by Dianna Love
She could remain a bear.
He wanted her rested. She had to be exhausted and would need her strength tomorrow, because they had only power bars for food tonight. That wasn’t much for rebuilding their strength.
Looking through Herc’s eyes, Justin searched ahead, then backtracked to fallen trees he’d seen downhill.
Herc slowed at the crest of the hill, waiting for direction.
Justin guided his bear to where trees and branches knocked over in a storm had piled up in one spot. He nosed around, pushing debris out of the way.
With a little work, that could be a makeshift lean-to large enough to shield even two bears their size if Justin had to shift for short stretches to stay warm.
Justin had Herc back up and shake off the clothing pack looped over his head, then he called up the change.
Cold air bit his skin.
He told Eli’s bear, “Don’t change yet.”
Snow continued to float down. Not heavy, though.
Rushing to unpack the bundle, he dressed in record time, hoping nothing got frostbite.
Monty topped that list.
Dressed, he wrapped his hands in Eli’s clothes and dug out the snow piled under the angled cover. When he backed out, there was a small bunch of branches inside which he started tamping down for a mat to keep them off the ground.
He looked around and Eli’s bear was dragging more evergreen branches over.
Justin took them as she made a pile, adding some of the branches at the top to create a slanted roof that went from tree to ground. When he finished with that, he used the other branches she’d found to cover the inside floor.
It would be cold, but that gave them a little layer of insulation between their bodies and ice-cold ground.
Just fine for a pair of bears.
Who was he kidding?
He might have an internal furnace that ran far hotter than a human because of sharing a body with Herc, but if he stayed in human form tonight he would freeze his nuts off. Sleeping next to Eli’s bear, they could generate heat, but they had nothing to hold that heat in close.
He hadn’t seen new branches in the last ten minutes.
Where the hell was Eli?
He didn’t want to yell because sounds carried out here. If she didn’t show up soon, he was shifting to Herc and tracking her.
He waited thirty seconds.
That was enough.
Just as he unbuttoned his shirt, he caught the sound of Eli’s bear huffing on her way back. Damn, but she had scared him. He had to remind her that although she was part polar bear and part grizzly, she didn’t know these woods.
She shouldn’t go anywhere without telling him first.
He buttoned up his shirt and crossed his arms. Yes, he was getting ornery, but he was tired and still had the headache from hell.
The closer she came, the more he realized she was dragging something again, but not tree parts.
When she reached him, her bear grinned around a mouthful of nasty canvas that trailed behind her fifteen feet. It looked like what was left of a tent from a storm. Maybe the same storm that had taken down these trees and blasted his cabin with lightning.
He’d seen blizzards out here with winds blowing uphill, which were powerful enough to flip a ship in the ocean. That tent probably came from the campground, but from the looks of frayed edges and holes, it had been blown here a long time ago.
Justin dropped down and hugged her bear. “That’s a hell of a find, babe.” He wanted to use her bear’s name.
They would fix that next.
Eli’s bear rubbed all over him. He loved this woman and her bear. Loved them more than he’d ever thought possible.
The only family he’d known had treated him as a leper.
It had taken a woman from across the ocean to tear down his walls one word at a time, to see past his constant joking and find the man inside.
Her bear bumped his head and nodded at the shelter.
Justin stood up. “I get it. Finish my chores first then I get some lovin’.” He reached for the canvas. “What you got here?”
It had tears and no sign of structure, but it looked to originally have been ten by fifteen feet. Now that he thought about it, a hunter might have had this tent. He’d get word out to scout this area for someone hunting illegally once he was back to a phone.
On the other hand, it could be wildlife photographers. He’d run across his share of those, too.
Darkness had set in completely before he figured out how to create a free-form tent structure using the slanted roof, but shafts of moonlight offered enough illumination for their bear vision. In the end, he used thick limbs to prop up the inside in different directions. He gathered all the excess canvas inside to pile on top of the branches.
All in all, not too damn bad.
The canvas wouldn’t have been as good without the lean-to construction and vice versa. A beneficial combination.
“Good place.”
He swung around to find Eli butt naked. “Damn, woman. You’re gonna freeze.” Not that he wasn’t enjoying the best view he’d had since the last time she’d been naked, but he didn’t want her suffering frostbite on one inch of that body.
“Polar bear blood. Strong in cold.”
She dressed and put her boots on, then stood up and faced him with her arms crossed. Her nose was red and her cheeks were pink, but she’d made her point.
She was no fragile woman.
She arched an eyebrow and leveled a challenging look at him.
“You are so damn hot.”
That sent her into a fit of laughter. When she caught her breath, she said, “You funny.”
His heart started beating like it wanted to join a marching band. “You’re beautiful.”
She ducked her head then raised those big blue eyes at him.
He knew the first time he saw them he was in deep trouble, but he wouldn’t change a thing about her.
“Night here. Get in,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Not old woman. Not ma’am,” she complained as she climbed through the opening created when he pulled overlapping flaps back.
