A Blaze To Bear (Fire Bear Shifters Book 1)

A Blaze to Bear

Fire Bear Shifters, Book 1

By Sloane Meyers

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Thank You For Reading!

About the Author

Ian Reed ran his fingers through his dark brown hair in frustration as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone line. He tried his best to keep his voice level and calm when he replied, but he only partially succeeded.

“Look, Jessica, we don’t need another guy on our team. We’re full up.”

“I’m sorry, Ian, but I don’t think anyone is asking for your opinion on this.” Jessica’s voice was sympathetic, but firm.

“The five of us can handle everything just fine on our own,” Ian said. “It’s too risky to add another body to the mission, and you know that.”

“Sorry, buddy. Boise disagrees with you. They had to split up and relocate an entire team of smokejumpers, and they’ve decided Charlie goes with you. It’s nonnegotiable. And don’t make me remind you that if it wasn’t for me and a few of the other higher ups in Forest Service fighting for you guys, you’d still be stuck on a twenty person hotshot crew. One extra person is much better than fifteen extra people.”

Ian sighed. The National Interagency Coordination Center in Boise, Idaho, better known to most wildfire firefighters as simply “Boise,” coordinated the numerous federal and state resources available for fighting wildfires. Ian worked directly for the United States Forest Service, but Boise often directed firefighters to the fires where they were most needed, regardless of which government agency the firefighter technically worked for. Boise was command central, and what its big shots said was as good as law. They expected unquestioning compliance, and didn’t care in the least about Ian’s reasons for wanting to keep newcomers out of the Burning Claws Smokejumpers—his five person team. Boise barked out orders, and, if you wanted to keep your job, you fell in line.

So, Ian would fall in line. The U.S. Forest Service had been remarkably understanding when it discovered that Ian and his ragtag group of four men were bear shifters, but other employers might not be so welcoming. And Ian and his men needed work. Not for the money, but for the structure. They needed physical labor that they could throw themselves into, burning off the angst and energy that always churned just below the surface.

Until last year, the Burning Claws Smokejumpers had been part of a hotshot team. Hotshots were elite firefighters who fought on the front lines of giant forest fires. The work was so physically demanding that heart attacks from overexertion actually caused more deaths than fire itself. It was the perfect job for a group of bear shifters who needed to burn off steam, except for one thing—hotshot teams consisted of twenty men, which meant fifteen men on the team weren’t shifters and had no idea that Ian and his boys were hiding bears inside of them. And when you’re with a group of people, working closely in life and death situations for long stretches of time, it’s hard to hide who you truly are. The hammer was bound to drop eventually, and when one of the men got caught shifting, Ian thought their gig was up.

But the U.S. Forest Service hadn’t wanted to lose five strong, elite firefighters just because they were part bear. So a deal was struck. The U.S. Forest Service would smooth over the shifter scandal, acting like nothing unusual had happened. Then Ian and his men would be placed in the prestigious smokejumper program, where they could continue to fight fires in their own small crew, parachuting into remote locations that couldn’t be reached by car or truck. Ian jumped at the chance. Although a few of the guys had initially balked at the idea of jumping out of a plane, they had all eventually come around.

Smokejumper training had been the most physically demanding program any of them had ever experienced, but they rose to the challenge, and proudly graduated to fully trained smokejumper status before this year’s fire season got into full swing. Now, they were stationed at a permanent base in Northern California, eagerly awaiting their first assignment. But Ian knew his crew’s anticipation would be significantly dampened when they learned that Boise was sending another smokejumper to tag along on their missions.

“I’m sorry, Ian,” Jessica’s voice came over the phone again, breaking into his thoughts. “I tried to get Charlie stationed somewhere else, but Boise insisted. I’ll keep campaigning for a reassignment, but, in the meantime, you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

“When?” Ian asked.

“Tomorrow morning. They’ve got Charlie scheduled to fly into base around 0800 hours. You don’t have to throw a welcoming party, but at least try to be nice, okay?”

“Fine. I’ll try. But I don’t have to be happy about it. And the boys are going to kill me when I tell them.”

“They’ll deal. They always do,” Jessica said.

Ian grunted in return, then hung up the phone. He knew it wasn’t Jessica’s fault, so he tried not to be rude to her. But the news had turned his mood sour. He stormed from his second floor office down to the large, open hangar, where his four men were playing a rowdy game of hacky sack. They had turned it into a drinking game that involved chugging beer whenever the sack hit the ground, and from their current state of inebriation, it appeared that the game had been going on for quite some time.

