Blake, Her Bad Bear: A Paranormal Bad Boy Romance

by Star, Amy

  The shifter had stopped short as well, and his black ears were raised. It took another minute for Blake to notice what had alarmed the bear—the scent reached him before he saw her. A human, no doubt about it. But what was a human doing this deep in the woods? She wasn’t part of the police contingent, he could make that out at least. A hunter, a mushroom picker, perhaps?

  It was amazing how noisy a human could be in the woods. Both shifters heard her long in advance of actually seeing her. Through a veil of ferns and between the trees, Blake could only make out occasional glimpses of her, and it was too far away to tell if he recognized her from such a distance. What he did notice was the reaction of the other shifter.

  The black ears on the smaller bear had laid flat, a sign of aggression. Blake tried to focus the rational part of his human mind. If, as he suspected, the shifter was involved with the death of Ogre, and was lingering here in order to observe how the police handled it, then his reaction to this human presence in the woods was understandable, and unavoidable. If he’s already killed another shifter, then getting rid of a human witness is just another step in the wrong direction, Blake realized. Additionally, if his pervasive suspicion that someone was trying to set him up was true, then adding another innocent casualty to the list of offenses would only incriminate him further.

  Another growl barely scraped his throat. The other shifter was huddled and taking tentative steps toward the human. She looked lost, although her back was to both of them. Something about her was familiar, but at the same time totally foreign. Whoever she was, she was definitely not a resident of Beaver Creek. Maybe, a tourist. Blake’s claws dug into the ground as he saw the other shifter creep toward her. His intent was clear, and Blake prepared to intervene. The last thing he needed was collateral damage.

  It happened all at once. The black bear shifter leapt into the clearing, snarling and giving his position away to the woman who turned with a shriek, her eyes wide, but somehow managed to keep her feet. Blake, meanwhile, remained silent as he trampled down the hillside, sliding through the undergrowth like a grizzled shade.

  The woman, young and muscular, somehow managed to dive to one side as the black bear reached for her. The momentum of his weight carried him across the slippery humus of the ground though, and there was a look of surprise in his face. Clearly, he had meant to kill her in a single go—Blake leapt forward, impressed by the clarity of awareness she had demonstrated in avoiding the shifter’s attack.

  As he entered the clearing, the black bear shifter suddenly recoiled. All three of them were arranged in a triangular formation. It would take the same amount of time for the black bear to reach the woman, who had tripped onto her back and was holding her ankle, as it would for Blake to intercept him. Clearly, the shifter was caught in a debacle, and Blake saw a very human dilemma color the bear’s eyes. He hadn’t expected to meet another shifter, and certainly not a grizzly—but at the same time, the hungry gaze he leveled on the human told Blake that whatever his intentions were, whatever his orders were that had been given to him while in human form, they would eventually trump good sense.

  He has no choice, Blake realized, never letting his attention drift from his enemy. In his peripheral vision, the woman was breathing hard, trying to scramble back. He didn’t have to look at her to know that fear was etched into her features. Two giant bears were less than ten meters away from her on either side. He had no time to worry about that, though.

  The other shifter snarled and roared, and stood up on two legs in intimidation. Blake remained level on all fours. He had no need for that sort of posturing. The black bear roared again, and his claws raked into the earth. It was only a fraction of a second, but his black eyes locked like round pebbles on the woman again, and Blake didn’t miss it or misinterpret. Whatever happens, he can’t let her live, he realized. He’s willing to go as far as it takes.

  Blake had no particular inclination to save anyone, but neither did he condone the useless and bloodthirsty slaughter of an innocent human. What stopped him as he took another step into the clearing, closing the distance between him and the other bear, was a more selfish prerogative. Whoever the shifter was, he was behind a conspiracy designed to entrap Blake, and Blake had every intention of getting to the bottom of it. Even if that meant tearing chunks off his enemy until they confessed. The grizzly snarled again, bubbles of saliva foaming at his jowls.

  The black bear charged. The woman didn’t scream, but let out a startled gasp again as she saw the bulk of a black shape rushing toward her. She was still on her butt, and her ankle looked swollen even from where Blake was standing. He had been waiting for this, though—his own legs flexed hard as he ploughed forward, trying to intercept the other shifter.

