by Moxie North
Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Lisa Ladew. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original One True Mate remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Lisa Ladew, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
One True Mate: Bear’s Embrace
Moxie North
Contents
Foreward from Lisa Ladew
Glossary
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Connect With Moxie
Also by Moxie North
Foreward from Lisa Ladew
I am lucky enough to have met Moxie in real life. Yep. I know. We met at Readers and Writers Seattle 2017. We’re both gonna be there 2018, if you want to come see us!
So, here’s my first impression of Moxie. Adorable. Sweet and pretty and wearing the cutest little headband with kitty cat ears on it. I loved them. I couldn’t wear them because I have a big head and they would look funny, but I still loved them. On her.
She was super nice. Of course. Easy to be nice when you’re gonna talk for 5 minutes and then go back to your table. But now it’s many months later, and she’s still super nice. I like that in a person.
Adorable. When I thought of Moxie I thought of adorable.
But then I read her book, Bear’s Embrace.
I’m so conflicted now! Because it’s freaking adorable. But it’s also freaking badass. I don’t even know where to go with this. Adorable badass? Is that my new opinion of Moxie? Ha! I think it is.
And she writes all shifters all the time, which is a major bonus. PNR is FUN. And when you pick up a Moxie book, you know what you are gonna get. Adorable badass PNR. My new fave. Amazon, I think it needs to be a new category. Snap snap.
I can’t wait for you to read Poppy and Zane’s story. It’s a good one. <3
Lisa
Glossary
Used with the permission of Lisa Ladew
Bearen – bear shifters. Almost always work as firefighters.
Citlali – spiritual leaders of all shiften. They are able to communicate with the deities telepathically, and sometimes bring back prophecies from these communications.
Deae – goddess.
Dragen – dragon shifter. Rare.
Echo – an animal with the same markings of a shiften. Usually seen as a harbinger of bad things, but could also be a messenger from The Light.
Felen – big cat shifters. Almost always work as mercenaries. They are also the protectors of Rhen’s physical body and a specially trained group of them can track Khain when he comes into the Ula.
Foxen – the foxen were created when Khain forcibly mated with female wolven.
Haven, the – final resting place of all shiften. Where The Light resides.
Impot – a shiften that cannot shift because of a genetic defect caused by mating too close to their own bloodline. Trent and Troy are not thought to be impots because they were born during a klukwana.
Khain – also known as the Divided Demon, the Great Destroyer, and the Matchitehew. The hunter of humans and the main nemesis of all shiften.
Klukwana – a ceremony where a full-blooded shiften mates with another shiften with both in animal form, then the mother stays in animal form during the entire pregnancy. The young in the litter are always born as their animal. Wolven from a klukwana always come in at least four to seven young. Bearen are always two cubs, and felen are unpredictable, sometimes only one. Shiften born from a klukwana are almost always more powerful, bigger, and stronger than regular shiften, but many parents don’t try it because of the inherent risks to the mother during the (shorter) pregnancy and the risk that the shiften young may choose not to shift into human form. A lesser known possibility is that the shiften young will have a harder time learning to shift into human form, especially if no one shifts near them in the first few days after birth.
KSRT – Kilo Special Response Team, or Khain Special Response team. A group of wolven police whose primary goal is to hunt down and kill Khain, if that can be done.
Light, The – the creator of the Ula, humans, Rhen, Khain, and the angels.
Moonstruck – insane. Shiften who spend too long indoors or too long in human form can become moonstruck slowly and not even realize it.
Pravus – Khain’s home. A fiery, desolate dimension that sits alongside ours.
Pumaii – a small group of specialized felen tasked with tracking Khain when he crosses over into our dimension.
Renqua – a discoloration in a shiften’s fur which is also seen as a birthmark in human form. Every renqua is different. The original renquas were pieces of Rhen she put inside the wolves, bears, and big cats to create the shiften. Every pure-blooded shifter born since has also had a renqua. Half-breeds may or may not have one. Some foxen acquired weak renquas when they mated with shiften. Also called the mark of life.
Rhen – the creator of all shiften. A female deity.
Ruhi – the art of speaking telepathically. No humans are known to possess the power to do this. Not all shiften are able to do it. It is the preferred form of speaking for the dragen.
Shiften – shifter-kind.
Shiftsegen – a special blessing left for the One True Mates by their father, a pendant that represents their angel half and the animal of their intended mate. The shiftsegen is powerful and unpredictable and its uses and powers are not clear.
Ula – the Earth, in the current dimension and time. The home of the shiften.
