Promising Peter (Bad Boy Alphas) (Shrew & Company Book 6)

Peter Ursu is a Bear without a home—an alpha without a clan. As a mercenary, he pays his bills by eliminating shifter rogues, and in the past, he never lost any sleep over his occupation. But when his fated mate turns out to be the meek younger sister of the Ridge Bear clan alpha, he struggles to rein in his basest impulses so he doesn’t scare her away.

The thing is, Andrea Ridge doesn’t expect him to. In spite of Peter being a killer-for-hire, he’s one of the few Bears she feels completely at ease around. She’s used to being the weak link—the victim—and believes that when mating season passes, he’ll change his mind.

Sweet Drea is the soothing mate Peter craves, and bold Peter is the protective companion Drea needs. But if they can’t convince themselves that they deserve each other, they’ll miss the only shot they’ll ever get at true love.

As Andrea Ridge was a Were-bear with some senses that were a bit more sensitive than the average person’s, a whisper from two rooms away could have roused her from sleep. So when she woke to the sound of a cranking air conditioner in obvious need of repair and metallic banging somewhere outdoors, she didn’t know how she’d been able to sleep at all. Her apartment wasn’t loud like that.

Her eyes were slow to adjust to the room’s dim light, but she didn’t need to see. If she were at home, her heart wouldn’t have been thrashing like that. Fear wouldn’t have been pulling her gut into knots.

The air conditioner at her apartment in Durham was as quiet as could be, and that bumpy thing she was resting on certainly wasn’t her bed. The last time she’d checked, her expensive pillow-top mattress hadn’t felt like a ball pit beneath her.

She flexed her fingers and toes and fixed her gaze on the textured ceiling. Specks of glitter glistened throughout the rough surface, just like the ceiling in the bedroom of her childhood home. Best she could tell, she wasn’t there, either.

Not home. Not work. Where am I?

She rubbed her eyes and tried to remember.

She’d been behind her desk at the Shrew & Company investigation agency doing filing. Some lady had come into the office looking for Maria, one of the core staff members. Drea had given the lady the info she needed and sent her on her way. And then Drea had left.

She’d driven west to the mountains because Peter Ursu had called earlier in the day, saying he needed her help on some vague thing. She never asked for specifics. When the Shrews or one of their associates called, Drea just
went
, and she’d never hesitate to do a favor for Peter. The Romanian Were-bear was maybe a little out of her league, but that didn’t stop her from harboring the occasional fantasy.

She liked everything about him. How messy his blond hair was when he took his hats off. How his green eyes darkened when he told dirty jokes. His smile when he said her name in that falsely sensual way he always did. His restraint in fights. He was
so
strong, but rarely saw good reason to show off, just like any other good, could-be-alpha.

Of course she paid attention to him.

She closed her eyes to rub the rest of the sleep away.
I’m missing something here. Rewind…

The business had been mostly quietly that day before she’d left. The five Shrews were all out of the office, as they usually were, and Drea had been left to hold down the fort. She tended to like the solitude. Those ladies always managed to make Drea feel like she was
less than
.

Of course, they didn’t diminish her on purpose. That was Drea’s own hang-up. She was a born-Bear, and was supposed to be an intimidating, formidable figure, but instead, she was a woman who’d jump at the sound of a toilet being flushed.

Something clattered out on the street and her body jerked with fright.

“Damn.”

She cringed and clutched at her rapidly beating heart.

So skittish.

She hid her nervousness well most of the time, but her brother knew. She couldn’t hide anything from Bryan.

Bryan was the alpha of their group of Bear shifters settled in and around Swain County, North Carolina—near where Bryan and Drea had been born and raised. He was the
rightful
alpha—not just
an
alpha.

The group had recently fragmented due to a coup staged by Bryan with some help from the Shrews, including his mate Tamara—Peter and Soren’s younger sister.

The alpha Bryan had expelled—a sadistic, ambitious, criminally-minded sociopath named Gene—had infiltrated and wrested control of the group back before Drea had even hit puberty. He was a made-Bear, and shouldn’t have had the natural power to lead the group, but he compensated in other ways. He had a violent streak and a knack for breaking people.

