Bear Necessities (Bad Boy Alphas): A Post-Apocalyptic Bear Shifter Romance (40 page)

Caleb never thought Vaughn would come up here, to Copper Harbor, looking for shifter blood. Never anticipated that his former friend would kill Caleb’s parents and take his younger brother hostage. It had taken him a year to find where they’d caged Jonah. And by then, the damage had been done. Vaughn had infected himself.

I should have killed him then and there, Caleb thought. Another thing Caleb could blame himself for. And he did. He’d had a choice in that fateful moment—he could free his brother or kill Vaughn. He knew he didn’t have time to do both. He had chosen to free Jonah, and in doing so, had doomed the world to this fate.

Overhead, the rain began, dampening Ivy’s scent and Caleb slowed, nudging his brother with his shoulder, and he slowed too, sniffing the air. It was charged with energy. He could feel it raising his fur. They had followed her for over a mile, and he knew, now, where she was headed. Where she likely was already. The thought made him colder than the rain pelting his fur.

Ivy had gone home.

Caleb shook himself, shifting back into human form, and Jonah did, too. The clearing where Ivy’s little homestead stood was at the edge of these woods and he didn’t need to go any further to know she was there.

“I have to go,” Caleb told his brother. He was signing his own death warrant, walking into a dozen of those armed men, but he couldn’t leave her there.

“No, Caleb, wait.” Jonah put a hand on his arm. “There’s something you don’t know…”

“I know she’s my mate,” he said, searching the tree line for any sign of life. “I don’t have a choice, Jonah.”

“Listen, this is Vaughn,” Jonah said. “He wants me.  Preferably alive. You too, if he can get you. They’ll use her as bait.”

“I know.” Caleb smiled grimly. “It’s working.”

“It’s suicide,” Jonah hissed, grabbing his brother’s arm as Caleb made to move. “But there’s a way to do this that isn’t! Will you listen to me for once before going off half-cocked and getting everyone killed!”

Caleb hesitated. His instincts were strong, his blood on fire. He needed to find her, needed to protect her. She was so close—and as a bear, he could kill at least half of them before they took him down. But half wouldn’t be enough to save her, would it?

“We can do this, brother,” Jonah spoke over the wind and rain. “Together.”

Caleb relented, turning and saying, “Tell me.”

Jonah did.

Ivy’s father had been a deer hunter. When he died, her freezer was still full of venison that he’d shot, dressed, and processed himself. He pretty much did everything in the barn. There was a pulley system set up so he could string the deer up and safely gut it before skinning it. He had taught her how to do it when she was twelve—she’d been such a tomboy. Most girls her age were into nail polish and boy bands. Ivy had been learning how to skin deer.

Now she was strung up like one in the middle of the bloody barn, hanging there as bait.

She just prayed that the rain had come in time—that Caleb hadn’t been able to pick up her scent and follow. She prayed that he would stay safe out there in the woods, alive and free.

Her arms ached, her shoulders stretched so far they felt like they were going to pop out of place. They had bound her wrists with the wire cable her father had used to hoist deer. It dug into her flesh. Her ankle throbbed, swollen, but she was on tiptoe, barely able to keep herself balanced. And of course, they’d stripped her naked before they strung her up, just so they could enjoy the show.

She was beyond humiliation at this point. There were more than a dozen eyes on her, Caleb had been wrong about that. Besides Vaughn, she had counted fifteen heads. But maybe she’d counted a few of them more than once? She wasn’t sure from this vantage point. They’d all come in to get a look at her—and a feel if Vaughn wasn’t looking.

She’d been groped and fondled so much that day, she was desensitized to it. Men’s hands everywhere, squeezing and kneading her flesh. And they all had that hungry look in their eyes—the one she’d seen on the man she’d shot and buried in her garden. She didn’t know if they wanted to fuck her or eat her—but she kind of hoped they’d do it in reverse order.

They all wore military garb—bloody fatigues, combat boots. They all had military rifles, too, big ones. Definitely big enough to kill a bear. Ivy closed her eyes and listened to the rain falling on the metal roof. The sun wasn’t down yet, but the sky was dark with the storm. It had swept in from the west like a dark curtain drawn over the world, and the men had put the barn lights on overhead.

