The Island Of Bears: A BBW Paranormal Romance (10 page)

I paused again, contemplating my realization, and before I could continue, my phone began going off. It was Holden.

Getting up from the picnic table, I answered right away, telling him that we needed to talk immediately. “You have some serious, serious, serious explaining to do as to why you didn’t tell me about what happened to Dr. Bradley.”

While I paced away from Cora on one crutch to get a little privacy, I heard Holden groan quietly, but he didn’t speak right away. When he did, after a long moment, his deep voice was quiet as well, though firm and resolute at the same time.

“I’m sorry, Haley. But this changes nothing about my decision to take you back to New York.”

That was where he was dead wrong. I was definitely
not
going back to New York, and even while we spoke, I was formulating a plan to make that so.

*

Still speaking quietly through the phone, Holden continued. “I
am
very sorry that I didn’t tell you about Dr. Bradley, but I didn’t want to ramp up your anxiety any higher than it already is, and needlessly to boot, since I’m very confident that what happened to Dr. Bradley was just some sort of a fluke. It
won’t
happen to you, once it’s safe enough for me to bring you back here.”

“That’s exactly what Cora just got done telling me, but—”

“Cora is right.”

“But the two of you don’t
know
that what happened to Dr. Bradley was just a fluke, Holden. You don’t know that. So, how can you possibly even think about taking me back to New York when there’s even the slightest chance of the same thing happening to me?”

“Because I think there’s a much greater chance of something very bad happening to you if you stay here on the island. Taking you back to New York is a calculated risk, and a risk that I didn’t calculate lightly.”

Mulling over his logic, I didn’t respond, and he continued.

“Do you think that I
want
to send you away? Do you think this is easy for me? I haven’t been lying when I’ve said that I already care about you deeply. And I’m torn between wanting to keep you with me and wanting to make sure, without a doubt, that you’ll never be hurt by the Forms.”

“Well, if you’re torn, then maybe you’ll still consider letting me stay.”

“No. As I’ve said so many times that I’m beginning to feel like a broken record, I’ve made my decision. You’re going to back to New York until all the Forms are dead.”

“But—”

“Despite the fact that you were attacked by two of them not too awfully long ago, I just don’t think you have the proper level of fear in regards to these Forms, Haley. They’re getting even stronger, more bloodthirsty. To be completely frank, my men and I aren’t exactly weaklings, yet we’re beginning to have a hell of a time holding them back. While we try to kill them one-by-one, we’re going to try our very, very best to make sure that they never reach the village, but there’s no guarantee than one or two of them won’t be able to get past us at some point. And when and if that happens, I want you gone, and you will be. I should probably also add that there are many in the village who probably wish they could trade places with you. There are many in the village who probably wish they could ride it out in New York until all the danger here has passed.”

Suddenly a bit misty-eyed again, I blinked back a tear or two. “Well, I still can’t say I feel very lucky that you’re sending me away.”

There was a long pause, and I thought I heard the faintest hint of a sigh before Holden spoke again.

“I want to enjoy this last week we have together for a while, Haley. Please, please try to do what you promised me yesterday that you would. Please try to trust me that this will all work out just fine. Please. Now, I have to go. We injured a dragon Form as he was trying to rise out of the lake earlier today, and while he’s still staggering around the jungle unable to fly, we want to try to corner him and take him out. So, goodbye for now. I’ll come back to the village as soon as I can. Hopefully tonight.”

I said okay and goodbye, then hung up, now knowing that I was going to have to execute the plan that had been forming in my mind. I
had
to. I just couldn’t take even the slightest risk that I might not be able to return to the island and have a future with Holden.

Of course, I fully realized that I wouldn’t have a future with him if I were killed by a Form, either, but I was going to make sure that wasn’t going to happen. I just had to get enough firepower.

I was still pretty certain that I wouldn’t be able to take out all the Forms myself with a gun, but I’d recalled that guns weren’t the only weapons stockpiled in Sun Cove. Once while we’d been taking a stroll around the village, Cora had pointed out to me some type of in-ground steel structure that had reminded me of a root cellar, but it didn’t store food. Cora had said that it was actually filled with boxes packed with sticks of dynamite, which the scientists who’d first come to the island to create the shifters had used to blast parts of the island away in order to build houses, cabins, and even a few underground laboratories. I knew for a fact that dynamite remained useable for decades, even centuries. I also knew something else, too.

