Alpha Lion: BBW Lion Shifter Paranormal Romance Read Free

fine, but…she didn’t.
    Instead, she took up her position again without saying anything—normally, she’d walk her rounds one more time before heading in to fill out her shift report, but tonight she was skipping it. Her friend planted himself firmly next to her, and she actually felt warmer with him standing there.
    Not to mention safer.
    “So,” she said, wanting to distract him from the topic of how dangerous her job was or wasn’t. It wasn’t going to change, so why spend time worrying about it, right? “I never got your name.”
    “Oh,” he said, and—it was hard to tell in the streetlight’s glare, but he might have blushed a little. “I sincerely apologize. That was rude. My name is Dale Addison.”
    “I’m Sam,” she said. “Samantha. Holt.” She sounded awkward and halting, and exactly as self-conscious as she was. Wonderful.
    “I’m very happy to meet you, Sam.” Dale graciously ignored her stumbling over her own name.
    “Not as happy as I was to meet you.” That moment when he’d shifted…she’d never seen anything like it.
    “I don’t know about that,” he said, but didn’t go on.
    If it were a line, she would’ve expected something like, It’s not every day I meet someone blah blah blah, but Dale just sounded serious, like he was really thinking about the question.
    Sam wasn’t sure what to make of that, so she just offered, “Sorry I interrupted your run.” He was wearing workout clothes, in the middle of nowhere at five-thirty in the morning; now that she was paying attention, it was obvious what he’d been doing.
    Dale shrugged. “I go every morning. I don’t get a chance to shift out on the street every morning, and I wish I did, so thanks for that.”
    “I didn’t know there were any lion shifters in the city,” she said, and then mentally kicked herself. She knew shifters were pretty private—the reason most of them lived way out in the middle of nowhere was to keep people from poking into their business.
    “We keep a low profile,” he said. “But there’s a whole pride of lions living in this city. Hardly anyone knows about us.”
    “I won’t tell anyone,” Sam said quickly. “I mean. It’s not anybody’s business if you’re just living your lives in the city like everyone else, right?”
    “That’s what I’ve always thought,” he said. “I’m glad you see it the same way. I appreciate your not mentioning it.”
    “That’d be a terrible way to pay you back for saving my life,” she said. “Blabbing your personal business all over the city.”
    “A lot of people would want to tell everyone they knew,” Dale pointed out.
    “I would never do something like that,” Sam said indignantly.
    Although it wasn’t like she had anyone to tell. Most of her friends had been at her old job, and when she’d been laid off, they drifted apart. Now that she was working nights, her schedule didn’t match up with anyone else’s.
    And her family…well, the less said about them, the better.
    She was distracted by the depressing thought that she was mostly alone these days, and the silence stretched out, becoming awkward again.
    Then Dale cleared his throat and said, “I couldn’t help noticing earlier…you don’t have much self-defense training, do you?”
    Sam blushed, hot and ashamed. “No,” she admitted.
    It wasn’t like she had a lot invested in being a badass, but it was shameful to be so obviously bad at her job . She’d always taken pride in doing good work, but here there was no way she could feel like that.
    “They didn’t train you when they hired you?”
    Sam shook her head. “They just told me what the protocols were for a few different situations. They told me there were hardly ever any incidents, they—they just needed a warm body in their uniform to discourage anyone who might think about breaking in.” Her face was hot again.
    “I can’t believe how irresponsible that is.” Dale sounded disapproving. “Well, I guess it’s