by Amelia Jade
Stone Bear:
Sentinel
Stone Bears Book 1
By Amelia Jade
Stone Bear: Sentinel
Copyright © 2016 by Amelia Jade
First Electronic Publication: February 2016
Amelia Jade
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
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Stone Bear: Sentinel
Chapter One
Gabriel
She was there.
He cursed silently while doing his best to maintain his typical air of implacableness. He was Gabriel. A Stone Bear. There wasn’t a bear shifter in Genesis Valley who could hold a candle to him. He was bigger than the rest. Faster than them. Stronger than each one.
And she made him weak in the knees.
Caia.
He only knew her first name.
It was so exotic and absolutely perfect. His bear growled and lunged, eager to make her acquaintance. He reined it in, tightening the hold over the feral, animal side that lived within him.
“Hello Gabriel,” she said, her voice as sweet as honey, but tinged with a steel he dared not test, nervous that he might not be worthy of its mettle.
It likely had something to do with the first and only other time they had met, he thought ruefully.
“Hello Caia,” he replied smoothly, letting his velvety bass voice fill the small waiting room. She may make him wild, but he knew that it wasn’t entirely a one-way street as he watched her take a sharp breath in as he spoke.
“Mr. Kedyn will be a few minutes,” she said, ticking off something on the thick black ledger that sat on the desktop in front of her.
“Of course he will. I am, after all, five minutes early.”
Caia made a noncommittal noise, returning her attention to the computer screen to which she had been glued when he first entered the room. Gabriel very carefully did not notice the glances she sent his way every so often. It wouldn’t do to be improper. She was a professional, and also the assistant to his boss, who happened to be a very powerful man.
It was, he reflected, a much better accommodation this time around. His mind wandered back to the first time they had met…
***
Three days earlier
Gabriel pushed open the swinging door that led to the antechamber next to Marcus’s office.
The door swung easily and without squeaking, despite the thickness and weight of the solid oak from which it was built. Marcus Kedyn didn’t tolerate poor craftsmanship. He demanded the best. That applied to those who worked for him as well. Marcus and his twin brother Valen treated their employees well. They expected greatness, and they paid extremely well for it. The door to their office was always open, especially to those who could suggest ways to make things better.
The twins ran Lionshead Mining Consortium. It was a bit of a play on their heritage. They were gryphon shifters. The first time Gabriel had learned that, he had had a chuckle over their sense of humor. Gryphons, he knew, had the body of a lion, and not the head. Their mining company operated out of Genesis Valley, a small community in the mountains. It wasn’t much, but for Gabriel it was home. He was employed by the Kedyns as one of their best, and they expected that from him day in and day out.
Which also meant not being late for a meeting with them.
His long legs took him quickly and smoothly across the small room, toward the door that led into Marcus’s office. At this point Gabriel was on autopilot, having moved through the room many a time before. Thus, it took him until he was almost halfway across the richly carpeted floor before he realized he wasn’t alone.
There was a woman sitting at a desk that spanned most of the far side of the room from where he had entered. The desk, he knew, had been there before. But in the entire eight-and-a-half years that Gabriel had been working for Marcus, the desk had been unoccupied. It was either a showpiece to fill the space, or a reminder of a different time, when perhaps he had had a secretary of sorts.
Now, however, a rather voluptuous woman filled the seat. The raven-haired woman was looking up at him expectantly too, he realized.
Gabriel blinked. He inclined his head in greeting—he didn’t want to come across as impolite—and then began to continue his progress across the room.
The woman cleared her throat.
He stopped walking and looked over at her.
Gabriel was a hair under seven feet tall. The smaller, but still beautiful woman couldn’t have been more than five foot nine, maybe ten. Yet he had to give her credit; she looked up at him unafraid. There was some strength in her, he realized, truly looking at her for the first time.
“Mr. Kedyn will be a few minutes,” she said, swallowing hard after saying it, but meeting his stare nonetheless.
The midnight-hued hair of hers came down to just past her jaw, and was almost razor-straight in its cut. Many of the women in Origin, the only real settlement in Genesis Valley, preferred to keep their hair long. But not this woman.
“Mr. Kedyn called me and said to come down to his office immediately. That was perhaps ten minutes ago,” he said coolly.
She may have been beautiful, her dark hair highlighting the cool icy blue of her eyes, but that didn’t mean he was going to let her dictate to him. Gabriel was one of the Kedyns handful of chosen elites. Nobody told him what to do.
“So,” he said with a brisk, clearly fake cheerfulness, “immediately means five minutes ago. Ten minutes have passed since he called. That makes me fifteen minutes late. I don’t like to be late, and Marcus”—he intentionally used his employer’s first name this time around, to emphasize the relationship he had with him—“does not like it when people are late.”