A few days earlier, I’d happened to overhear Holden and Cora’s husband Conner talking about the Forms, specifically about how they all seemed to return to sink to the bottom of the lake every night around midnight. Holden and Conner both thought this was odd, how they seemed to do this like clockwork. It was as if they were designed with some sort of need to refuel their energy in the mystical lake at that very particular time or something.

I was going to blow up the lake. Although not the lake itself, to be exact, but the area around the lake. I figured this would accomplish two things at once. For one, with massive craters around the large pond-sized lake allowing all the water in the lake to drain, the lake itself would be destroyed. For another thing, if I timed the blast for a short while after midnight, when all the Forms would be in the lake, the dynamite blasts would likely instantly kill all the Forms at once. And if the blasts didn’t take them
all
out at once, I’d just throw in a few more sticks for a second bang. If I packed a large bag full of dynamite sticks, which I intended to do, I figured I’d have enough “ammo” to blow all the Forms to kingdom come at least twice over. Luckily for me, while shifters couldn’t use man-made weapons against each other,
I
could use man-made weapons against
them
. And once I did, and once I’d accomplished my two objectives with the dynamite, I would have also accomplished a third, because then, with all the Forms dead, I wouldn’t have to be parted from Holden.

Sometime over the next week, I’d get into the underground storage cellar and fill a backpack with sticks of dynamite. Then, the night of the clambake, around midnight, I’d sneak away somehow while everyone else was occupied, grab the backpack, and make my way to Black Lake. With it being located more or less in the dead center of the island, I didn’t think it would be too hard to find. My biggest concern would be avoiding detection by the guards who I knew would be patrolling the area around the lake. Community party or no, I knew Holden would definitely still be leaving a few guards in place.

However, these guards would simply be between the lake and the island; they wouldn’t be actually
at
the lake itself, meaning that I could probably just go around them. They never patrolled too close to the lake because they never wanted to fight the Forms on their own turf, for fear of being sucked into the magical, murky lake, which I planned to avoid, too, by launching into my plan with zero hesitation the very moment I arrived at the lake. I’d have the Forms blown to smithereens well before they’d even have a chance to emerge from the dark water and attack me.

After parting ways with Cora, I spent the rest of the afternoon by myself, contemplating different stages of my plan. Despite how it might have seemed to others, I didn’t think I was being reckless or stupid. After all, I’d be heading to the lake with plenty of dynamite to do the job, and also, I couldn’t think of anyone better to do the job than myself, since I could use man-made weaponry against the Forms.

It wasn’t lost on me, though, that what I would be doing was morally wrong, as far as going behind Holden’s back. I knew it was deceitful and sneaky, but that just wasn’t how it
felt
to me. I felt like although what I would be doing certainly wasn’t noble, it was what I
had
to do in order to ensure that my relationship with Holden could continue. It was what I
had
to do to ensure that what had happened to Dr. Bradley wouldn’t happen to me.

Basically, I felt like the ends of my plan justified the means. I just hoped and prayed that Holden would agree. I figured he’d be so happy to have the Forms finally all dead that he probably would.

When he came home that night, I was already in bed. He climbed in beside me and took me in his arms, and we didn’t talk, though we did make love before going to sleep. But when I woke up in the morning, he was already gone. I thought how wonderful it would be to actually get to spend long, uninterrupted stretches of time together once my mission was complete.

To that end, I was determined to get all the dynamite I needed before the day was over. Then, I’d store it somewhere in my cabin where Holden would never see it. After that, I’d just have to wait patiently for the night of the clambake to use it and fix everything.

After a beach-side breakfast with Cora, Amy, and Amy’s daughter Emily, I decided to put my plan in motion. Cora and Amy were going to take Emily for a swim, but I declined, saying I was going to take a walk, which was partially true. My ankle was still a bit sore, but just slightly, and I was off crutches at this point, which I was incredibly thankful about, because I was going to have to walk to the eastern outskirts of the island to get to the underground storage cellar. I knew it wasn’t locked, so I wouldn’t even need a key. The day we’d strolled by the cellar, Cora had said that the heavy steel door was plenty heavy enough to keep out curious children, but I was sure it wouldn’t slow me down at all.

