Billionaire Bear Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset

by Brittany White

  A cheer went up among the wolves. Angela and Carlo disappeared back into their apartments, sending him murderous looks over their shoulders, but Vince couldn’t find it in himself to care. What were three wolves against eighteen?

  74

  Brooke

  She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, she had to get back to the pack, but Connor’s bed was as soft as a cloud and far more pleasant than her own shitty mattress. Before she knew it, the sun was streaming in through the pale curtains. Brooke yawned, resisting the urge to turn over and go back to sleep. Connor’s arm was slung low over her hips, their legs entwined. She replayed the last twenty four hours and couldn’t stop the dopey smile that spread over her face.

  Eventually, she had to wrestle her way out of the bed. As warm and comforting as Connor was, his arm was pressing directly onto her bladder.

  The bathroom door closed behind her softly and Brooke scoffed at the sheer size of the room. Fucking rich people! Who the hell needed a bathroom the size of a ballroom? It took her longer than she’d like to admit to figure out which one of the many switches on the shower wall turned the damn thing on. She stepped under the hot water with a barely contained groan of bliss. It was easily the best shower she’d had in well over a year - water pressure was always the first thing to go in crappy motels and apartments.

  The tension melted away from her shoulders and Brooke sighed in contentment. I’m never leaving this place, she thought idly, he’ll have to peel my pruney remains out of this shower. The soap smelled like him: sort of woodsy, with hints of sage and sandalwood. Brooke breathed it in as she washed her hair, pulling out leaves and twigs knotted into the ends and watching with satisfaction as they collected in the drain.

  Wrapping a towel around herself and feeling much more human, Brooke stepped back into the bedroom. She’d never stopped to appreciate just how gorgeous Connor’s suite was before; despite being stupidly big, it was tastefully decorated in warm shades of blue and cream that made everything seem cosier.

  Brooke gathered her clothes from where they were scattered on the floor, being careful not to wake Connor. He had rolled over onto his side in his sleep, face adorably squished into his pillow. Her clothes were covered in mud from their run and still smelled faintly like river water, but she dutifully pulled them on, casting her eyes heavenward as she desperately prayed she'd get the chance to change clothes before anyone saw her.

  She was just pulling her shirt over her head when a hand shot out from under the wonderfully thick, warm duvet, closing around her wrist and tugging. Brooke laughed as she tumbled back onto the bed, Connor rolling over to instantly pin her against the mattress. She looked up into his handsome but sleepy face and looped her arms around his neck.

  “Good morning,” she smiled.

  Connor’s eyes were half-lidded and still dream-hazy, and Brooke felt a throb of arousal go through her when he leaned down to nuzzle against her throat. He looked so soft, unguarded, and vulnerable, and she thought she could stay like this with him forever.

  “Mm, good morning, my mate.” He smiled, adorably clumsy round the edges, and kissed her with a mouth stale from sleep. Brooke still arched into it, loving the feel of his body pressed against her. She caught sight of the clock by the bedside as he pulled back.

  “Although it is now, technically, afternoon.”

  “Early enough,” Connor’s sure hands went to the zip of her jeans and Brooke’s brain short circuited. This wasn’t fair. She’d only just put them back on!

  “No, no no no we need to get up - we’ve got a lot of important shit to do today, or don’t you remember?”

  “More important than keeping you in my bed?” Connor responded, collapsing dramatically on top of her. Brooke wheezed with laughter, shoving at his chest as she tried to wiggle out from under him. “Impossible.”

  And it was that sentence, that subtle promise that he wanted to wake up like this every morning, that had Brooke finding herself with a soft, silly smile on her face and uttering three words into the space between them, “I love you.” She couldn’t imagine being parted from him, she wanted to know everything about him, find out what he was like around his brothers and their mates. Mates. She wanted that with him, wanted to be his and he hers, she wanted a family… What was Connor like around children? Brooke was excited, eager, to learn.

  “I love you, too,” Connor whispered like a promise into her mouth and she swallowed the words, savoring their taste. She didn’t realize she was crying until the tears had already trickled down her cheeks, into her hair, onto the mattress.

  Connor wiped them away with his thumb, kissing her sweetly. “Don’t cry.”

  “I am not crying,” she muttered furiously, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She looked away from him, embarrassed, and pushed him off her so she could sit up. “Now, you said yesterday that we should try getting everyone to talk to each other,” she said, eyebrows raised. “That still the plan?” She arched her brow. “Or is your dick more important?”

  “I think I hate it when you’re right.” Connor reluctantly stood up and stretched, then leaned down to press a quick kiss to her cheek. “And I think you’re going to be right a lot.”

  “Damn straight.” Brooke smiled as Connor finally opened his closet and started getting dressed, admiring the view. The muscles in his back were lovely to look at, almost enough to make her change her mind, stay here instead...

  “The best thing to do is to stop this from going any further,” Connor said over his shoulder, startling her from her thoughts. “I’ll talk to my brothers, there’ll be some way for your pack to get the resources they need without impacting the lodge, there has to be. I’ll tell them I’ve spoken to you, and that you’re willing to hear us out.”