“Upstairs, now,” Ian growled out, and they all looked up at him, surprised at his tone. Until that moment, the mood at their little base camp had been downright jovial. Ian resisted the urge to punch the wall as he climbed back up the stairs, his men following cautiously behind him. Ian rarely let anger get the best of him, so his men knew something major must have ticked him off.

“Shut the door, Zach,” Ian said to his second in command. Zach Brooks kicked the door shut and looked back up at his alpha, waiting for Ian to speak.

Ian surveyed the men in the room. They made up a fearsome group, with bulging biceps and legs so muscular they might as well have been made of steel. Even in their beer buzzed state of mind, they gave off an aura of confidence. And they weren’t going to be pleased at the announcement Ian was preparing to make.

“We’ve got a new crew member joining tomorrow,” Ian said, getting straight to the point. “His name’s Charlie, and he’ll be here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I tried to resist, but apparently Boise is being pretty hard nosed about this.”

As expected, a chorus of growls and protests rose in the room.

Hunter Wilson, the youngest in the group, and the one who had been caught shifting when they were still part of the hotshot crew, slammed his fist against the wall. “Damn it, I thought we had a deal with the Forest Service. We continue firefighting for them, and they let us fight in our own little group.”

“Yeah, well, you know how it goes in Boise. Forest Service can only do so much. Jessica, my contact at Forest Service, thinks she should be able to get Charlie reassigned within the month. In the meantime, just do your best to be nice to Charlie and not get him riled up.”

Luke Griffin and Trevor Hayes, the other two members of the Burning Claws Smokejumpers, kept silent. Although they said nothing, their displeasure was clearly etched into the scowls on their faces.

“Just get through the next month, guys,” Ian said. “Keep a low profile, like we always did on the hotshot crew. Everything will be fine.”

* * *

The next morning at eight a.m., Ian realized that everything was not, in fact, going to be fine. He had expected Charlie to be a tall, muscular man, like all of the other smokejumpers on his crew. Instead, a strong but petite woman hopped out the door of the Twin Otter airplane as it pulled to a stop in front of the hangar. The woman lugged two giant duffel bags of gear out of the plane and dragged them over near the hangar door. Then the pilot gave a short wave and turned around to taxi back to the runway. There were several other people in the plane that the pilot would be shuttling around to the different Northern California smokejumper bases.

Ian furrowed his brow as the woman walked confidently up to him and extended her hand.

“Hi, I’m Charlotte Moore, here to join the Burning Claws Crew,” she said. “Cute nickname, by the way. Did you boys come up with that all by yourselves?”

Her voice dripped with sarcasm. Ian shook her hand cautiously and didn’t say anything. She was a sassy one alright, and he could feel his bear turning restless at just the sight of her. Her piercing blue eyes took him in as his blue-green eyes did the same to her. She had her blonde hair pulled into a tight bun, and she wore athletic shorts and a fitted t-shirt. Every visible muscle on her body was toned to perfection from the hours of conditioning exercises smokejumpers endured on a daily basis. Behind him, Ian heard Zach let out a low whistle.

“Oh boy,” Zach said. “This just got even more interesting.”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow and glanced back and forth between Ian and Zach. “I’m sorry, is there a problem? I was told you’d be expecting me.”

Ian finally found his voice. “We were told to be expecting a new addition to the crew. It was supposed to be a guy named Charlie.”

“Oh, right. Some of the supervisors at the Bureau of Land Management insist on calling me Charlie. They think it’s an endearing nickname or something. But I really prefer Charlotte, if you don’t mind.”

Charlotte smiled brightly and waited for a response, but Ian and Zach just stared at her dumbly.

“Right, well, nice to meet you,” she said. “I can see you two aren’t big conversationalists, so I’ll just show myself around.”

Ian resisted the urge to growl as his bear demanded to be let out. Of all the shitty luck—not only were they being forced to take on a new crew member, but she was a female and his bear was already insisting on mating with her. Ian took a deep breath and tried to calm his pounding heart.

“You can’t stay here,” he said as Charlotte walked by him. Charlotte stopped and slowly turned around.

“And why not?” she asked.

“We can’t have a stranger around here, and especially not a stranger who’s a woman.”

Charlotte crossed her arms. “Why does it matter that I’m a woman?” she asked.

Ian rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t exactly tell her that she was causing his bear to stir. If he had to be around her constantly for the next month, he was going to have a hell of time keeping his inner beast in check.

