Scandalous Shifters Paranormal Box Set

by Mia Taylor

“Is this some kind of joke?” he asked, bemused. “Did Lena put you up to this?”

  “Please step outside,” Shue instructed. Damon placed a foot onto the porch and was immediately spun around, his arms pinned behind his back.

  “What the hell is this about?” Damon screamed. “This is a joke! I’m the goddamned chief of police.”

  “Damon Sommer, you are under arrest for corruption, illegal search and seizure, witness tampering and intimidation—just for starters. You have the right to remain silent…”

  Damon stared helplessly at his wife but Lena stood frozen, her face unmoving as she watched the scene unfold.

  “Call my union rep!” he screamed. “I will have your asses for this!”

  “Save it for the courts, Sommer,” Mendez muttered. “I hear that the Prince of Luxembourg is scheduled to make an appearance.”

  Damon’s blood ran cold then and he jerked his head up to stare at the smugly smiling policemen.

  “What did you just say?” he breathed. “What did you say about Vivier?”

  The men exchanged a knowing grin, their eyes glittering between them.

  “Wait a second,” Damon breathed. “I-I’m his father-in-law. He can’t do this to me…”

  “Did you understand your rights as I’ve read them to you?” Shue hissed and as Damon turned his head, he saw something terrifying in the man’s face.

  As if in a trance, he watched the cop’s face twist into the long, snarling snout of a wolf, his teeth gleaming like razors against grey fur.

  “What the—”

  He blinked and the men were men again but Damon was trembling in his place.

  What the hell is going on here?

  Once again, he thought of his late wife unexpectedly and somehow, from somewhere in his psyche, he couldn’t help but feel like everything was interconnected.

  In that moment, Damon realized what was happening and why.

  He was yanked out of the house and pulled toward a waiting car out front.

  “Oh hey, Mrs. Sommer?” Shue yelled back into the house as they led Damon away.

  “What?” Lena screeched, wringing her hands. “I’m not talking to you! He didn’t do anything! You’ve got the wrong guy and no matter what you do to me, I won’t talk! I love you, baby! Stay strong! We’ll get you out, baby!”

  Damon rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth as the agents laughed at her histrionics.

  “We’re just letting you know your pizza’s here, geez.”

  As Damon was perp-walked into the back of the unmarked car, he suddenly had the feeling that he had opened a whole can of unearthly worms in his town.

  And he was going to be the one to pay the price for it.

  Bear Behind Bars

  Scandalous Shifters

  Book 4

  Chapter One

  Whiplashed

  It was one of those dismal, miserable days, the weather gods furious as water dumped from the skies in a torrent. Even the rats hid beneath the sodden mess of cardboard strewn haphazardly in the alleyways, unwilling to get their disease-infested paws damp.

  Impartially the rain fell, attacking the slickly dressed crowds in the financial district and homeless vagabonds huddled around trashcan fires without discrimination.

  One must ask oneself if this isn’t the foreshadowing of Armageddon to come.

  Not that she much believed in such nonsense, but still, the blonde, poised female couldn’t help but question it.

  Victoria Duvall watched the hustle of the streets below her New York City penthouse with little interest, despite the propensity for action. After all, it was NYC in a storm. Something interesting was bound to happen but Victoria couldn’t have been less intrigued with the comings and goings of the Manhattaners below. Her mind was fully occupied elsewhere, despite her idle thoughts of the world’s end.

  In the background, the television was playing barely loud enough for human ears, but she could hear the words clearly, CNN enhancing her already acute sense of hearing as she listened. For the first time in a long while, she cursed her shifter senses. Oh, how she wished they would all shut up, but like the glutton for punishment she seemed to be, her ears honed in more to grasp at the nasal words of the reporter onscreen.

