by Jade White
He was proposing to her.
One of Amelia’s hands flew up to cover her mouth, a quiet, “Oh my god,” escaping. Her eyes darted between the ring and Aibek’s nervous face.
It was a beautiful ring, made of rose gold vines and leaves, with small rubies twined within the vines, as if a breeze was sweeping all of it along. It gleamed in the light, and for a moment, Amelia felt like all of her breath had been stolen from her. She couldn’t believe it. She almost wanted to pinch herself or pull her hair, just to make sure she was awake, but she kept the ridiculous urge in check.
For an equally ridiculous moment, she wished that she wasn’t wearing her pajamas. It just felt like the sort of situation she wanted to be fully dressed for. But if Aibek didn’t mind that she was wearing a nightgown, she supposed she didn’t mind either.
“We have done a few things a bit out of order,” Aibek acknowledged with a crooked half-smile, “but will you marry me, Amelia?”
“I—” She paused and pulled her hand away from her mouth. “Of course I will,” she answered, her voice quiet and awestruck.
Aibek grinned up at her, beaming and brilliant. Carefully, he pulled the ring from the box and slipped it onto Amelia’s finger as she offered her hand to him. Once it was on, she closed her hand around his and pulled him to his feet, and she laughed as he picked her up to kiss her and spin her in a circle.
Though it came from what had started as a nightmare, everything had turned out perfectly in the end. Her family was so much bigger than it had ever been before, and she couldn’t wait to tell Faina, Anara, Sezim, and Serik the news. They were her family now, after all.
She couldn’t even be annoyed when her mom started taking pictures from around the doorway.
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MATING SEASON
A BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance
JADE WHITE
About This Book
When curvy Kim moved to a new village in order to escape her past she had no idea what she was about to walk into.
As she settled into a new life, she found her new surroundings to be slightly strange. She could not put her finger on it but something was a bit... odd.
Then when she met two hunky men, Tony and Keith, she found herself strangely drawn to them but the last thing she wanted was a relationship of any sort.
However, she began to notice her sex drive was higher then ever before and she was finding it hard not to resist sleeping with these incredibly sexy men.
Little did she know, Tony and Keith were shifters. In fact the whole town is full of shifters and she has just arrived there during the one time of the year when things go a little bit crazy...
She has arrived during MATING SEASON!
Could Kim be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or could she find she actually enjoys mating season a bit more than any human would have expected?
PROLOGUE
It was a dark and moonless night. Light clouds streaked across the black velvet sky, occasionally blotting out the stars above. A lone country road wound its way through the foothills of the scenic Canadian Rockies. It was silent. No insects or other nocturnal animals sang out their haunting night music.
A fully loaded logging truck barreled down the empty road. The driver, a middle aged First Nations man, sang along with the country station on the radio as he rushed the last load of the day to the saw mill. The loggers had a difficult time getting to the site due to a murder that happened in a cabin up the trail from the wood lot they had marked that day. The boss wanted those logs in today; he had quite a few back orders for lumber to fill due to the construction of mansions for the Hollywood types working in Vancouver.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a young woman running towards the road. She was naked and covered in blood and bruises. She raced to cross to the other side, causing the truck driver to stop so suddenly, he nearly jackknifed his load all over the remote road.
He opened the door to his truck. “Hey, are you okay, miss? You look like you’re hurt.” The woman’s skin was pale from shock and blood loss.
She was hunkered over, trying to cover her nakedness as best as she could. Gashes marked her thighs and back, blood pooled from her feet which were cut up by the stones in the forest. She was shivering with shock. Her blue eyes were wild with terror. She had massive amounts of pine needles and burrs matting up her long dark tresses. In other words, she looked like she’d been through one hell of an ordeal.
“Yes! Please, you have to help me. My boyfriend….he’s out there. He…he killed my parents, and tried…to kill me…I was hiding in the woods. I saw you drive by and…” she panted. “My name is Kim Smith. Please take me with you. He’s still out there!” she said hysterically. “My parents --- my mother and father. They're still lying there, in their cabin just a ways from here, off a little logging road – dead now. He shot them both.” She leaned back in the seat, cold and trembling.
The truck driver reached behind his seat and took out a red plaid wool blanket. He slid out the passenger side of the cab and draped it over Kim’s slim, pale shoulders. “Come on, let’s get you to the hospital. You look like you’ve been through a rough go.” He looked at her keenly. “You say it happened in a cabin near here? I’ll radio the cops on the way and tell them all about it, so they can meet us there. Sometimes they take a bit to get around to showing up this late at night.”
The truck drove down the winding road until they found a small town. “This town has a clinic that can patch you up. It’s not a very big place, but you can get stitches and some pain killers at least. Cops will be there waiting to talk to you. If you were hurt any worse they’d have to air lift you to Prince George.”
“Thank you so much,” Kim replied warmly. “You’re a literal life saver.” She offered the blanket back, since it wasn’t hers.
