his eyes wild and blue, and his jaw clenched. Up ahead, Clinton squatted down, stripping pine needles off a branch, his body placed between Alison and her pissed-off looking partner.

“Close enough,” Clinton barked out.

“It’s okay, Clinton,” she said, squeezing his shoulder as she passed. “What are you doing here?” she asked Finn.

His mouth flopped open, and his face turned red, the color of his hair. “Are you f*cking kidding me? What am I doing here? What are you doing here? And in that?” He waved to her giant T-shirt. “This is against the rules!”

“What rules?”

“You know…fraternizing with…with…”

“The enemy? They aren’t an enemy. We’re supposed to be working beside them, and I’m off-duty. Who I choose to hang out with in my downtime is my choice.”

“But they’re…”

“They’re what? Shifters? I know you weren’t about to say suspects or criminals. Know you weren’t. They haven’t done anything wrong.”

“So killing an entire government agency isn’t doing anything wrong?”

“No proof,” Clinton said blandly.

“Are you talking about IESA?” she asked. “The undercover government agency that went rogue? The agency that got their dumb asses videotaped by Cora Keller and exposed to the world because of their messy assassination attempts? The agency not even the government will publicly claim? Sorry Finn, but your assumptions about these people were wrong. If IESA agents are missing, it’s because the shifters up here were defending themselves.”

“Which should be brought to light in court to see who is really guilty.”

“A trial the government would never let see the light of day, Finn! They aren’t dragging IESA out to expose all the illegal, unethical, horrible shit they did! If the IESA met their end here, the shifters did the government a damned favor.”

“And again, no proof,” Kirk said. His voice had cooled. “I don’t recall any IESA agents storming these mountains. Don’t remember them trying to wipe out every shifter here. Don’t remember them coming after innocent men, women, and children. Don’t remember them raising some of the people here in a testing facility, torturing kids, running experiments, scarring the survivors. That’s all rumors and hearsay.” Kirk’s voice had gone hollow, as if he didn’t care if Finn believed him or not. “If you want to back the attempted massacre of an entire species, probably do that somewhere else so you don’t get your heart plucked from your chest here.”