Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Crashing Down
Chapter 2 – Cold Reception
Chapter 3 – Gimme Shelter
Chapter 4 – Reunion
Chapter 5 – Prodigal Mate
Chapter 6 – Awakenings
Chapter 7 – Escape Attempt
Chapter 8 – Trust
Chapter 9 – Auction
Chapter 10 – Call of Duty
Chapter 11 – Commitment
Chapter 12 – Reclaimed
Chapter 13 – Lost
Chapter 14 – Resolve
Chapter 15 – Run to Me
Chapter 16 – Standoff
Chapter 17 – Home is Where the Heart is
Epilogue
Ash (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 6)
By Ophelia Sexton
Published by Philtata Press
Text copyright 2017 by Ophelia Sexton. All rights reserved.
Cover art by Jacqueline Sweet
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Excerpt
Hell, he could smell the delicious perfume of her arousal right now, filling the cab of the pickup truck as they drove back to the ranch. And all he was doing was drawing slow circles on the palm of her hand with his thumb.
The highway was deserted, so he pulled over to the side of the road and parked.
"Is everything okay?" Nika asked.
That tense, worried look that bothered him so much returned as soon as he pulled over.
"Everything's just fine," he replied, raising her hand to his lips.
One by one, he slowly kissed the back of each finger, then worked his way across the delicate bumps of her knuckles, enjoying the hitch in her breathing and the sound of her heartbeat speeding up.
"I just couldn't wait to do…this," he continued, turning to cup her cheek with his free hand. "You're so beautiful, Nika, and I've missed you so much."
Slowly, he leaned in, savoring the hunger in her gaze and the pounding of her pulse.
"I've missed you, too," she whispered, her breath warm against his lips just before his mouth made contact.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Crashing Down
Chapter 2 – Cold Reception
Chapter 3 – Gimme Shelter
Chapter 4 – Reunion
Chapter 5 – Prodigal Mate
Chapter 6 – Awakenings
Chapter 7 – Escape Attempt
Chapter 8 – Trust
Chapter 9 – Auction
Chapter 10 – Call of Duty
Chapter 11 – Commitment
Chapter 12 – Reclaimed
Chapter 13 – Lost
Chapter 14 – Resolve
Chapter 15 – Run to Me
Chapter 16 – Standoff
Chapter 17 – Home is Where the Heart is
Epilogue
Books by Ophelia Sexton
Dedication
To the brave and selfless firefighters at Cal Fire and the Alameda County Fire Department, who spend countless hours risking their lives to keep friends and neighbors safe during wildfire season. Thank you.
Chapter 1 – Crashing Down
Seattle, Washington
"My God, Nika," said her younger brother Dimitri, as she opened her apartment door and he caught a whiff of her scent. "You actually mated him, after all?"
His horrified gaze traveled down to Veronika Medved's midsection, where her already generous curves had grown even curvier over the past few months. "And you got pregnant?"
Dimitri's face bleached, and his already pale cheeks went completely colorless under his carefully trimmed dark stubble. His gray eyes were wide, fringed by sinfully long black lashes, and at the moment, he looked much younger than his twenty-one years.
Nika had always gotten along well with Dimitri, but right now, he was the last person on Earth that she wanted to see.
And damn her parents anyway, for making her baby brother do their dirty work!
"It happened before we broke up!" she protested as panic flooded her system, making her heart pound and her stomach churn. "Ash told me that since he usually worked from home, he'd take care of any babies we had, and I could just continue my studies…"
The enormity of Dimitri's presence here, in her Seattle refuge far from the rest of her family at the other end of the country, suddenly hit Nika.
Mama and Papa knew that I was hiding something!
She bent and curled around herself, feeling as if she'd just been gut-punched.
Don't throw up, she begged her traitorous body. Please. Not now!
"But Mama's already got another mating arranged for you after you graduate med school…how long did you think you could hide this?" Dimitri asked slowly.
"Another—oh, God, Mitya. I can't! You know I can't! I didn't mean to defy them! It just…happened." Nika heard how small her voice sounded, and hated herself for it.
But it was true. She had found her mate last summer and bonded with him. Even though they had been separated for months now, that bond had not faded. She could never mate anyone else while Ashton Swanson lived.
Before Dimitri had knocked on the door of her small one-bedroom student apartment near the University of Washington campus, where Nika was in her final year of medical school, she'd been thinking about her plan of attack for her postgraduate residency applications and to which teaching hospitals she should try applying.
And trying to figure out whether she could really do a residency as a single mother with a baby.
She couldn't afford full-time childcare, not without asking for a bigger allowance, and that would mean having to explain herself to Mama.
But the very last thing Nika had been expecting in the middle of a gloomy Pacific Northwest February day was a visit from a member of her family. She hadn't gone home since last summer's fiasco, not even for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Part of that had been her simmering rage at her parents and what they'd forced her to do. But most of it had been a desperate attempt to hide the truth from them…that it had already been too late for her when they issued their edict forbidding her to mate-bond with Ash.
