Page 24 of Into the Lion's Den (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

Sam folded the piece of paper in half. “I’ll take it from here.”

“I didn’t know there were mountain lions in Minnesota.”

Sam’s mouth tightened at the corners. “Not many. Usually they’re males who’ve been pushed out of their territory and have wandered east from Montana.”

“And it makes a new family here?”

He shrugged. “It’ll look for a mate, but it’s not likely to find one. It’ll keep migrating, or...”

I raised my eyebrows. “Or?”

“Or someone will kill it,” he said ominously.

A shiver ran down my arms at his tone, and I thought I caught a flash of pain in his eyes.

“Don’t go wandering in the woods,” he said.

I almost laughed. “I wasn’t going to, but...I thought wild animals were supposed to be more afraid of us than we are of them.”

“That’s often true,” he said, “unless they feel threatened. You don’t want to threaten a mountain lion, Sarah. It’s bound to attack.”

10

REESE

My desk was covered in spreadsheets, but my focus was on the two items I couldn’t stop turning over and over in my fingers: the first, the bullet that killed our father; the second, a torn piece of fabric bearing a partial logo—probably off someone’s jacket or bag. I’d found both items in the woods near his body.

It would have taken a seismic event to tear my thoughts away, but that’s exactly what I got.

My head jerked up as all four of my siblings burst in, my brothers looking beyond pissed, if not betrayed. I had a sense as to what was coming. A part of me wondered what had taken them so long to figure out I’d been breaking my own no-shifting rule.

“Is this a coup?” I forced the corners of my mouth up and dropped the bullet and fabric scrap back in my desk drawer.

“Any ideas about this?” Sam asked, slapping a piece of paper onto my desk. Toby and Angel closed in on either side. Melanie dropped onto the couch and pulled her legs up underneath her.

I read the words typed out in big black letters, then raised my eyes to meet Sam’s. “Where did you get this?”

“Sarah picked it up in town,” Sam said.

I winced at the sound of her name. The woman had gotten under my skin, and I was having a devil of a time shaking her.

In the last four days I’d had to shift three times just to burn off the buildup of energy—but always after dark, and only after everyone had turned in for the night.

Yesterday, Sarah and I had both worked late. She’d stopped in my office doorway to say good night. The sleepy look in her eyes had nearly made me follow her out.

Fortunately I’d managed to stay at my desk, clenching the armrests of my chair until I was sure she was in her room with her door locked.

“Apparently every store has one posted,” Angel said grimly.

“Do you think it has anything to do with Dad?” Toby asked. “Maybe the guy who shot him made the posters.”

“If it had anything to do with Dad,” Sam said, his narrowed eyes assessing me, “the warnings would have gone up weeks ago.”

“This could scare visitors away from the resort,” Angel said.

For a second, I considered the investors Uncle Joe had warned me about. I wouldn’t put it past them to play dirty if they wanted our land badly enough, but homemade warning posters seemed a little too rudimentary for a professional outfit.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” I said.

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