  The two of them hit one another hard, and it was like two walls colliding into one another. The air left Blake’s lungs as he gasped and tried to keep his momentum moving. Time slowed to almost a pause as both bears broke to one side, less than a foot from the startled human. It was hard to tell because of the speed and the massive dose of adrenaline flowing through his hot blood, but as Blake passed by, he glimpsed again the woman’s startled face and that same recognition ignited behind his eyes. Why this familiarity? he had time to wonder as he landed hard on his side.

  The black bear grunted, having been body-checked hard into a tree. Somehow he still had the nerve to stand up and shake it off. Blake was more winded than actually wounded and huffed heavily as he put himself between the shifter and his quarry again. The black bear’s look of antagonism had changed into one of desperation. Not only was he now confronting a full-blown grizzly, but what had supposedly been an easy task—getting rid of a pesky human—had now developed into a full-blown panic. Who could inspire such fear in him that he’d be willing to go head to head with me? Blake wondered, pawing the ground in irritation.

  He detected the faint fragrance of the woman behind him, like a phantom of flowers.

  The shifter roared again, and the black lips flexed back over his fangs as he charged again, this time with less determination. Blake met him head on, and felt claws rip into his shoulder. Barking in pain, he brought his own paws against the black bear’s head and heard the satisfying crush of skin and the scraping of his own long claws against plated bone underneath.

  Both bears stood on their hind legs, wrestling, and Blake screamed again as he felt teeth puncture the forearm of one paw. More in rage than anything else, he swung heavily with his other clubbed paw and felt the impact smash like a hammer against the smaller shifter’s skull. There was a whoof of surprise, but the black bear had wound his grip around his elder tight enough that the concussive blow merely turned him into standing jelly. Dazed, his mouth hung slack and a pink tongue lolled. Blake hesitated, not wanting to kill the young fool. Who are you? he wanted to know.

  It took less than a few seconds for the black bear to recover his senses and he bit again, but this time Blake was ready and brought his own jaw around the back of the shifter’s neck and bit down, not hard enough to snap his neck, but enough to taste blood. The black bear whined. He was injured, but refused to give up—a veritable David versus Goliath, except Blake as Goliath was reluctant enough as it was.

  In a final effort, the black bear pushed away. His hind legs locked into the soft dirt and he sprang forward again with what strength he had left. There was no way he could possibly get past Blake, and the grizzly met him again head on, bringing both paws down like a mallet on top of his head. It was anti-climatic. The shifter grunted in defeat and dropped as a brick to the earth, his muzzled snuffling hard into the dust, and he let out a single raspy breath. Blake grunted and stood back, watching as the black bear’s golden eyes blinked in a tired gesture and very slowly his transformation back to a human shrunk him into a pale body.

  Now Blake recognized the young one. He was also a novitiate, several years older than Gavin, but Damian himself had been grooming the young one as a general in the ranks of the tribe. Tanis. Now in his naked, spra
wled human form, Blake could see that there were numerous deep cuts in his abdomen and chest and his head was thick with shimmering red. The wounds he’d incurred while in bear form had been more grievous than Blake had realized. Tanis had forced his hand—when he’d gotten injured he should have backed down. Swearing to himself, Blake felt a surge of nausea eat into his stomach and he allowed himself to return to human form as well.

  The transformation back was simpler, more fluid. The heavy black shag of fur fell off of him like brown-black snow, coating the ground beneath him, and he stood up straight, shaking the rest off his naked back and thighs. Several deep, lateral cuts also crisscrossed his shoulder where Tanis had gotten in a few lucky strikes, and there was a numbness in his other arm where several deep teeth marks had gone deep into the muscle. He flinched it off as he walked forward and knelt by Tanis, turning him over.

  The kid was still breathing, but barely. The wounds were too terminal.

  “Goddamn it! Goddamn it,” Blake repeated, his voice a mixture of guilt and anger and irreconcilable sadness—it shouldn’t have come to this. Tanis looked up at his Beta and his eyes grew wider as a thin trail of blood dribbled from his lips.