None of it fazed her.
“I’m aware of that. But Mr. Kedyn,” she stressed his formal name tartly, “received a phone call in the intervening time. So until he finishes that phone call, he would like you to stay out here.”
“With you,” Gabriel said, turning to face her straight on.
“With me,” she echoed.
“And who are you?” he asked, phrasing the question as politely as possible.
“I am an executive assistant to the Kedyns.”
“You’re new,” he stated, seeking knowledge on whether she had transferred from elsewhere, or was just completely new to the Mining Consortium.
“I am,” she stated. “Is that going to be a problem?” she asked after a half-second p
ause. There was a challenge in her voice.
He liked that.
“Not at all...” he trailed off, hoping to get a name.
The intercom on her phone buzzed.
“Caia, please send Gabriel in now.”
He dutifully ignored the quick blaze of anger that flashed in her eyes as the opportunity to deprive him of her name was taken from her by the hunk of metal in front of her that emitted her boss’s voice.
“Thank you Caia,” he said. There might have been a hint of a smile, but only a hint.
“Have a wonderful day,” she had said, hitting him full bore with a gorgeous smile of her own.
His heart nearly stopped.
My God, she’s stunning.
Gabriel’s hand missed the knob on the door. Frantically he commanded his brain to obey, to look at the door, to resume his walk, and exit the room.
But he couldn’t. His eyes were glued to hers. The smile on her face became a full-blown grin as his hand flapped around uselessly, looking for the protruding bit of metal that would allow him to move forward.
“Everything okay Gabriel?” she said, her voice anything but sarcastic, and yet dripping with it at the same time.
How did she do that?
He wanted to know more. To ask her who she was. And most importantly, to find out how she had such an incredible hold over him.
You are a trained machine. Get a hold of yourself. You can enjoy her, but you can’t lose control around her. That could be deadly.
A small sliver of logic entered his brain from that thought, and proved to be the pebble that started the avalanche as he returned to himself as swiftly as she had taken him away.
“It is now,” he managed to return far more smoothly than he felt, blasting her with a smile of his own.
The door opened of its own accord, but before he turned to see how, Gabriel was positive he saw a tiny tremor run through her body.
Perfect.
He took a step forward into the office, eager to put her behind him and regain some semblance of control.
Gabriel ran into a brick wall.
“Oomph,” he grunted.
A brick wall of suede and cotton.
Shit.
“Sorry Marcus,” he said, awkwardly stepping around his boss, trying to cover the fact that he had just been staring at his assistant.
“Everything all right?” Marcus Kedyn asked, giving Gabriel a strange and rather disapproving look. “You took a long time coming in, so I wondered if perhaps the intercom was broken.
He deserved that look too. Gabriel was paid well to remain in control at all times, and to be aware of his surroundings. Walking into his boss like he was a wall was not a good impression to give. Especially not if the meeting was about what he thought it would be.
“Good to go sir,” he replied.
“Very well. Take a seat then.”
The reproachful look he received wasn’t quite bad enough to make him flinch, but it was close. He would have to be extra alert during the meeting. His boss seemed on edge about something more than being run into by one of his subordinates. Not that he had been fazed by the collision despite the handful-and-change of inches and hundred-plus-pound size difference. Gryphon shifters were simply more powerful than a bear shifter. Gabriel had practically bounced off of him.
“Do you know why I called you in here?” It was a dangerous leading question, but he had no choice but to answer it.
“I’m not positive, but judging by your tone and the general atmosphere, I have a suspicion or two.”
Marcus nodded for him to continue.
Gabriel gathered his thoughts, looking around the office as he did. It was a richly decorated room, but not opulently so. The Kedyns had fantastic wealth, but they spent very little of it on themselves, and what they did spend they tended to do so tastefully for the most part. They did entertain high-profile guests from time to time, so they had appearances to maintain, and their offices were one of those places. He guessed the thick Persian rug under his feet with its reds and brown hues likely cost an arm and a leg. The map, neatly framed and hung on the wall behind his desk that showed Genesis Valley in exquisite detail, also had to have been rather extravagantly priced.
But nothing screamed “Look at me, I’m a filthy-rich bastard.” Which is one of the reasons Gabriel was quite content working for them. Not only did they do their best not to show off their wealth, but they also paid their employees quite handsomely. There were CEOs of good-sized companies that didn’t get paid as well as Gabriel for the work he did.
“I’ve been working here for a little over eight years now,” Gabriel began. “In that time, I’ve seen a number of things happen. It’s a harsh, rough place to live compared to the outside world, so it’s to be expected.”
