Stone Bear: Sentinel (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Stone Bears Book 1) (6 page)

So who, or what, was he guarding, and what was he protecting it from?

Something much bigger than she was being led to believe was going on in Genesis Valley.

Her attention focused back as Marcus spoke again.

“Gabriel is the best at what he does, yes. Now, you say that only the one bear was there. Tell me, why do you think Ben would say that the two of them were fighting in bear form?”

“He hates Gabriel. That much was clear. But also, unless there were video cameras there, Ben wouldn’t know any better. So he may have assumed it. When the other shifter recovered consciousness, he may have just told Ben that Gabriel shifted. Or maybe he wants Gabriel in trouble. If he told you that Gabriel had caused a lot of the damage in bear form, you might have prevented him from going back there. And while I don’t think the Sapphires were hiding anything in the apartments, they are definitely up to something. I picked up on that much at least.”

She leaned back and waited for Marcus to digest all she had said. To his credit, it didn’t take him long at all.

“I think your last theory makes the most sense. Let’s run with it. For now, I’ll play along with Ben, pretend that I’ve disciplined Gabriel. With a little bit of luck, perhaps they’ll buy it, and slip up in a way that will let us catch a break.”

Caia didn’t think it was overly likely that they would slip up now, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt.

“With that being a dead end, how do you propose to continue?” he asked.

There was no malice in the question this time, which she appreciated. It would appear her rationale had calmed down Marcus for the time being, or at least ensured that his anger wasn’t directed at her.

“We have word that one of the Ridgebacks has exhibited some of the same characteristics as the others, so we’re going to try and follow him, see if he gives us some more information. If we knew the whereabouts of the Opal crew, it would be so much easier. I don’t understand how six bears just up and disappear. It’s not like the valley is that big a place. Nobody has reported seeing any of them, despite information being given out and broadcast everywhere.”

Then another thought struck Caia. “Could they have fled the valley entirely? Leaving us behind?”

“It’s possible,” Marcus mused. “But usually once a shifter arrives, it’s because they’re no longer welcome anywhere else, and are given a last chance to survive here. So if they turned up elsewhere, human law enforcement would find them quite quickly, I would assume. No, I think they’re still here. Whatever is going on, they’re a part of it.”

Caia nodded. “Well, we’ll continue looking, and I’ll update you as we proceed.”

“Excellent.” Marcus voice took on a more formal note now. “That will be all Miss Rowan.”

She gave him a nod and left the office before he could ask her anything else, especially about Gabriel.

Gabriel

“Good morning gentleman.”

The other two men in the office looked up as he entered, but neither rose from the desks they were sitting at.

“Boy, you two both look like you’re working hard.”

“Yeah, surprisingly enough, not all of us get to go gallivanting around the city any time we please.”

“Raphael, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that was jealousy in your voice!” Gabriel smiled at the second-in-command of the Stone Bears.

“Oh, it’s not? What pray tell
is
it that you hear then?”

“Why, the respect and acknowledgement that, I, as your glorious leader, deserve.” He swept his arms out wide, as if welcoming them to pay homage to him.

Uriel, the third shifter of the team, snorted and threw a pen at his “glorious leader.” “Spare us your drivel please, good sir. I must finish this mountain of paperwork.”

Gabriel dodged the airborne object with ease, moving his big frame faster than anyone else his size was likely able to do. He could have easily grabbed it and sent it flying back, but now Uriel was without a pen to write, and that, to him, was much more entertaining.

“It’s rather ridiculous, isn’t it, at how much paperwork we have to fill out as simple guards.”

Raphael arched an eyebrow. “After the money they spent training us, I’m not that surprised. I would want to know what we’re up to as well, and to ensure we’re doing everything our contracts necessitate. For all they know, we could be doing nothing but partying when we’re not picking up.”

“Raph, that’s exactly what you do though!” Gabriel said, mock confusion on his face. “Are you telling me you
lie
in your reports?” He brought a hand to his mouth in shock.

“That wasn’t very nice,” Raph complained.

“Ah stuff it. Nobody wants to hear it anyway.”

Raph smiled. “So, what are you up to now that you get to beat up Sapphires and leave us to do the boring work?”

Gabriel looked at him. “You guys know about that?”

He hadn’t expected the word to get out that quickly.

“Oh yeah,” Uriel said, chiming in. “Everyone knows by now.”

“How the hell did the word get out so quickly? That only happened yesterday afternoon!”

“Marcus was pissed, because Ben reported that you shifted and blew up the entire ground floor. So he was yelling about it until Caia set him straight on the truth.”

Gabriel didn’t say anything for a moment. Then “Caia set him straight…on my behalf?”

