Page 61 of Bearly Hanging On

No. The bear and I were one, picking Harper up and throwing her over our shoulder before we faced the lot of them down.

“The minute anyone finds out you’re on school grounds, every fucking first responder who sprouts fur will converge here to get a piece of you.” I forced myself to grin slowly. “If there’s anything left.”

“The fuck?—”

Joker lunged forward, but Gray and Vinnie held him back.

“Leave Teddy with his play thing.” I fucking hated the way he stared at Harper’s butt as her heels kicked at my chest, trying to get down. “We’ll be around when Mack rejects her. Girl thatsmells like that.” This is why I needed my sleuth around me. Together we would’ve smashed these idiots into the ground, plucking out their eyeballs for daring to look twice at Harper. “She can be real useful. C’mon.”

The fact they turned tail and ran off was the only reason I didn’t lose control completely. Instead, I placed Harper on the ground, taking in her flustered face and outraged expression right before I pulled her close.

“I need to get you out of here, now, Harper.”

“After I pee.” She stabbed a finger in my face. “Then we are going to talk about what the hell that was. Smell me…”

As she strode over to the toilet block, I was forced to follow hot on her heels. Mack was going to lose his shit when I let him know what happened tonight, but right now, he’d need to get in line.

Chapter 25

Harper

I stared at the side of Kieran’s face, willing him to open up.

He’d hustled me into the toilet block and let me do what I needed to after inspecting each cubicle, which wasn’t creepy at all. First, I had to deal with my bladder, but now we were on our way home, I needed to deal with this.

“You need to tell me what that was about.” If I closed my eyes for a second, I could see those three creepers. I didn’t know what kind of shifter they were, but they were the most animalistic I’d ever seen. “Kieran.” He shook his head, flicking the indicator on as he changed lanes. “Kier?—”

“Mack’s gonna kill me if I tell you.”

“So this is something to do with Mack.” I might not be a genius, but my mother didn’t raise no fool. Dating men meant being a part-time sleuth just to make sure you got home in one piece. I grabbed my phone out, my fingers flying across the screen. “What’s his last name again?”

“Harris… Shit, Harper.” He glanced over to see what I was doing, then steered the car over to the parking lane. “Harper…”

“Just a sec.” I started scrolling rapidly through the results of my search, scanning the hits, when he reached over and covered my hand with his.

“Harper, they’re bad guys.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

I had run into more than my fair share of dodgy men at work and in my personal life. The ones that had your hair standing up on the back of your neck, some primal part of you saying nope, not him. Each one of those… whatever they were, had me feeling all sorts of things I never wanted to feel.

Right after they smelled me.

“And what the hell does me smelling fertile mean?”

“It…” He shook his head. “Look, none of that matters. What matters is you can’t go anywhere near them.”

“Have no intention of doing that.” He blinked, obviously expecting a fight. “I’m sorry, those guys had ‘I will do bad things to you, then desecrate your corpse afterwards’ written across their foreheads. I went through my whole bad boy phase, but I am completely over that now.” When I crossed my arms, Kieran seemed to pay way too much attention to my chest. “Eyes up here, Bear Boy. Who are those guys?”

“Mack—”

“Mack’s not here right now. I am.” My hand went to the door handle. “For now, so fess up.”

“Mack has good reason not to want to form a mating bond.” It was like Kieran was unloading some terrible secret, but I had Mack pegged already. A moody avoidant that started chasing the moment I showed no interest. Sometimes it felt like that was guys’ default setting. “His dad didn’t treat his mum right. Not all wolf shifters are freaking psychos?—”

“But some of them are.” I settled back in my seat, trying to work out how the hell Mack grew up with dickheads like that and failed to become just like them. Surely little baby Mackwould’ve been bossing them all around, making them question their life decisions.

Unless he only got bossy once he managed to free himself from a dysfunctional family.

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