by Amelia Jade
Kiefer nodded, then glanced up at Gabriel. “Well, Captain?”
The captain looked unhappily between the two of them. “The craziest part of all of this is that I actually think you’re telling the truth,” he muttered.
“That would be because I am,” Peyton said dryly. “I have no reason to lie to you.”
“No?” Gabriel looked unconvinced, his eyes focusing on Kiefer for a moment. “Maybe there’s the fact that you could be saying this as a way to ingratiate yourself with us, and worm your way into our confidences?” He gave her a nasty smile. “I’ve heard that once you’ve done it once, it becomes much easier.”
Kiefer growled protectively, not making any attempt to keep the volume down.
“No,” Peyton said, putting a restraining hand on his chest. “He’s right. That is a valid concern to have. I’ve certainly done enough double-crossing in my past life.”
“Past life?”
“Yes, Captain, past life. I’m not that person anymore.” She looked down at her limbs, closing her fingers into fists and then relaxing. “In more ways than one. But you see, I recall everything that I’ve done. I have the memories within me, but they don’t feel like mine. It’s as if I’m watching a movie of another version of me doing them. Even though I was theoretically one of the good guys, I still don’t feel like that person anymore.”
“What do you feel like?” Kiefer asked.
This was the first time she’d spoken of her memories and her feelings toward them since she’d woken up from being Turned. Before that she’d told him once that she felt like the memories weren’t hers, but after regaining all of her memory, he hadn’t had a chance to ask her how she felt.
“I feel like the person you met two weeks ago,” she said, her head tilting slightly to look up at him. “It’s weird. I don’t really know how to describe it, to be honest. All I can say is, I don’t feel like that person, and on top of that, I don’t want to be that person.”
The force behind her words rocked Kiefer back on his heels.
“I know I’m biased, sir,” he said, glancing over at Gabriel. “But I think she’s telling the truth.”
Gabriel looked thoughtful. “I think she is too.” He looked past the duo and down the stairs at all the assembled shifters. “If you’ll excuse me, I have an assault to stop.”
He pushed through them, bellowing orders to “knock off that racket” and to stand ready for a surprise inspection. Then he sent several runners to retrieve those who had already left.
Moments later Kiefer watched a Pegasus shifter launch into the sky and wing frantically northward, likely to relay word to the main force leaving from Cadia itself that they were walking into a trap, and to cease advancing until given further orders. Or something like that. Kiefer didn’t particularly care just then.
He had other concerns.
“So, what are you going to do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Peyton replied suggestively. “But I have a few ideas.”
Kiefer blinked.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Peyton
“Looking good, recruit.”
Peyton turned. It wasn’t a smooth pirouette like she might have done. No, the only way to describe it was lumbering. Four huge paws danced across the ground as lightly as she could make them, but it was still a slow process.
There was a man standing there. One that she had vaguely seen before, but didn’t know who it was. He held an aura of command about him, however. He had a powerful jaw and dirty-blond hair that seemed immaculately cut. Short on the sides, slightly longer on top. A classic cut for his classic good looks.
Standing next to him was a tall strawberry blonde. She wasn’t quite as long-limbed as Peyton, but the difference would be minimal overall. Though she didn’t possess the bulk of one of the female-born shifters, the past three weeks since she’d “awoken” without a memory had been spent entirely immersed in shifter culture. It gave Peyton the ability to note the way this woman carried herself.
She was a shifter. A split second after that, Peyton realized she knew the woman.
With a conscious effort, Peyton called up the room maze in her mind, and began to shuffle them once more. Her bear protested, but it had no choice, and its power began to fade as it was pulled away from her.
Moments later Peyton rose from a crouch.
“Recruit?” she asked, looking confused.
“Sorry,” the man said with a wave. “General term I use for anyone new to something.”
“Ah,” she said, then hesitated. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Not officially,” he said, then stuck out a hand. “Colonel Garrin Richter. This is my mate, Mia Jameson.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Colonel,” she replied, shaking his hand firmly, then turned to the woman. “Mia, a pleasure to see you again, and under much more, ah, enjoyable, circumstances.”
The woman blushed at the reminder that the last time Peyton had seen her was when she was drugged unconscious and had been unceremoniously carried back to the motel by a Green Bearet.