When I told Cora and Amy the little white lie about my “walk,” I felt a distinct pang of guilt. I didn’t like lying to friends at all, but I certainly didn’t feel like I could tell them the truth, either. Of course, fearing for my safety, they’d tell Holden. Then I’d quickly find myself back in New York City, not having a clue when I’d see him again.

Once Cora, Amy, and Emily had left for their swim, I hiked back to my cabin through the borderland of the jungle area, which was behind all the cabins in the village. This provided me some cover from anyone who might be watching to see what I was doing, though there really wasn’t anyone around. All the men in the village were out on Form patrol, and at least a dozen women with children had joined Cora, Amy, and Emily at the beach. Most of the remaining women in the village were working at the chocolate shop that day, and their children were being looked after by several women at an extremely large cabin that served as the community’s childcare center and school.

Once at my cabin, I grabbed a backpack and started off again along the border of the jungle behind the cabins, heading toward the underground cellar. I hadn’t been walking more than a minute or two before I caught sight of a big, dark shape moving through a dense cluster of palms maybe twenty feet to my left. I froze, startled, but almost instantly realized the big, dark shape, which was now heading toward me, was Holden in bear form.

With his black fur glinting in the sun, he lumbered over to me, immediately shifted into human form, and looked at me with his expression unreadable. “Well, well. Where are you headed off to with such a big backpack?”

CHAPTER NINE

Right after he’d asked me the question about where I was off to with my big backpack, Holden broke into a grin. “Running away, are you? Well, if you wanted to go back to New York City even sooner than planned, all you had to do was ask.”

Relieved almost beyond words, I exhaled in a rush. “I’m not running away.”

Holden’s grin became replaced by a frown, and he pulled me close.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you in my bear form like that. I scared you didn’t I? I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to make you rattled.”

I gave my head a little shake. “No. No, don’t worry about it.”

Holden pressed his full lips against my forehead. “I’m really sorry. I was just running a patrol by the village, and I caught sight of you, and you just looked so beautiful with the sun on your pretty honey-brown hair how it is...I just had to say hello. And I know you’re not actually running away with your backpack. But I bet I know just exactly what you
are
doing with it.”

“Oh yeah?”

My voice had come out in some sort of high-pitched squeak.

With his pale blue eyes twinkling, Holden nodded, moving his arms lower to hold me around my waist. “Yeah. The three giant wheelbarrows full of shells you have back at your cabin aren’t enough. You’re on the hunt to fill your backpack with more shells so you can pile them high in a fourth giant wheelbarrow. Am I correct?”

Despite my anxiety, I couldn’t help but crack a smile. I did
not
have giant wheelbarrows full of shells back at my cabin. I kept my shells for jewelry in clear glass jars, and fairly small jars at that. And I only had seven of them.

Leaning into the length of Holden’s long, hard body, I scoffed, though still smiling. “Yup. You’ve got me pegged. Hunting for more shells to fill my fourth giant wheelbarrow with, because that wouldn’t be ridiculous at all or anything.”

He chuckled and gave me a brief kiss. “I have to get back now, but I’ll see you tonight, hopefully.”

“Okay.”

He gave me another brief kiss, released me from his arms, and began walking away backward, slowly. “I know you’ve already thoroughly combed the beach in front of the village, but I’m not sure how many shells you’ll find back here. There are some that the kids have dumped back here at various times, though. Just try not to stray too far into the jungle. My patrolmen will be coming by here soon, and they run at a pretty high rate of speed, and I wouldn’t want you to get accidentally run over.”

“Okay. I won’t go far from here.”

Holden gave me a smile, then turned, shifted into bear form, and ambled away into the jungle, accelerating into a run.

I didn’t make it to the underground cellar that day. After my meeting with Holden, I just couldn’t continue on right then. I knew what my problem was. My conscience was nagging at me. I couldn’t stand the fact that I was going behind his back, but at the same time, I was doing it for
us
. I was doing it so that our new relationship had a chance to fully blossom without being interrupted by what I was pretty sure would be a lengthy separation.

I knew I had to continue forward with my plan, and the next day, I did. The morning proceeded similar to the way it had the day before, with Cora, Amy, and I sharing breakfast together, then parting ways. I went back to my cabin from Amy’s and got my backpack, then set out along the border of the jungle. And this time, I wasn’t stopped by Holden, or anyone else for that matter. I was pretty sure no one even saw me.