He’d certainly broken Drea a time or two.

Gene was still out there somewhere raising hell, but Drea trusted that Bryan would nail him eventually. She just needed to be vigilant until he was captured.

But given her current circumstances, she wondered if perhaps her vigilance hadn’t been enough. For all she knew, Gene had grabbed her again—maybe sold her off to another circus for freaks like her where she’d be forced to shapeshift into her bear form
or else
.

Turning her stiff body slowly, she regulated her breathing to stave off the hyperventilation she was so prone to. She put her socked feet on the floor and wriggled her toes again.

She wasn’t tied up. Her hands and feet were free, so she doubted she was in any imminent harm, but she’d been wrong before.

“Where are my shoes?” she whispered.

She was pretty sure she’d been wearing shoes.

She remembered then.

In the mountains, she’d gone to the bunker where Peter had supposedly been stationed to guard some the buddies of Gene that Bryan and the Shrews had captured. The memories of what happened next were less clear.

Pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes, she groaned softly.

Somehow, Peter had gotten trapped inside the full moon cage, and she’d let him out. He’d given her a soda, and they’d talked about stupid shit, and then…

She had no idea.

She shifted her weight onto her feet and stood slowly, holding her hands out behind her in case she should go toppling backward.

So dizzy.

After a few seconds, her brain cleared enough for her to walk. She moved to the small window over the radiator and pulled back the flimsy curtain.

There was a brick wall about ten feet across the alley. They were a story, maybe a story-and-a-half up. She couldn’t open the window. Couldn’t crane her neck enough to see where the street was or if there were any stars. She didn’t have enough information to reckon her location from.

Have to think of some other way.

She patted her pockets in search of either of her phones. One was connected to the Shrew’s office lines. The other was her personal device. Her watch, which connected to her phone and could make and take calls, was missing, too.

There was nothing in the pockets of her jeans—not even the key card for the agency building or the dollar bills she usually had on hand to get Cokes from the vending machine.

She closed her eyes again and squeezed them tight.
They took everything.

“But Peter was there…” she mused. Peter killed people for a living. She probably wasn’t supposed to know that. Everyone thought they were doing her such a favor by trying to keep her in the dark on things, but she managed to piece pictures together in spite of them withholding information.

Peter wasn’t the kind of Bear who’d let anyone get the jump on him.

So what happened?

Pulling in a much-needed breath, she scanned the room around her, hating herself for not having been vigilant sooner. If she’d been thinking like a Shrew, she would have assessed the room the moment she’d opened her eyes and probably already devised two different plans for a safe exit.

Alas, Drea was just a receptionist and would probably always be just a receptionist. She didn’t have the instincts—didn’t have the right kind of anger to fight back. All she had was a resistant inner beast that made her second-guess every move she made and every word she spoke.

Facing the room again, she made out a twin bed with a white metal frame. Nearby, a particleboard bookcase stood empty save for a single book. Drea padded over to read the cover.

“Just a phone book.” A
Baltimore
phone book.

“Baltimore…” she whispered
.

She didn’t know anyone in Baltimore, so she mentally filed that information away and kept scanning. No overhead lighting. No lamp on the banged-up wooden nightstand.

Two adjacent doors sat in the corner opposite the window. Light glowed beneath one. She guessed that the other was to a closet.

She walked to the corner, put her hand on the closet knob, and then reconsidered.

If there was a light in that closet, she didn’t want to risk turning it on. For that matter, she didn’t even want to risk opening the door. Knowing her luck, the compartment would be filled to the brim and half the contents would tumble out, crashing loudly and sending her captor running toward her.

She wasn’t ready for that.

Wringing her hands, she made her way across the faded rug, cringing and halting at the creak of the hardwood beneath her feet.

With her heart thrashing and pulse pounding in her ears, she waited stiffly for the sound of encroaching footsteps.

One breath.

Two.

Another.

She heard no noise elsewhere in the place, so she kept moving.

With her hand on the doorknob, she paused to make some sort of plan. She still didn’t have one. She wasn’t using instinct so much as taking the obvious path. There was nowhere to go except through that door. She couldn’t be the sitting duck she was so used to being. For once in her life, she needed to be proactive.