  “It’s you,” he murmured.

  “It’s me,” Blake said. “Tanis… Oh, Tanis, what’s going on? Why?”

  If Blake felt a certain measure of guilt, the look that crossed Tanis’ face far exceeded it. He closed his eyes for a moment, and a single tear welled at the edge.

  “I’m-I’m sorry, it was… I don’t know what I was doing. I thought, for the Ursas. I thought I was doing it for everyone. But… but, it’s wrong. I knew it, the moment it happened, I knew it was wrong!”

  “Tell me what happened,” Blake said soothingly.

  More tears welled at Tanis’ eyes as he coughed. “It was my mission, he told me, he told me that it was to protect the tribe, that if I did it—I would be a general, I’d be protecting my brothers and sister,” he said, “the tenets. Loyalty.” Tanis held up his hand where the ancient script for the word was inscribed in ink across his knuckle.

  “I know, I know,” Blake urged, feeling the life drain out of the young one, and biting back on his own disgust at what he’d done. “Tell me… what happened?”

  “It was Ogre,” Tanis said, coughing again, and blood flecked his lips. “He told me that I had to kill Ogre, because he’d betrayed us. I didn’t—I didn’t think… but I obeyed. It was easy, Ogre didn’t see it coming. I thought it would be different. But I only felt sick… Oh god, Blake, what did I do?”

  “Shhh, it’s okay,” Blake said, lifting the youngster’s head into his hands. “Who told you to do it?”

  Tanis closed his eyes again, opening his mouth in an expression of pain. His hands had gone white, and his wounds were still bleeding profusely. A dark pool had already formed under him, and his pale flesh was now coated in the dark sticky substance which refused to dry in the humid climate. “It was, it was Connor,” Tanis replied, barely a whisper. “What… did I do?”

  They were the last words Tanis spoke.

  The muscles in his neck went slack and turned slightly in Blake’s hands. Gently, he lowered the shifter back onto the forest floor and stood up, his lips already muttering on instinct a small prayer for the lost soul of the boy. Blake’s arms shivered, his body coated in grime and dirt and blood that was a mingling of his own and Tanis’. But it wasn’t the cold that caused him to shiver. It was rage, unadulterated, unfixed. His jaw bit down so hard that it was a vice, and his eyes became as cold as untempered steel as he touched his heart above the tattoo representation of a bear paw and he finished the prayer.

  “You will be avenged, brother,” he murmured, more as a vow to himself than as a statement of fact. “Blood by blood, you will be avenged.”

  He turned away from the corpse and stumbled back several footsteps, and was surprised by the presence of the woman who was limping behind him, her eyes now not full of terror so much as wonder. He had forgotten about her temporarily, entirely, and now found himself face-to-face with a young looking waif with black hair. And a face that he had seen once before. A face that had now witnessed not only a mortal struggle between two shifters, but their transformation as well.

  A face that had lingered in his memory ever since he’d seen it two weeks ago, and who had never failed to invade his memory.

  “Lily,” he murmured, half in a stupor.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It had all happened too fast for her to process. The roar had signaled her attention first, and when she’d turned there was only a black blur. Somehow she had dived to one side, but rolled her ankle in the process. Then the other bear had crashed into the clearing. She could still smell the rust of blood—the young man who now laid on his side where the black bear had been was still and white, pale as open wood. The other man, the one who had been a grizzly, looked down at her and said her name.

  The contrast between Blake and the grizzly was so wide it took her brain several loops to finally recognize the handsome stolid jaw, the shaven head where a darkly golden brim of hair was growing back, and those shale grey eyes. But what gave him away were the tattoos—how could she forget those cobalt symbols running across his bare, hairy chest, down his arms to his elbows? Even now, though, it must have just been the flood of endorphins combined with fear, they seemed to move about his body, animated of their own volition.

  “Lily,” he murmured, saying her name again.

  She stammered, and scooted back several more feet, wincing at the pain as her ankle dragged. Blake didn’t make any move toward her, but he looked concerned. Lily noticed that he was coated in blood, and there were deep lacerations down his arm and she thought she glimpsed something white. It made her sick to think about, but Blake looked unaffected.

