Bearing the Midnight Sun (Ice Bear Shifters Book 3) Read Free Page B

and he felt strangely protective of her. He didn’t want Kat going back to a man who obviously didn’t love her. But that’s clearly what she had set her heart on doing.
    Tyler frowned and turned back to staring at the baseball game, but he couldn’t concentrate on the television screen. All he could concentrate on was the bear inside of him, roaring with rage at the mistreatment Kat had received. The feeling overtook him with an unmistakable intensity. Could it really be? None of this made sense.
    But Tyler’s bear instinct inside of him demanded to be heard, roaring out insistently with a message that came clearer and clearer with every rush of passion through his body. Tyler slumped his head down into his hands, unsure of what to do next.
    Kat Peterson was his mate. He was sure of it.

Chapter Three
    Kat cursed under her breath for the duration of the walk back to her cabin. She had decided to walk the mile to the pub earlier, but now she was wishing she had a snowmobile or car to get her home quicker. Even though it was mid-May, the nights in Glacier Point were cool. The sun was still up, even at this late hour, but it was waning, and the temperature had dropped. Kat shivered, and cursed some more. She should never have shared so much personal information with Tyler. Training with him was probably going to be super awkward now.
    But what bothered Kat more than the forthcoming awkwardness, was the fact that she realized she actually cared what Tyler thought about her. He had looked at her with such kind, sad eyes as she told him her story. He focused on her completely when she talked, and the faint lines on the sides of his eyes crinkled every so often with concern. Ethan had never gazed at her like that—like she was the only person in the room. Kat had figured that men only looked at women like that in movies. Men in real life could only be expected to always be somewhat distracted. Or so Kat had thought, until tonight.
    Kat shook her head as she reached into her purse for the key to her cabin, trying to shake off all the thoughts of Tyler creeping into her mind. She hadn’t come here to find a boyfriend. She had come here to win her former fiancé back. And even if she and Tyler did hit it off, she was going back to Nebraska in four months. Then what? He seemed pretty settled here. Kat didn’t want to move this far north. And Alaska to Nebraska wasn’t exactly an easily commutable distance. Flights were long and expensive.
    Kat let herself into her small cabin and pulled her coat off, throwing it on the couch. She went to the kitchen to pour herself a tall glass of water, all the while trying to convince herself that Tyler Cox was not, in fact, the kindest, sexiest man she had ever met.
    The butterflies in her stomach every time she thought of him suggested that she was losing that battle.
     
    * * *
     
    Across town, Tyler was doing some mental gymnastics of his own, trying to figure out how to justify to his alpha his very sudden interest in a human woman. He stood in the lobby of Neal’s Tattoo shop, waiting for Neal to finish up the last touches on a tattoo for a big, burly man. The man scrunched his face up in pain every so often, a comical sight on such a large person. Neal remained professional, pretending not to notice. Tyler could have cared less what was going on in the tattoo chair right now. He just wanted Neal to hurry up and get the man out of the store so Tyler could get some advice. It was late—after ten p.m.—but Neal frequently kept his tattoo shop open for customers who wanted to come in and get some ink done after finishing up their own work shifts.
    Neal Ray held the title of Alpha for the Northern Lights Clan, the clan of polar bear shifters to which Tyler belonged. Neal had a reputation for being hotheaded and throwing temper tantrums if he perceived the slightest hint of subversion from any of his bears, but he was also quick to apologize when he knew he had overreacted. In addition,