True North (The Bears of Blackrock Book 4) Read Free Page B

point.”
    “Bull shit, man! You’re a fucking polar bear!”
    Theron couldn’t help but laugh. John had the kind of personality that could get the people around him in trouble. He was also a lot of fun to be around.
    “So how’s Catherine doing? She still crying all the time?”
    John sighed. “No, thank god. That was rough as hell. Did I tell you she literally burst into wailing sobs in the middle of Pete’s Dragon ? Pete’s effing Dragon ! Could not stop crying. Poor baby.”
    Catherine Fenn was heavily pregnant with John’s first child.
    Theron shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I’ve burst into tears watching Pete’s Dragon a few times.”
    “Well, me too! But I can keep it to a subtle man cry. Poor Catie was practically keening. And she couldn’t stop. I tried to hug her through it, but she just smacked me away because she doesn’t like to be seen crying.”
    They reached a narrow dirt road in the woods and Theron gave the air a quick sniff. There was nothing to warn of company in the air. “So she’s better now?”
    John marched out into the dirt road, giving his own inspection. “Yeah. Now she’s eating nothing but toaster waffles and drinking two gallons of lemonade a day. Och! And the fucking heartburn. Poor thing goes through Tums like jelly beans.”
    Theron shuddered. He’d never spent a great deal of time around pregnant women, but he’d heard more than his fair share of horror stories from his mother. She loved to regale him with what a miserable pregnancy he’d been.
    “Think it’s clear? Haven’t seen anything since that cruiser out on the main drag,” John said, unbuttoning his flannel shirt.
    Theron shook his head. “Naw. Looks pretty clear.”
    John was shirtless now, too excited for the hunt to wait. By the time John tossed his pants over a tree branch, Theron had only thought to start getting undressed.
    They were in the woods around Parkhurst Lake. Theron usually shifted down by the shoreline near the rez, but John assured him the hunting around Parkhurst was way more interesting.
    “You got rabbits, coons, possums, deer, moose – everything down there,” he’d said.
    Theron had never shifted further inland for one very particular reason – unlike the Fenn family of shifters, Theron wouldn’t blend in with the usual fauna. If someone saw Theron trudging the woods in bear form, there’d be an uproar.
    Still, John assured him no one ventured onto the Fenn side of Parkhurst, and he was almost impossible to argue with.
    John grunted softly, and Theron realized his friend was already a bear – a massive, furry monster of brown. A grizzly.
    Suppose a Grizzly isn’t exactly a common sight in Downeast Maine, either, Theron thought.
    That notion stilled a hint of his anxiety. Still, years of growing up with a polar bear mother – seeing her constant efforts to go unseen, the stress of not being able to shift for long periods because of her anxiety.
    Shifters need to shift. It is in their blood, and the longer they go without it, the harder it is to quell the need. Theron’s mother would sometimes simply go out back from the house and shift for a moment or two behind the shed. Otherwise, she remained constantly on edge, wary of every single shift she made.
    No wonder she and Maggie had such trouble over the years. A shifter who isn’t shifting can be one grumpy character.
    Theron was a tad more adventurous than mom. He didn’t take week long vacations up north to visit family so he could ‘get it out of his system’ like she did. Theron just trekked down to a corner of the shoreline and hunted for fish, splashing through the waves in the dark, fearless of being spotted by anything but boats passing miles off shore.
    Even down in Boston, Theron never went more than two weeks without shifting. The last thing a polar bear shifter needs is to push his limits too far, and then get set off in the middle of lab class.
    John grunted again and Theron noticed how long he’d been