Bear Mountain Bride: Shifter Romance

by Sky Winters

  “Regardless, you’re putting the twins in jeopardy by letting your feelings get involved,” Anjelica snapped. “This sort of stress and irresponsibility can have detrimental consequences.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  Jolene looked up from the table. She felt sullen and like she was not being considered as an equal part of all this. In fact, she felt as though Anjelica didn’t see her as a living person who was carrying these babies. To her, Jolene was just a shell. A casing for these precious, historic offspring.

  Maybe this was why she had never thought about being a mother. Now that she was going to be one, she wished that she could feel at least a little excited about it, instead of constantly being shamed about who she chose to spend her time with or what she wanted to do. She could not sit in bed every day, goddammit!

  She hit her palms against the table. “I want feelings to be involved!” she shouted, her voice coming out a lot shriller than she intended.

  The six eyes of the wolves were on her now.

  Emboldened by their attention, Jolene proceeded. “I know that all three of you care about my babies, but have you ever stopped to care a little about me? They aren’t just your werewolf twins. They’re my twins. My children. And I want my children to live in a happy family. I don’t know, I’ve always had the crazy notion that if I started a family it would be with someone as the father… I know that you all want to help. And I know that we don’t know if Luke is the dad or if it’s Zebe… But I love Zebe. I want to be with him. And I don’t want to be shamed for wanting that. It’s more stressful for me if you just make me sit in the bedroom and not have a life of my own.”

  Anjelica was looking at her skeptically now, but Luke at last seemed to understand. It wasn’t easy for him to hear that the lovely redhead he had the hots for was more interested in dating his brother, but he was beginning to see where she was coming from. Now was not the time for bickering or trying to control her. The babies were her babies too, as she said… As a matter of fact, they were her babies first and foremost.

  Once Luke looked past the jealousy, he realized that Jolene was right.

  “She’s right,” he said then, turning to look at his sister. He still could not bring himself to admit his defeat to Zebe, but at least he could say it to Anjelica while his brother was right there in the room to hear it. “What’s done is done. I can’t keep being mad at them for wanting to be together, and we can’t keep treating Jolene like she’s the babies’ host. That’s not right.”

  Then he turned and smiled at Jolene. “We’re wolves, but we don’t have to be animals.”

  Jolene smiled back at him, gasping out a pleased and grateful breath. She reached over and took his hand, squeezing it in a show of thanks.

  “I won’t lie and say this isn’t awkward,” he said, looking at Zebe then and giving him a slight smirk. “But I am happy for you two. Here’s hoping you name one of these babies something that is less stupid than The Lone Wolves.”

  Zebe laughed a little. “Hey!”

  Anjelica sighed, but she threw her hands up and gave Jolene a small smile. “Just… be careful. Maybe no more outdoor activities like that?”

  Blushing, Jolene nodded. “Okay. That’s fair.”

  Suddenly, her stomach growled. She brought a hand to her belly and felt a little kick along with the rumblings of her hungry stomach. Reaching over, she took Zebe’s and Luke’s hands and placed them onto her belly so they might be able to feel the movement of the twins too.

  “Are you ready for some dinner?” Zebe asked her, more concerned about her than the babies, which she loved him even more for.

  She smiled at him. “Yes, please.”

  Luke pulled his hand away from her then, though he smiled at her. It was a slightly sad sort of smile, but it was not without kindness. “Come on, Anjie. Let’s leave these two love birds to it. I’ve got a Vermonster burger calling my name.”

  He and Anjelica got up from the table.

  Jolene smiled appreciatively at him. “Don’t drink too much,” she said with a soft chuckle.

  “That’s impossible,” he said, giving her a wink.

  Once he and his sister were gone from the house, Jolene looked over at Zebe and felt a little awkward for some reason. They were well past feeling shy now. The fact that they had essentially been given permission and Luke’s blessing made things feel official in a way that making love in an open field did not.

  “I think there’s grass in my underwear,” she said.

  They laughed together. At least that decreased the tension.

  Zebe nodded towards the front door. “I’ll go get the food from the car,” he said. “Hopefully it’s okay.”

  Jolene’s eyes went big when she remembered that she had put his casserole in the bag. “Oh god, I forgot. Your casserole!”

  The likelihood of all of that cheese still being edible after sitting out in a car all day was not a very high one. She felt crushed. “I’m so sorry. I meant to eat it now that I was with you… I had saved it.”

  Zebe’s smile only grew. “Aww,” he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and giving her head a kiss. “It’s okay. Let’s see if we can salvage it. Otherwise, I’ll make you another.”

  With that, he got up from the table and went out to the car. Jolene put her head in her hands, her eyes filling with tears. She could not stop herself from crying. She knew it was irrational, but she was disappointed in herself for forgetting Zebe’s sweet gift to her in the car. There had been distractions galore, but she still felt stupid.

  A few minutes later, Zebe came back inside with the bag of food. He brought it into the kitchen and placed it on the counter, pulling out the casserole container. Jolene stood up and joined him.

  “It doesn’t look good,” he said. “But it’s okay. I’ll make you a fresh one.”