When I reached the underground cellar, which was maybe a hundred yards away from even the easternmost cabin in the village, which gave me a little privacy to do what I needed to do, I discovered that doing what I needed to do was going to be a little harder than I’d thought it would be. The steel door of the cellar, which laid almost flat against the ground on the slightest of angles, was much heavier than Cora had made it sound. When she’d said it was heavy enough to keep kids out, I’d guessed it was maybe eighty or ninety pounds. It definitely wasn’t. I wasn’t quite sure how much it did weigh, but it had to be two or three hundred. At least. Needless to say, I hadn’t planned for this. I hadn’t planned on having to lift a door that was possibly twice as heavy as my own body weight.

After several minutes spent pulling, tugging, and yanking in different ways and from various positions around the door, I managed to lift it several inches open several times, pushing large rocks and sticks across the door frame with my foot each time. Getting the door propped open wide enough for me to slide my body inside the cellar was the only way I could see that I was going to be able to get inside. Clearly there was no way in hell I could muster the strength required to swing the door fully open on its hinges, no matter how hard I pulled. I was going to have to do this task little by little, especially since my ankle was still slightly sore. I certainly hadn’t sprained it very badly, but just enough that it was still tender if I moved my foot in a certain way.

Eventually, after a dozen more times of lifting and propping with thick sticks and fallen branches from the jungle, kind of stacking them on top of each other in rows of four, I had the door propped open maybe a foot-and-a-half, and from what I could tell, fairly securely, too. Securely enough for me to get in and get out quickly, I hoped.

Drenched in sweat from a combination of my efforts and the sun, I took a quick look around to make sure no one was watching me, and then I had a seat on the edge of the door frame and lowered myself into the cellar. Only about three feet deep, it certainly wasn’t much of a cellar, and I couldn’t even begin to stand up fully. I remained in a crouch while my eyes adjusted to the dimness, and once they did, I began duck-walking around to see what I could see. But, to my horror, what I could see wasn’t much.

The cellar may have been shallow, but it was long, probably fifteen feet or so. And most of that space was completely empty. I’d expected it to be jam-packed full of crates of dynamite sticks, like Cora had sort of made it sound. But instead, literally the only thing in the dirt-floored cellar was a single wooden crate. That was it. Just one. And it wasn’t even a large crate. It was really more of a box about the size of a couple of lunchboxes stacked on top of each other maybe. Even if it were filled with dynamite sticks, they wouldn’t even be enough to fill half my large backpack.

And, upon inspection, I saw that it wasn’t even full. Only four sticks of dynamite sat at the bottom of the un-lidded crate. I was screwed.

However, I wasn’t yet ready to give up my plan. I’d just have to think of some other kind of weapon to go along with the dynamite or something. I figured I could think about that later. But at present, I knew I had to get back out of the cellar before anyone caught me.

I hastily stuck the four dynamite sticks in my backpack, then hoisted myself up to my stomach on the cellar door frame, swung one leg over it, and crawled out. After that, I immediately reversed the process I’d done to prop the cellar door open. With perspiration snaking a line down the back of my neck, I lifted the door up a few inches, then kicked a few branches out of the way, over and over. When only the last one remained, I took a deep breath before heaving the door up, kicking the branch out of the way, and then yanking my hands back with all speed and care as I dropped the door to shut it. I was pretty sure the last thing I needed was a full set of badly broken fingers.

Once back at my cabin, I stashed my backpack containing the dynamite sticks in the very back of the walk-in pantry in the kitchen, behind several large bags of potatoes and various cereals.

Task now completed, I went for a swim by myself, cursing my luck to have only found four single sticks of dynamite. All I could figure was that at one time, there may have been crates and crates full, but much of the dynamite must have been used for whatever reason or reasons since then. But, at any rate, it didn’t even matter. I needed to set my focus on how I was going to make do and make my plan work with only the four sticks that I had.

By that evening, I still hadn’t thought of anything, despite wracking my brain for ideas about any other weapons I could use, and specifically, any other weapons that weren’t guns. I was just at a complete loss, and the more I thought about it, it seemed as if I might be forced to abandon my plan. With this realization, my mood plummeted. I cried against Holden’s chest that night, and he didn’t even know the real reason why. He thought I was just upset about having to go back to New York City, which, I supposed was a great part of my tears.