She was strung up and lit up in a spotlight, like a beacon, calling to Caleb.

And she knew, now, that was what Vaughn had wanted all along.

“Come on, Captain,” the voice, full of gravel, came from behind her. “Just a little taste? Just one?”

A hand moved over her back and she cringed when it squeezed the meat of her behind.

“Can’t we at least try her out?” Another asked.

They weren’t all in the barn. She saw some of them milling around inside the house. She didn’t want to think about what the house looked like, after seeing—and smelling—the barn.

Vaughn spoke, from somewhere behind her, too. “I told you, not until he shows up. We need her scent strong and pure.”

Outside, the wind shifted, and the rain blew inwards. Ivy shivered, feeling it dot her skin with moisture.

“How do you know he’s even out there?” One of them complained.

Whiny bitches,
Ivy thought, filled with disgust at the men who surrounded her.
They’re all whiny little bitches.
She smiled, in spite of her situation.

“Trust me.” Vaughn snorted. “I’ve known him since we were kids. He’s going to do the honorable thing. He always does.”

Ivy knew he was talking about Caleb—had overheard him talking to his men about trapping the shifter. Because, according to Vaughn, they needed Caleb’s blood. His shifter blood. The infection these men had—whatever made them crave meat, and not just raw meat, but living, breathing meat—had been some sort of mutation gone wrong.

The shock of Caleb shifting from human to bear seemed a million years ago now. And the least of her concerns. The shock of finding Vaughn at the center of the group of men who had invaded her house had come as a greater surprise. Not that she’d had a lot of time to contemplate it. When she wasn’t being stripped, pushed, prodded, shoved or strung up, she was being taunted by this man or that.

At first, they liked to come look into her face, to watch her eyes when they told her what they were going to do to her. They liked to rub their crotches and lick their lips, and the smell of each and every one of them made her gag. They all smelled like rotting meat, like something long dead. They all looked like they hadn’t cleaned up after any of their kills. Their clothes were stained with blood and gore, and no one seemed to notice or care.

After Ivy started spitting in their faces—and one of them had gotten close enough to try to kiss her, and she’d rewarded him by biting off part of his lip and spitting in onto the blood-stained floor—they stopped approaching her from the front.

She’d almost preferred that, though, to the uneasy feeling that they were all watching her from behind. And occasionally, someone would grab her ass or shove a hand up roughly between her legs, trying to slide a finger inside.

“She tastes like honey,” someone said after doing the latter, and she heard him lick his fingers. “Can’t wait to eat that.”

“She’s a cow,” Vaughn’s voice cut through their low talking. “Would you fuck a cow?”

“He did fuck the cow, sir,” another man replied and Ivy cringed, closing her eyes against it. “Twice. While Donald was eating her eyes.”

“That’s what I’m gonna do with this one.” That rough hand again, probing, shoving fingers inside her. Ivy squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, wishing it was over. “I’m gonna fuck the cow—then I’m gonna eat the cow.”

“Well I’m gonna fuck her, too,” another man piped up. To Ivy, he sounded incredibly young. “Never fucked a girl before.”

Jesus Christ.

“Too bad this one’s gotta be your first.” Vaughn laughed. “Fat pussy ain’t tight pussy. Like throwing a fucking hotdog down a hallway. Better off fucking your fist, private.”

“Eh, she’s not so bad,” the youngster spoke up in Ivy’s defense and she felt another hand, this one gentler, stroking the back of her thigh. “I bet she’s gonna taste good. Inside and out.”

Jesus fucking wept.

Ivy tried twisting away from the touch and the wire above her head turned on its axis. She swung around, twirling, her toes barely touching the ground. Faces went by in a blurry circle, all of them dirty, bloody, laughing. She saw Vaughn standing there, arms crossed over his chest, grinning, looking utterly delighted at her predicament. That infuriated her and she lashed out with her foot, which just made her twirl faster on the cable.

“Whee!” The young one laughed, giving Ivy a little push, which widened the arc of her rotation from circle to ellipse.

“Don’t play with your food, private,” Vaughn snorted, and she felt him grab her from behind, bringing her wild swinging to a sudden stop. His mouth was against her ear, and she felt his hand move down to cup her mound. He spoke low, and she didn’t know if he was trying to keep them from hearing, or not.