  “…is leading slightly in the polls, despite his controversial opinions regarding women’s roles in society. A protest is scheduled to commence at eleven a.m. in front of the Federal District Court in Manhattan. An estimated four thousand people are expected to attend in opposition of the Republican senator hopeful—”

  Victoria sighed heavily, willing herself to block out the blonde reporter’s clipped voice, and shook her head, smoky grey eyes trailing toward the heavens. Their color almost matched the storm above.

  Are you going to do something about this? she demanded silently, but it wasn’t God to whom she was speaking. No, Victoria knew there was no God and even the gods the other shifters sometimes took solace in addressing couldn’t help her now. She was talking to her husband, but he either ignored her or was out of earshot.

  From the door, a brisk knock distracted her from prayer.

  Hopeful, she turned to look, thinking that maybe Ryker hadn’t ignored her after all, but her face fell when she saw who it was.

  “What is it, Riley?” she asked, her light German accent harshening the words as she addressed the assistant coldly. The twenty-two-year-old Harvard graduate shuffled toward her, his bright, brown eyes shadowed with worry. Ryker had a deep affection for the kid but Victoria found his presence unnerving.

  Everything about this is unnerving, she thought bitterly.

  “Um…” he faltered and Victoria narrowed her perfectly made-up lids, causing her dark, mascaraed lashes to touch.

  “Speak, Riley. Use your vocal cords. I know you have them.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Duvall,” he stuttered. “I—there is a letter I think Mr. Duvall needs to see.”

  Victoria turned fully to the aide and held out a manicured hand, but the young man seemed reluctant to unhand the paper. Victoria eyed him with annoyance.

  “Well?” she snapped. “Are you going to give it to me or not?”

  “I really think Mr. Duvall should read this—” Riley started to say.

  “We don’t pay you to think,” she interjected firmly, insistently thrusting her palm forward. Visibly swallowing, Riley slunk forward, extending the paper toward his boss—or rather, his boss’ wife.

  Victoria accepted it and slowly began to scan it. Riley watched her intently, his eyes darting nervously about her face, seeking clues as to her reaction, but as always, Victoria displayed nothing of her true feelings on her face.

  After she had finished perusing the page, Victoria stoically tossed the printed sheet back at Riley and turned toward her desk as if he wasn’t still standing there.

  “Ma’am?” Riley finally uttered imploringly after a long moment. “What should I do about this?”

  Scorn colored Victoria’s patrician features and she stared at the assistant, causing him to wither visibly.

  “About what?” she asked. “A death threat? Put it in the pile with the others and stop seeking out my husband for trivial matters. He is an important man.”

  Riley turned crimson and backed quickly out of the den as though she’d physically burned him with her glare. Victoria stared at her laptop, ignoring his departure, but her mind was racing.

  Oh, Ryker, you must stop before things get out of hand, she thought worriedly. There were dozens of emails pouring into her personal server but Victoria was far too distracted to attend to them. As far as she knew, they were also laden with new threats on her life.

  As if hearing her thoughts, her husband strolled confidently into the study, a huge beam on his face.

  “Hello, my love,” he purred with too much confidence.

  “What are you grinning about?” she snapped, trying to keep the exasperation from her tone. “You just got another threat on your life.”

  His smile did not
falter as he shrugged nonchalantly.

  “Just add it to the pile,” he replied jokingly and Victoria swallowed a smile despite her concern. After fifteen years of marriage, they had begun to assimilate with one another. They were mates after all, even if it had taken two hundred years to find one another.

  Or at least that was what she told herself to get through the day—that they were mates.

  This is not a laughing matter. He needs to be stopped, she chided herself. She knew her husband was far too cocky in his abilities to admit that there were still dangers that could affect them. Ryker might not fall victim to a man with a gun, but he could just as easily be overtaken by a shifter with a grudge if he wasn’t careful.

  How easily he forgets that he’s not invincible and that terrifies me.

  She maintained her irritated expression and stared at him balefully.

  “You cannot be so flip. You need to scale it back, Ryker. You’re going to get yourself into a world of trouble.”

  She didn’t add that trouble for him meant trouble for all of them.

  He should know that.