Vahiy – end of the world.
Wolfen – a wolf shifter. Almost always works as a police officer.
Wolven – wolf shifters, plural.
Zyanya – when a wolfen dies, the funeral is for the benefit of humans, but the important ceremony is the zyanya. The pack mates of the fallen wolfen run in wolf form through the forest, heading north to show the spirit the way to the Haven. When they reach a body of water, they all jump in and swim to the other side, then emerge in human form.
Chapter One
Wyoming Wilderness
“You gonna play, or just sit there staring at your cards all day?”
Zane Rakoff glared at the man across the table. It didn’t matter that Beau Chance was his best friend or that they had grown up together. Beau liked to fuck with him, and he was doing it at that very moment. He was stalling on purpose.
“There you go, rushing into shit again. Last time I checked, there wasn’t a time limit on playing a hand in poker,” Beau said calmly.
Zane growled the sound rumbling from the middle of his chest. “Yes, there is. It’s called the small amount of time you have before I reach across the table and break your nose.”
“Can’t we all get along?” Zane’s friend Renley commented while keeping his eyes firmly on his own cards.
“Not when fuckwad over here is wasting time just to piss me off.”<
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“That, my friend, is the last thing I want to do. You need to calm down and realize this is just a game. You always get riled up when we haven’t had a call in a while. Which, may I remind you, is a good thing,” Beau remarked and threw a card down on the table. “One.”
“Amen to that,” Renley said, throwing down two of his cards.
“Don’t tell me what I need to do. I’m sick of waiting around here getting fat off of stale donuts and shit coffee.”
“Don’t tell me you’re wishing for a wildfire?” Renley asked.
Zane wasn’t, of course. Being a Hot Shot firefighter in Wyoming meant that fire season sucked, and it often meant unending hours of sweat, tears, and destruction. But it was their job to battle back what nature, or some asshole with a cigarette, started.
He knew that he shouldn’t jump on his friends. These guys were more like his brothers, they were the only family he had, and he didn’t want to alienate them. Luckily, they were used to putting up with his shit on a daily basis.
“You know what, this is pissing me off. I’m gonna go punch the bag. I’m out,” he announced, throwing his cards down and standing up.
“You do that, buddy. Growl, hiss, spit, whatever, just don’t hit anyone that’s alive. You don’t want the Lieutenant to suspend you. You know he’s got it out for you.”
Zane did know that. His Lieutenant answered to Bruin, the new Citlali and Fire Chief, and he was of the mind that their transfer to his unit was unnecessary. He had his crew and he liked it the way it operated. Taking on three new recruits messed up what he had been sure was a perfect team. But the Fire Board had their reasons and Lieutenant Slade was going to have to suck it up.
Zane wasn’t sure if it was because of him and his need to buck authority or the fact they were misfits that didn’t fit back into a bearen group when they came of age. Most went back to where their fathers and grandfathers lived, assuming a loose sort of family dynamic. Zane didn’t want to go home and Beau and Ren also had their reasons for not returning home. They were transients and just wanted to do the jobs that called to them like so many others. They were firefighters and whether it was car accidents, burning buildings, or burning forests, they did their jobs well. There was no reason their Lieutenant should give a flying fuck about why they were transferred. They all did what their superiors told them to do.
But the Lieutenant didn’t suck it up. He took it out on Zane and the guys. Some would have called it honest hazing for new recruits, but they were firefighters with years of experience between them. They did their jobs, and they did them damn well. Treating them like newbies was unnecessary.
Zane didn’t mind scrubbing trucks and sorting gear. He liked knowing that when they needed to save someone that he had been the last one to make sure that everything was in working order.
Walking down the long hallway, he looked over to the parking bays that held the department’s trucks. Some were standard fire trucks and others pumpers that could hold thousands of gallons of water. There were also trucks that resembled military vehicles that could cross the rough terrain that was their battlegrounds during a wildfire.
Passing the kitchen, Zane could hear voices coming from inside. He continued past the offices and bunk rooms until he came to the open doorway of the gym. It was a room that always made his nose twitch. He scented the sweat of too many men and too much testosterone. It was the smell of old leather and body odor. To anyone else it would make them turn around and search out fresher air.
He didn’t, it made the dominant side of him rear up and want to make his sweat the only scent in the room. He wanted other males to come in and know that he had been there and was someone they didn’t want to mess with.
