by Amelia Jade
Bad Bad Bear Dad
A Fated Mate Romance
By Amelia Jade
Bad Bad Bear Dad
Copyright @ 2017 by Amelia Jade
First Electronic Publication: July 2017
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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Bad Bad Bear Dad
Chapter One
Gray
It was against the rules.
Blatantly.
So much so that if caught and captured, it wouldn’t be too much to expect that his captors would likely kill him on the spot. It would be easier that way. No paperwork, no public explanation. No record. Nothing. Then they would likely kill the people he was here to rescue, to save themselves any further trouble, not to mention money. Lots of money.
He didn’t know any of the men guarding the facility, and that alone told him a lot. The world he lived in was pretty small. There were only so many combat-trained bear shifters to go around. If he didn’t know them, that meant they were one of two things. One, brand-new graduates of the program, and thus not only inexperienced, but likely nervous as all hell about their first posting. Or second, they were trained in secret, outside of the normal channels.
If that were the case, then things were seriously, seriously wrong in his homeland. It would indicate a fracturing, and that could lead to bad things happening. Instability and infighting could easily destroy much of the land. When shifters fought in numbers, it generally wasn’t a pretty thing. All that meant was that he was just going to have to do his part to help avoid such a situation. By rescuing the shifters and having them simply disappear, it would remove a large source of discontent for the less savory—and therefore more vocal—part of the population of his homeland.
Doing so undetected wasn’t going to be easy though. They were being held in a facility to supposedly help oversee their recovery, but Gray knew how long they’d been there. By now they would all be recovered and aching to get out and start re-establishing their lives. Oddly though, from what he’d learned, the paperwork to discharge them from the facility kept getting misfiled, misplaced, lost, or just straight up thrown into the shredder.
Hence why he’d come. The reason for it was a long story, but he needed to condense it down into something much, much smaller, so that he could convince the shifters inside to come with him without any hesitation. He had several aces in his pocket to help him with that, but the fewer he had to use, the better. Time would be of the essence. The guard post he was now sneaking up on inside the facility had to report in every fifteen minutes. So once he took down the guard, he would only have fifteen minutes to convince them to believe him, and then get as large a head start as possible. Pursuit would follow them, and it would follow quickly.
Piece of cake.
Mmmm cake. Wonder if that bakery back in town will have any chocolate fudge…
Gray shook his head. Focus. He needed to focus. Thinking about food could cause his stomach to growl, which would give away his position and force him to act early. The last thing he needed on his mind was the delicious chocolate fudge caramel cheesecake…
His stomach rumbled loudly.
The guard’s head lazily turned around, but his eyes widened the instant he saw Gray.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to be here!”
“Aw hell,” he swore and dove at the guard before he could punch down the alarm button and bring all of his friends in to the fight.
He took the bear shifter in the shoulder, the pair of them bouncing off the console and onto the ground.
“You can’t be here!” the guard said as they struggled for superiority.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Gray said, ignoring the words. “I’d be content to just knock you out. But I’ll do what I need to. Just please don’t force my hand.”
He received an elbow to the chin as an answer.
“Very well then,” he muttered through a rapidly swelling lip.
Pulling his head back Gray slammed it into his opponent’s nose repeatedly, stunning the younger shifter. Then he stood up, grabbed him by the neck and rammed him head-first through the wall, taking a stud with it, snapping the two-by-four right over the crown of his head.
“And humans need something electronic to find studs,” he muttered. “I’m a natural.”
By that time the noise had gotten the attention of the patients, who were now poking their heads out into the hallway.
“Come on, I’m here to get you out,” he said, motioning for the four of them to follow him.
“Who the hell are you?”
He waved with his arm again. “There’s no time. My name is Gray. Your leader Harden sent me to get you.”
Which was sort of true. Harden hadn’t actually sent him. Harden was okay with it, but he didn’t have any authority to ask Gray to do something. No, it had been another shifter, and his boss, who had sent him back to their homeland of Cadia to free the shifters and bring them to the human town of Cloud Lake, to help them escape further captivity.
It was complicated.
“Seriously, come on,” he urged. “Don’t look at me like I’m a moron. You guys are being held in a recovery facility, despite being recovered weeks ago. Have you not figured that out yet?”
One of them stepped forward. “And how do we know you’re on the level? Maybe this is just a trap designed to have us officially arrested by making it look like we assaulted the guards.”
The wall beside Gray shuddered and drywall crumbled and fell to the floor. The shifter still didn’t move, held in place and blissfully unconscious for the time being. That wouldn’t last though. His kind healed unbelievably fast, and soon he would wake up very, very angry.