“No, you keep it, I can come get it from the hospital later. My sister’s the head nurse tonight. Tell her Graham brought you in. She’ll fix you right up, and give me my blanket back,” he said with a broad grin and a twinkle in his dark eyes. “You get on in there. You’re bleeding all over my truck.”
Kim sighed with relief as she stepped through the automatic doors of the small hospital. The bright fluorescent lights glared on the linoleum floor. She approached the triage nurse. “I’m expected?” she said.
“Oh, you must be the poor lamb Graham found on the side of the road. You get on back there and we’ll clean you right up,” the matronly triage nurse fussed. Her silver-blonde hair was drawn up into a severe bun and she wore floral scrubs.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have my health card on me.” Kim said. “I mean, I left all my ID and stuff back at my parents’ cabin.”
“Don’t you worry about that. We need to get you patched up and dressed. Come along back, darling.”
Kim stood up from the chair, still bundled in the scratchy wool blanket, and headed through the mint green painted double doors to the emergency department.
The triage nurse directed her to a bed surrounded by a brown cotton curtain partitioning it off from the other beds in the department. The nurse pulled the curtain closed to give Kim a bit more privacy from the general ward.
She rocked back and forth on the hospital gurney trying to remember all that transpired before she fled into the woods, so she could give an accurate testimony to the police once they got there.
Her feet hurt, her legs hurt. Everything hurt from her perilous escape from her now ex fiancé, Smiley. She was hoping that a nice quiet weekend at her parent’s cabin in the mountains would help him unwind after his rough week at work. Whenever something didn’t go his way at the jo
b, or in general, he always managed to pin the blame on Kim. After a few drinks, he unloaded on her, fists and all. Her landlord wouldn’t give her the security deposit back on their apartment because there was just so much damage to the drywall from him hurling her slight frame into the walls. Every time she went to the hospital for stitches, or to patch up a broken bone, she lied about how it happened. She covered his ass for too long, and now she was paying the price.
There was a respectful scratching at the closed curtain. “Ma’am. My name is RCMP Constable LaJaune, may I come in?” A female voice announced from the other side.
“Yeah…” Kim said as she tried to get comfortable, and cover herself better. She hoped the nurse would come back soon with a gown of some sort. Even the hospital gowns that flew open in the back were better than just sitting around in an itchy wool blanket that smelled like smoke and pine needles.
“So, can you tell me about what happened? Like, how did you get here like this?” The cop asked.
“Well,” Kim cleared her voice. “My fiancé, I guess he’s my ex now, and I decided to come up to the mountains for a bit of a get-away. My parents have a cabin up here, just a little bit off a logging road. He got stressed out a bit at work and I thought it would be a great way to try to get him to unwind.” Kim shifted nervously on the gurney, feeling more exposed than ever.
She continued. “We were having an okay weekend, as okay as it can be with an abusive alcoholic of a boyfriend, anyway, and then my parents decide to show up. It was their cabin, after all. They wanted to talk me out of marrying Smiley. They were tired of seeing me get beat up. I wouldn’t press charges, or anything. Anyway, they followed us to the cabin. They tried to take me home. Smiley just lost his shit. Dad keeps a hunting rifle up in the cabin, because that’s where he stays during deer season.
“He punched my dad in the face and took his keys, which had the key to the gun locker on it. He grabbed the gun and loaded it. He shot my dad point blank in the chest. I screamed. My mom rushed to my dad’s side. He shot her, too. I tried to run but he grabbed me. He dragged me over to my parents' corpses, ripped my clothes off and….” She started to hyperventilate at the flood of memories and the grief that assaulted her.
Kim gulped to gain control of her emotions and continued on with the story as she trembled. “He raped me. I rolled over on to my side after he was finished and sobbed while reaching for my mom. She couldn’t help. She was dead. He kicked me in the ribs a few times with his steel toe boots. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me around for a bit, then threw me against the wood stove. Glad it wasn’t lit anyway. Still hurt. I couldn’t believe it was happening. After that there was another blast from the rifle and I ran out. I couldn’t hear anything past the ringing in my ears from the rifle blast. I think he was yelling at me. I don’t know what he said. I think he went to get more ammo for the gun because he left the room.
“I took my chance and ran to the woods. Figure I’d be safer out there, even buck ass naked, than I was in that house. I ran and ran. I was so scared I didn’t feel it when I fell down the ravine.” Kim winced at the pain she was in. The adrenaline was finally wearing off from her flight of terror and she was beginning to feel the damage that had been done to her.
The officer was scribbling furiously in her notepad, nodding as Kim recounted her trial. “We’d gotten a call earlier, from loggers working near the cabin. They heard shots being fired. We found a purse at the crime scene; we can assume it’s yours?” LaJaune asked.
“Yeah, it’s mine. Can I have it back please? It has my health card and ID in it. I really need it now.”