“We say ma’am out of respect whether you’re five, twenty-five, or a hundred and five.”
“Oh. I like.”
She made it to the opposite side of their accommodations for the night.
Justin stood there thinking about how she’d just used Herc’s words of compliment.
This was the perfect match.
He and Eli could spend a lifetime getting to know everything about each other, but he knew all he needed for now. She was loyal to a fault. She said what she thought. She was a woman he could trust with his heart and his future.
He would never settle for anything less than her.
Easing inside, he closed the flaps and tried to prevent upending their shelter. His headache was down to a dull throb, but he could feel the poison seeping into his body. The cold might be helping him since his blood flow would slow down.
He’d watched a Gallize shifter die in a war zone. Losing one of their shifters was rare because they were so tough.
But titanium affected all shifters adversely, including Gallize. Justin’s unit had a medic that could have saved the shifter, but they didn’t reach him in time to irrigate the multiple wounds and apply a neutralizer to offset the effects.
The warrior had shifted into his mountain lion form. By the time they found him, his tail and one leg had rotted off. He couldn’t shift back to human, which left the bullet holes not lined up, because he’d been shot in human form. Even if the medic could irrigate every opening, too many areas had moved during the shift and some had healed enough to close off access.
Eli was on her side, curled up and watching him.
Justin pulled her to him, kissed her sweetly, then rolled her over so he could bring her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms and legs around her, shielding her every way he could.
Tom
orrow was critical.
He had no idea how much titanium was still influencing him or the amount of damage it would do overnight, but he’d always been warned not to go beyond twenty-four hours with that crap in his system.
He had to get them off this mountain tomorrow and find a way to contact the Guardian. He couldn’t risk Eli being left alone up here facing those wolves if the titanium won the battle and killed Justin.
CHAPTER 22
“She’s a what?”
Cazador held his mobile phone out from his ear, pissed at the wolf shifter’s shout. He spoke at the phone. “Just so you know, Mateo, my wolf hearing is possibly better than yours. Don’t do that again.”
“Sorry,” Mateo, his contact at the Black River Pack headquarters in South America, muttered. “I’m just ... hell. An ursid hybrid is like ...”
“Finding the impossible,” Cazador filled in calmly. Unlike his South American client, Cazador didn’t speak with a Spanish accent. He’d been born in Florida, where natives had no accent. He said, “While natural ursid hybrids definitely exist, ursid hybrid shifters are perhaps the rarest form of shifter imaginable. That makes this one extremely unique and adds significant value to the contract on her.”
Cazador had pulled off the hunt tonight and returned to his truck, parked at the trailhead, for one reason—to cut a better deal. Those two bears didn’t have his wolf vision, which normally drove him to hunt relentlessly at night.
His guess? They would be bedded down until first light.
“Decide soon, Mateo,” Cazador warned.
Mateo had to be careful or Cazador would keep this ursid hybrid. Cazador had been brought in to do what the Black River pack wolves operating in the US could not—capture one female bear shifter.
For that he had demanded his usual high sum, but this new development ... deserved a fitting price tag.
“Do you have pictures?” Mateo asked.
“That is not the kind of shooting I do. When I deliver her, you force her to shift and you will have proof of purchase. Which brings me to the point for this call. This is no usual job.”
Mateo’s tone switched gears from surprised to annoyed. “You’re getting paid five times what anyone else would be paid, plus expenses.”
“True, but I’m ten times better than anyone you could send after them, which means you’re getting a hell of a deal just for a pair of bear shifters. She is a jewel worthy of high price. Before you stroke out on me, keep in mind the reason I’m paid so well is because I have the patience to always deliver the goods. When dealing with deadly or unusual shifters, not many hunters can say that,” Cazador finished with a smile.
He wasn’t bragging, only stating his value.
His moniker, El Cazador, translated to The Hunter. He’d earned it in South America when he tracked down a huge Andean condor shifter.
Natural vultures had a ten-foot wingspan.
This one could carry off a full-grown man.
The condor shifter had been attacking Black River pack wolves, because one had killed his sister.
Sixteen dangerous wolves had died before that condor shifter picked Cazador off the ground. The condor shifter was never seen again.
But Cazador didn’t have to argue the point of his value. Mateo already knew it.
If this pack didn’t pay him, Cazador would send them the money they’d wired in advance, plus the outstanding balance they had not yet paid. He’d include a note to consider the contract canceled and the money as payment in full for the ursid hybrid.
Any mercenary contractor would do the same in his shoes.
Many would do far worse to walk away with Elianna, when a Power Baron would hand over an insane amount for this bear shifter.
Myths regarding ursid hybrids might all be hogwash, but myths usually grew from some grain of truth.
“How much?” Mateo asked in a guarded voice.
Cazador gave him a figure and smothered a grin at the wolf’s intake of air.
Mateo said, “We will pay that, but this may adversely affect your opportunity to do business with the Black River pack in the future.”
“No, it won’t. You run drugs that target our kind and kidnap shifters to use as experiments. Your pack will always need contract shifter help. What you’ve just done is ensure that I continue to offer my services to your pack.”