  Brooke grimaced, unconvinced. There was a reason a truce between predators had never been successful in the past. But the thought of her pack being set up for life, thriving and happy and healthy in the Rockies was a tempting one. “And I’ll go back to my pack and tell them you want to call a truce?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. Connor nodded, pulling on a pair of boxers. “We’ll need a fifty-fifty split, Connor. You may have the lodge, but I have twenty wolves to worry about.” She knew she might be coming off as abrasive, but if anyone was going to understand putting a pack, a family, before anything else, it would be Connor.

  “Of course, I want this to be as fair as possible. Your pack is your family, same as my sleuth. I know they come first.”

  Brooke sagged with relief, warmth filling her chest at her own words echoed back to her. She’d had faith, but it was nice when reality backed it up. “Thank you, Connor.”

  She was still skeptical; Vince was getting bolder, he’d made it clear he didn’t trust the Strauss family and, in light of more recent events, that he didn’t trust her, but the look of confidence on Connor’s face made her want to hope.

  Her stomach was in knots when she reached her place. Angela met her at the door, pretty face drawn and anxious.

  “Everyone’s inside,” Angela said softly. “They’re not happy.”

  Of course they aren’t, Brooke thought, but I’m going to fix that.

  Seeing twenty wolf shifters gathered in her tiny front room would have been funny under different circumstances. They were cramped together a little like those old Where's Waldo books Brooke had as a kid. Every surface was occupied with her pack, pushing and shoving, faces angry as she walked in and stepped up onto the kitchen counter so she could face everyone at once.

  This was her family, and seeing them upset like this made her heart ache. She needed to fix this; they deserved better.

  “I know a lot of you no longer feel that I am fit to run this pack,” she started, forcing herself to keep her head held high. She could own up to her mistakes. “But I have been in conversation with Connor Strauss - the alpha of the bear sleuth who has been fighting with us over the land that we deserve. We have managed to come to an agreement.” Ripples of conversation mad
e its way through the room, like a giant game of Chinese Whispers. For some of her pack, anger melted into interest, but others’ frowns only deepened. Brooke waited a moment for them to settle down before continuing. “He wants us, all of us, to come up to the lodge to meet with him and his sleuth so that we can get everything sorted out once and for all.”

  There was silence for all of two seconds before the room erupted into chaos, twenty voices all calling out at once. Brooke tried her best to differentiate one voice from another, but the overlapping shouts were hard to unravel.

  “What about the dead bear?” someone asked. Anger flashed through her, the memory of Connor’s face streaked with tears running across her mind, but she quickly fought to get her expression under control.

  “Connor Strauss has said that he was willing to let the matter go, for the sake of both our groups.” There was a murmur of surprise. No one had expected the bear to forgive so easily, especially something of that calibre. Brooke privately agreed; he was too kind. Brooke fixed every face in the room with a hard stare. “Unfortunately for whoever spilled that bear’s blood, I will be far less forgiving.” More than a few faces in the crowd shrank back and Brooke smiled menacingly. Good to know I haven’t completely lost my touch, she thought.

  They must have made quite the sight; a group of twenty wolf shifters approaching the entrance to the lodge like a parade of street urchins. Brooke brought up the rear, walking with the injured and the meandering pups, watching as Eric directed her pack into one of the side rooms that had been reserved for the meeting. They made eye contact and he nodded politely to her. She nodded awkwardly back, eyes wide, and Eric’s face relaxed into a smile that made him look years younger.

  Vince was just in front of her, and he shot her a dark look over his shoulder as he passed the lodge’s threshold. She made a note to warn the Strauss' to keep an extra careful eye on him. Connor fell into step with her as she crossed the glinting dark hardwood floor of the foyer. He walked with her quietly to the room. He caught her eye and flashed a grin, scrunching his nose reassuringly before smoothing his expression out into something cool and professional.

  The meeting was awkward and stilted, which didn’t surprise Brooke in the slightest. The entire pack was on edge as they sat in what looked like a large ornate ballroom with gilded furnishings and floors polished enough to be mistaken for mirrors. Connor’s brothers looked just as uncomfortable - leaning against the wall in a rigid line like war generals waiting for a briefing.

  It was easier than she’d thought it would be to act like things between her and Connor were strictly professional. They’d agreed not to tell anyone about their relationship yet, certain it would only make things more complicated. Brooke was glad they’d made that call. She felt like she was back in the high school debate club, waiting her turn at the front of the room while Connor told the room that he realized her pack had been treated unfairly and vowed to make things right. Brooke’s threat back at the apartment must have stayed with the pack because no one mentioned William’s death.

  “I’m sorry for how we’ve treated you all,” Connor said quietly. “I know we have a lot to make up for, but I promise you, I will do everything in my power to make things right between us. There’s no reason why we can’t occupy this territory together as a cohesive group.”