  Her husband waved a hand dismissively and flopped onto the white chaise as he reached for the decanter. But he couldn’t quite reach the crystal container over the cinch in his belt.

  Victoria watched him struggle like a fish out of water for a moment, remembering what he had looked like when they had first married, fifteen years earlier.

  They had both been recently divorced when they’d met at the Met gala and neither had the enchantment of fairy tale romance on their minds.

  Victoria had been a lingerie model for most of her eternal youth but had since started a successful clothing line in New York’s bustling fashion district. Her face had become far too commonplace for far too long in magazines and she knew she needed to do something else, if only to keep suspicion from raining down on her head.

  Over and above the handsome alimony payments her ex-husband doled out from Dubai, Victoria was wealthy in her own right. She had no shortage of salivating men vying for her attention, a courtesy she simply did not have time to provide. She had always been career-driven, a fact that many men found intimidating—even the strongest of shifter males she’d encountered.

  Ryker Duvall, on the other hand, was not a self-made man. He was an attorney in the swanky Upper Manhattan offices of Chatham, Crowe and Fiend. He had narrowly avoided a career in divorce law by marrying Samuel Crowe’s intellectually stunted daughter, Evangeline. Begrudgingly, Samuel had agreed to make his new son-in-law a junior partner, despite Ryker’s carefree attitude and poor work ethic.

  To the shock of everyone in the firm, Ryker managed to pull in white-collar clients with his flimflam artist tongue, giving the managing partners no choice but to put his name on the door. Soon after that, Ryker filed for a divorce from Evangeline.

  It was three weeks following the finalization of the paperwork that Victoria and Ryker chanced upon one another.

  Victoria had been immediately unimpressed with the cocksure, broad-shouldered bear. She could understand why some women would consider him attractive—he possessed all of the characteristics of the “dream man”. His hair was full and dark, his eyes a deep, smoldering blue, and his smile could dazzle the stars from the skies.

  Yet Victoria had met many men like Ryker Duvall and when he approached her, uninvited with a martini in his hand, she had eyed him with thinly veiled contempt.

  “I had them make it with a twist and olive,” he informed her, handing her the glass. He had forsaken an introduction and Victoria had blinked, shaking her head.

  “I loathe martinis,” she replied tightly, turning back to her female companion in dismissal. To her ire, Ryker continued to speak.

  “Just try it. You never know unless you try,” he urged, pressing the stem into her palm. Furious, Victoria had whirled around, prepared to throw the drink in his face.

  “I don’t know who you believe you are but you must learn to take rejection,” she snarled. To her surprise, his grin widened and he had leaned in conspiratorially.

  “I’m Ryker Duvall,” he replied, pushing the glass toward her pursed lips. “And I have been sent from the heavens to renew your faith in martinis.”

  As Victoria stood at her desk, she tried to remember what it was specifically about him which had captured her in the beginning.

  She admitted that he had charmed her in ways she had never known. Ryker was inherently romantic, sweeping her off to Morocco and Paris on a moment’s notice. There had been champagne in the bathtub and rose petals on the stairs. He recited poetry to her until she fell asleep and once he had even serenaded her underneath her bedroom window.

  It had all been so cliché and borderline cheesy but Victoria had been amused and eventually smitten by his refusal to let her go. He had simply been relentless, breaking down her cool façade until she had finally agreed to spend her life with him, convincing her that they were fated to be together. Truthfully, he had never stopped with the flowers and surprises, keeping her very much in love with him.

  Although if Victoria was to think about it, she had never really been convinced that they were mated to each other—at least no more so than any of her other husbands.

  Mates are for young, idealistic shifter females who need to be taught to pursue their careers and not settle until they’re established. I’m well beyond that.

  Sometimes she wondered if she still saw him the way she had, fifteen years earlier when she looked at him.

  Ryker grunted and Victoria was forced back to the present where her husband continued to lurch for the scotch in the decanter from where he sat.