  She leaned into him, sniffling but letting her tears subside. “I didn’t eat it when I had the chance because I didn’t want to lose the sweetest thing you had done for me,” she said. “You know? I didn’t want to ruin your gift to me by eating it.” She laughed then, realizing how silly it seemed. “But I’ve learned my lesson. I will eat whatever you give me now.”

  Zebe raised his eyebrows at her, smirking a sideways smirk. “Don’t tempt me. I might start testing that promise.”

  Jolene giggled. She sat at the small kitchen table, letting herself relax now that he had brought in the food and it had been decided that he would just make a new casserole for dinner. “Let me help you,” she said. “Don’t let me just sit here while you do everything.”

  He looked at her skeptically, as if cooking a meal was too taxing for a pregnant woman. “You can read the recipe for me?” he suggested. “Look up tuna casserole on your phone and read off the first recipe you can find.”

  “Ugh, so I do have to get up,” she joked, standing and going out to the living room to fetch her phone from her purse. She brought it back and sat down, searching the internet for the perfect tuna casserole recipe.

  Meanwhile, Zebe dumped the old one into the trash and carefully put away all of the other items that she had so meticulously packed away in the bag. He laughed and held up the box of Pop Tarts.

  “That’s my signature breakfast,” Jolene joked. “Get used to it. You can back out now if you want.”

  He shook his head, beaming down at his casserole pan. “Read me the recipe.”

  As Jolene told him what ingredients to use and the order to put them into the pan, Zebe made her a tuna casserole. When it went into the oven, she could smell it and her mouth watered as though she was now a werewolf too.

  Her tummy growled and her baby wolves growled along with it, ready to eat the delicious meal their father was making for them. She was eating for three now, after all. That was the perfect excuse. She hoped that there would be many surprise casseroles in their future. Forget cakes or pies. This was somehow even sweeter.

  Watching him, she knew she had made the right choice
. There was no question in her mind. Zebe’s kind of love was special. It was relaxed and filled her up with happiness, and didn’t make her worry if he would come back to her again. She knew he would.

  It was the kind of love she had been hoping to find. It was the best kind of love.

  The End

  Bear Shifter Romance

  LA Shifters

  PROLOGUE:

  “Ready for this?”

  Antonio, the large wolf with black fur and green eyes, turned at the words.

  Magda, shifted from her bear form to human, stood close by the edge of the pen where she was kept. “I guess it’s a moot question, really, but I thought I’d ask.”

  Antonio shifted quickly, skin and bone forming and growing then transforming until he stood on two legs, his skin bare of the fur. The wind blew across his skin and goose pimples rose. “I’d say yes, but that would be a lie.”

  Magda grinned. The dim light flashed off her large white teeth. “Are you ready enough?”

  Antonio moved closer, but still stayed below the shelter, out of sight of the zookeepers, if any should happen along. “As ready as we can be.”

  Magda nodded. Her long brown hair waved around her cunning face. “It won’t be easy.”

  Antonio said, “Never expected it to be. How we’ve stood it this long is anyone’s guess.”

  It was anyone’s guess. The zoo had captured them all at some point, bringing them into the zoo under the assumption that they were the animals whose forms they could shift into. High doses of tranquilizers kept them complacent, and the food they ate was always laced with those drugs.

  Shifting was dangerous—for a lot of reasons. For one, all of them were in cages with actual non-shifting animals. Those animals harried them daily and forced the shifters to the edges of the pens. The keepers assumed that they were just not assimilating, and they weren’t, because they couldn’t.

  Antonio had thought he was the only shifter caught in that hell until he had seen Magda one night. She had been enraged enough, and awake enough, to shift right there in her pen. She’d almost been killed because the bears had gone on the attack. She’d had to shift back and fight to stay alive. The keepers had come in with their sedation tools and their sprays, and Magda had ended up in a pen just for herself because she was deemed untrustworthy.

  She was also marked as a zoo failure, and while the zoo, on the surface of things, did not kill its animals unless it was necessary, she had pretty well punched her own ticket that night.

  It was just a matter of time before they took her down. That went for both the keepers and the actual bears pacing in their pens, which were connected to hers even if they were separated by a slim band of trees and glass.

  Antonio said, “You shouldn’t be shifting yet. What if you are spotted? The whole thing could go up in flames. The cameras might spot you and then what? There’s no way to explain a naked woman in a pen where a bear was a moment before. You’re being foolish.”

  Magda snorted. “I have to. I can’t stand not to.”

  “I know.” He put his weight on the other foot, his eyes searching the pens.

  “The keepers should stay where they are for a few more minutes,” Magda replied. “Now’s our best chance.”

  “Yeah.” Antonio lifted a hand, raking his fingers through his thick hair as his nostrils spread and his head lifted. He sniffed the air, but the scent of humans lay too thick everywhere to know if any were nearby. “Just keep one eye out for anyone, will you?”

  “I will.”

  “Get going then.”

  “I didn’t need your permission.”

  The words made Antonio grit his teeth. “No, you don’t.”

  Magda paused. “I’m not staying here anymore. If I have to die here tonight, I will. I would rather be dead than be here and alive.”

