Claim the Bear (11 page)
Shira approached, giant paws silent against the plush carpet. A panther smile stretched her face as she pressed her claws against Breshia’s neck. If she moved, she’d slit her own throat. Wheezing, she tried to think of Dillon. Of how happy he’d made her. Of how much he’d changed her life. She was meant to meet him like this, so she could have those blindingly beautiful moments in her life before it ended. She no longer was scared of death. She hadn’t lived a gray life after all, but one vibrant in the end.
She was the lucky one.
If Shira was waiting for her to submit, she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. She’d rather die than go back to the cowardly lioness she used to be. With a look of pure hatred, and with the knowledge that her doom was coming, Breshia lurched forward and clamped her teeth into Shira’s paw.
A deafening roar sounded from the lioness, and as Shira reared back her claws to finish her, Breshia closed her eyes and thought of Dillon’s smile.
Shira’s weight disappeared and a mass of weight hit the ground next to her. She opened her eyes in time to see Shira hit the wall and fall to the ground like she had no bones at all. The force of it rattled the house. Dillon stood over Breshia, fur matted with red and a snarl on his lips to expose impossibly long canines. They were dripping with crimson. If she didn’t know it was him—if she couldn’t feel how much he cared about her—she would’ve been terrified. That scared lioness was gone now though, and in her place was an animal bound and determined to protect her new clan.
Step after powerful step shook Dillon’s dark fur and rattled the floor. When he bunched his muscles to lunge at Shira, Breshia curled in on herself and squeezed her eyes tightly closed.
A victorious roar bellowed from her mate, and the call was answered by another bear’s roar in Abigail’s nursery. More sounded outside and even more from the surrounding woods and suddenly, the night was filled with the sound of the Hells Canyon shifters’ triumph.
Logan shook out his red mane from the doorway and stared at her, waiting for…something.
She stood as Dillon roared again, and inhaled a long breath. Tipping her chin up, she joined in, and Logan roared a deeper tone.
The battle was done. It wasn’t one she’d wanted, but the loss of the lions was on Shira. It was on their blindness and stubbornness. It was on the prides’ inability to adapt or compromise. It was on their audacity in trying to kidnap the child of their enemy. Their extinction wasn’t of Breshia’s doing, like Shira had said. It was on generations of abuse and arrogant alphas.
And as her voice faded with that of her new clan, she knew she’d chosen right. She’d chosen to defend people who deserved her fealty.
Panting, Breshia looked up to find Muriel in her human form, battle-weary and bloody, emerging from the nursery as she cradled her tiny lion cub. The excitement and stress of the battle must’ve triggered the little shifter’s change. Muriel set Abigail down gently and Logan padded slowly over to his daughter, pride in every facet of his feline face. Long claw marks decorated his ribs and belly, but none of that seemed to pain him when he looked at his cub.
A ferocious sounding little snarl escaped Abigail’s lips as Logan lowered his giant, block head to the tiny cub. She ran her body down the side of his face, then down his mane.
Dillon approached Breshia slowly, as if he didn’t want to frighten her, and rubbed his cheek against hers and closed his eyes. It seemed like he just wanted to touch her to reassure himself she was really here—really okay.
With a sigh, he wrapped his paw around her side and drew her in close. Together they watched as Logan cleaned his daughter with long strokes of his sandpaper tongue.
If lion shifters had any chance at all, it started with Abigail being raised to appreciate diversity and to be kind to others. To be strong and loyal like the bears who would help raise her.
Breshia rubbed her face against Dillon’s thick neck and inhaled. The intoxicating scent of fur and the man she loved settled the adrenaline pumping through her blood.
She’d kept everyone out of her heart until he came along and broke her wide open. She would share her life like he wanted her to, because he deserved all of her. Her future stretched on and on now, and without a doubt, she would heal under her mate’s tender and patient affection. And someday, when she and Dillon were ready, they would raise their cubs around the people they cared about. And lion or bear, her children’s animals wouldn’t matter. These people who had already touched her life so completely didn’t care either way.
Her heart filled with warmth and adoration for the gift Dillon had offered her.
He’d given her a place in his clan and a purpose, but it was so much more than that.
He’d given her a family.
Final installment in the Hells Canyon Shifters series
Heart of the Bear
Coming January 2015
KDP All-Star Series – Bestselling Series
Bear Valley Shifters - Complete Series - Available Now
The Witness and the Bear (
Book 1
)
Devoted to the Bear (
Book 2
)
Return to the Bear (
Book 3
)
Betray the Bear (
Book 4
)
Redeem the Bear (
Book 5
)
For exclusive sneak peeks and new releases, sign up for T. S. Joyce’s Bear Shifter Romance Newsletter
HERE
.
THE WITNESS AND THE BEAR
(Bear Valley Shifters, Book 1)
Read on for a sneak peek of the thrilling first book in the bestselling Bear Valley Shifters series.