Silence followed. Not an uncomfortable kind, at least not on Cazador’s end. He had preparations to make, so he moved to the next item on his list. “I need a magic spell.”
“I do not have magic to hand over.”
Sighing, Cazador said, “My time is very valuable and you’re wasting it by lying. Your headquarters in South America provided me with a spell in the past.” He rattled off the name of this man’s superior within the Black River pack. “If you can’t supply it, I’ll contact your upper management directly.”
“You’re a fucker to deal with.”
“There’s no need to get vulgar,” Cazador said in his usual congenial voice.
“You should have negotiated that in your contract. It will cost extra.”
“I will trade the bodyguard grizzly for the magic spell. See? I’m saving you money.”
“What if you are unable to deliver him alive?”
“Then I will pay for the spell. I know what they cost. You just get the spell to me in the next six hours or the entire contract will be null and void.”
Cazador would ideally deliver the male bear shifter in trade for the magic, but he would not tolerate a headache to do so.
Not when the ursid hybrid had just tripled his take.
CHAPTER 23
Elianna peeked through her lashes.
It was still dark outside the shelter she and Justin had built from forest debris. She’d napped on and off. Was it early morning?
She had thought by today she’d be making great progress on her plans for when Nico arrived, not to wake up on Monday in the middle of nowhere and being hunted.
All she wanted now was to survive this ordeal with Justin.
Her boots were next to the slit they used for a doorway to this tent. Not a real tent, but she was proud of the way she and Justin had created a haven for the night.
She knew he’d intended to stay up in his human form and that had worried her. The inside smelled of fresh pines and Justin. His scent surrounded her.
Nothing stirred outside.
He slept with his body turned toward the opening, with her in front of him. Sometimes a man put himself between a woman and the door to protect her. She had no doubt Justin trusted his ability to flatten her to the ground and protect her with his whole body if anyone approached.
She had never felt safe like this.
It was strange, yet wonderful.
She could protect him, too, if she and her bear worked together. Her bear had never been serious until yesterday when Justin and Herc were wounded. Then her bear had helped her with power, and demanded to be let out to kill wolves.
Her bear.
Elianna did not know what to make of that, but she was happy. She’d like to be able to hold her own in bear form.
The air still had a bite to it, so she snuggled back against Justin ... and woke Monty.
“Mornin’ babe,” Justin said in a rough voice.
She liked that sound.
Rubbing her rump against Monty, she stifled a laugh at his muttered comment about how he couldn’t help it.
How she should just ignore the thick length prodding her.
Foolish man to think she hadn’t intended to wake Monty.
She turned to face Justin and slid her hand between them and down inside his pants where she got a good grip and stroked him.
He hissed. “Jeezo mighty.”
“What is jeezo mighty?”
“A lot nicer than the words I was thinking,” he groused.
Did he think she had never heard bad words? She wouldn’t tell him. It was nice that he cared.
She kept her hand moving slow
ly up and down the thick shaft. When he groaned this time, she tried to sound innocent when she asked, “This hurt?”
“Yes, but not like you think. Hurts because I want you.”
She paused and he held his breath until she stroked him again. “I hurt, too. Want, too.”
Justin’s body shuddered, then he pulled her hand gently from him. “Music to my ears, babe, but you need to rest. Tomorrow will be long.”
Why didn’t he want to play? Had she been doing something wrong? “Is tomorrow now, yes?”
“Guess so, now that you mention it.”
She pressed her hands on his chest and asked, “Head hurt?”
“Not bad. I didn’t plan to sleep so that was fine. I got up a little while ago and took a walk.”
He was lying, but men would be men. “Why? You hear noise?” Her breath sent frosty clouds billowing in the air.
“Nope. Me and Monty needed a nature break.”
“Oh. Is safe here, yes?”
“Yep, this location worked out. I thought it might. Wolves hunt at night, but being wolf shifters who function all day as well, they had to stop at some point. I’m thinking hitting that rockslide did it or they’d have been here before now if they’d kept going. We do need to be out of here soon though, because they’ll be already moving again.”
“How long?”
“Dawn should start in maybe thirty or forty minutes. We’ll have enough ambient light for our bear vision. I want to get rolling then.”
She sighed on a smile and changed her tactic. “Is cold. I want warm.”
He hugged her to him in a tight bear hug, which squashed her against his still unsatisfied Monty. “Ugh. Squeeze too much.”
“I’m keeping you warm.”
“Need more heat.”
He chuckled. “Babe, I’m a furnace. Just stay still and I’ll warm you.”
She had to know if he was in too much pain to play. “You lie. Much pain.”
Releasing his grip on her body, he said, “No, really. I’m fine.”
Taking advantage of the opening she gave him, she pushed herself up on one elbow and gripped him again. “Good. Be still and I make better.” This time when she stroked him he didn’t talk. The only sound she heard for a moment was his ragged breathing that also blew out puffy white clouds.
