Black Bear Fall: A BWWM Paranormal Romance (Black Bear Saga Book 2) Read Free Page A

said.
    A bottle of water was placed in Graces eye line and she heard the man behind her kneel on the ground at her back. He grabbed her around the waist and flipped her around to face him, and picked up the bottle of water. He was turned away from Grace and she could see he was in his late thirties and had a surprisingly soft and kind face. The man turned around to face her and Grace let out a scream and her feet scrabbled on the ground to try to escape.
    The other side of the mans face was pulled back in a sneer, exposing mottled crimson gums and a jagged row of teeth. Clumps of bristly fur stuck out along his jawline and the skin of his cheek was rough and pitted. The eye on the human side of the face was a sparkling glacial blue, on the deformed side a dark brown orb stared out though eye lids squeezed half shut from boney protuberances around the sunken eye socket.
    The man held his hands open before him and said, “Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.”
    Grace leaned against the back wall, her eyes wide as she looked from the deformed man to the other guard across from him. He was a large African American with a smooth shaved head and he was looking at her with an amused look on his face. There was something not right about how he was sitting on the bench, his body looked twisted and bent in at an unnatural angle. He wore loose fitting army fatigues and black leather gloves.
    “What are you people?” Grace said watching the snarling man, afraid to take her eyes off him.
    Anne pushed herself on an elbow and looked at Grace and said, “They’re mongrels. They wont hurt us,” she said and asked the snarling man, “I’m right aren't I? You are mongrels?”
    The snarling man nodded his head while he watched Grace.
    “Anne what are they?” Grace asked and she could feel her heart like a jack hammer against her ribs.
    “They are from the white bear clan, members who have been shunned from ever returning. I always thought they were nothing more than a legend,” Anne said pushing herself up to a sitting position and leaning against the bench.
    “How does it make you feel meeting a legend,” the snarling man said and slapped his chest. The human side of his face pulled back in a smile and exposed the transition of his square peg like human teeth into the sharp jagged bear teeth of the transformed side.
    “Untie me and I’ll tell you,” Anne said.
    The snarling man looked across at the other guard and they both laughed.
    “No can do sister. I’m afraid you have to stay like that until we get to our destination,” the snarling man said.
    “And where are you taking us?” Grace asked as she slowly got hold of her frenzied breathing and her initial shock at the snarling mans face began to dissipate.
    “We are going home and you’re the key to the front door,” the snarling man said tapping Graces shoes with his leather army boot.
    Grace looked to Anne in confusion her mind still reeling from the horror of the snarling mans face.
    “Tell her what we are shifter, you seem to know so much,” the other guard said.
    “Water first,” Anne said.
    The snarling man let Grace drink from the bottle first, he held the bottle and poured it into her parched mouth. She gasped and cold water ran down her chin. When Anne was finished drinking she moved to the back wall and sat beside Grace, their bound legs sticking out in front of them and the two guards looking on with very little interest.
    “These two gentlemen are mongrels,” Anne said looking at their two captors, “we are told stories about them when we are little children, go to sleep or the mongrels will get you. They are meant to be the stuff of nightmares. When we got older we eventually found out that they are shifters like us and banished from the white bear clan.”
    The snarling man interrupted and said, “I ain’t no shifter. Look at this face. Theres no changing back to a soft faced human I’m stuck like this for life. The clan doesn’t want us