“I’ll pick it up from the station. I have no reason to believe you’re lying to me. Do you have a picture of this guy, by any chance? It’ll be easier than describing him to me.”
“Yep, it’s in my wallet actually. You can take it out. I don’t care.” Kim sat there, looking out into the distance. “I don’t want to even look at his stupid face right now.”
“Not a problem. Thank you for the permission,” Officer LaJaune stated. “I’ll come back with your things in a bit. I’ll leave you to get patched up.”
“You know, I’m gonna be moving away as soon as I can. I live three hours away in Golden, and he knows it. I just don’t want him to find me.”
“Don’t go too far, we might need to find you for court. Make sure you leave us with your contact details at least.”
After the officer left, a tall First Nations woman dressed in light blue scrubs scratched at the curtain. “Hey, you’re the poor stray Graham brought in. I’m Mary, I’ll be your nurse tonight. Looks like you’ve been through quite a bit. There’s no doctor on call, but I can stitch you up as best I can, and get you all sorted out for a ride to Prince George in the morning.”
“Thanks…” Kim whispered, drawing back into her own world after mentally re-living her earlier ordeal.
“I also kinda overheard that you were raped. I have a rape kit here. Cop asked me to do it, if that’s okay with you.” The nurse was a gentle woman who exuded kindness and consideration. Kim had a feeling she was in the same position at one time.
“Whatever you need to get that bastard behind bars. Just sedate me first, will ya? I think he did a bit of damage down there,” Kim requested.
“Not a problem. I figured you might need something for the pain, so I got a doctor to phone in some morphine with a bit of Valium for you,” Mary said with a kind smile, while holding up a needle full of clear medication. “Just a little pinch.” She stuck the needle in Kim’s arm.
Kim relaxed as she felt the fog of the drugs overtake her. It didn’t take long to take hold. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.
CHAPTER ONE
The sleepy town of Predator Springs was located deep in the British Columbia Rocky Mountains. It was one of the most remote reservations for the Cree people of the Interior. The main Cree population didn’t know their brothers and sisters up in Predator Springs even existed, except in legends. Kim’s mother told her about it when she was a child. Her grandfather spent the winter there after getting lost in the woods while out on a logging job. He said the people were kind. After the band police took him in for identification, one family let him sleep on their couch. He said they were a bit different than the people from his reservation. They spoke in a purer version of Cree than the elders did where he came from. They were saddened when he told them about his time in the residential school in St. George.
Her grandfather left Predator Springs a changed man. The few months he spent among the isolated people caused him to become more connected with his past. After a few years, he became one of the head elders, and passed down his story to his daughter, who passed it down to Kim after he died from diabetic complications.
It was early morning in the remote village. The sun was barely cresting over the mountains in the east, so the small valley was still cast in shadow, and the mountain air still held a crisp bite. Ravens were calling out their throaty songs and chickadees sang in counter point in the cool dawn.
A U-Haul truck pulled up in front of the only vacant house in the small village. It had gingerbread style wooden shingles painted white, and a red tin roof that was sharply sloped down. At the elevation that Predator Springs happened to be located, snowfall in the winter could literally tear one’s roof down. So sharp triangular roofs were par for the course up there. The front yard was neatly tended, despite no one living in the house for almost five years, when the previous resident passed away.
A short, dark haired woman opened the driver’s side door and hopped out of the truck. Her dark blue skinny jeans hugged the curve of her tight butt like a second skin, and her white tank top clung to her firm, perky B-cup breasts. She shivered in the chill of the early dawn. She drove five hours from Golden throughout the night in hopes that Smiley wouldn’t follow her to Predator Springs.
Once she got out of the hospital, she called her grandmother to inform her of her parent’s murder. She told her she wanted
to get far away from Golden, without actually leaving the province. Her grandmother suggested the sleepy little village that had helped her husband out so long ago, with a warning that it was mostly single men. Kim thought it odd, but a village full of bachelors sort of made sense, some guys wanted solitude, or other guys, who knows. With her Cree status, she could join the band and move onto their reservation with the elder council’s blessing. Her grandmother called their old friend, who happened to be on the Predator Springs council, and arranged for a band transfer.
Kim walked up to the front door of the house, keys in hand, and unlocked it. The smell of fresh paint assaulted her nose as she entered the house.
The bare hardwood floors of the small bungalow were newly refinished. All signs of the previous resident were meticulously erased. She was grateful to the residents of the small town for doing that for her. She wanted a completely fresh start. Why not start with her home?
Kim walked through her new house, mentally placing where she wanted to put her belongings. She found the master bedroom and noted it was quite spacious, containing a walk-in closet, and a door directly to the bathroom. There was a small galley style kitchen with appliances already in place.
After she took the grand tour of her humble little house, Kim propped open the door and started towards the moving truck.
“Hey there, neighbor.” A pleasant baritone voice greeted her.
She startled, totally not expecting anyone around at that time of day. “H...hello?” she replied skittishly, her heart beating faster as the strange man approached her.