“Good question. You don’t. All I can tell you is Harden sent me to come get you. He went to the Shifter Ball, found a mate, and wanted nothing more than to bring you with him. You’re all that’s left of Kronum. You don’t belong in here. You belong out there, making a life for yourselves.”
Gray saw his words start to have an effect on them. It was true. They were the last five survivors—including Harden—of the now-defunct shifter territory of Kronum. A territory that had been devastated as part of a large human corporation’s assault on his kind. Gray thought it unbelievable how his homeland had treated them, but it would seem that with the end of the war and Cadia’s newfound spot as the undisputed power among shifter nations, some of the politicians had developed grandiose ideas of their own importance.
The four of them were lookin
g among themselves now, as if trying to decide what to do. Gray wanted to let them decide, but the decision was taken out of his hands. The alarms began to ring as the unconscious guard failed to press the check-in button.
“Now or never. Come on, let’s go.”
None of them looked happy about it, but they all came after him.
“This way,” he said, darting down the hallway.
Behind him he heard four sets of feet come steadily onward.
“Which one of you is Flint Kieremeyer?” he asked softly as he came to a halt at an intersection of hallways.
“I am,” said a large man with the scent of an Arctic wolf, the largest of its kind. He stepped forward and crouched down at Gray’s side.
“Harden said you were the eldest after him, and most likely to be in charge. Is that accurate?”
Flint shrugged, looking over the shoulder at the others. “Sure, I guess. Not much to be in charge of.”
One of the others punched him in the shoulder.
“All right. Well we’re gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way. I’d hoped to be outside the building before the guards got to us, but this exit is likely to have two of them ready and waiting.” He paused. “We’re going to have to fight. Can you handle that?”
“Harden sent you?” he asked, looking for confirmation.
“Yes. Sort of. He didn’t exactly send me; he doesn’t have that kind of power over me. But I’m here on his behalf. We had to make him vanish from the grid, thanks to the same shit you’re going through here. So we decided it would be best if you all joined him. It would be safer for you that way.”
Flint gave him a hard stare, his eyes living up to his namesake. Gray met his gaze and didn’t flinch, letting the other man look into his soul, showing that he was telling the truth. The tall lanky shifter held it for a moment, inhaled sharply, and then nodded.
“He’s telling the truth.”
Gray couldn’t see the reaction of the others, but judging by the professional silence, he took it as a good sign. Behind them shouts sounded in the hallways, coming closer. That was a bad sign.
“Come on,” he said, peeking around the corner and taking off to the right.
Their feet slapped against the floor, all pretense of secrecy gone now.
“Big boys to the front,” he said as they approached a set of doors. “We go through. We don’t slow down.”
In response, two other bear shifters moved up alongside him. They had to be Bryce and Owen, if his memory was correct. Both were thickly built like himself, and a head or more over six feet tall. The hallway was almost too small for the three of them to run abreast.
Gray was in the middle and he accelerated as the door got closer, leaning a shoulder into it. On either side of him Owen and Bryce did the same without speaking, their faces set. He almost wanted to grin, feeling bad for the shifters on the far side. They would never know what hit them.
The metal doors shrieked and tore from their hinges as almost a thousand pounds of determined shifter slammed into them, exploding outward like lethal projectiles. Gray felt more than heard the impact as the doors warped around the bodies of the guards, picking them up and taking them with them as they bounced and flew across the ground to land thirty feet away. Gray wanted to stay and admire the handiwork, but there was no time.
“This way!” he called, taking off toward the forest that came up to within a few hundred yards of the facility. The others followed, their feet powering them forward at speeds no human could match, practically flowing over the ground instead of running upon it.
They’d just made it to the cover of the trees when shouts erupted behind them. Gray paused, hiding behind the thick bole of a tree. The guards milled about for a moment before they picked up his scent, but the wind was blowing heavily, and it would be tough for them to follow.
“Come on,” he said, and the quintet took off deep into the forest. There was a river less than half a mile away. Once they could lose themselves within it, they would be free.
Then it was just a quick journey to the border and into the vehicle he had stashed away there. He’d done it. They had done it.
Chapter Two
Kelly
“Here, keep the change,” she said, paying the taxi driver and getting out of the vehicle.
It would be a long walk up the driveway, but it wasn’t that she couldn’t handle, even in her current condition. Closing the door behind her, she adjusted the stretchy pants she was wearing, the movement of her swollen stomach pushing them down some more.
