Southern Shifters: Bearly Dreaming (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Online Free PDF

make these letters and things.” I shifted my weight and shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m getting them right.”
    She steeled me with her gaze, investigating, searching for something. “You really feel a connection to this woman.”
    I shrugged again, but it felt wrong. Dismissive in a way. So instead I stood tall, looked her dead in the eye and said, “Her name is Nyla, and she’s all I can think about. I need to be able to talk to her.”
    Her smile turned soft and sweet, as if she was proud of me for some reason. “Then let’s find some videos.”
    Hours later, my attention span died a hard-fought battle against the machine Audrey had sat me in front of. Ready to make the run home again, I double-checked a few phrases I’d picked up, making sure I had all the motions as accurate as I could make them. Audrey had been babbling behind me while she straightened the shelves for at least an hour. I’m sure she was talking to me, but I hadn’t been paying her a lick of attention.
    Until she started talking about dreamwalkers.
    “What was that?” I asked, watching a particular video one last time but trying to listen to her as well.
    “I said—” she huffed and smacked her feather duster against a shelf “—there are lots of legends about why people would dreamwalk.”
    “They had reasons?”
    “Oh, sure. For some, it was a way to manipulate the enemy.”
    I hummed, letting her prattle on but barely listening as I watched a man sign a hymn I’d always liked. My bear twitched, though, when the tension in the room skyrocketed, the feeling of being watched making me spin around.
    Audrey stood across the room, staring at me with wide eyes. “That’s it.”
    “What’s it?”
    “That’s why she comes to you. That’s why you can’t stop thinking about her.” She walked toward me slowly, as if I was a dangerous animal…which I was, but not right then, and never to her. So her reluctance was completely unnerving.
    “What are you doing?”
    She froze. “I don’t want you to freak out like Whit did.”
    “Whit? What are you talking about?”
    “Weren’t you listening to me?”
    “No, not really.”
    She glared. “You know, if I had a nickel—”
    “Audrey,” I interrupted. “Scold me later. Why do you think Nyla’s dreamwalking to me?”
    She dropped the glare and inched closer. When she spoke, her voice came out soft and quiet, as if cooing to a wild animal, which again, sort of true but unnecessary.
    “Could she be your mate?”
    Every molecule of oxygen in the room disappeared in a single gust, leaving me breathless and dizzy. Mate? The thought had crossed my mind, especially after my chat with Whit, but I’d dismissed the idea quickly each time. How could she be my mate? We’d never met, not really, and the legends stated you had to smell and see your mate to feel that connection.
    My bear grumbled, sniffing, reminding me of the light scent of lavender he picked up through my dreams. Subtle, something my human side had dismissed, and yet the scent called to us. It was the first thing I noticed every morning when I woke up horny as fuck and craving her touch. It was with me at night, before I went to bed, when I worked my cock to images of her in my space, doing everyday sort of things, simply existing in my world with me. I hadn’t been paying enough attention to put the pieces together, but the scent of lavender made me hard, made me lust for someone I’d never touched. Because it was my mate’s scent.
    “Holy shit.”
    “You’d better sit down.” Audrey directed me to a chair, being gentle and quiet. “I don’t want to meet your mate for the first time and have to explain how I let you fall on your face while you were so dazed about—you know—realizing she was your mate.”
    Mate, the word thrown about casually and yet so meaningful all of a sudden. Every second I’d spent thinking about Nyla—the way her picture in my mind made me need her, the way my bear and I had been