  “Oh, for the love of all that’s sacred, Ryker, I’ll get it!” Victoria moved out from behind her desk to pour her husband a drink, shaking her head in annoyance. He had been much closer but she knew he was waiting on her to do it.

  “Mr. Duvall?” Riley was back at the door. Victoria did not look up from where she poured but Ryker gestured for the boy to enter.

  “What do you have, Riley?”

  “DA Braden and ADA Howell want to meet you this week for lunch. I told them with the election in two weeks…"

  Riley trailed off but Ryker shook his head.

  “No, that’s fine. Set it up. Tell them to leave their wives this time,” Ryker replied, accepting the scotch from his wife. Victoria rolled her eyes at his last remark.

  “I-I don’t know how I would say that…” Riley mumbled. Victoria could almost hear his face flushing pink.

  Couldn’t he have hired someone with a little bit more life experience? she thought with some exasperation.

  “Like this, Riley. Watch my lips now.” Ryker pointed at his mouth. “Leave. Your. Wives. At. Home. I cannot bear to listen to Ramona Howell’s nasal pitch for one more minute. If it weren’t for their contributions to the campaign…”

  Ryker trailed off to take a sip of his potent drink as if to drown the bitterness in his mouth.

  “Yes, sir,” Riley murmured. He paused, glancing nervously at Victoria.

  “Anything else, Riley?” Ryker demanded, sensing that the aide wanted to say something more. Victoria’s mouth puckered into a frown. She knew what he was going to say before he spoke.

  “Uh… did Mrs. Duvall tell you about the letter you received?”

  “About the death threat? Yes. It’s fine.” Ryker waved his hand in dismissal despite the worried expression on Riley’s face. The assistant paled and nodded, disappearing over the threshold to leave the couple alone.

  “He’s much like a timid pit bull, isn’t he?” Ryker commented. “He seems all meek and scared but if you get that kid mad, he will rip your throat out. I have heard him on the phone trying to get a reservation at the Gramercy Tavern. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong end of that boy.”

  Victoria did not smile.

  “I don’t care what you say, he is afraid, Ryker. He’s worried his car is going to be laced with explosives one of these days. He’s not made of the s
ame material as us,” Victoria countered, reminding her husband that the boy was just that—a flesh and blood man.

  “You and your melodrama,” Ryker snapped, his grin fading. “I told you not to binge-watch 24 on Netflix. It’s not that bad. You forget, we’re dealing with Liberals. They’re all bark, no bite. They’ll write a scathing, venomous letter filled with angst and then go home and do yoga to cleanse their auras. They don’t have the know-how, let alone the balls to build a bomb between them.”

  Victoria did not share his sentiments but she did not argue. There was no sense. Ryker genuinely believed he knew what he was doing and there was nothing she or anyone could say to alter his perception.

  “Why are you always so sullen?” Ryker complained and Victoria forced a smile upon her lips. She wasn’t in the mood for an argument. They always ended the same way—slammed doors and without resolution.

  “Oh, come on, darling. You can’t fault me for worrying about what is going to happen when you’re elected,” Toria offered.

  “You know what will happen. We’re going to spin this election on its head and you’ll be married to a senator.”

  Victoria eyed him without speaking and Ryker began to pace the spacious den, oblivious to her watchful stare.

  “We are so close, Toria. You can’t allow for a few scary letters to dissuade us from our goal.”

  Death threats are not “scary letters”, Victoria thought with some acridity but she wisely said nothing and let her husband go on.

  “Once I become senator, the presidency is at my fingertips. Just think of it, darling! You could be first lady ten years from now! We’d be the first shifters in the White House! Well, except for that little stint… but you know what I mean. It’ll be a landmark election!”

  It was Victoria’s turn to stare out at the storm thoughtfully. It truly did have a delicious ring to it. First Lady of the United States of America, Victoria Duvall. The problem was, she did not fully share in Ryker’s confidence that he was winning the race for Senate. His campaign was gaining momentum for the wrong reasons and that gave her cause to worry.