“Yes sir. I was waiting in the back of his office to give him our latest report on the stones, and I overheard the entire thing,” Raph said. “She must think you’re an okay person. Doesn’t say much about her though,” he joked.

Gabriel had to reach out and grasp the edge of his desk to fight back his bear. The instant-anger response at a sheer joke astonished him. The strength of it caught him off guard, and if he wasn’t so highly trained, Gabriel doubted he could have stopped himself from going after Raphael. Considering the other shifter was the closest thing to a best friend he had, that scared Gabriel.

What if he found himself in a situation where someone else, someone he wasn’t as close to, made a remark about her? Would he be able to contain himself? The fact that he couldn’t answer that question immediately scared Gabriel more than he was willing to admit. Some of what was going on in his brain must have shown, because Raphael’s expression turned serious instantly.

“Everything okay Gabriel?” It was rare that either of the other two Stone Bears used his full name in an informal setting such as this one. It meant that they were concerned, or trying to get his attention.

He looked up, meeting the green of his friend’s eyes, noting the inquiring look. Raphael wanted to know what was going on, but if Gabriel said everything was okay, he wouldn’t press him about it. That was one reason why he valued Raphael’s friendship so much.

“I think so.” He straightened, taking a deep breath and releasing his hand from the desk. “Yeah, I think so,” he repeated, looking around the room, unwilling to meet that emerald stare again. He was too worried that Raphael might see the truth, which at that moment meant that he had no fucking idea if he was going to be okay or not.

But then another thought penetrated his anger-fogged brain. Caia had stood up to Marcus. For him. She had defended him to her boss, who could be a very intimidating man when he was angry. Gabriel had seen Marcus angry before, and even he preferred to be somewhere else.

“Did Marcus believe her? Because it’s the truth. The last thing I wanted was to catch any shit over it, so I put him down as easily as I could.”

“From the sounds of it, yeah. And since you haven’t been called in there yet to answer for your sins, I’d say it worked.”

Gabriel flopped down heavily into the sturdy, steel-reinforced chair behind his own desk. The leather fabric still groaned and hissed as air fled from beneath his body weight.

“Well I’ll be damned. I owe that woman,” he said, a lopsided smile on his face as he pictured her correcting Marcus. “I almost wish I could have seen it. Marcus
hates
being corrected,” he said with a laugh, the others joining in after a moment.

The office they shared wasn’t that large, but it housed three desks in a flat U-shaped pattern. The door was on one end of the rectangular room, with Gabriel’s desk on the other, and Raphael and Uriel’s desk facing inward on each side. It was the lair of the Stone Bears, and where they spent much of their time between pickups, unless they were training in the on-site gym located next to their offices.

The phone on his desk began to ring.

Speaking of pickups…

The other shifters immediately shut up and looked over at Gabriel. That phone only ever rang for one reason. Gabriel reached down and put the receiver to his ear.

“Go,” he said simply.

“This is Michael. Requesting pickup, Shaft A, Side Corridor 1-C.”

“Pickup team is enroute. Whitepine. Shaft A, Side Corridor 1-C. Acknowledge.”

He waited for the person on the other end to repeat the information and then he hung up.

“Time to do our job,” he said, placing the phone down carefully.

Raphael and Uriel were already on their feet. They waited for Gabriel and fell into step behind him as they exited their office. The office itself wasn’t attached to the rest of the mansion complex. It was in fact a singled-off room inside the garage. This allowed them to easily and immediately leave for an extraction.

Three large, military-looking trucks were parked in a line, taking up a large portion of the garage. The rest was filled with their personal vehicles, supply crates, the office, and a fully equipped weight room and sparring mat, built to bear-shifter sizing.

“Where we going?” Raphael asked over the intra-truck communication system that linked the three vehicles together.

“Diamond mines today fellas. Michael says they have a stone ready for extraction at their main site, Shaft A.”

“Oh the Diamond boys. They sure do dig up a lot of dragon stones, don’t they!” Uriel said from his truck as he fired up the engine.

“That they do, that they do. We would be a lot poorer if they weren’t able to be so productive.”

The Diamond Crew, formally known as the Whitepines and lead by their Alpha Michael, were the most productive crew in the mountains. They held a fair lead over the Ruby Crew, and a sizeable one over the rest of the crews.

“Hey, do you guys ever wonder about all these stones?” Raphael asked as the trucks rolled forward, exiting the garage.

“What do you mean?” Gabriel was in the lead truck, making his way toward their destination with practiced ease.

“Well, think about it. We do a retrieval, on average, every other day, from the various crews.”

