Heart of the Bear (Hells Canyon Shifters Book 5) by T. S. Joyce Page A

gaze to Rae Lynn and gave her a kind smile. With a twitch of his head, he said, “I’ll go get my mate. She’s out back in the workshop.”
    “I’ll get her,” Jesse said, then escaped the entryway and shut the door behind him.
    Logan stared at the door he’d just disappeared out of and swung a questioning gaze to Rae. “Does it hurt bad?” He nodded toward the four perfect slashes across her forearm.
    She shrugged miserably. “It’s not so bad.”
    He studied her puffy eyes and red cheeks, but was apparently polite enough not to say anything about her being a crybaby. Instead, he asked, “You want some tea? I already have the water on to boil.”
    “That would be great, thanks.”
    He led her into a small kitchen, and she sat down at a table in front of the stove. “Breshia brought Samuel by earlier this evening.”
    A weight lifted, and Rae rested her elbows onto the smooth wood of the table. “Good. I’m glad she has him. She’s who Shay wanted to raise him. I’m supposed to oversee some kind of adoption arrangement, but Shay left before we could work on anything. Is Breshia going to take care of him?”
    “She doesn’t know yet. She and her mate, Dillon, are newly mated and were planning on trying for a child of their own during her next heat cycle.”
    “Heat cycle?”
    “She’s a lion shifter, like me.”
    Rae clenched her hands together under the table and fought the urge to jump out of the chair and back slowly out of the house. “Jesse said you don’t keep your minds when you shift like bears do.”
    Logan pulled tea bags from a tin can and, from here, she could see him smile. “Some of us have less control than others. Breshia keeps her head completely, but she’s told me stories about Shay. I’m assuming she’s the reason your heartbeat is racing right now.”
    Right. The whole shifters-can-apparently-hear-everything-in-the-whole-wide-world bit was becoming seriously tedious. “She tried to kill me the second she changed.”
    Logan turned and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. “That sounds like a typical lioness.”
    “Is your wife one, too?”
    “No, she’s a black bear, like Jesse.”
    “Wait, wait, wait. Your mate is a bear, and you’re a lion?”
    He grinned. “Yep.”
    “Is Breshia’s mate a lion?”
    He shook his head. “Grizzly.”
    “So bears can mix with other…non-bears?” Not that it mattered, because Jesse obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Her heart sank farther. His rejection wasn’t even because she was human.
    “It isn’t encouraged because bears are dying out. There are less than a hundred of them left, but an exception was made for lions.”
    “Why?”
    His look darkened, and he cast his eyes back to the stove. “Because there are only a few of us left.”
    “So, human-shifter relationships are a no?”
    “My alpha, Bron, has a mate who used to be human. She turned so she could be with him, though.”
    Rae nodded slowly. It didn’t matter anyway then. Jesse panicking at their intimacy didn’t matter, because whatever she’d been allowing her heart to feel was wrong and not allowed. Maybe that was why he was pushing her away now.
    “Logan?” Jesse asked from the doorway. “Can I talk to you outside?” His voice was grim, and his eyes had lost their spark from earlier. He refused to look at Rae, and her heart broke a little more. He couldn’t even bear the sight of her now.
    A striking, dark-headed woman sidled Jesse’s tall frame and approached Rae with a kind smile. She lifted her injured arm under the light and made a clicking sound behind her teeth. “You got her good, Jesse.”
    “Yeah,” he said somberly. “I did.”
    He turned and left the house. Logan set two porcelain cups of tea on the table before he followed him out.
    “I’m Muriel,” the woman said. “Jesse told me what happened.”
    “I’m Rae Lynn. People call me Rae, though. And what all did he tell you?”
    “He told me about