“Yes,” Garrin said through clenched teeth. “About that. Where is Lieutenant Hartmann?”
Mia punched him on the shoulder. “Stop that. You already know you’re not going to punish him, because he did nothing wrong. It’s mine and Allix’s fault. We were too slow, and too overconfident. Besides, Kiefer tried to keep us from coming with him. We just ignored him after doing our job in the bar.”
“So that was you,” Peyton said.
“Yeah,” Mia replied with a grin. “Kiefer knew that his men would be spotted instantly, so he asked Allix and I to go in and watch the exits, in case they tried something funky with you. Good thing he did, too.”
Peyton nodded. “Thank you for that, by the way. I never did get the chance.”
“Maybe you would have, if she hadn’t been shot,” Garrin rumbled.
“Stop being so protective of me,” Mia protested. “I am a grown woman and a full-blown shifter. I can take care of myself!”
“Except when you’re tranq’d,” Garrin muttered under his breath.
“If I hear about that one more time, you’re going to regret it,” Mia threatened. “Drop it.”
“Drop it? Like you dropped to the floor when you were tranq’d?” he asked, though this time there was a teasing element to it.
“If I wasn’t so damn in love with you, Garrin Richter, I’d hit you right here and now,” Mia said, trying to restrain a grin even as she pretended to be mad at her mate.
Peyton wisely kept quiet, though she knew her face reflected amusement at the interplay between the two.
“I hope I’m not interrupting.”
She turned at the hips as Kiefer emerged from the forest and walked up next to them, an arm automatically snaking out and around her waist, drawing her close to him. Peyton didn’t resist, allowing herself to cuddle up next to him.
“No, you aren’t,” Colonel Richter said. “Though I will tell you that, in the future, you’re not to use my mate as a decoy.”
Kiefer had the good graces to blush. “Yes sir.”
Mia elbowed Garrin in the ribs. Hard.
“Right,” the colonel said, rubbing his side gingerly. “Anyway, the reason we came out here, Peyton, was to thank you. Contact has been initiated with this group opposing the Institute, and we’ll see how things go. But I thought you deserved to know first-hand that it all went smoothly, and that the dialog has started.”
Peyton nodded calmly. “I’m glad to hear that, Colonel. And thank you for not asking me to become involved besides giving you a way to get in touch with them. I’ve decided to leave that part of me behind, and I appreciate you respecting that.”
The colonel waved his hand dismissively. “Nonsense. You’ve more than earned it. You not only saved hundreds of shifters’ lives by letting us know about the planned trap with the Fenris remnants, but you also made us aware of the human attempts to assert control over us. We’ve since
warned the other strongholds.”
Peyton just shrugged. “It was the least I could do.” Then she frowned. “What do you think will happen now?”
Kiefer spoke up. “I actually just came from an informal theory session with some of the others about that.” He looked unhappy. “We think most of the other strongholds will withdraw more into themselves, isolating themselves from human contact even more.”
“Did you tell them about our theory on the human-shifter matings that we’ve been having?” Garrin asked.
“They’ve been informed sir, yes. Informally, as you asked. We’ve relayed messages to some of our friends out there as well. Letting them know that we think it’s a sign that further integration with humanity is the way forward.”
“Good, good,” the colonel said.
Peyton looked back and forth between them. “What theory?”
Kiefer looked like a deer caught in headlights, and then looked away.
“You didn’t tell her?” Mia asked cautiously.
“I…no,” Kiefer said.
“Tell me what?” Peyton asked, looking back and forth between the three of them.
The two men wouldn’t meet her eyes. Only Mia was willing to look at her.
“Oh for…” Mia shook her head. “Okay, since these two bozos are too embarrassed, I guess it’s up to me.” She gave Garrin an exasperated look. “Okay, so you’re Turned now, like me. You’ve manifested an animal, and are a full-blooded shifter.”
“Right.”
“So that means you dealt with the extreme fever that comes with it, and of course as we just saw, you’ve learned to harness the animal within your mind.”
Peyton tilted her head back and forth. “Working on it, but no incidents so far. It’s…difficult, getting used to having another entity in your head.”
Mia smiled. “Tell me about it. You should come hang out with me and the other girls sometime. It’s nice to get a different perspective on things. The boys here manifested their animals so long ago, they don’t remember what it’s like to live without them.”
