An Alpha's Tempest (Water Bear Shifters 4) Read Free Page B

said, standing and dragging him toward the edge of the boat with her. “It’s time to go for a swim.”
    With a splash, she and Evan tumbled over the side of the boat and into the cold, Arctic water. Even though their survival suits kept them warm, Rhythm couldn’t stop herself from shivering. This situation was, by far, the most terrifying ordeal she had ever experienced.
    Minutes later, Rhythm watched the boat sink completely below the surface, and she started praying for a miracle.

Chapter Two
     
    Ben Harrington’s desk looked like something that might belong to a crazy professor. Pages full of messily scribbled notes filled the workspace, many of them ringed with coffee stains. A half-eaten tangerine sat in the left corner, next to a red leather journal. Pens and pencils littered the table, along with a few balled up sheets of paper here and there.
    But Ben wasn’t a professor. Far from it, actually. He was the copilot of a Coast Guard Rescue Crew, and an alpha panda shifter. And he had a big problem: he was a being hunted by a group of scientists who had become obsessed with killing off bear shifters.
    No matter how many times Ben reviewed and analyzed the limited information that he did have on these men, none of it made sense. He couldn’t figure out where they might be hiding, or what, exactly, their plan to kill him and the other bear shifters might be. These guys knew how to expertly cover their tracks, and Ben knew that every day that passed was a day closer to the possibility of total elimination of bear shifters.
    Ben rubbed his right shoulder the way he always did when he was thinking hard but couldn’t figure out a problem. He glanced over his notes and sighed, then picked up his tangerine and took another bite. He looked down at the fruit and frowned, then tossed it into the wastebasket under his desk. He still hadn’t quite adjusted to the bland fruit in Alaska. All of the citrus fruit here had to be imported, which meant it wasn’t nearly as fresh as the citrus fruit Ben had enjoyed in San Diego, California—the city from which he had just moved.
    Despite his tangerine leaving something to be desired, Ben had been happy with Alaska overall. In the three months that he’d been here, he had already come to love the raw wilderness that Alaska had to offer. He had even adjusted to the cold, although the locals warned him that the worst was still ahead of him. They told him that November’s temperatures had nothing on February’s coldest days, and Ben shivered as he thought about dealing with months of subzero days.
    The work here had been challenging but rewarding. Ben and his fellow crew members—all alpha panda shifters as well—ran helicopter search and rescue missions for people stranded out in the freezing Alaska waters. If a boat began to sink, or if someone on board a vessel had a medical emergency, Ben and his crew were there to fly them out. Brett, the rescue swimmer on Ben’s crew, even jumped into the water to swim out to people who needed saving. The work was tough, but Ben couldn’t imagine doing anything else for a job. The gratitude in the eyes of every single person they rescued was more reward than any salary could ever be. The crew had performed hundreds of rescues in San Diego, but being in Kodiak, Alaska, with its frigid temperatures, had required them to step up their game even more. Ben was enjoying the additional challenges, and the change of scenery.
    What he wasn’t enjoying was the seeming futility of all of his efforts to search for the scientists. Ben and his crew had found out, thanks to a clan of Alaskan polar bear shifters known as the Northern Lights Clan, that the scientists were hiding and working somewhere in Alaska. This was why the crew had moved up here—so they could be closer to the scientists’ operations, and, hopefully, figure out a way to find them and stop them. But, so far, the time in Alaska hadn’t brought them any closer to finding their