Oh God, Ash. I'm so sorry, she thought, for the thousandth time since last summer. I never meant to hurt you like that. But I couldn't tell you the truth either. You would have tried to challenge Papa and gotten yourself killed.
Dimitri shook his head. "'Doesn't matter if you meant to get mated or not. Now that you're mate-bonded to that guy, you're useless to our clan. Mama is going to order Papa to dispose of your mate. And the baby too. And you, if she's angry enough not to care about selling you off to the highest bidder."
He looked sick as he spoke the truth they both knew.
Nika shuddered as his words confirmed her deepest fears.
Bear shifter clans were traditionally matriarchal, with dominant males who served as protectors…and enforcers, when needed. Mama and Papa hadn't raised the Medved clan to the top of the shifter food chain by gentle diplomacy. No one had ever told Nika the details, but she could guess the ugly truth.
"What are you going to do now, Nika?" Dimitri looked as trapped as she felt. "You know I can't lie to our parents when they ask about you. They'll read my scent and body language in an instant! And they know something's up, becaus
e they sent me all the way out here to check up on you. "
Nika knew she couldn't stand and fight. She was trapped in her human form until her baby was born. If she shifted while pregnant, she would lose the baby. That was the cruel reality of being a female shifter.
And even if she hadn't been pregnant, she knew she didn't stand a chance in direct confrontation with Papa…or even Mama. Both of them were bigger, stronger, and tougher than she was…and they always worked as a team.
They wouldn't show a disobedient child—much less a rebellious one—any mercy.
"I have to run," she told Dimitri in a hushed voice. "It's my only option. I have to get as far away from here as I can."
Which wasn't very far. Her passport was sitting in a safety deposit box back at the family's bank in New York City, and her checking account was nearly empty, waiting for the next deposit of her monthly allowance to cover rent, living expenses, and tuition.
Dimitri nodded solemnly. He reached into the back pocket of his tight jeans and pulled out his wallet. Without hesitating, he flipped it open and pulled out all his cash.
He stepped over the threshold of her apartment and pressed a wad of twenties into her hand. "Take it, Nika. You need it more than I do."
Nika looked down at the bills in disbelief, then went up on tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
"Thank you," she said, her throat tight. She hesitated, then forced herself to open her fingers and offer the money to him. "But I don't want you to get into trouble for this."
Dimitri shrugged. His mouth firmed into a familiar, stubborn line, and he closed his hand firmly around hers, forcing her fingers to close around the bills.
Then his arms came around her and he hugged her hard. "Oh, Nika," he whispered. "I'm scared for you."
I'm scared for me too.
She hugged him back and breathed in his familiar scent, overlaid with a trace of expensive cologne. Dimitri wouldn't be able to protect her from their parents' wrath, but it felt good to know that she wasn't completely on her own yet.
"I'll have to tell Mama and Papa about your mating…and the baby," he said, after a long pause for consideration. "But I don't have to call them right this second. And I don't have to tell them I helped you. I'll call them, uh…tomorrow afternoon. Maybe closer to dinnertime."
That gave her twenty-four hours of reprieve.
She buried her face against the soft, padded leather of his dark red motorcycle jacket. What am I going to do now? Where can I go?
"If you run, don't use any of your cards," he warned. "Before I left New York, I overheard Mama putting a tracer on all your accounts."
So much for buying a plane ticket with my credit card, Nika thought, followed immediately by another, more painful thought. I'll have to drop out of med school now.
Despite her family's wealth and influence, it had taken blood, tears, and a lot of sweat to get into one of the country's top medical schools here at UW.
And she was so close to finishing…so close to being in a position where she could go somewhere and live a life that Mama and Papa couldn't just wreck on a whim.
They had already ruined one good thing in her life—her mating with Ash—and now they were going to drive her away from the only other thing that mattered: her dream of becoming a doctor.
If she tried to escape, she would be completely alone and without any real resources. But what was the alternative?
Her hand slid down to press against the pronounced curve of her belly, and she felt the flutter of her baby moving inside her. I can't go home to New York. I can't.
She desperately wanted to ask Dimitri to run away with her, but she knew she couldn't put him in a position of choosing between her and their parents.
Nika clung to him a moment longer, marshalling her strength. Then she stepped back and looked up at her brother.
He was taller than she was, with a bear shifter's muscular, broad-shouldered build and with the same black hair, fair skin, and clear gray eyes that she saw every day in her mirror.
"Thank you," she said softly. "I won't forget this. If it's a boy, I'll name the baby after you."
"Cool! It would be fun to be Uncle Dimitri to a little Mitya." Nika's brother smiled crookedly at her. "Don't tell me where you're going, but if you can, let me know you're safe, okay?"
"I'll try." Nika swallowed hard.
Dimitri turned to leave. A moment later, the apartment door shut behind him.
