by Haley Weir
“You better have a good explanation as to why Sapphire showed up to my door an hour ago crying,” Brock belted into the phone. “She looked like she was attacked by a wild animal. Then she tells me that you, of all people, rutted up against her like a beast and then left her there alone while you ran off into the woods.”
“There’s no excuse or explanation that’ll be good enough for you. It isn’t that simple, but what she said is truth enough.”
“Why?” his friend demanded. “Why did you have to do that to one of the sweetest, most amazing people I know? Sapphire is my best friend, Anders, and she didn’t deserve what you did to her—”
Anders moved the phone away from his ear for a moment, unable to listen to what he already knew. “I get it, Brock. I screwed up.”
“You more than screwed up. Don’t even think about speaking to me until you fix this. Unless Sapphire tells me that you’re worthy of forgiveness, our friendship is over.”
The line died and Anders threw his phone at a tree. It shattered upon impact and got lost in the foliage. His clothes were torn to pieces, so he had to make it back to his car without anyone seeing him. Anders didn’t sleep at all that night. He read Sapphire’s letter and imagined their kiss until he felt overwhelmed by the strength of his yearning.
CHAPTER SIX
“She’s alive,” Travis grumbled. Corey Reed looked up from his rifle and glared at his recon specialist with an impatient frown. He set the firearm aside and strolled over to the other man, boots kicking up dirt as he walked. Travis took a step back when Corey crowded his space. The legendary Commander was unpredictable at best and ruthless when he was on edge.
“Who is alive?” he snarled. Corey grabbed Travis’s jaw in a biting grip and forced the man to his knees. “Vanessa is dead, you fool. And you think it’s wise to disturb my meditation to make vague statements. Answer me.”
“The woman who saw us set the fires that night in the valley, the one who fell.”
Corey released Travis. “I sent you on a mission and that didn’t include you looking in on a girl who fumbled over a year ago. Did you find anything out about Vanessa’s past with Anders McKinney?”
“But what if she remembers something?” Travis stammered pitifully.
“Those freaks already know we’re here! They’re biding their time like we are. Now, I gave you orders and I expect a full report.” Corey’s voice echoed through the mountain. He sat in his favorite chair and kicked the kneeling man over with his grimy boots. “I won’t repeat myself.”
“Vanessa worked at the facility that experimented on Anders McKinney. A doctor named Nora Burk lured him there under the guise of a false relationship. Vanessa was head of security for the facility and, like everyone else, she had turned a blind eye to the things that had gone down there,” Travis said as he wiped his shirt off. “From what I found, it wasn’t a government facility, but privately owned by a man named Hydra.”
Corey stiffened at the mention of his employer. Hydra was an enigma that hired contract hunters to find shifters, skin-walkers, were-creatures, and other abominations. Hydra wasn’t in the market of killing them; he was more of a collector who turned the freaks into his personal pets. Not long before Hydra dispatched Corey and his crew to Haden Springs Wyoming had the mysterious man started to breed different species of his own creation. So far, the only thing to come from it was the Frankenstein’s Monster equivalent of a werewolf and bear shifter hybrid that gave Corey the creeps.
While he didn’t condone the act of billionaires playing god, he did enjoy the money and the thrill of hunting something new. “Anders recognized her the day we fought against the bears in the woods. He was the one who pulled her out of the tree. What else?”
“She was the only survivor at the facility when he went on his first rampage and slaughtered everyone, including the woman he loved. We knew he was a killer, but the body count he scored that day was something out of a horror movie.” Travis rubbed the reddened part of his jaw where Corey had grabbed him. “Vanessa was the one who put Nora in his path of destruction. If he were to find out, then—”
“Then it might send him into another rampage,” Corey finished with intrigue. “I’ve avoided triggering our enemies for the sake of this town, but I might just be tempted to let their faith in the so-called ‘bear protectors’ falter.”
“What are you thinking?”
Without another word to Travis, Corey walked over to the tent he knew the old war veteran Patrick would be resting inside. “You and I need to talk, partner.” Patrick crawled out of the tent and into the light of day. The retired marine had shaved his head and beard, putting the scars he earned from Dorian Chandler on full display. Three jagged lines cut across the left side of the man’s face.
“You’re target turned last night,” Patrick announced. “Anders was all over that coma girl and then took off into the forest. I followed him to make sure he behaved himself, had him in my scope…man, it was hard not to take that shot.”
“Our sponsor wouldn’t take kindly to us killing his assets,” Corey reminded him. “We need to put the mission before our personal bias. No matter how much I hate these abominations, it’s my job to make sure that we take them in alive.”
“So, what’s this chat of ours about, then?”
“I need you to go ahead and send a message to Anders McKinney,” he said. “No casualties, just a message, you got that?”
Patrick regarded Corey carefully. “You want me to tell her, don’t you? You want me to tell her what really happened that night…”
“I’ve thought it through. Once she hears that the man she was getting cozy with is a monster in disguise she won’t get in the way of us taking him down.”
Before he could walk away, Patrick grabbed his arm brazenly. “What are we going to do about Vanessa? She was one of ours, Corey, we can’t let them think her death will go unanswered. It’ll make us look weak.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“How?”