“Look, it’s hard to explain. You just can’t stay here.”

Charlotte gave him an annoyed look. “Well, Boise wants me here. So unless you can convince them otherwise, I’m going to be around for a while. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find somewhere to stash all my stuff.”

Charlotte grabbed one of her duffel bags and marched off, heading in the complete opposite direction of the bunkhouse. But Ian didn’t try to stop her.

“Real smooth, boss,” Zach said. “I’d say you made a great first impression.”

“Shut up,” Ian said, storming off toward his office. “Jessica is going to get an earful about this.”

Charlotte finally found the bunkhouse and dragged her two duffels to one of the empty bunks on the far side of the room. None of the five guys on the Burning Claws Crew offered to help her. Not that she needed assistance. She could move her own bags just fine. But it would have been nice for them to introduce themselves and show her around or something. Instead, they all gawked at her like they had never seen a woman before.

“Fantastic,” she muttered to herself as she started setting up her few personal items around her bunk. “Of course I would be assigned to a group of nerds who have no idea how to act around a woman.”

She tacked a picture of her family to the wall near her bunk, stopping for a moment to admire the smiling faces staring back at her. Her parents held hands, and her dad draped his arm around her younger brother’s shoulder. Some days, it still seemed surreal to Charlotte that everyone in that photo except her was dead. Her family had died in a house fire five years ago. Charlotte had been away at school, finishing up her last semester of college. She had been working on a degree in chemistry, with plans to get a doctorate degree. But after losing her entire family, she completely changed her career plans. She had chosen to fight wildfires because she didn’t know if she could handle the emotions of being around a house fire after what she’d been through. But she hated fire with a vengeance. In fighting wildfires, she found her passion. She quickly advanced through the ranks to join a hotshot team and then become a smokejumper. Only twenty women in the country could claim the title of smokejumper, and Charlotte was damn proud of her accomplishment.

Apparently, her new crew didn’t share her sense of pride.

Charlotte sighed and decided to go find Ian, the crew chief. They had obviously started off on the wrong foot—which was totally his fault for acting like having a woman around was such a big deal. But Charlotte still wanted to make an effort to smooth things over. If she was going to be working with these goons all season, she wanted things to be a little less awkward.

As she went back out into the main hangar, three of the crew members abruptly stopped their game of hacky sack and stared at her like she had a third eye.

“What are your names?” she asked.

They kept staring back at her.

“How are you all this socially awkward?” she asked. Of course, they didn’t answer.

“Can one of you at least tell me where Ian is?” she asked. This time, one of the guys pointed toward a stairwell. Charlotte muttered a thanks and bounded up the stairs. She was almost beginning to wish she had stayed on her hotshot crew instead of becoming a smokejumper. At least the guys on the hotshot crew had known how to form words around females.

As Charlotte reached the top of the stairs, she saw a door that simply said “Chief” on the outside. She raised her hand to knock, but froze with her hand in midair when she heard Ian yelling.

“Jessica, we can’t have a woman on our crew. It’s bad enough we have to have an extra body around when we were promised we could be an exclusive group if we went through smokejumper training. But a woman? Our kind won’t mix well with her, if you know what I mean.”

Charlotte frowned. “Sexist pig,” she muttered, and turned around to leave. She had changed her mind about smoothing things over. She had no interest in talking with someone so adamantly against women on his crew. She’d heard that chiefs like him existed, but she thought the reports of men who thought women couldn’t handle firefighting were over-exaggerated. Apparently, she’d been wrong. As she stormed over to the stairs in a huff, she nearly ran into the other guy who had been standing outside when she arrived earlier today.

“Give him some time,” he said. “I know it sounds like he’s an asshole, but he’s genuinely worried about the dynamics of his crew being thrown off. It isn’t just because you’re a woman, although that certainly makes things even trickier. It’s because you’re… you’re another human.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, it takes a lot of people to fight a wildfire. Shocking, isn’t it, that another person got added to the crew? You can tell your chief that if everyone would act professional, then the dynamics of the crew would be just fine.”

The man sighed. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s a little more complicated than that. I’m Zach, by the way.” Zach stuck out his hand to Charlotte and she shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Zach,” Charlotte said. “It’s nice to know at least one person here knows how to speak. Maybe you can give a few pointers to the others.”

With that, Charlotte scooted past Zach and headed back to the bunkhouse. She’d had about all she could take of this group for one day.