Chapter One
Today was as good a day to die as any.
Jimmy’s fingers dug into her shoulder as he shoved her out the window. “Hannah! Stop fighting me. If you don’t run now, it’ll be too late.”
Another tremendous crash rattled the room. Stone’s men were coming in sooner than later and the men protecting her were sitting ducks to the hell on the other side of that door. Jeremy watched her with an eerie glow to his dark eyes. Fluorescent lights and dingy walls had that effect on him. Braced against the door, he snarled, “Get out of here!”
“And what about you?” she snapped, lunging for the window and gripping the edges with straining fingers. “Huh? They’ll kill you! There is no end to their reach. They’ll keep coming until I’m dead and I’m tired of running. Just let them have me.”
Defeated. After the last time they’d found her, she’d skimmed the insanity train. Paranoia ruled her life. And not the I-smoked-a-joint-and-now-the-government-is-after-me kind. This fear didn’t end with the high. It stretched on and on until she would drown in it. Burn in it. Fall into the darkness wider than the known world and tumble forever, hitting every rock crevice on the way down until her mind was shredded. She was so damned tired of it.
“I’ll never forgive you,” Jeremy said. His cold eyes threw ice that pierced her heart. Gray hair cropped short, wrinkles that textured his face, and most of them were probably from trying to keep her safe for the past year. Witness protection gone horribly wrong. He’d given too much for her to give up now. He knew it, and begrudgingly, she knew it too.
“Jimmy,” she breathed, tears burning her eyes.
His grip on her shirt tightened and he shook his head, slow. Bright blue eyes filled with sadness so deep, she didn’t know how he could draw a breath. Jimmy and Jeremy wouldn’t come with her this time. Their last stand would be here, in this filthy apartment in Ashland, Oregon.
Crash.
Plaster spewed from the walls and ceiling and Jimmy shoved her out onto the fire escape. “Climb down and run. Don’t stop until you know they aren’t following. Take this.” He shoved a Glock into the palm of her hand, the metal cold against the perspiration of fear. “Shoot ‘em if you’re cornered.”
Jeremy flew backward with the force of the next blow and Jimmy shoved her in the back. She fell forward, catching the grate with her knees and crying out at the sudden pain. Gunfire peppered the tiny space and she tumbled down the stairs, caught herself on the railing at the bottom and shot one last look to the window, then pounded the pavement with the soles of her sneakers.
Jeremy who’d given up his life as a civilian to protect her. Jeremy, who’d calmed her fears when Stone’s men got too close. Jeremy, who’d become more like father figure than friend. He was trapped in the middle of the rattling explosions.
A sob wrenched from her throat. The last good parts of her would die with him. His death was on her. She’d made the choice to testify against Stone and his men, and that decision had caused an earthquake that rippled through her life and killed people she cared about. If she lived a minute or a decade, she’d never curse another person with her love.
A hand reached out from the darkness and wrapped around her throat like a manacle. She tried to scream but her wind wouldn’t come through his crushing grasp and as the man emerged from the shadows, the flickering street light illuminated a long scar across his forehead.
Spinning, he slammed her against a brick wall hard enough to rattle her skull and blur her vision. Sparks whipped this way and that through the edges of her vision and warmth trickled down her neck. Yanking her long, honey colored hair out of the way, the man grunted a satisfied noise and the crack of metal on metal was deafening as he cocked his gun.
Definitely one of Stone’s enforcers. No one else would be interested in the scar that marked her.
Gravel met the flesh of her cheek as he slammed her to the ground, and when his weight disappeared, she rolled over. No way was she going to die with a bullet in her back. The least this asshole could do was look in her eyes when he pulled that trigger. Gunfire had tapered off from above, and the apartment behind his shoulder had gone dark. Her breath trembled, filling the night air with the traitorous proof of her fear. Heart hammering against her sternum, she glared at the sneering man.
“Go to hell,” he said, lifting the barrel.
“You first,” she snarled, pulling the trigger on the Glock Jimmy had gifted her.
His gun discharged at the exact same moment as hers, and pain ripped through her, shredding her insides until there was nothing left. The man sank to his knees with a shocked look as his unloaded weapon clattered to the cracked pavement. She struggled to breathe as he brought searching fingertips to his chest and pulled them back crimson.
The last thing she’d do on this earth was rid it of an evil man. Pride surged through her as he fell forward. Her hand lay limp in front of her, smattered with blood. It felt detached from her body. Everything did. Nothing worked except her lungs, dragging air in, and pushing it out, and even that small movement was failing.
The man’s eyes dimmed until the dark orbs saw nothing at all. Her lungs rattled with every breath, but she smiled despite the pain. Stone won the war, but at least she’d go out on this tiny victory.
Her vision shattered inward and she winced at the blinding pain.
Nearby, an animal roared loud enough to rattle her bones.
If it was her death the creature sought, he was too late.
She was already gone.
THE WITNESS AND THE BEAR
Available Now