“I’m going to let them all fuck you, you know.” His breath was fetid and she gagged, trying to turn away, but he held her fast against him, his finger moving between her slit. “Let’s see… how many cocks is that? And you’ve got… oh, three good holes at least. Plus your eye sockets. You should have seen Donald go at that cow…”

Ivy gagged, but nothing came up.

“And Lord only knows how many more wet, squishy holes they can cut in you to stick their cocks in.” Vaughn sighed. She tried not to remember what he looked like, the night he’d taken her virginity in the back seat of his father’s BMW. She’d told Caleb she had given it to him, but that wasn’t exactly true.

He’d proposed—also in the back seat of his father’s BMW—and had given her the ring. Apparently, he figured it worked like a key that would unlock the pussy-door. When she’d still refused him, Vaughn had shoved up her skirt, yanked her panties aside, and had taken what he wanted all along.

She could still see him in the dashboard light, sweating and rutting like a pig, his blonde hair cut like Justin Bieber that summer, flapping over one eye, his meaty hands keeping her wrists pinned to her sides so she couldn’t push him away.

“Frankly, none of that interests me,” he told her softly. “I already rolled you and flour and found the wet spot. Your flabby cunt couldn’t satisfy a horse… or a bear for that matter.”

Those words got to her. Ivy choked back a sob and she heard Vaughn chuckle.

“He’ll come for you,” Vaughn assured her. “Not because he wants you—no, sweetheart, don’t delude yourself. With all this padding, you’ll make a great meal, but you’re a terrible fuck.”

Rage rose up in Ivy, and she fought against it. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing his words had any meaning for her.

“No, he’ll come because he thinks it’s the right thing to do,” Vaughn assured her. “And when he does, he’ll get to watch it all. And I’ll finally get to be what he is.”

“You’ll never be what he is,” she hissed, opening her eyes as lightning flashed across the sky, revealing her ravaged garden in wet relief. “You could never, ever be like him. None of you can. You tried and failed, Vaughn. Just like you’ve tried and failed everything you’ve ever tried to do in your whole goddamned life!”

She knew she was provoking him—she felt the way his spine straightened in response to her words. She wished she could see his face, and the anger rising in his eyes. She wanted to provoke him, now that it had begun. She’d realized, finally, that the only way to end this was to get them to end her. Without Ivy hanging in the barn as bait, there would be nothing to tempt Caleb into this trap.

“You wouldn’t be anywhere if it weren’t for your father’s money,” she snapped, gasping when she felt his arm go around her neck. The weight of him yanked on the pulley overhead and her feet finally touched the ground. “You can’t be what Caleb is. Never in your tiny, miserable little life. You can keep trying all you want—but you’ll never measure up, needle dick.”

“Cunt!” He brought his knee up between hers from behind, hard against her pubis. If she’d been a guy, it would have taken her right the hell out. Even as a woman, it hurt so much she saw stars and it jarred her teeth together. “I’m going to eat your fucking heart out, sweetheart. And I’m going to make him watch.”

Lightning flashed outside, and Ivy saw him standing just outside the barn doors in the darkness. Caleb was holding the biggest rifle she’d ever seen, and there was another man beside him, slightly smaller in stature, holding a gun just as big. They were both soaked to the skin as they stepped into the circle of light.

Behind her, she heard men and guns at the ready. Ten of them, maybe more. When lightning flashed again, she saw the men from the house moving quickly, quietly down the garden rows, guns drawn. This was going to be a bloody massacre.

“Caleb,” she whispered, seeing the pain and the anger on his face when he looked at her. For the first time, she felt truly humiliated by her situation. Before that, she hadn’t let herself, not for a minute, be part of what they were trying to do to her. But when she saw Caleb’s face, his reaction, it finally broke her. “Caleb, don’t… please… just go! Leave me!”

“Oh, he won’t do that. He’s a fucking Eagle Scout, sweetheart. No Marine can stand to watch a woman suffer, even a fat bitch like you.” Vaughn chuckled. “Look, boys, we get a two-fer—both brothers for the price of one fat cow. Fuck Jack and his magic beans, this is the best trade ever!”