“I would like that,” Peyton said with a smile. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Now, what it seems like Kiefer didn’t tell you, is that normally the Turning is extremely dangerous. In fact, it normally kills humans. The survival rate has, historically, been very, very low.”
Peyton felt her eyebrows raise. She slowly turned to regard Kiefer, but he was steadfastly looking at the ground.
“No, that wasn’t mentioned to me.”
“Don’t tear his head off just yet,” Mia said with a chuckle. “There’s a reason.”
Peyton arched an eyebrow.
“It’s never been tried on a mate before.” Mia frowned. “In fact, from what I understand, mating with humans has been a very rare thing until now, based mainly on the fact that shifters have done their best to avoid interacting with us.”
“So who was it that kept dying when they tried to Turn them?”
“Generic humans who wanted to become shifters. Or deranged shifters trying to create an army of shifters to help them. Things like that, or so Garrin has told me.”
“So what’s the theory then?” Peyton pressed.
“The theory is that none of us died during the Turning, because we’re their mates. Something about the shifter mated bond kept us alive and unharmed, besides having to deal with the events within our mind.”
“But why?”
“That is the bigger question,” Garrin said, joining the conversation for the first time. “We’re not sure. It could just be coincidence, for all we know. It could have always been this way, but because we were so isolated from humanity, we never truly realized it.”
“Or?” she asked, sensing there was more to it than that.
“Or it could be a sign that things are changing when it comes to the relationship between us and the humans,” Kiefer finished.
Peyton considered that.
“Could this be why the humans have chosen to act?” It felt odd to no longer lump herself in with that group, but it was something that Peyton was adjusting to with a startling alacrity. “Could they have learned about this, perhaps from other strongholds, and decided that they didn’t want it to happen?”
“We don’t think so,” Garrin said. “As far as we’re aware, this wide-scale shifter-human mating scenario has only happened in Cadia, not in any of the other shifter territories.”
“So why the hell did they decide to make a move now?”
Kiefer glanced at Garrin. He looked away quickly, but not before Peyton and Mia noticed.
“What is it?” Mia asked, looking back and forth between the two Green Bearets. “You know something, don’t you?”
Kiefer looked unhappy, while Garrin’s face was impassively set in stone.
“Don’t think you can just bring this up and not tell us!” Peyton said, anger slipping through into her tone.
There was a long pause, but Garrin eventually nodded at Kiefer.
“Sorry,” Kiefer apologized. “I wasn’t sure, since you’ve only so recently gone through the changes you have. It, ah...”
“Just spit it out, Kiefer,” she said. “Why are the humans trying to control us?”
Kiefer looked unhappy. “Because that’s just the way they are.”
Peyton stood still for a moment.
“You know,” she said slowly. “I should be offended by that, seeing as less than a week ago I was still human. You’re basically saying that it’s their nature to want to control everything?”
Kiefer nodded. “Yes. We’re individually stronger than they are. Faster. We live longer and are generally immune to disease. That is a threat to them that they can’t ignore, even though we have no designs on supplanting the human race.”
“Simply by existing we’re a threat to them?” Mia asked, also looking unhappy.
“It’s just a thought,” Kiefer said, trying to downplay it.
“No, it’s more than that,” Peyton said. “I think you’re right.”
“And if he is, it means we’re not safe,” Garrin said. “None of us are safe.”
“Perhaps not,” she replied. “But we have each other. That’s got to count for something, right?”
Kiefer pulled her close once more.
“It counts for everything.”
This concludes Book 5 of the Base Camp Bears series. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Although this story is over, there are more adventures to be had. To get access to my newest stories at the introductory price of just 99c, and for other exclusives, sign up for my newsletter!
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THE END
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About the Author
Amelia Jade
Amelia Jade loves to write the stories of tall, growly shifter men and the women who come to love them. Living out in the backcountry near the mountains, she keeps her own alpha male close by to keep the bears away and keep her warm. In her downtime (which is rare), she loves to read science-fiction with a dash of fantasy. You can often find her curled up in front of the real wood-burning fireplace, her nose firmly buried in a book or her favorite e-reader. The cold can’t bother her there!
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Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
