To Catch a Wolf (BBW Werewolf Shifter Romance) Read Online Free PDF Page A

back?”
    I watched Erik run his hands through his hair and then lock his fingers behind his head. He always tried feigning relaxation when he was anything but. At his most nervous, he acted almost drunk.
    Tapping away at my keyboard, the reactions from the other councilmembers were as entertaining, and as hard to record, as ever.
    The nearly-narcoleptic Duggan puffed up, looking just about like he was going to roll into a ball and hiss at someone. He shook his head then his spines, and very quickly went from cute, oversized hedgehog to cranky historian. “When did Jenga stop raising zombies? There’s one in the newspaper every other week causing some sort of trouble. Doesn’t anyone read anymore?” His voice was high pitched, but obviously irritated.
    “No,” Erik and Jamie Ampton, a tall woman with very pointy teeth, answered in unison. Jamie was upside down, hanging from the rafter of the building, wrapped in her wings. She sneezed softly, and then she and Erik exchanged a short glance.
    “I’m sure you think that’s clever,” Duggan said. “I’m sure you do.”
    “Duggan, can we please keep the irritable professor act to a minimum until we figure out what’s going on?” That time it was Clay Tomkins, one of only two hyena-shifters in town, who spoke. Shortly after, he took a drink from a cold can of soup. “We’ve got a real problem here that has nothing at all to do with adult literacy. If these reports are true, then this is the first time in our present memory that there have been two Alphas of Jamesburg, and that just won’t do!”
    A murmur spread through the room, everyone looking at everyone else. Erik gulped twice on his steaming cup of coffee, and Jamie, his partner in quipping, stuck a pencil in her inky black hair then sneezed again. For a second, the two of them stayed silent and let everyone else do the chattering.
    Two wolves, the most sensible of the bears, and a cheetah looked at each other, then groaned incoherently. They’d been napping in their animal forms, as I’ve learned the people here tend to enjoy, especially during meetings.
    “Izzy,” Erik whispered, turning in my direction. “What do you think of all this?”
    “I dunno,” I said. “I don’t even really understand what they’re talking about. There are two alphas? Or I guess one regular alpha and also a zombie alpha? Doesn’t that kind of go against the idea of a... you know, alpha?”
    He looked back and forth, but when he noticed that the rest of the twelve council members were either playing on their phones, in the case of Jamie, or trying really hard to keep from screaming at each other, he eased up a little.
    “The short version,” he said, “is that this werebear, Atlas Parsons – and yeah, I can tell from your face you are wondering if that’s really his name, it is – spent a lot of time in charge of Jamesburg. He went nuts and then jumped off a building. Real messy. Wait, you’ve heard this before, haven’t you?”
    “Duggan told me about him. Or I read it, or something. But that’s not what’s confusing me – what’s got me is how blasé you’re being about it all.”
    “That kind of thing is more common than you’d think, especially with the bears. Part of being a shifter is containing your animal instincts. Not all of us manage to do it quite so elegantly as yours truly,” he grinned. “But the bears have the hardest time. That’s why most of them stay off in the woods by themselves and only come to town when they have to. Ruben there is one of the only ones who can keep a lid on it, really.” He tilted his head to the left, indicating the half-transformed, half-sleeping councilmember.
    When I first came here, it struck me just how wildly different all the people were. Each group had their own ways, and somehow they managed to come together and not murder each other.
    Mostly.
    I tapped my fingers lightly on the tops of my keyboard keys, not typing, just tapping. “But... a zombie?