God she hated pants. Even before she’d gotten pregnant she’d disliked them. Now they were basically her worst enemy. She’d walk around in underwear or nothing if she had her way. Apparently that was considered taboo, however, much to her dismay.
Heading up the driveway, she wondered not for the first time what was going on. Her best friend Erika had called her and said she needed to come over. That they were having a celebration, and she needed to be a part of it.
Translation: Erika wanted some more help setting up for it.
Kelly Crouche grinned as the curving driveway emerged from the forest designed to conceal it from the road and revealed to her a tableau of a party setup in progress.
“I should have known that you wanted me here to help, not be a guest,” she called out to her friend, watching Erika waddle back and forth. She was a full month and change further along in her pregnancy than Kelly, and it showed. Any week now, and she would have her baby.
Kelly smiled. She was happy for her friend, and her mate Harden. The two of them were the perfect match, a couple so in love and head over heels for each other that you could only wish them good luck. Kelly hoped to find such a love herself one day, but for now, she was focused on the child growing within her and providing it with the best life that she could.
“Oh, come on now,” Erika said with a roll of her eyes. “You get to participate too. Now, be a doll and take these over to those tables,” she said, tossing several tablecloths into Kelly’s arms and pointing behind her.
“You got it, boss,” she said with a grin and proceeded to lay out the red and white striped cloths onto the tables.
No sooner was she done that than a little van pulled up, strikingly similar to those the postal workers used to deliver mail. Only this one was decorated with images of various food items.
“Ah, just in time,” Erika said with a clap of her hands.
Kelly watched as her friend moved like a whirling dervish, directing the two workers and two other volunteers on where she wanted the food. A moment later Kelly found herself caught up in the flow, putting this tray there, that dish here, and those things over there.
“You know, Erika,” she commented, “I think maybe you should alter some of your life plans.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, glancing over at her.
“You should open up your own party-planning business or something. I’ve never seen you so organized.”
Erika brushed it off.
“No, I’m serious. You have a knack for this. I bet you could serve a niche here in town that people don’t even know they need.”
Her friend paused, considering her words. “Maybe,” she admitted. “This is kinda fun.”
Kelly smiled. “Can I find out what it’s for yet then? All you told me was a celebration.”
“Exactly,” Erika said, with a level of mysteriousness to her tone that set off all sorts of alarm bells in Kelly’s head.
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” she shouted, but her friend had thrown herself back into the mix. Another crew had shown up with tables and chairs, and she was busy directing them as well.
It wasn’t going to be a large celebration, she noted. No more than perhaps two dozen people. Three rectangular folding tables with four chairs on each side were quickly set up and then covered with cloths of a black and white swirl. White seat covers went on to the chairs, making them appear fancier than they were.
Ke
lly took a break, not wanting to work herself too hard. During that time she regarded the volunteers. They were all members of the same family, plus Harden, Erika’s mate.
“How’s it going today, Kel?” one of them asked as he walked by, casually carrying an entire barbecue and tank in one hand as if it were just a bunch of feathers.
“Good, Gavin,” she said, addressing the middle Koche brother. “She roped all of you into this as well?”
“Sort of,” he grumbled. “She talked to the women. After that, it was game over as far as us trying to avoid helping,” the big shifter complained, but there was a large smile on his face, indicating he wasn’t really bothered by having to help.
Kelly laughed. Lena, his mate, was a lovely woman, and she definitely would have been all over him to help, ensuring he had no way out.
“Where is she now?”
“Inside, somewhere, with the others. Doing something important I’m sure,” he said, his tone indicating he thought otherwise.”
“Maybe I’ll have to find my way in there as well,” she joked.
Gavin just shook his head and moved off.
Kelly smiled. Erika moved up next to her, breathing heavily and trying to calm herself down.
“Take it easy,” she urged. “You don’t want to go into labor early.”
“I know,” Erika said, hands on her hips as she surveyed the grounds.
Kelly saw her head turn out of the corner of her eye, watching her now instead of the work going on.
“Things sure have changed since we first arrived in Cloud Lake, haven’t they?” Erika asked thoughtfully.
“Just a bit,” Kelly said with a laugh. “We came here two hopeless pregnant women, victims of a scam that resulted in us getting knocked up. Now you’ve found a mate, he’s building you this gorgeous house, and you’ve made some good friends too,” she said, referring to the Koche brothers, five shifters who had taken Erika and Harden under their wing and helped them set up a life outside of what Cadia wanted.
