Stone Bear: Sentinel (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Stone Bears Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’d really rather avoid the whole thing, but people are being killed, and that’s not acceptable.”
    His eyes reflected the cold in his voice. Caia suppressed a shudder. She wouldn’t want to cross Gabriel.
    “So, tomorrow we go to the Sapphires,” she pronounced.
    “Perfect. I’ll drive, and afterward you can go talk to the humans, see if you can dig up anything. I’m meeting a contact in Origin anyways, so I’ll use that to kill some time while you snoop. Then I’ll pick you up and we can come back here.”
    “That sounds like a logical plan,” she said. “I approve of that.”
    “I’m not always reckless,” he said, winking at her openly as he stood up, slipping the papers back into the envelope. “I need to go tell Raphael about the changes and get these read.”
    “In the morning then,” she told him. Then she firmly pulled her tongue from her cheek and resolutely did not bite down on her lip as he purposefully flexed his arms more than necessary as he rose from the chair across from her.
    “Don’t stay up too late.”
    She opened her mouth to reply, but he was gone.
    Grrr.

***
    “Why is it that all of you drive trucks?” she asked as they drove into town the next morning. “I don’t think I’ve seen a single shifter drive anything but a truck.”
    Gabriel laughed. “Look around you.”
    She did. “Okay?”
    “Where are we?”
    “Genesis Valley?” She wasn’t following along.
    “Yes, but where is Genesis Valley?”
    “In the mountains? Is that the answer you’re looking for?”
    He nodded, his eyes mostly focused on the road, but occasionally glancing over at her. “Yes. Now, what time of year is it?”
    Caia thought for a moment, trying to follow his train of thought before she spoke next. She didn’t like where it was going. “There’s a lot of snow here in the winter, isn’t there?”
    “Yup. And the first of it is only a few weeks away I’d say. Plus, if you haven’t noticed, we tend to be rather larger than most human men.”
    “I had, ah, noticed that,” she said, failing to conceal the blush that admitted to just what she had noticed about the shifters.
    “Well, they make the perfect vehicles for us.”
    “But there are still large SUVs out there too,” she said. “Shouldn’t at least one of you own one of those, just to break up the pattern? I mean, statistically speaking, lots of you should.”
    “It’s a shifter thing,” he told her with a smile.
    Caia rolled her eyes and made an exasperated noise. “Lovely. ‘It’s a shifter thing.’ You’re no worse than normal men!”
    Then a thought occurred to her.
    “Why are there no shifter women?” she asked suddenly.
    “There are,” he replied. “Their animals tend not to be as wild and feral as ours, so they typically have less issues working with the rest of society. You don’t see them here in the Valley.”
    “Your…animal?” she asked, unsure of what he meant.
    Gabriel gripped the wheel tighter for a moment before he spoke. “The bear part of us exists as an entity, Caia. A very basic entity, but one capable of emotions and primal thoughts, but an entity nonetheless. We can assume human form by taking control over that entity, and keeping it controlled. The larger the person, the harder that entity, that animal, is to control.”
    Despite herself, Caia found herself looking Gabriel up and down. He was by far the biggest shifter she had ever met. Part of her wanted to inch her way closer to the door, putting some more space between them. If his animal was that wild, she didn’t want to be in its way if something happened.
    “You have nothing to be worried about,” he said.
    Something must have given her away, she realized.
    “My bear and I came to an agreement a long time ago.”
    “It did? I mean, you did?” The terms of who was what were confusing. She wasn’t sure if the bear should be referred to as an “it” a “he” or just as “his bear.”
    “Yep. I told it to behave, and in