Timber Valley Pack: Lynx On The Loose( A Paranormal Romance With Shifters) by Georgette St. Clair Page B

cooperate.”
    “You may be right. I don’t want him to end up getting injured.” Isadora didn’t sound too happy about it, though.
    Dash pulled up in front of the house and parked. On the front porch, Steele sat next to Roxanne, his wife.  Roxanne’s son Flint was curled up on Steele’s lap, in cub form, and Roxanne was stroking his fur.
    Sally and Thomas yawned as they climbed out of the truck and followed Dash and Isadora up the flagstone path towards the house.
    “Why did Pyotr run away like that?” Sally asked.
    “He’s stone cold crazy,” Thomas replied with a shrug.
    One of the men with Steele was a tall, lean man who Dash recognized as Mayor Bertelsen.  Dash recognized another as Edvin Gund.   The Gunds came from a pack that had gotten cut off from the rest of the shifter nation in the 1800s, and had intermarried with humans. He also recognized Edvin’s cousin Axel Gund, who had been kidnapped and held in the laboratory for more than a year.
    Axel looked much better than the last time Dash had seen him. That had been right after Dash had helped to free him from the underground lab, and Axel had been pale and so thin he was almost skeletal. Now he’d gotten his color back and he’d put on weight. He managed a smile, but Dash could see the thousand yard stare in his eyes.
    “Dash. Isadora. You made it.” Steele handed his son to Roxanne, and stood up, brushing the fur off his jeans. He quickly climbed down the steps and walked over to greet them.
    “So, tell me what’s going on,” he said. 
    “Long story,” Dash said as they climbed up on the porch. “This is Thomas and Sally.  A bunch of human mercenaries just raided the camp they were staying at, about two hours from here.”
    “Anybody hurt?” Steele asked.
    “No, the shifters smelled them coming and took off before they got there.  It’s not a good thing that they’re this close to your town, though.”
    “No, it isn’t,” Steele said grimly. 
                  Dash tried not to stare at the human cops standing there on the porch. Human cops, working for a shifter police chief. This town was absolutely unique. It was a shame that it couldn’t be like this all over the world. Even though these people represented the best possible outcome of humans discovering the existence of shifters, unfortunately, they’d also encountered the worst possible outcome, in the form of Colonel Bradwell and his men.
                  Roxanne’ son Flint shifted to human form, turning into a chubby toddler. He ran over to Sally, who picked him up. “Oof. He’s heavy,” she said. She stared at Roxanne, then back at him. “Wait. Are you his mother? How is that possible?”
                  Flint, laughing, leaped into Roxanne’s arms, and then squirmed to get back to Sally.
                  “Oh, we’re playing that game, are we?” Roxanne held on to him, ruffling his hair.  “It’s a genetic mutation,” she said to Sally. “Some of the humans in this town can have children with wolf shifters.”
    Then she glanced worriedly at Sally and Thomas’s skinny frames.
                  “Not my fault!” Isadora said quickly. “They were living at a Hobo camp.”
    “Who wants to help me make cookies?” Roxanne asked. She worked as a short order cook in the town’s diner.  “Chocolate chip. You can lick the spoons afterwards.”
                  Sally’s hand shot up in the air. “We do!” 
    Thomas shrugged, pretending indifference. “I guess I could help.”
                  Sally turned to Isadora, grabbing her hand. “Come on, come help us.”
                  “Go on ahead. I’ll be right there,” Isadora said.
                  “She’s not coming. She’s going to leave us again,” Thomas said to Sally. “We’ll come out and she’ll be gone. It’s okay. We do okay on our own, don’t we?”