  Antonio’s heart sped up. He scanned the surroundings again, seeing nothing but shadows sifting and crawling out there along the concrete pathways. “I’m with you, no matter how this pans out.”

  Am I willing to die here tonight? Yes, he was. He understood that even as his mind scrawled past all the risks she was taking and resentment at her willingness to take those risks simmered up in his being.

  Because Magda was in a position to pass things on, she had told him about the others. At night, when they were herded from their outside enclosures and into their pens, he had spotted a few other shifters, or thought he had. Magda had confirmed that there were others here, just as eager to escape as she and Antonio were.

  Revealing themselves as shifters would be disastrous. They all knew that from experience. No way did any of them want to become the pet project at some lab, stuck full of needles and having their brains scanned while being forced to shift constantly for ‘research.’

  By the law of nature, they were all enemies. Wolves, bears, and tigers were not meant to be friends. In the wild, they would have fought and killed each other. Here, they had to work together or die.

  This was their only shot, and they all knew it.

  The zoo had to cut power in the cages and pens tonight, and keepers would be standing guard to make damn sure no animal escaped while they did the routine maintenance that he, Magda, and Patel had all been waiting on for an entire year.

  This was their chance, and they would have to take it.

  They had a plan.

  As soon as the power went out, Magda, who was alone in her pen and stood the best chance of being able to get out without being eaten by non-shifting bears for her troubles, was going to climb her enclosure in bear form, because she was more capable of scaling the great height of the tree in that form.

  But the branch that stuck out from the enclosure would never hold her in bear form, so she would have to reach it and shift then drop onto the paved and concrete walkway.

  It was going to hurt. Even with her mutated healing abilities, she was going to be wounded, and naked.

  A naked woman toppling onto the path would be noticed, but since the power was going to be out, the cameras would be out, too, which would give her the perfect chance to get into the keepers’ lockers and grab clothing for them.

  Antonio knew Magda was not all that keen on helping the other shifters escape. The only reason she was doing so was because if she did not, they had all threatened to not only shift and reveal their secret, but to tell hers as well.

  No way would anyone let a shifter escape. The government really would track her down to the end of her days and that chip they all had implanted under their skin would certainly aid in her capture.

  That was why she had agreed to help free Antonio and Patel. Patel was a surgeon and capable of removing the chips, and Antonio had contacts in LA, unlike Magda and Patel. He could get them into shelter for the next few days, and get them food and other things they needed.

  Once dressed and in possession of the keys, Magda would unlock their pens. It was risky, because they could all go down in flames if she were caught.

  Antonio chewed his lips as he watched her shift yet again.

  This was it.

  His heart picked up again, his pulse ticking away in his throat. His gaze moved across the landscape, his mouth opened as he tasted the air, trying to separate old scent from new.

  The branch gave a low warning creak, making his head jerk upward. “Be careful, dammit.”

  “I am being careful,” she snapped. “I don’t want to break my legs or something, you know. Even if they will heal, I’ll be in misery for days. What’s more, there’ll be no way I could run.”

  Magda climbed the tree and when she reached the fork of the branch, she shifted again. She paused, looking down, and Antonio’s heart thumped painfully in his chest as he shifted back to wolf form.

  What if she lost her nerve? What if she could not bring herself to jump from that branch, knowing how much pain she risked?

  The branch creaked again, an alarming sound. The faint jingle of keys worn on a hip sounded out and a keeper strolled closer.
Antonio could hear far better than Magda, and he was the lookout. She looked down at him, sniffing hard as she did so.

  He ran closer to the edge, where she could see him, and placed a paw out, aiming it in the direction the keeper was coming from.

  Magda stayed put. The bare strands of moonlight played over her body, all lean and high angles and rounded breasts and hips.

  Lust stirred up in Antonio, and he forced it away.

  Bears and wolves did not mix. It was against nature and even shifters had to play by those laws. His thoughts went back to the pups he had created with a non-shifting she-wolf.

  The pups had just been born a few hours before. They were there, in the pen, and they were his. He would take them with him, because not to do so meant risking them being shifters trapped in this existence, and risking shifters with no ability to handle the shifts exposing him and every other shifter in the world.

  There were plenty of shifters in LA, established packs out there in the neighborhoods. He would take his children and find a pack or forge a new one. If they could not shift, he would have to send them into the steep canyons to live, where they could be free and away from the humans who would kill them.

  The keeper stepped out from a thick clot of shadows. It was the ruthless one, Barry. There were keepers who loved every animal in the zoo, and then there were keepers like Barry, who was known to hit, kick, and hurt.

  Magda watched him, and Antonio saw the expression on her face. A warning growl rose in his throat, but she ignored it.

  Dammit! His body shifted instinctively as Magda went down, right on top of Barry.

  Magda landed on the keeper, already shifting to bear form. The heaviness of her body took Barry down and she landed right on his chest, forcing all the air from his lungs and preventing him from being able to scream.

  The thick and rich tang of blood hit the air, driving Antonio into a near-frenzy, no matter how much he tried to stay level-headed. He was not the only one reacting. Howls and growls rose up all along the long path that ran in front of that section of pens. It was just a matter of time before the other keepers showed up and they were all fucked.