“So?” Uriel sounded completely confused, though Gabriel couldn’t blame him, since he didn’t have any better sense of where Raphael was going with his thoughts.

“That’s almost two hundred stones a year. That’s a lot of dragons. So, where are they?”

Gabriel frowned. That was a good question. The stones that they were tasked with retrieving, despite the precious-gem classification of the mining crews, were anything but. They were dragon stones. Whenever a dragon died or decided to relinquish their hold on life, they would assume their dragon form. As the life left them, they turned to rock. Encased in the middle of that rock was their heart stone.

Diamond, Ruby, Emerald, Jade, Onyx, Amethyst, Sapphire, Opal and more. They resembled the jewels visually, but when a shifter or someone with special eyewear saw them, it was obvious they were anything but. The stones radiated immense amounts of heat, even if the stone itself was cool to the touch.

Genesis Valley was rumored to be the birthplace of dragons, which is why there were so many stones found from dragons who had been born here and returned to die many thousands of years later.

“Well,” he said now into the silence as the others waited for him to speak. He was their senior, and had been at it for longer than they had by several years. “I’ve never had it absolutely confirmed to me that the dragons are able to turn the stones into eggs and hatch new dragons from them. We’ve just always assumed that’s what they do.” He finished speaking and swerved his truck to the left to avoid a large pothole.

“Of course. Why else would we get paid ridiculous amounts of... dammit!” Raphael swore as his truck hit the pothole. “Why else would we get paid so well to be glorified babysitters?” he finished, maneuvering his truck back into line.

“We may just be babysitters now,” Gabriel told him, “but it wasn’t that long ago that the last of the renegades were still trying to take the stones.

“That was what, thirty years ago now Gabe? Come on, you can’t still believe that there’s any threat now! Mirrnolax was killed. The dragons said so!”

“And we all know dragons to just be the completely truthful and forthcoming sort, don’t we Uriel?” Gabriel responded. The youngest member of the Stone Bears was a little bit too trusting for his liking. “How do we know they told us the truth about Mirrnolax? Maybe they just imprisoned him, assuming that would do the job. Or maybe there’s another renegade out there still.”

As if to put truth to his words, Gabriel began to scan the road and sky a little bit more carefully. If there truly
was
a renegade dragon out there, their jobs would be a lot more dangerous than they were now.

“You know, I never did understand the idea behind the renegades,” Uriel said, half-accepting his boss’s word, but still seeking more knowledge.

“Think of it this way, Uriel. Have you ever met a criminal before?”

“Sure. Hell, half the bears in the Valley are criminals fleeing from the rest of the country. Even we three don’t have clean sheets.”

“Exactly. We all did things we aren’t proud of. But we learned to accept the rules. The Dragon Council wants to work peacefully with the humans, like many of the shifters outside of the Valley. The renegades want to do as they please, and use their strength to rule the humans.”

“Do you really think they could do something like that, Gabe? Rule over all the humans?”

“If they had enough dragons, of course they could Uriel.”

“And where do you think they get those dragons from?” Raphael chimed in.

“The stones,” Uriel replied, realization setting in. “So we have to protect the stones to prevent the renegades from getting their hands on them and raising an army.”

“When you boil it down, that’s exactly it,” Gabriel told him. “That’s why they put us through such rigorous training, and why we get paid so much money.”

“Hazard pay,” Raphael said solemnly.

“Exactly. So just because nothing has happened in a long time, let’s not also forget one more thing.”

“What’s that?” Uriel asked, curiosity mixing with unease.

“To a dragon, these past thirty years or so are nothing more than a heartbeat,” he said happily.

“Wow, you’re just full of good news today, aren’t you boss!” Raphael said.

“You don’t know the half of it boys. Starting soon it’s just going to be the two of you.”

Gabriel paused to let his two associates voice their astonishment and disbelief before he explained what was going on with the new position and what it entailed.

“The Kedyns need someone to be able to act with a bit more freedom, and not be weighed down with the responsibility of this position,” he finished.

“So you’re no longer going to be a Stone Bear?” they asked almost in conjunction.

“That’s what I thought at first too, Raph. But as it turns out, it actually looks like the Stone Bears are going to be expanding and encompassing this Sentinel program as well. So I’ll be in charge of everything. I’ll still make pickups with you, though likely not as often. But you two will also have at least one new recruit, so Raph, you’ll be in charge of training them.”

Raphael acknowledged that idea thoughtfully. Gabriel knew he would. The other shifter had been with him for almost five years now, whereas Uriel was only in his second year with the Stone Bears. Those extra few years meant Raphael had begun itching for more command and responsibility. Until now, Gabriel had been unable to grant it to him. There simply wasn’t anything to do.