  Brooke watched Connor’s brothers out of the corner of her eye and while one of them, Cody, she guessed from the scruff decorating his jaw, let shock tighten the corners of his mouth, they were - for the most part - emotionless. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

  The pack remained quiet. They don’t trust him, Brooke thought, chest tight. She’d warned Connor that they wouldn’t, but seeing him standing there so hopefully in front of a sea of disbelieving faces with her own eyes dimmed her little bit of remaining hope.

  In the end, they agreed to draw up an official treaty that called a truce and stated specifically the borders between wolf and bear lands, each getting a fair share with a portion of No Man’s Land between them. The elders of both families would be called down in the following weeks in order to sign off and that seemed to signal the end of things.

  Brooke shared a look with Carlo, silently asking him to make sure everyone got back okay, before joining Connor at the front of the room but Carlo followed her and shook Connor’s hand, much to Brooke’s amazement.

  “Thank you for helping us out,” Carlo said stiffly. He turned his head to watch the last of the pack skulk out of the room. “We may not seem like it just yet, but we are grateful.”

  Connor nodded, looking just as shocked as she felt, and then Carlo turned to Brooke with a small smile, “See you at home, cuz.”

  “See you at home.” Brooke tried to pack everything she was feeling into that short sentence, and the warmth that filled Carlo’s eyes and the way his shoulders relaxed, just a little, made her think she’d succeeded. They clasped each other, resting their foreheads together, before Carlo turned and left the room. Shortly after, Nathan, Cody, and Eric slipped out another door, leaving the pair alone.

  The ballroom felt even larger with just the two of them and Brooke slid to the ground, crossing her legs and leaning back against the wall with a sigh. After a moment, Connor dropped down beside her.

  “That went… well…” she tried.

  “They don’t believe me, do they?”

  “Nope. Not a word. Well, wait, Carlo does, and Angela could be convinced, maybe, but the rest of them? Not a chance.”

  Neither of them spoke for a long moment, Brooke pitched sideways, letting her head fall against Connor’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Actions speak louder than words; I’m sure that when the elders arrive and they actually have a treaty in their hands, they’ll believe you.” She had meant to be reassuring, but Connor sat up straighter and her head slid from where it had been resting. She looked up at him, confused.

  He stared back with a burning intensity that made her cheeks warm and her stomach tight.“I can do better than that,” Connor vowed, voice low and fervent. She swallowed. He took hold of her upper arms, turning her to properly face him, huge hands so gentle with her even though she knew they could do so much damage. “I can give you some money - enough for you to move the whole pack into some better housing.”

  Brooke stared up at him, emotions threatening to overwhelm her. Her hands trembled, and her nose tingled as tears pricked her eyelids. What was it today with her and crying?

  “That would be- God, Connor, that would mean so much.” She shook his hands off, and he let her, though he could have kept hold of her easily. He also let her grab his face and pull him down into a bruising kiss. “I love you, I love you so fucking much.”

  “And I love you.” Connor grinned, resting their foreheads together, and they sat like that for a few moments, enjoying each other’s comforting presence.

  “I should go,” she whispered after a while. “I’ve got work in the morning.” It felt ridiculous to be worrying about her job at Cole’s right now, but after all of this she ached for the familiarity of it.

  “Okay.”

  They climbed to their feet, walking back through the foyer and pausing just inside the entrance.

  “You’ll come visit me, right?” she asked. Connor grinned, lifting her hand to press a kiss to her knuckles.

  “You just try and stop me,” he said, eyes sparkling. Brooke laughed and watched him head back up to his office, pausing to wave at her before he shut the door, then stepped out into the afternoon light.

  “Now!” The voice came from her left.

  Brooke whirled, but couldn’t see anything before she was met with a figure crashing into her, sending her sprawling across the ground. She tried to get her feet under her but another figure joined the first, pinning her to the hot tarmac of the lodge’s parking lot before she could move. She tried to twist out of their grip, but it was no use. More hands were on her in an instant, and when she snapped her teeth at them someone took advantage and shoved a ma
keshift gag into her open mouth. It was greasy and tasted like stale burgers and cigarettes and Brooke retched. Something hit her across her head and the last thing she saw before her world turned black was Vince standing over her. Grinning. The bastard.

  75

  Brooke

  Brooke came to slowly, head throbbing dully. She opened her eyes and was immediately panicked when she was met with only darkness. She tried to scream but the noise was distorted, muffled; she realised the two bands of pressure round her head were the twin weights of a gag and a blindfold cutting into her skin. She tried to figure out what was happening, and the last thing she remembered was Vince’s awful, leering face. Fury burned in her chest. Fucking Vince.

  She scented the air, trying to find the other shifter. Faintly, she could hear the sound of rushing water; she was somewhere in the forest at least.

  Footsteps. She wasn’t alone. Brooke tensed, head turning to follow the noise and trying to get her feet under her, but heavy ropes bound her ankles and wrists so she could do little but squirm as those footsteps got louder and louder.

  Not just him, she realized faintly. There were more footfalls all around her, anxious and restless. She tried again to talk but the gag was tied securely around her head, the knot of the stale tasting fabric digging into the back of her skull. She heard a laugh directly in front of her and turned her head towards the noise.