Saved by Wolves (Shifters Meet Their Mate Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

another night in the woods wasn’t high on her list of things to do. She jumped down off the log, landing in the dirt with a jarring thud that sent a fresh wave of pain through her side. Her breasts bounced, and she longed for the support of the sports bra in her pack. She should have asked to stop for a few minutes so she could put it on, but she’d been too embarrassed to bring it up. Which was ridiculous. They were all grown-ups, and one—or both—of them had seen everything she had. Talking about bras should have been no big deal.
    “Yeah, only another twenty, twenty-five miles,” Marcus continued in an encouraging tone.
    Twenty or twenty-five miles? Even at their current pace, it would take hours to cover that much ground. It had already been four days since Francesca had been kidnapped. With every minute that passed, there was more of a chance her sister was in real trouble. Memories of being stuck with needles and locked in a tiny cell crowded her mind, and she sucked in a deep breath and forced her weary body to walk faster, until she was right on Jackson’s heels.
    He stopped abruptly, and she stumbled into his back. Peering around him, she saw they’d entered a small clearing, roughly fifteen feet around.
    “She’s tired,” Jackson said, looking over her head to Marcus.
    “I’m fine,” she said, but he wasn’t paying her any attention.
    “She’s going to collapse any second,” he grumbled. “And I smell fresh blood. It’ll attract predators.”
    “Worse than you?” she said, and then bit her tongue at his steely stare.
    “Worse than us.”
    Kirra didn’t want to imagine what—or who—they were worried about running into. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Let’s keep going.” She inched her way past Jackson, intending to lead the way. A hand on her shoulder made her pause.
    “Jackson’s right. We’ll stop here for the night,” Marcus said. “Check your bandages and get some rest.”
    “I need to get to your alpha. It’s literally a matter of life or death.”
    He tilted his head and cast a considering look at the sky. “The sun’s going to set soon, and unless you have better night vision than the other humans I know, you won’t make very good progress in the dark. Even if we continue, we can’t talk to the alpha until morning anyway.” He shrugged off his pack and set about gathering wood for a fire, not waiting for her response.
    Not ready to give up, Kirra turned to argue with Jackson, only to find he’d vanished.
    “He’s scouting,” Marcus said from the middle of the clearing. He built a tepee of crumpled newspaper he pulled from a pocket of his pack and twigs, then used a fire starter to get it burning.
    “What for?” Kirra let her own pack drop to the ground and searched through it until she found her food stash. Her stomach was a hollow pit.
    “Anyone or anything that shouldn’t be in our territory.” He shook his head at the chocolate-covered protein bar she offered him. “Chocolate doesn’t agree with me.”
    “Hmm,” she mumbled around a bite of the bar. “Why were you guys out here, anyway? I mean, I’m glad you were, I’m just wondering why.”
    “We’re enforcers.” The way he stressed enforcers made her think she should know what it meant.
    “I don’t know much about shifters. What does an enforcer do?”
    “We patrol the boundaries of our territory and... deal with unwanted visitors.”
    “Ah, so you’re kind of a cross between a guard and a forest ranger.”
    Marcus’s lips twitched. “Yeah, but don’t say that around Jackson. He doesn’t like being compared to anything human. Gives him hives.”
    “I got the feeling he doesn’t like me very much.” Kirra finished her bar, stashed the wrapper in her pack, and pulled out her wet clothes. Everything in the pack was damp from its dunking in the river, and smelled a bit musty. At least the papers inside were still dry in their waterproof pouch.
    “Don’t take it personally. Jackson