Corey moved so quickly that Patrick didn’t know what had happened until he was on his back with a blade pressed to his throat. “You don’t get to interrogate me. I am your commander and the privilege of calling my judgment into question is reserved to our employer only. Step out of line and you’ll wish you had died in that house fire like Vanessa,” he barked. “Watch yourself. You’re a tracker. Nothing more.”
“The great prodigy, right? That’s what you are. My god, Corey, you might be younger than I am, but I’ve heard the tales of your missions.”
“Forget what you heard.”
“Can you forget all of that?” Patrick asked. “You were only eighteen when they snatched you up and forced you into special ops. The things you must have seen… Do you ever think that this sponsor of ours is only out to eclipse your abilities and intelligence by mutating these freaks in some laboratory? Super soldiers like you would be old news if the government buys up all those beasts.”
The thought had crossed his mind a time or two. “What happens to the creatures is not our concern when they leave our custody.”
***
Brock ducked to avoid getting hit by the wineglass that came hurling toward his head. It crashed into the brick wall, breaking and scattering across the floor in hundreds of pieces. He dove over the chair and slid across the floor to try and tackle Sapphire to the ground, but she was faster than she looked. Sapphire jumped onto her bed that was held up by pallets and threw a pillow at Brock. She darted for the kitchen.
“Do not defend him, Sapphire! Not to me. He hurt you!”
“I let him,” she argued. “It wouldn’t have meant anything if I hadn’t let it mean anything. He told me he wasn’t interested, that I was attractive, but that was all it was.”
“Anders gave you false hope!” Brock finally caught her, grabbed her shoulders and pinned her to the floor. “You might see yourself as too strong for this sort of thing, but you’re only human. He’s the one who messed up. He’s the one wh
o can’t see what an amazing woman you are.”
“I’m not…I can’t be loved. I’m broken, Brock.”
“And I’m not broken?” he asked. “After everything I went through with my father and the guilt of my brother having to clean up after me, am I not worthy of being loved?”
“Of course you’re worthy!”
“Then why wouldn’t you be? It’s his loss, Sapphire, and he’ll come around and see that eventually. Don’t…let him use you,” Broke pleaded.
“We both used the agency…Kodiak Dating Agency. And we weren’t expecting to be each others’ perfect match, so we agreed to just enjoy the night without the feud between Michael and I or our personal animosity hanging over our heads.”
“So, a peaceful night of just getting to know each other?”
Sapphire nodded her head and stopped struggling. Brock released her shoulders and rolled beside her, both of them looking up to the water-stained ceiling of her apartment. “And everything was going so well. We had a lot in common. Literature, traveling, art, music…dancing, fighting, and honey.”
“Honey?”
“Our favorite food is honey. I didn’t know that when I made the dessert for the date, but it was a happy mistake,” she sighed. “Until the dessert was over and I was left alone, lying on my back in the middle of the night. I had to make myself presentable enough to finish the event and then walk home with my shoes in my hands and tears streaming down my face.”
“I’m going to kill him.” Brock tried to sit up from the floor, but Sapphire hooked her arm around him to keep him steady. “Seriously, Sapphire, how can you be so calm about this? I would be furious. You’ve put up more of a fight against me tonight than you did against that jerk.”
“I knew the score as soon as I saw that he was my date. Did I expect it to go the way it did? No, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t even think either of us wanted it to go as far as it did. He wasn’t entirely in control of his actions.”
Brock rolled his eyes and she smacked him on the arm. “Fine. I’ll let it go for now, but don’t defend him to me. I could literally kill him for hurting you.”
Sapphire kissed her best friend’s cheek and walked him to the door. “Good talk,” she yelled as the door shut behind him. Legolas, Melby, Puffer, and Rocco came out of hiding once the noise died down. Sapphire always felt much better after her unconventional conversations with Brock. “Did Mama scare you?”
The cats meowed and walked over to their food dishes as she changed into her pajamas. Brock’s loud truck peeled out of the driveway of the repair shop, bringing a smile to her face. There would be a letter pinned to her mailbox in the morning from the landlord claiming at “hooligans were racing their foreign cars” at all hours of the night. Sapphire had just tossed her clothes into the laundry hamper when she heard the front door squeak open.
She froze for just a second, but pretended to sort through her laundry. Her eyes darted around the room in a silent panic as she tried to think of some way to defend herself. Rocco hissed the second her eyes caught sight of a man in the reflection of the window. Sapphire dropped before his arms could wrap around her and rolled across the floor. She sprinted, feeling a deep burn in her overworked muscles from her childish spat with Brock earlier.
Unlike her friend, this man had no qualms about hurting her. He snatched Sapphire’s head back with a handful of hair and slammed her healing body to the floor so hard she bounced off the hardwood. But Sapphire was no easy prey. She brought her knee up hard and jammed it into the man’s side, causing him to drop the blade she hadn’t noticed in his hand. It skittered across the floor and she dove for it.
