Boarlander Boss Bear (Boarlander Bears #1)(7)

“I don’t want you to fight.” She was panicking that this was somehow because of her. Harrison was already covered in scars, and this really wasn’t how she’d imagined this place would be. She’d thought it would be like happy-go-lucky shifter land, but it was dark, gritty, and the bears fought too much.

Harrison spat on the ground and unbuttoned his jeans. “If I win, no more alpha challenges. This is for everything.” He said it quietly enough, but the impact of his words was instant on Clinton.

“You won’t challenge me back if I win?”

Harrison shook his head slow as he shoved his jeans down and kicked out of them. Harrison was all smooth rippling muscles, overlaid with a patchwork of scars that made him look dangerously beautiful. Warmth filled her stomach the moment she laid eyes on his long dick, swinging between his legs.

“Oh, my goodness, that’s your dick.” Audrey scrunched up her nose. “You’re naked.” Stop. Talking!

Harrison ghosted her a bright-eyed glance. “Get in the Jeep.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Just get in there until this is through. I don’t want you hurt.”

“Oh.” She scrambled inside but didn’t roll up the window. Not yet.

“If I win,” he said to Clinton, who was now pacing across the road, “no more challenges. You aren’t dominant enough to hold this crew. If you want to be alpha so badly, you’ll find another.”

“Deal.”

Harrison flinched inward, and an instant later, a massive, dark-furred grizzly bruin exploded from his skin. A wave of power passed through Audrey’s window and over her skin, lifting the fine hairs on her body with chills. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he charged the blond grizzly. They crashed with the force of an avalanche. Roaring, clawing, and slapping echoed through the valley. Clinton’s impossibly long canines flashed in the instant before he sank them into the muscular hump between Harrison’s shoulder blades, but the dark brawler hooked his arm around Clinton and slammed him to the ground. In a flurry of violence, his teeth were on Clinton’s neck, and the blond bear froze underneath him. Harrison held him there, the promise of death in his eyes. So easily, he could rip Clinton’s throat out. So easily, he could end his life, but he didn’t. Instead, he released him and walked away with long, powerful strides. He stood on his hind legs and roared, then shrank back into his human skin. He walked right past her Jeep and into the first trailer in the park.

Audrey sat there plastered to her seat, too shocked to move or breathe as Clinton transformed into his human body again and spat red onto the white gravel road. He gave her a death glare, then pushed himself up and limped into one of the trailers at the end of the road.

When she dared a look to the side, Bash was standing there leaned against her window, slurping a pizza roll straight off a paper plate.

She startled hard and gasped. How had she, with her heightened senses, not noticed him approach?

“You wear a lot of perfume,” he said casually, like he hadn’t just watched his crew go to battle. “Smells like flowers and pesticide.”

“Thank you?”

“I knew it. Texas manners.”

“It’s really not just Texas—”

“Pizza roll?” He held the paper plate through the window.

Out of politeness, she took one and smiled.

“Say it,” he urged through a bright grin.

With a sigh, she muttered, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Bash arched his eyebrows and nodded, apparently proud of himself. “My dick is even bigger than Harrison’s.”

“Okay, I’m going to go talk to him now,” she said, pushing the door open.

“By like a centimeter probably, but it counts as bigger.”

Her cheeks were on fire as she ducked her gaze and sidled around the Jeep at a fast clip. She didn’t bother knocking on Harrison’s closed door but, instead, let herself in to escape Bash, who was following close behind.

“I like your hair,” he rushed out as she closed the door behind her.

She pressed her back against the door and tried to adjust her eyes to the darkness. Apparently Harrison was fine with his trailer looking like a cave.

The only light filtered in through an open window over his kitchen sink. The riiip of first-aid packaging sounded from where Harrison stood with his profile to her in front of the sink.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a low, snarly voice.

The air was too thick in his den. “Is it always like this for you?”

“Like what?”

“Violent? Unsettled? Cora Keller’s website said you had seven bears under you, and that dominance was already established.”

“Well, Cora’s updates didn’t include Clinton. It takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch.” Harrison inhaled deeply and tried to press a wash cloth over the puncture wounds on his back, but the injury was out of reach.

She couldn’t stand this. The light switch made a single click under her fingertip. She padded into the kitchen, then took the soaking cloth from him. As she dabbed the blood from the puncture wounds on his back, she asked, “And Clinton is that bad apple?”

“Yes.” Harrison gripped the edge of the sink and sighed. “No, that’s not fair of me. He’s just spiraling, and he’s taking the rest of us with him. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I accepted him after he left the Gray Backs. I didn’t realize how much shit Creed put up with to manage troubled bears. He’s better than me at this.” Harrison turned and ticked up a sad smile, just there and gone in a moment. “The Boarlanders are the new C-team now.”