Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 44578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 223(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 223(@200wpm)___ 178(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
A hush fell over the gathered crowd.
Daddy kissed the top of her head. “This is Amber,” he announced. “She has the gift of extraordinary vision. She’s still learning to understand distances and decipher what she’s seeing, but I can tell you if you drop a crumb on the floor in your home, she can see it from our house,” he joked, though he was not wrong.
Everyone chuckled. They also paired up and gathered in a circle. All the Alphas stood behind their mates, everyone shifting into human form. They went around the circle, each Alpha introducing himself and his mate. She already knew Rylee and Hayes, of course. She’d also met Molly and Gavin, plus Khloe and Felix the first day when she’d arrived.
The truth was she could identify everyone already because she’d seen them all in their homes and Isaac had helped her put names with faces.
Leah and Elias. She was the one who had started having dreams.
Olivia and Damon. She was the blind mate who could speak to bears telepathically.
Suzette and Brock. This was their home, and Suzette was the one who had been kidnapped by one of the bears on the day of her ceremony.
Jezebel and Arion. They were the first in recent history to have mated.
And finally Jayce. He would be the last to mate in three weeks. There were other marked girls and Alpha Protectors waiting for them to come of age, but it would be a few years before the next woman reached twenty.
Luckily Amber didn’t need to stand there straining to remember them all. She’d done that over the past week. But it was nice to meet everyone in person.
Rylee tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and inhaled. “Thorn and Surge are on their way.”
Molly leaned to the side, listening. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
Amber was fascinated by this group effort and all these shocking abilities. She faced the direction Molly and Rylee had focused and looked off into the distance. When she turned back to her new extended family, she shrugged. “Does anyone care what they’re wearing?”
Everyone chuckled.
Arion spoke. “No, but we would certainly care if you ever saw someone coming with a weapon in hand or a fierce expression.”
Rylee responded. “Forget the fierce expression. I can scent that sort of thing.”
So bizarre.
Amber continued to focus on Thorn and Surge. She knew which one each of them was. She was surprised they were approaching in human form, but after a minute, they leapt into the air and shifted. They landed a second later on four paws, their size taking her breath away.
Minutes later, they bounded into the clearing. No one flinched except Amber. They knew not to be afraid. It was her first time up close and personal with a giant bear, though, and shifter or otherwise, they were formidable.
The two bears shifted into human form and strolled closer, joining the group. They glanced around before pausing at Amber.
The more outgoing one she knew to be Surge smiled. “Welcome, Little wolf.”
She liked him already. “Thank you. Nice to meet you.”
“I understand you’ve been gifted with the ability to see intricate details at long distances,” Thorn said.
Amber nodded. “Yes. I promise to do my best to look away from anything inappropriate.”
Surge chuckled. “Luckily neither I nor Thorn have a mate. If we did, I’ll admit, we’d be a bit spooked. But that was already the case knowing Molly can hear everything we say.”
Molly held up a hand. “And you know I do not focus on anyone yapping in their homes regularly. I’d be so overwhelmed in ten minutes I’d faint.”
Surge nodded. “I know, Little one.”
“What’s going on with Drow?” Jayce asked.
Thorn sighed. “He’s being held and heavily guarded while our elders meet to discuss our options. The problem is we’re not used to this sort of total abandonment of our basic tenets. Dealing with Drow and Firat has been challenging for months. It’s unheard of for a bear shifter to kill one of our own. We don’t respond to violence with violence. Eliminating him is not an option anyone would like to face.”
“He escaped once before, though,” Brock pointed out.
Surge nodded. “Yes, he did. Our elders are not ignoring that fact.”
Arion rubbed his chin. “We understand your dilemma. Wolf shifters do not believe in eliminating our own, either. Our elders have not been faced with that possibility in centuries.”
Surge cleared his throat. “We have a theory. Keep in mind, it’s nothing but a supposition. We have zero evidence to back it up.”
Everyone nodded and focused on Surge. This was why the bears were here today. They always came with new information. Like Molly had stated, there was no way she could pay constant attention to every conversation happening in every household for miles around. She’d go mad. She mostly blocked out everyone entirely by remaining inside her insulated home to protect her sanity.