A crushing grip encircled her ankle and pulled her back beneath her attacker. “Anders McKinney is a murderer.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Who are you?” Sapphire kicked her legs, trying to dislodge the unwelcome guest in her home. She clawed and punched and elbowed, but nothing seemed to push him off. He reached for the neck of her bed shirt and tore it open with his hands. A new wave of fear ignited in her belly as she hurried to cover herself. The man jumped away from her as though she had burned him. Sapphire clutched the tattered fabric of her pajamas to her chest and repeated her question. “Who are you?!”
He shook his head in disbelief and stepped away from her. “You let that foul thing mate with you?” he snarled. “For a woman to lay with one of his kind is the most vile thing anyone could do. I’m sickened…”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your friends are not what they seem,” he replied ominously. “My name is Patrick. A year ago you saw something that you shouldn’t have, you saw my unit setting fire to the forests that surround those mountains.”
“You’re one of the arsonists?” Sapphire climbed to her feet, wishing she didn’t feel an aching numbness in her legs.
“Arson is merely a tool that we used to do the job we were sent here to do. And that is to find and capture things like Michael Adair, Brock Wasting, Dorian Chandler, and Anders McKinney. Bears that take the form of a man and hide amongst us.”
“You’re insane,” she snorted.
“No, you just don’t remember.”
“What…what are you talking about?! Stop speaking in riddles.” Sapphire crouched down and lifted the knife from the floor, surprised that he had been so distracted by the conversation that he allowed her to arm herself. “Tell me what you came here to say or leave.”
“You did fall that night, like they said. The river nearly finished off what the cliff didn’t take care of, but somehow, you found the strength to pull yourself out of that water and kept fighting,” he said with an air of admiration. “I knew you were hurt more than you realized, but when you collapsed and the flames nearly consumed you…well, I was the one that called in the fire. No matter what you might have heard about me, I ain’t no murderer.”
“The people who lost their lives to the arsons might feel differently.”
Patrick ignored Sapphire. “Then the freak showed up, the bear. He rushed into the fire to save you—or so I thought. If you hadn’t begged him, he would have left you there to die. You saw it…you saw him shift with your own eyes.”
Sapphire was ready to scuff and insult the man’s mental capacity, but something stopped her. She pressed the heel of her hand against the center of her forehead. A damn broke inside of her mind and memories flooded her conscious.
Sapphire held on for dear life, burying her face in the soft, damp fur that smelled of spring soil and berries. When the heat no longer threatened to scorch her flesh, the bear stopped. Sapphire climbed down and watched as it shifted into a man, a man that she recognized instantly. “Dr. McKinney?” she wheezed.
He didn’t stop or say anything as he stalked away from her. Sapphire attempted to follow him, but she tripped. The sound of her startled shout was what gave him pause. He was a doctor. He wouldn’t just leave her there to gasp for breath, would he?
“He…he wouldn’t have left me. He didn’t.”
“Because of the guilt. Not because he cared,” Patrick shouted.
Her trembling hands pulled the tube out of her throat, causing her to gag and sputter, expelling the contents of her stomach and way too many fluids onto the floor beside the unfamiliar bed beside her.
A constant beeping echoed in the back of her mind, disturbing the memories of her fall. Sapphire blinked open her eyes and felt pain radiate through her entire body. She grabbed the wires and tubes flowing from her body and yanked them away with a grimace. Her arms and legs felt like pins and needles or million fire ants were gnawing at her bones, but she forced her legs over the edge of the mattress.
Sapphire stumbled, slipping onto the cold tile on the floor. She let her cheek press against it for a moment, trying to calm the heat that threatened to burn her up from the inside. After a few seconds, she began to crawl across the floor.
“Help!” she finally shouted. Footsteps approached from somewhere down the hall. A familia
r face appeared, but her vision was blurred from the tears that wouldn't seem to stop flowing from her eyes. Arms lifted her from the floor and Sapphire leaned her head against a very masculine chest. “Help me…I…have to…save him.”
“Save who, Miss White?”
“The bear…the bear is on fire,” she wheezed. Those strong arms laid her down in the bed. Her vision cleared enough to reveal his face and Sapphire looked into the tormented whiskey-brown eyes of her savior.
Sapphire ran over to the kitchen sink and heaved. The nausea in her stomach worsened with the pounding in her head. “I-it’s true…it’s all true,” she gasped and sputtered. Her hands clutched the edge of the sink as she fought to tamper the sickness inside. It wasn’t the realization that her friend and almost-lover were the legendary bears of Haden Springs that made her feel ill. It was the lies.
Ever since she had awakened Christmas Eve, her friends had all withheld the truth from her. Either they didn’t trust her to keep their secret safe or they didn’t believe she was strong enough to handle the truth. Sapphire rinsed her mouth with a grimace and handed the knife back to the hunter. “Just go…you’ve done enough here.”
***
Bang! Bang! Bang! Three rapid-fire knocks on the door roused him from sleep. Anders hurried to the entrance hall of his home and looked out of the peephole before unlocking the door. Standing more than a foot shorter than he was Sapphire White. Her cheeks were red and blotchy as her hazel eyes misted with unshed tears.
“Miss White, I’m your doctor. This isn’t appropriate—”
