Bear Reign (Alpha Guardians Book 7) Read Free

instinctive step backward, which turned Bethesda’s expression dark as night.
    She jingled the keys in just the way Crane had, mocking.
    “Sit on the bed.” Those two words had his feet moving, had him stepping back and back until the bed bumped the backs of his thighs. He slowly sank down to sit. If he tried to resist, tried to turn away, every single nerve burned like wildfire. Bethesda grinned again, baring her teeth. “It won’t be that bad. Well, not after the first time.”
    Bethesda reached out and slid her fingers into Ephraim’s long hair, gripping it tight and tugging his head to the side. Exposing his neck, he realized. Bethesda’s lips parted. As her mouth descended toward his neck, Ephraim knew the first true moment of despair in his young life.

Chapter One
    “ S o then he messaged me and was all like Netflix and Chill, and I was like, nooooo way Jose.”
    Dawn smacked her gum, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder. Sophie examined her friend and coworker for a moment, admiring her smooth cocoa skin and impeccable dress. Dawn was always done up to the nines, makeup and nails and hair perfectly matching the outfit of the day.
    Sophie looked down at her own thrice-worn jeans and wrinkled ivory silk top and sighed. Dawn always outclassed Sophie in the having-her-shit-together department, but today Sophie was practically slumming it. She hadn’t been out in the sun since midsummer, so she’d completely lost her tan. Her long blonde hair was a wild mess of unbridled waves, and her nails… well, it was better not to get into the finer points. It wasn’t pretty.
    “So then he had the nerve to say I was a tease!” Dawn said, pulling a face.
    “Mmmhm,” Sophie said. She scrunched up her face and stared at the rain hitting the broad plate glass window that faced Royal Street, one of New Orleans’s most popular high-end shopping districts. The weather had killed all the walk-in traffic to Sophie’s little dressmaker’s shop, and Sophie knew she should be doing any number of little tasks. She and her sales assistant, Dawn, should be dusting the place from top to bottom, doing inventory, rotating out some of the stock, or at least changing the elegant mannequins in the front window.
    Sophie glanced at the mannequins for the briefest moment, then looked away. She knew well enough what they looked like; all done up in pastel silk dresses, trimmed out in full 1950s flair. It was a beautiful display, though it was over two months old at this point. Tears stung her eyes every single time she thought about the stupid dolls for more than half a second.
    Lily picked those outfits. She stood there and dressed those mannequins, touched them. She smiled and laughed and frowned while she was setting up their display .
    And then,
    It was her last display, on her last day of her whole life. It was the last thing she touched before…
    Thus the tears.
    “Sophie!”
    Sophie turned to look at Dawn, guiltily wiping at the corners of her eyes.
    “Oh, girl…” Dawn said, hopping up from her perch behind the cash register and walking around to hug Sophie. “We have to get you a hobby or something, honey. I love you, I really do, but you are spending all your time focusing on what happened to your sister and no time on what’s happening to you , right here and now.”
    “I know,” Sophie said, shaking her head. “I get up in the morning and I think I have a handle on it, but by lunch I’m just…”
    “It’s okay,” Dawn said, giving her another little hug. “I was thinking maybe we could go to that Wiccan power circle thing tonight, since you said you haven’t been able to do any magic since… Lately, I mean.”
    “I don’t know,” Sophie said, rubbing her hands over her face, trying to wake herself up a little bit. She was exhausted all the time, but she never really slept. Hell, she never did much of anything… it seemed like food, sleep, and basic self-care only happened when they were absolutely