She could either open that door and see where she was, force the window open to jump and hope her shapeshifter body could handle the fall, or she could stay on that bed until someone came to fetch her.

“Not gonna just wait here,” she whispered. “Not gonna be that woman anymore.”

You’ll always be that woman
, her inner bear chided.

Drea closed her eyes tight and gave her head a shake. The voice would go away, as always. The bear would get bored and leave her alone.

She took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the doorknob, and then turned it.

To her Bear ears, the grating of the knob’s inner workings was loud and bombastic, but her ears were better than most. Even better than Bryan’s. Her nose, on the other hand, wasn’t so great.

“Keep going,” she whispered to herself. “You’re just being a scaredy-cat.” She cringed. “Scaredy-
Bear
.”

She stopped turning the knob, though.

“Maybe being scared is smart. I have no weapon, no plan.”

She canted her head and chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“But I need info. Can’t strategize without info. Whatever happens, happens.”

She opened the door a hair and put her eye to the crack. And then, reflexively, she opened it more to see take in the full image of the seated blond figure in the hallway.

“Peter! You’re okay.”

No response from Tamara’s mercenary brother except a blink.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “What are
we
doing here?”

He sat in a spindly wooden chair with his arms folded over his broad, naked chest, his jean-clad legs spread wide, and his pale feet bare.

His expression was a neutral blank, but his nostrils flared and his chest vibrated with a Bear’s growl.

Swallowing, she took a step back, wondering if she’d missed some clue of danger.

She dragged her hand across her damp brow and shifted her weight. “It’s just you. I…I thought I got kidnapped by one of Gene’s lieutenants again or something.”

“Mmm.” He closed and reopened his bloodshot green eyes in what was more or less a long blink, and then fixed his gaze on her face.

Still so neutral and unreadable. His expression was usually a little more open. Both of the Ursu brothers were gregarious sorts. Merry murderers, they were. Drea had always thought that was funny. Bryan and Tamara—not so much.

“Are we okay?” she asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

“What happened? Why are we here?”

He forced a long exhalation through his parted lips and stood. “Are you hungry?”

He walked away before she could answer.

Confused, she followed. “Hungry? I…well,
no
I don’t think so.”

“Eat anyway. You were knocked out for a while.”

He led her into what was obviously the rest of what the apartment had to offer. The unit evidently only had the two rooms, and probably a bathroom somewhere. The kitchen and living room—such that it was—merged into one open space.

A sofa, turned toward another window facing the brick wall, was piled high with blankets and pillows.

Has he been sleeping there?

“Here,” he said.

She turned her attention back to Peter and the wrapped sandwich he held out to her.

“Roast beef,” he said. “You like roast beef.”

A statement, not a question, as if the words were sure fact and not just an assumption.

She took the sandwich because she
did
like roast beef, but that wasn’t commonly known. She furrowed her brow. “You said I was out for a while. Why was I out?”

“Because I knocked you out.”

The sandwich fell from her fingers, and like all the other competent Bears in their entourage, Peter’s reflexes engaged right on time. He caught and handed the sandwich back to her.

“What?” she asked lamely.

He drew in a deep breath, ground his teeth, and fixed his darkened gaze on her. “I said
I
knocked you out.”

“How? And why?”

“How is easy. You left your drink uncovered.”

“You put something in my soda?”

“Yes.”

She tried to hand him back the sandwich.

“Eat it,” he snarled.

She clutched the deli package against her belly and stared at the floor. She didn’t know what was happening—she couldn’t put the pieces together fast enough. Something was missing. She
always
felt like something was missing. Ever since puberty when the bear inside her started piping up.

“Fuck.” He moved away from the table. “The
why
should be obvious.”

“You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t think so. I’m not exactly the swiftest lady at the agency.”

His back was turned, so she set the sandwich down on the table and took a moment to itemize the rest of the contents on the surface. The overturned sub shop bag. Lots of wrappers from food already consumed. Some empty water bottles. One of Peter’s guns, minus the magazine. The contents of Drea’s pockets, minus her silly little pocketknife. Both phones were there, though, and her watch, too.

She pulled her gaze up to his inscrutable mien. “Are we running from something?” she asked.