Chance Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire 6) by T. S. Joyce Page A

trips were always the same. Wolves, wolves, wolves, but that wasn’t what he was really teaching her to hunt. He taught her how to hunt shifters who shared the skin of a man. He’d trained her to be a murderer.
    Nothing of his would hold sentimental value anymore.
    She pulled the boxes out of his closet, down the steep porch stairs, and to the front yard. This would be the tinder for one hell of a bonfire because today she was saying goodbye, not only to him, but to a big part of herself as well.
    She removed his shoes and the clothes on his hangers. She fought the urge to sniff one of his jackets to see if it still smelled like him. She pulled decorations off the walls and gutted the house, leaving only the things that she needed—that she could make her own in time.
    The pile outside grew bigger and bigger through the day. She didn’t stop, didn’t slow, didn’t eat. Her forehead was damp with sweat and her muscles fatigued, but still, she cleared out everything down to the bare mattress in Dad’s room.
    If she was going to try and keep this place, it couldn’t have any trace of him left behind.
    And this fire…this fire would burn the last of the Hell Hunter from her. Determined, she hauled out the ancient anti-shifter books her Dad had read to her like bedtime stories growing up. The pages were full of drawings of Hell Hunters gallantly hanging wolf-like monsters and houses on fire with children screaming at the windows. Sick, sick shit that had never felt right, but she’d assumed was how the world worked. Why? Because the most important man in her life had brainwashed her to accept it.
    There were three old, hard-backed texts on the history of shifters that she kept behind. If she ever saw Chance or the Silvers again, she would gift the books to them. She was only interested in destroying the Hell Hunter history books, not theirs.
    With the last of the giant texts on top of the pile, she dumped gasoline onto it and stood back. With a steadying breath, she lit a match and tossed it onto his things. Her skin flushed with the instant heat, and she backed away slowly until her ankles brushed the bottom porch stair. She sat down heavily and wrapped her arms around her middle as the flames climbed higher and higher up the pile of her dad’s belongings.
    “No more,” she murmured. No more hate, no more vengeance blackening her heart. This was the moment she separated herself from her fucked-up lineage.
    The long, haunting note of a wolf’s howl lifted on the breeze, drawing chills up her arms despite the heat. It sounded close. She scanned the woods around the billowing smoke, but nothing moved, nothing stirred.
    She hoped it was him—Chance. She hoped it was his song she was listening to with bated breath. That it was his notes calling to her heart and making her feel completely torn up by what she could never have.
    The wind shifted, pushing the thick plume of smoke along the ground. And through the haze, a snow-white wolf with icy eyes trotted toward her like a ghost appearing from thin air. He held something in his mouth. His nose was black and his paws massive, but it was his body that held her stunned as he approached. He was much bigger than she’d imagined a werewolf to be with a barrel chest, long legs, head held high off his shoulders, ears erect, and those stunning eyes on her.
    He stopped five yards in front of her and dropped her dirty cell phone that she’d left at the bar in the mud. Head low, he searched her face. She didn’t know what he saw there. Maybe her heartache was evident, or maybe it was just streaked with sweat and ashes.
    “Thank you,” she murmured. “For the phone—and for everything else.”
    The wolf ducked his head and turned away, then trotted toward the tree line. Near the fire, he paused and watched the flames for a moment before he cast a look over his shoulder at her.
    She smiled, feeling empty. “I’m saying goodbye.”
    A soft whine sounded from his throat as he