Page 26 of Cold Foot Croc

“Yeah. He stays bear for a while.”

“Because he isn’t Changing enough. Suppressing the animal will just piss it off. It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“Yeah, well, we’re doing the best we can.” There was a defensiveness to his voice that she understood. He’d tried. He was still trying, and there was no road map on this stuff for humans. There was noHow To Be A Shifter for Beginnersbook out there.

“Can you drop a pin to your location?”

“You shouldn’t be—”

“You don’t know me well enough to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.”

“I know what you did to get into Cold Foot Prison.”

That sentence froze her in place. She was just a still frame of shock, reaching for her jacket by the front door, fingers barely touching the sherpa lining of the collar. “What did you say?”

“Garret told me what you did to get into prison.”

“Well, Garret doesn’t know,” she gritted out, fire racing up her spine.

“I’m just saying, if you come here thinking you’re going to kill me out here in the wilderness, it ain’t gonna happen.”

“Do you beat women?”

“No.” Truth.

“Then I guess you’re pretty fuckin’ safe. Send me your location.”

And then she hung up.

As she shouldered her jacket on and shoved her sock-clad feet into her snow boots, her mind raced around what he’d said. Garret knew? Garretknew? He must’ve found the reports online. Why hadn’t he told her that?

And even more curious, why hadn’t he treated her any differently?

As she waited for her truck to warm up, she thought back on all of their conversations, but she couldn’t remember a single moment he had even hinted that he knew she’d killed Harold Price.

She should still be rotting in Cold Foot Prison. If Harold had been a shifter, she would’ve gotten four years, maybe. Humans didn’t care as much if shifters were killing off other shifters, but Harold, like her adoptive mother, was human, and so Raynah had been sentenced to life in Cold Foot Prison.

Yet here she was…free.

She didn’t know if she deserved freedom or not, but she did know one thing—if she had it all to do again, she would do it just the same.

Chapter Seven

Physically, Garret always felt great after a Change. It was the mental side he struggled with. The shame, and the wishing he could go back to his exact old self and be normal.

He stumbled on a slick rock under the snow and righted himself before he carried on. His sweater was in his clenched fist. His skin was steaming with the heat left over from the Change, and he was in a pissy mood. He wanted to be back to camp, sending Raynah a good-morning text and feeling better about being a shifter, because she was a shifter and she didn’t seem to hate it, and good gah, right about now, he needed that kind of positive attitude to rub off on him.

Nah, that wasn’t even why he was so eager to talk to her. He’d kind of…missed her. Which was insane because he was barely conscious when he was the bear, but he had. There it was. Maybe the bear missed her too, he didn’t know.

He could smell beef cooking, which meant he was getting close to camp, so he quickened his step.

The drone had been buzzing over him off and on all night, probably between Dylan napping. It was equipped with night vision, which had been a game-changer in tracking his movements.

Campfire smoke was visible just above the trees toward his right, so he changed course and headed that way.

What he hadn’t been prepared for was the scent of Raynah.

With a frown, he lifted his chin into the air and sniffed again, and yep, it was there. Faintly, but it was there.

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