Page 137 of Choose the Bears

But also blood.

I whirled around, ready to exact the same amount of blood that Phil had shed from his corpse, when her grip on me tightened.

“Asher…” Her eyes pleaded mutely with me, her throat working, too dry to say much, so her mind touched mine.Asher, I’m safe. You came for me. I’m here and he’s over there…She snorted despite herself.Being tossed around like a football by a couple of bear shifters. How…?Her eyes met mine again.How do we walk away from this?

A pertinent question. Police cars pulled up abruptly, encircling us, and while many of their number knew of our existence, they couldn’t allow the general public to have the same knowledge. The crackly sound of a bullhorn cut through the chaos, a familiar voice addressing me.

“Asher, you need to stand down.” Detective Lowell’s voice was full of alpha wolf command. “This needs to end now, and only you get to decide how.”

With the bear’s eyes I saw it, police officers securing the scene, guns raised.

“We’ll fight the cunts off,” one of the bear bikers shouted to me. “We stand with you, Ash!”

“Ash…” Ursula jumped off the back of a motorbike and walked towards me. “It’s time to wrap this up.” Her eyes flicked upwards to take in the news chopper overhead. “I’m not surewe’re going to be able to use hackers to hide the footage this time.”

“So we won’t.” I came back to skin and then picked up Imogen in my arms. “Are you alright? Did he hurt you? Imogen?”

“He knocked me out, and my wrist is going to be out of action for a bit.” The limp smile she shot me had my heart clenching. “So maybe no hand jobs for a week or two.”

“Hand…” I shook my head sharply. “He should die for this, for daring to hurt my mate, for thinking he had a right to.”

“Pretty sure he’s questioning his life choices right now.” She nodded to where a limp form lay on the road, the rest of our sleuth poking him with their claws. “But unless you’re cool with having one less sleuth member, we need to get over there and intervene.”

Stand down!I said sharply, straight into the minds of my sleuth mates. Their bears resisted. We did not have the hierarchical structure of a wolf pack, so I had no alpha bark to use, instead having to show them this.

“Give them an excuse,” I told Kyle and Lucas as I moved closer. “Give them any excuse and they’ll shoot you like the animals you are, just to try to resolve the cognitive dissonance inside their heads.”

“The fuck they will.” One of the men I’d come to call father strode forward, tugging his shirt up and over his head. “If humans don’t put bullets in the heads of men that beat women, they aren’t doing that to my son.”

“Harry…” Gail said, her hand going to her mouth, right before he took fur.

“So that’s what we’re doing?” a massive wolf shifter said with a wild grin. “Fuck yeah.” His leather cut was tossed aside and he leapt off his bike, turning into a wolf seconds later.

This seemed to create some kind of seismic shift, man after man–and even some women–transforming, until the intersection was filled with foxes, wolves, bears, and even a tiger and a lion.

The onlookers filmed everything.

This suburb now knew what we were, which meant the city would, and even the world before the end of the day. No matter what I’d been taught, I couldn’t bring myself to regret that. I knew this brought the potential threat of shifter hunters down on us, but… I walked forward, towards the police, fixing Lowell with my gaze, then the other officers I knew that were also shifters.

“Fuck…” I watched Lowell mouth that, right before he set the bullhorn down and then stripped off his shirt and tie to take fur in the form of a beautiful black wolf that trotted forward to sit down and face the rest of the police force.

Grips on guns faltered as more and more officers took fur, leaving a far smaller number to stare, aghast.

“We are shifters.” My voice rang out across the entire intersection, because if people were going to film this, then I would get my message out there. “We’ve lived among you for centuries without incident. We don’t want violence. We don’t want to hurt anyone.” I looked down then at my mate, catching her staring up at me with shining eyes. “If anything, we like it less than humans. So many of you seem content to bully, harass, abuse, and kill those we think are the most precious.” I nodded slowly. “Women. We’ve tried to minimise that harm from the shadows, but we’re stepping into the light.”

My eyes went to Phil, who groaned as he flipped himself over, Lucas and Kyle padding over to join us.

“So I say this.” I looked up into the sky at the news chopper. “You might want to think again next time you raise a handagainst a woman, slink after her down a dark alley, because you don’t know what might be waiting there for you.”

I was dimly aware of the sounds of my fellow shifters’ howls, yips, and growls as I carried the one human I cared about in this entire intersection back to our car.

“We need to get you to the hospital now, make sure you’re alright.”

“People ask if a woman would choose to be with a bear or a man if she was alone in the woods,” Imogen said, staring at me, then Lucas, then Kyle. “I choose the bear, the bears, every time.”

“Just keep choosing us,” I said, “and I promise you’ll never regret it.”

Chapter 71

---