Nika stood where she was for a long moment, holding onto the wall next to the doorframe for support. She was shaking, and her knees felt wobbly.
She concentrated on breathing…in, out…in, out…until the shakiness passed, leaving only the acid bite of terror in the back of her throat and an unsettled churning in her stomach.
I have twenty-four hours. Can't waste any time. I've got to pack, and then I've got to get out of Seattle, she thought.
Nika turned, still leaning against the wall for support, and took a long look around the tiny apartment she'd called home for the last seven months.
She surveyed her eclectic collection of IKEA bookshelves and second-hand furniture too old to be new and too new to be considered vintage. Can't pack those in a suitcase.
Combined with knickknacks she'd received as presents and some that she'd bought herself at various street fairs, her place would have given Mama's interior designer a heart attack.
Nika didn't care. This place was entirely hers. Her furniture. Her books. Her stuff.
This is stupid, Nika thought, as she felt her eyes stinging. Her vision began to blur. I've got real life-and-death problems now, and here I am, crying over stupid cheap furniture and this ugly run-down apartment. Stupid pregnancy hormones!
She swiped viciously at her eyes and marched into her bedroom to begin packing her clothes and a few treasured items.
Where am I going to go now?
Even as she thought it, she knew. Given Dimitri's warning, she knew she couldn't risk a phone call or an email message, not with Mama on the alert and tracking her.
Ash. I have to go to where Ash is living and warn him about the danger we're in.
* * *
Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho
"You fixin' to be sensible this time, Ash?" Justin Long asked gently in his deep Texas drawl.
The rangy sabertooth shifter didn't take his eyes off the road, where the dark asphalt of the highway was rapidly disappearing under wind-driven flurries of snow.
Justin was driving one of the Grizzly Creek Ranch's big pickup trucks to the scene of a fire at a farm on the other side of town. Both Ash and Justin had received alerts a short time ago on their first responder app.
All the volunteer firefighters of the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department had the app installed on their phones. Linda Barker, the town's 911 dispatcher, used it to send the firefighters the details of emergency calls that came in, including incident information and driving directions to guide them to the scene of an accident, medical emergency, or fire.
Sitting next to Justin in the pickup's passenger seat, Ash Swanson looked at his stepfather.
"What are you talking about?" Ash asked, puzzled.
"You keep taking risks like you've been doing, and you're going to break your mama's heart." Justin shook his head in slow reproof.
Justin was wearing his Stetson hat today, along with his firefighter's bunker pants and a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt. His bulky, insulated firefighter's jacket and helmet were stowed behind him in the extended cab, as was Ash's firefighting gear.
He added, "And the hearts of a lot of other folks around these parts."
It had only been a few months since Justin had moved from his home in the Texas Hill Country and joined the all-volunteer Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department, and barely six weeks since Justin had married Ash's mom Elle Swanson.
But in that short time, Ash had figured out that the soft-spoken Texan shifter frequently noticed things that everyone else missed.
And sometimes he got things completely wro
ng. Just like now.
"I'm not—" Ash began to protest.
"Everyone else seems to think that when you do somethin' crazy, you're just bein' competitive with your brothers," Justin interrupted smoothly. "But I figure that there's something else goin' on. Maybe something to do with the fact that you smell like you're mated, but you ain't dating or livin' with anyone." He sighed. "I've asked Elle but she just shakes her head and doesn't want to talk about it."
Ash tried to suppress the tiny jolt of happiness at Justin's observation that he still smelled like Nika. He scowled and wished that his—stepfather? Mom's husband?—would mind his own business.
It had been months since Ash and Nika had seen each other.
Twenty-seven weeks, three days, and four hours, to be exact, since Nika called me and told me she'd changed her mind about mating me. When she told me that she didn't want any further contact between us.
That memory still made him feel as if he'd been stabbed in the heart.
"Just try not to kill yourself on my watch, okay?" Justin continued.
He hesitated and gave Ash a sideways glance from his striking blue-green eyes.
He added quietly, "You need to talk about something…anything, I'll listen. And keep whatever you tell me in confidence. Sometimes it's easier to unload on someone who hasn't known you for your entire life." The corners of Justin's mouth twitched upwards in a not-quite-smile.
"Thanks, Justin. I appreciate the offer," Ash forced himself to say.
He turned away from his new stepfather's questioning gaze and stared out of the window at the driving snow.
Even if I wanted to spill my guts to Justin, what good would it do? No one can help me. I'm screwed, and it's my own damn fault.
Ash had spent the last seven months living with the knowledge of just how badly things had gone wrong. It surrounded him like a smothering black cloud.
Last summer, he'd been on top of the world. His drive for success had earned him his first million before he graduated from college, thanks to his wildly successful online game, Hunter's Blood, which was a "naked and afraid" survival game in a wilderness filled with physical threats and predators. Now he was well on his way to becoming a billionaire.
Ash (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 6) Page 1