Marcus was nodding in agreement. Gabriel wasn’t going to waste his boss’s time, and as such, his boss didn’t hurry him along, instead realizing that Gabriel must have a point behind his little speech.
“Death is fairly common. A shifter’s life is much closer to worthless here than elsewhere. But everyone who comes here, all the miners and the others, they know this. It’s made clear to anyone before they settle in Genesis Valley that their life expectancy will drop substantially. None of what goes on surprises people.”
He paused.
“Or I should say, none of what goes on should surprise people.”
Marcus’s eyebrows, he noted, rose fractionally as he corrected himself.
“So why am I being surprised lately?” he asked his boss.
“An interesting way of putting it,” Marcus replied.
“First we have a brawl between two shifter crews. Nothing unusual in and of itself. But two humans get caught up in it, and the shifters manage to kill three of their own before we even sentenced the others to their ending? That’s a lot of bloodshed sir.”
Marcus nodded, in complete agreement. Gabriel didn’t get involved between the miner crews often, as that wasn’t his job. But fighting was frequent. Nobody cared as long as no humans were harmed. The instant a human was harmed, punishment would be meted out. If the harm was on purpose, the only sentence was ending. A careless shifter wasn’t tolerated in Genesis Valley, and by the time they made it to the Valley, they were out of chances anywhere else. Gabriel had been forced to end more than his share of shifters over his eight years working for Marcus. It was, as he had said, a fact of life.
But when the Onyx and Amethyst crews had brawled several months back, it had been so violent that not one, but two humans had been killed outright. Three shifters had also been killed. That was extremely unusual as well. Usually shifters fought until they were too badly hurt to continue. But to kill their own? Almost unheard of.
“And then we have a shifter show up on our doorstep without a memory? That, sir, is something I have never heard of. I’ve scoured the records as best I can, and I haven’t been able to find anything about a shifter losing his memory.”
Marcus spoke. “Unless he didn’t lose it.”
Gabriel started in surprise, his sharp mind immediately understanding where his boss was going. After working together for so long, they had that kind of relationship.
“You think someone took his memories, sir? I don’t think Garrett is the type to make that sort of enemy. If they even exist,” he added.
Garrett Hoffman was the Alpha of the Jade Crew, a new crew of shifters mining the nearby mountains. He was, to Gabriel’s knowledge, a good man. So why would someone want to rob him of his memories?
“How does one even go about doing that to a shifter?” he asked aloud, unsure if it was even possible.
“I don’t know,” Marcus responded, deep in thought.
“Well sir, it would almost make sense if someone was behind it,” he said, frantically thinking. “It would explain the Amethyst and Onyx fight, Garrett’s memories, and perhaps even this latest incident.”
“You’re referring to the Opal crew fiasco?”
Gabriel
nodded. The day before he had been at a local bar, the Tongue & Flame, operated by a resident dragon shifter. The newest mining crew, the Opals, had decided to show up after their shift in the mountains. What had resulted had been another fight when the Emerald Crew, longtime patrons of the bar, had gotten upset with the way the newcomers had first treated the bartender, a well-respected shifter, and then two women who had entered had also been harassed.
In the end the Opal crew had been obliterated, half of them being sentenced to ending, the other half somehow managing to escape, including their leader. It had come out of nowhere and surprised everyone at Lionshead. The Opal Alpha, Kent, had shown great promise as an up-and-coming leader. The complete loss of control on his part and of his entire crew had been completely unexpected, and Gabriel was still seething about it.
He had managed to save the women from death, but one of them had still hurt her neck rather badly after a glancing blow from a shifter.
Gabriel saw red for a moment as his mind inadvertently pictured Caia as the one under attack. His bear surged forward, ready to rend anyone limb from limb if they so much as harmed a hair on her body.
Fingers tightened on the armrests of his chair as he tried to remain calm, fighting down the sudden upswing in his temper. It took him several long moments and deep breaths before he returned to normal.
“We need to do something about this,” Marcus told him.
Either he hadn’t noticed the momentary spat of anger from his subordinate, or he was ignoring it. Gabriel hoped for the former.
“I agree sir. I’m just not sure what. Whoever or whatever is behind all of this is clearly being very careful about their movements.”
Marcus nodded. “For now, I want you to take charge of locating the Opal Alpha. He’ll be able to tell us what’s going on, if anyone can.” The gryphon shifter fixed him with a gaze that would have made a lesser shifter flinch. “We need him alive, Gabriel.”
“I understand.”
“Good. I know you’ll take the utmost precautions, but you do have a bit of reputation of being hard-charging. But we need to be able to question this one and see what we can find out. In the meantime, while you begin to track them down, I’m going to contact the Dragon Council and see if they are willing to share any information.”