We shared breakfast the next morning before making love and showering together, but then he was off again. Of the five Forms that remained in the lake, only one, a wolf, had
not
been giving Holden and his men constant daily troubles.

I barely saw Holden at all over the next couple of days. When I did see him, I just cried most of the time, feeling hopeless. He kept reassuring me that we
would
be together again, but it didn’t make me feel any better. However, things were soon to improve.

Friday, the day before my clambake send-off, Holden killed one of the Forms, the dragon one. He called and told me himself, thrilling me. My excitement was pretty short-lived, though. Once I’d gotten off the phone, I overheard Amy happily telling Cora what good news the killing of the dragon Form was, because now with only four left, having them all dead within a year or two was a fairly realistic.

“And then maybe we’ll
finally
get to see our husbands for longer than an hour here and there. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Cora laughed in the kitchen, her voice reaching me out in the hallway. “We can hope. I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to spend more than an hour or so at a time with Conner. I hope he isn’t annoying at a long stretch.”

I knew she was just kidding. Even after twenty-some-odd years of marriage, she and Conner still acted like newlyweds around each other and seemed like they couldn’t get enough of each other’s company.

After her joking comment, Cora and Amy burst into laughter, and I slumped against the wall, thinking about what an awfully long time a year or two could feel like when a person was parted from someone they were in love with.

But soon, the next good thing of the day happened. Noticing how down I was, Cora insisted on taking me out for a walk, first to my cabin to get one of my jars of shells for some strange reason that she wouldn’t explain, then to one of the small outbuildings at the edge of the village. This particular building was usually just used for storage of various odds-and-ends, most of them related to the village’s chocolate-making enterprise, but when we stepped inside, I saw that one half of the building had been cleared out and outfitted with a long worktable and two chairs. On top of the worktable sat at least a dozen small, clear plastic bins filled with various items like glass beads, tiny scraps of shiny metal in various shapes, and little curled lengths of thin wire. Next to these bins sat a few pairs of scissors, hole-punchers, and the like, for arts and crafts - or jewelry-making.

I turned to Cora with a little lump in my throat. “What is this? Is this for me?”

She grinned, making her big brown eyes sparkle. “Welcome to your workstation for your new jewelry-making business. Lord only knows you have enough shells to start with now. So, you can begin today, to help take your mind off of leaving in two days. Then, you can take all the shells and everything else with you, so you can keep making jewelry back in New York, to continue keeping your mind off of everything. Then, when Holden brings you back, you can bring everything back with you.”

I smiled, sad, thankful, and filled with a rush of emotion for Cora all at the same time. “Thank you.”

I immediately got to work, with Cora sitting at the table with me, just to keep me company. Using a tiny chisel-type tool and an equally small mallet to make tiny circular holes in the shells, I began trying to make a necklace with cream-colored shells and tiny clear glass beads, and I found the process a fun distraction from my troubles. But when the necklace was about half-done, I set it on the table, a little dissatisfied with it.

“It’s pretty, but I almost think all the shells are too big or something...too clunky. I wonder if there’s anything I can use to just... I don’t know. Whittle the edges down a bit. Maybe even kind of reshape some of them completely. I wonder if just plain sandpaper would work.”

Cora, who’d seemed to be thinking hard while I’d been speaking, suddenly gasped. “Oh my gosh. This is going to be amazing.”

“What is?”

“You’ll even be able to cut different precise shapes if you want. Things like hearts, or triangles, or whatever.”

“But how? Using what?”

Cora suppressed a giggle, clearly tickled about something. “You can’t tell Holden about this, okay? I’m about to dash out for a second and bring you back a very serious tool for jewelry-making. And it’s going to be amazing, but it is something kind of dangerous, so I’m going to grab a few pairs of safety goggles, too. Be right back.”

With that, she got up from the worktable and jogged out of the little building, leaving me absolutely mystified.

Several minutes later, she returned with two pairs of safety goggles and some sort of strange, futuristic-looking gun. It was made of some kind of shiny silver metal, and the barrel of it was long and slender, and about twice the length of any handgun I’d ever seen.