Page 25 of Into the Lion's Den (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

Sam and Toby exchanged a look. Melanie got up to leave.

Angel folded his arms. “That’s it?”

“What more do you want me to say?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Angel said. “The fact you haven’t askedanyof us if we’ve been shifting behind your back tells us all we need to know.”

Melanie paused at the door and swung her gaze toward me.

“Angel,” Toby said cautiously. “It could have been an actual mountain lion. The poster doesn’t say anything about the animal being overly large.”

“No.” I rose to my feet. I was alpha, and I owed them no explanation. But I wasn’t going to lie to my siblings either. “Angel’s right. I’ve been shifting.”

Melanie’s eyes widened, and she came up to the desk, joining her brothers.

“Reese,” Toby said, and his disappointment was palpable.

“But that poster’s not about me,” I assured them. “I haven’t been seen. I would have smelled anyone in the area.”

“Fine,” Angel said. “But where does this leave us? Are we all excused from your shifting ban? Or is this just a free pass for you because you’re alpha?”

I shot him a warning look. I’d set two rules for them all: no operational changes to the resort’s status quo and no shifting until we were sure what happened to our father.

There was a reasonable rationale for me to take the risk, because both sides of my nature needed to be in top form to best protect the family. I wouldn’t let anyone else hurt the people I cared about. I’d kill anybody who tried.

Anybody.

Or at least that’s how I justified it to myself.

“Is this about Sarah?” Sam asked, always so perceptive but still not completely hitting the mark.

I clenched my teeth. I wanted that woman in my bed in the worst of ways. Every time her name came up, my jeans got uncomfortably snug. “I admit my reaction to her has been...inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient,” Sam repeated, laying the sarcasm on thick.

I leveled him with an alpha’s glare. “Yes.”

“Sarah?” Angel asked, sounding surprised. “If she’s the problem, why don’t you just sleep with her and get her out of your system?”

“No, Angel. I can’t just sleep with her.” It was a compelling idea, but if my dreams were any indication, I was pretty sure that would create more of an obsession than what I was already dealing with. And it was hard to have a one-night stand when I was practically living with the woman. She’d be here in the morning. And the morning after that.

“And besides,” I said, “this isn’t merely about Sarah. Shifting helps me think, and I need to figure a way out of the trouble we’re in.”

“What kind of trouble?” Melanie asked.

I exhaled through my nose. I’d been hoping to keep this from them—at least until I figured out how to fix things. I didn’t want to tarnish their perception of our father. “Dad got himself into some money trouble.”

Sam leaned back as if bracing for impact.

“How bad?” Angel asked.

I gestured at the invoices and ledgers spread across my desk. “I haven’t got to the bottom of it yet, but there are a lot of unpaid bills and money is missing.”

“Maybe Dad had an account you don’t know about,” Toby suggested. He was always so damn optimistic.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What I do know is that he closed an account without transferring the balance anywhere obvious. We’re going to have to let some employees go.”

“But they just got here,” Toby said.

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