  “Y-you, what?” she stammered, her voice trembling. It was all too much.

  “Just relax,” he said, holding out his hand. Blood had runneled down his fingers and dripped on the ferns. He made a helpless and comical gesture. “Listen, Lily… I… what are you doing here?”

  “W-what am I doing here? What are you doing here? What the fuck is going on?!”

  She was becoming hysterical, but she couldn’t help it. Moments ago, she’d been inches from getting decapitated by a rogue bear’s paw. Now she was face-to-face with a naked lover, the father of her unborn child.

  He kneeled down and cocked his head. “There are things, about me, about my tribe, things about Beaver Creek that you don’t know—that no one knows. We try to keep it that way.” He sighed, his face fatigued from the fight and from his wounds, but he still put on a strong face. “I’m not what I seem.”

  “No shit!” Lily stammered, and stopped as she backed up against a fallen log. Blake took another step toward her, this time limping. He looked like hell, a war zone.

  “I’m what you might call a shifter. Something that is both bear and human,” he tried to explain. “Please, don’t be afraid. You’re injured.”

  “So are you.”

  He noticed his wounds and shrugged. “Had… worse,” he replied. “Listen, we can’t stay here. It may have alerted the cops, they’re not from here. It’s too dangerous. Please, let me help you.” Reluctantly she took his hand and was hoisted up. Her ankle was definitely swollen, but it didn’t look broken. Still, he hissed as she put weight on it. “Here, get on,” he murmured, and she let out a gasp as she was literally slung onto his back. She fought weakly at him, more out of the fact that she was now straddling a half-naked man, but his grip was resolute. “Hang on,” he breathed, and took off at a run.

  She was amazed at his speed. Even injured and carrying her, his strength was incomparable, and he practically sprinted through the forest floor, his breath a solid rhythm that pushed heavily at his chest. She wrapped her arms around his muscular torso tighter to keep from getting shaken off, and felt herself unconsciously aroused.

  “Wh-where are we going? What happened to that man?”

  “He w
as my brother,” Blake replied grimly, and would say no more. “There’s much to explain.”

  “Does it have to do with the murder?” she asked blatantly.

  The word murder struck him hard and he skidded to a stop, and Lily let out a gasp as she gripped him even tighter. “How do you know about that?” he asked over his shoulder. The forest around them had gotten darker, seemingly as if anticipating the bad news.

  “I… I was coming here, Beaver Creek, I mean… I’m… I’m a reporter,” she confessed. “My assignment was to come here and investigate. That’s, that’s why I was in the woods. I was hoping to find a clue to… well, to whatever was going on. But then—”

  Blake nodded as if perceiving the rest of the story and took off a run again. “We’ll try to make it to the road, if we can,” he stumbled briefly, and at the speed they were traveling Lily gasped again and her glasses nearly fell from her face. Her ankle was throbbing now, and it didn’t help when Blake tried to right himself to keep from falling. He grunted, and she realized that his wounds were more grievous than he’d let on. “We have to make it to the road.”

  “You’re hurt, you can’t,” Lily stuttered. They were in the middle of the woods. Where did he expect to go? The physical stress of carrying her and trying to run, as well, was taking its toll, and she knew it was only a matter before he exhausted himself—he truly was something extra-human. He knew no limits, including his own. “Wait, go back. We can reach my car. Please, Blake…”

  He snuffed, more bear-like in his mannerisms, but silently veered left. She couldn’t tell if he was actually going in the right direction, but several minutes passed and she saw a clearing up ahead in the forest. Her Camry was right where she parked it. Somehow, Blake had managed to find it. He is truly a bear, she realized, he must have smelled it out, by my scent.

  By the time they reached the car, he heaved, panting like an Olympic athlete as he supported himself against the passenger door. Lily hopped off. Her ankle was still swollen, but the pain was numb now. She could still hobble, and quickly opened the back door for Blake. Now that they’d stopped, he looked even more haggard and his eyes were closed. He nearly ran himself to death trying to get me out of the woods, she mused.