Bearing the Whiteout (Ice Bear Shifters Book 2) by Sloane Meyers

Chapter One
     
    Eric Caldwell took a long, slow sip of his beer, and nodded his head dutifully as his friend Tyler droned on about the latest and greatest of workout methods. Tyler worked as a personal trainer in Glacier Point’s only gym, and he took his job pretty seriously. Tyler’s voice reverberated across the whole pub as he described power cleans and split jerks, and Eric vaguely caught on that these were some sort of weightlifting maneuvers. Eric could care less about workout regimes, but he let Tyler talk.
    Not that Eric didn’t stay in shape. When the snow and ice had melted enough to allow outdoor running, Eric went for long runs through the beautiful Alaskan landscape on a daily basis. In Glacier Point, however, the temperature only remained above freezing from about June to September. The rest of the year, the piles of snow and ice everywhere made running outside impossible, so Eric logged a lot of time on the treadmill. He also did his fair share of pushups, crunches, and bicep curls. He stayed fit, as evidenced by his muscular body, but he didn’t need any of the fancy, new exercise fads that Tyler was peddling.
    Eric was a big believer in keeping things simple.
    Which was why he had never been too serious about having a woman in his life. Women complicated things. They were beautiful and fascinating—and absolutely full of contradictions. Eric didn’t have time for that. He thought love was a magnificent thing, and he was always happy for his friends when they found it, as his friend Ryker recently had. But better them than him.
    Eric had had one serious girlfriend. Gina. Eric and Gina had been your quintessential on again, off again couple, and Eric had just assumed that eventually they would end up together as life mates. He wasn’t crazy about spending forever with her, but she had been nice enough. And he couldn’t just spend his entire life alone. Maybe lone wolves were a thing, but lone bears? Not so much. He figured that he’d need a mate, eventually. But then Gina had been killed in the poisoning tragedy that hit the Northern Lights Clan last year. After the poisoning, Eric had lost any interest he’d had in finding someone. The fewer people that you loved, the less chance you had of being hurt. Eric’s violet eyes darkened as he remembered the horror of watching most of his clan writhe in pain as they took their last breaths.
    “Dude, are you even listening to me? You haven’t said anything more than ‘hmph’ in the last ten minutes, and now you’re staring daggers into your drink. I get the feeling your mind’s somewhere else.”
    Eric rubbed his forehead and looked over at Eric. “Sorry. I randomly started thinking about Gina.”
    Tyler’s eyes, the same shade of violet as Eric’s, darkened as well. Tyler patted Eric on the back, and the pair sat in silence for several minutes. Other than taking an occasional long sip from their beers, they made no sound. Tyler finally looked up and sighed, breaking the silence.
    “Hey, I know no one can ever replace the bears we lost. But at least we finally have a chance to find someone again, since Neal relaxed his stance on dating humans.”
    Neal was the alpha of the Northern Lights Clan. Neal had taken over leadership of the clan when Neal’s father, the previous alpha, had died in the poisoning tragedy. Like his father before him, Neal had forbidden his bears to mate with full humans. Humans often reacted with horror and revulsion if they discovered that bear shape shifters existed, and that horror often turned into bear hunts that attempted to exterminate entire clans. But as the number of bear shifters in the arctic dwindled, Neal had been forced to face the reality of the situation. There were only five Northern Lights bears left. If Neal didn’t allow his clan members to mate with humans, his clan would likely die off. Another one of the Northern Lights bears, Ryker, had already found a human mate. Her name was Kenzie, and she was