by Amelia Jade
“For not asking if I’d done it, if everything worked.”
He shrugged. “I trust you.”
Her smile became a grin and she kissed him harder this time. Then she pulled away abruptly, as if remembering the other parties in the room.
“Sorry,” she said shyly.
“Don’t be,” Lora replied with a wave, and then introduced the two of them.
“So, Stephanie,” Commandant Grigory said, his voice serious to indicate a return to business. “I must know. How did you do it?”
She glanced nervously over at Gabriel. “Honestly, I don’t know. We initially sold ourselves as camp prostitutes, forced to go please the men guarding the shifters, in sight of the shifters, basically as a prank.”
Gabriel felt his blood boil at the idea of Stephanie with anyone else, and his bear matched the anger. He protectively stepped closer to her.
“It worked, and we managed to have some of us break the cells open for the men under the guise of showing our bodies off to them.” She winked. “Little did they know the women going up to each cell were their mates.”
He laughed.
“So then we snuck them out one by one, while we slowly got naked for the troops, keeping their attention on the trio of us losing our clothes.” She had a vaguely distasteful look on her face at that part.
“But then we got caught. More men showed up, and they had guns pointed at us. The same officer who had taken them in the first place.” She frowned. “That’s when it got weird. He was about to order us all tranq’d and thrown back in the cages. But then someone else came up to him, and said something. All I caught was “more willing” and “ally.” After that, the officer looked around, then shrugged and said ‘Okay, you can go, as long as you don’t come back, and none of your other men try to attack us for this.’”
Gabriel stared slack-jawed, as did the commandant. “So you just walked out of there?”
She nodded. “Without a problem.”
“What the hell was he told?” Commandant Grigory wondered.
A shifter knocked on the door. “Sir? I’m sorry to interrupt, but…”
“What is it?” the commandant said, motioning the private inside.
“Sir, we were just going to the prison. To do our first meal delivery since we got back. And. Um. Sir, they’re gone.”
“Who’s gone?” Lora asked, speaking for her mate.
“The Koche brothers, sir. All of them. And sir, there’s more. We smelled traces of humans in the area.”
Gabriel met the commandant’s eye as they both came to the same conclusion.
“Well, I’d definitely say the Koche brothers are more pliable,” Gabriel said dryly, thinking of the hotheads who had been locked up for running an illegal gambling ring within the Green Bearet recruit training program.
“And definitely more willing to work with the humans,” the commandant said. “Is that what they were after all along with us? Shifters willing to work with them?”
“Or for them,” Stephanie suggested.
The assembled group looked around unhappily.
“All of that military work, trying to trick us into attacking the Fenris remnants, and for what? Five measly recruits?” Gabriel mused. “That seems…excessive.”
“There were far more than five cages in their camp,” Stephanie offered, giving his hand a squeeze. “Nearly two dozen that we could see. They could have been hoping for more.”
“They also probably hoped to wipe out a number of us in the process,” the commandant said. “So that their military forces could overrun Cadia itself with a lot more ease. That last part failed, but they were still intent on getting their “allies” from within us, I suppose.”
Gabriel thought about that for a long second.
“So are we truly at peace then?” he asked.
There was no immediate answer.
“I think it would be best if we stayed inside our borders. Returned to life as it was before things with Fenris went south,” Alexander said at last. “Strict controls on who gets in, who goes out. Ensure that everyone knows we must be on our best behavior, else we risk the humans descending upon us in force.”
“They might just do that anyway,” Stephanie said unhappily. “If they truly want to control us, we don’t have the strength to stand up to them. There are just too many of them.”
“If that becomes the case,” Gabriel said. “Then we disperse, and mingle amongst the human population like in the old days.”
Commandant Grigory nodded. “Hopefully that won’t become necessary.” His eyes roamed over the two of them. “If you’ll excuse us, we need to get word out about what Stephanie found, and orders to pull back all of our people into Cadia itself, so that we may attempt to maintain peace with the humans.”
And just like that, they were gone.
Gabriel turned to Stephanie, who was already twisting to face him, so she could rest her head on his chest, arms hugging him tight.
“You’re learning muscle control already,” he said when she didn’t squeeze him so tight it hurt.
“I have some good teachers,” she told him.
Gabriel was positive he detected a bit of a smile in her words. “Getting along well with them already, are you?”
Stephanie nodded. “Yes, actually. They’re so wonderful and welcoming. I’m going to train with them, they said. Once everything calms down, they’ll help me learn how to master all these new abilities.”
“I can help too, if you want,” he offered, not wanting to be completely excluded.
“That was a given, silly,” she said, picking up on his feelings behind the words. “For now though, you need to rest up.”
“I know, I know. Get better, lie in bed, etcetera. I’m feeling better already. They stuffed my face with food, so that’s helping the healing. Not long now and I’ll be healed enough to be moving normally. Maybe another half a day at most.”
“Amazing,” she said quietly. “That gryphon fucked you up. A human would be, if not dead, down and out for months, if not years. And yet less than a day and a half and you’re up and about like normal?”
He grinned. “Oh, yes, like normal. If you stick around, I can show you just how normal.”
Stephanie giggled and swatted at him.
He grabbed her hand, and, as a display of how much better he was feeling, lifted her up with graceful ease, so that he could brush his lips to hers. It wasn’t his usual raw strength, or ravaging desire, that ran through him. This was a longer, more lasting and peaceful emotion.
This was love.
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THE END
This concludes 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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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
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