Page 11 of Bear Haven
Chapter Four
Bex flinched. Again.
The noise from the nail guns set her nerves on edge. Since the Mayor had left weeks ago, with Luke on his tail, everyone left behind focused all their strength and energy into her idea of renovating her bed and breakfast, or what was supposed to be a bed and breakfast, into a retreat, a place of healing for wounded shifters.
How she’d do it in the middle of a small town, she didn’t know. Though, hiding in plain sight might be the best thing.
The living room was a shambles. As was the dining room.
The downstairs bathroom was nearly finished and useable.
There were two small rooms that she’d planned to use as gathering and breakfast rooms, but that were now being fitted as a very basic exam room and recovery room for the wounded shifters she was afraid they’d have in the coming confrontations.
Part of her wondered if what she was doing was foolish, but given what Maxine’s brother had been through and the recovery that he was still in the midst of, the Blackwood pack wolves that had been injured and worked on in her dining room, she didn’t think she was being foolish at all.
Being there, in Dandridge… Hell, just being alive put them all in danger. Being a shifter caused that danger to surge into territories of fear she hadn’t known she possessed.
A quiet girl growing up, living on the fringes of her hometown, a social outcast without really understanding why, she was now the center of a really big problem. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like the attention it garnered. She didn’t like the scrutiny. She didn’t like that humans and shifters alike were all up in her business.
Not that she knew what her business was.
She’d had a plan. Sure. Months ago.
That went to hell in a hand basket the second she climbed on the back of Gus’s bike.
Gus. The one bright spot in this whole fucking mess.
Okay. The first bright spot.
The second was Beck. Her father. Or one of her father’s.
None of them understood that still. None of them could figure out how it happened. None of them could explain how human and shifter DNA joined together to give her life without any definitive paternity.
But it did happen.
And Beck was here, with her, in her house.
Beck was part of her life now when he was supposed to be long dead.
Beck had chosen her over the father who’d cared for him and taken care of him since the other who’d given her life tried to take his. The father who wanted her dead, who wanted all shifters dead. The Mayor.
Beck was off with Gus right then. They were doing some supply shopping in Knoxville. Dandridge carried some stuff they needed, but most of it needed to be shipped or come from the city. The house needed to be as self sufficient as possible so they didn’t attract unwanted attention.
“Uh, Bex?”
She lifted her gaze to Michael, Gus’s brother. And her cousin. She was still getting used to that. “Yeah? Sorry.”
“The porch.” He inclined his head toward the front door. “We have visitors.”
Speaking of unwanted attention… “Neighbors?”
“Yeah.”
She smoothed her hands over her paint stained T-shirt and jeans. “I guess I can’t put them off any longer.” She’d been unsuccessful doing so for a few weeks, but they continued coming back, continued looking for answers in regards to her and all those who had taken up residence with her.
She could do this.
She could handle disgruntled strangers.