He knew it wasn’t rational, but Zane had never been a laid back type of guy. Growing up, he was always picking fights and getting into scrapes. Not that fighting with humans gave him the full release he needed. Zane had to hold back with them. Being big and tall, along with the strength his animal gave him - it made him lethal if he needed to be. Beau and Ren could handle him in a tussle. Even if they did break something, a quick shift would heal their injuries.
He was already wearing his blue work pants and a t-shirt that would allow him to hit the bag around. Slipping on a pair of sparring gloves, he set out to teach the hanging bag a lesson.
Chapter Two
After expending some energy, Zane cleaned up and clocked out. He was staying at the base like Beau and Ren and their facility was out of the way, but closer to the action if it ever arose. Sleeping there made more sense than trying to find housing that could be up to forty-five minutes away. When time was of the essence, minutes could mean lives lost.
He couldn’t imagine being away from his friends. They’d been sleeping in the same room since he was seven years old. Beau was four and Ren was five when they were sent to the camps. Zane had been the head boy so to speak by the time they got there. He took the younger boys under his wing and they had never left. The time before he was sent to the camp and even some after his arrival were faded memories. Out of stress, or fear, he wasn’t sure which, but Zane remembered the day they showed up as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
Lying in one of the oversized single beds he put his arm behind his head. Zane pulled a quarter out of his pocket and rolled it over and in between his knuckles. The coin in his hand went soft and clung to his finger, wrapping around it. Zane focused on it and the coin hardened back to its original shape. The ability to alter and manipulate metal was something he’d discovered one night when a group of older boys were threatening to pound him for talking back to one of them. They had come for him after the call for lights out and were close to landing the first blow when Zane felt his rage build at an uncontrollable rate and the next thing he knew, the bunk bed that he was hiding beside crumpled and collapsed on the boys in a groaning screech of metal.
The boys didn’t bother him much after that. He was also lucky that Beau and Ren weren’t afraid of him after the display of rage. They loved Zane’s new-found skill and thought of all the ways they could use it to their advantage.
Their bond was more than just comrades in flames. They were bearen without mates. Bearen without mothers, sisters, or grandmothers.
Twenty-five years before, the demon Khain had struck a mortal blow against all shiften, killing nearly every female they had. In one disastrous stroke, Khain had removed all of the love, laughter, and peace of an entire race and the heart of every shiften all over the world broke at the same time.
Everyone hurt, the young and the old alike. Some found solace in their family groups, banding together and finding a place to continue their lives.
Zane had been sent to a war camp where he met Beau and Renley, and after all the pain that he had been through, they were the only family he knew and loved. His father had not been able to handle his own loss and continue to raise his child. Zane barely spoke to him anymore. As he and his friends aged out of the camps, they chose a slightly different path than most of their brethren.
With only a few exceptions, bearen were almost always firefighters. It was in their nature to protect and save humans. It was what they did. There would have been a place for him and his friends in any fire station in the country.
But they wanted something different. Whether it was their fatalistic attitude about not having mates or never having the opportunity for mates that goaded their decision they never asked. They would be firefighters, like the rest of their bearen kind, but they wanted more so they trained to be Hot Shots. Jumping out of airplanes and fighting wildfires was an outlet for a lot of the rage and grief that came from losing their opportunity to find mates of their own.
After years of being alone, news had reached them that the first One True Mate had been found. And then another, and another. Mates, women, and partners were coming forward. The prophecy told by a wolven Citlali twenty-five years before had been noted but not believed. An angel that had been fighting Khain had come down and
fathered half angel, half human children that had grown to become One True Mates to the shiften. They finally had a chance at a future, a chance to fight Khain and rebuild their lives.
Nobody wanted to believe it. It didn’t matter that decades had passed. All those that had lost their mates had no hope of finding new ones. But shiften like Zane had gone from no chance at a mate to at least a hope for one.
Hope was something that was new to all of them. Hope that there might be love, comfort, and that softness and community only a woman can bring. It was tempting, that hope, something that he could almost taste on his tongue. A mate.
Most shiften that feared being moonstruck would vent their emotions and pent-up energy on willing partners. It was just sex and there was a small release. But it could never fill that aching part of them that longed for their mates.
Zane took part when he had to, but it never settled the animal side of him. He loved to run as his bear, tear up a hillside, and tussle with his brothers. It was a physical release that did nothing for the pain he felt.
There was only one thing that ever settled the anger he felt inside at being alone and without a woman. It was something he hadn’t even shared with his friends. Something he couldn’t share with anyone.
His secret.
Ren and Beau entered the room and both flopped dramatically down on their beds.
“We need to go out, do something. Run,” he suggested.
