Bear Next Door (Shifter Protection Agency Book 1)

by Brittany White

  “Well, good morning, lovebirds,” she called when she caught sight of them. Beside him, Laura blushed and Sam shuffled his feet. “Well, the other three ate more than ten people’s worth of food but I think I have enough for two more, so help yourselves.”

  Sam dug in, stacking the plate high with sausages, bacon and eggs. Laura did the same and Stella watched them both with a wry smile. “You two worked up quite the appetite, huh?” Something in her tone made Sam look up from his plate, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t look at me like that, Miller, you two were so loud I might as well have been in the room watching! Didn’t know you were so adventurous, Sam.”

  Sam’s cheeks burned but he shrugged.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Stells,” he quipped.

  His phone rang before Stella could respond and Sam wiped his hands on his jeans before pulling it out. It was Axel. He pressed “Answer” and held the phone to his ear.

  “Morning, heard you ate Stella nearly out of house and home, nice going there dude-”

  “Sam!” Axel interrupted, sounding more urgent than Sam had ever heard him. “The agency is under attack, it’s at least sixty shifters, fifty of which are those delightful freaks of nature that attacked Laura.” Sam gripped the phone tighter. He felt Laura tense up next to him, hand finding its way to his thigh and holding tight. He could hear the sounds of Even and Wiliam fighting in the background and sighed with relief. At least they’re together.

  “Where’s David?” he asked urgently. A muffled swear answered him, followed by the sound of Axel running and Sam grit his teeth, waiting for his brother to answer him. After a long, terrifying minute of nothing but harsh breaths and the sound of feet hitting concrete, Axel’s voice finally returned.

  “I have no idea… Saw him a little while ago but we lost him when a bunch of the fuckers chased us toward the main library. Sam, we need you here.”

  “I’m on my way.” Blood pounding in his ears, Sam hung up and looked up. Stella and Laura were giving him twin looks of terror. “I have to go, the agency is under attack. Stella, I need you to look after Laura for me.”

  “I can take care of myself-”

  “No. You can’t.” He turned to Laura. There was no way he was putting her in danger again. Not as long as he was alive. “You don’t remember these things, Laura, they're monsters. They’ll rip you to pieces and I am not strong enough to lose you again.” She stared at him and Sam thought for a moment she was going to disagree, to demand she go with him but her shoulder sagged and she nodded. “Thank you.” He kissed her and climbed to his feet. “Stella?”

  “She’s safe with me,” Stella swore. “I promise.”

  They nodded at each other and Sam turned and fled from the house. He only hoped he’d arrive in time.

  21

  Laura

  Laura hated waiting. Every minute that passed felt like an eternity as she paced listlessly across Stella’s kitchen floor. The witch was infuriatingly calm, sitting exactly where she had been when Sam had left, clutching at her long-cold coffee and looking off into the distance.

  Laura wished she could have the same composure –her mind was awash with worry. She knew Sam was right, she had no fighting experience, nothing to help a situation like this, but fuck, she couldn’t stand sitting around and not helping. Sam had protected her, countless times. She wanted to be there for him. To prove she could do the same.

  “You’ll wear through the floors at this rate.” Stella’s voice was soft.

  “I can’t help it,” Laura snapped back, instantly regretting it when the witch’s face tightened. She stopped pacing, dropping into the seat next to her and taking one of Stella’s hands in hers. “I’m sorry, I know you’re as worried as me, I just…I can’t stand feeling so useless.” She glanced at the clock. It had been an hour. So much can happen in an hour. Stella said nothing, though she did give her hand an understanding squeeze.

  They sat there for a few minutes more, hands clasped around the cold ceramic mug in front of Stella. Laura’s mind wouldn’t quiet though, and she took to jogging her leg under the table. How long are we supposed to wait? We can’t phone the police but surely there has to be someone we can call? Some form of backup? She was about to ask Stella if there was some sort of shifter messaging system so they could call for backup when the witch suddenly stood up and left the room.

  Unsure what to do, Laura followed her into the hallway. She watched dumbly as Stella pulled on a pair of truly extraordinary platform heels and slipped a black leather jacket on over her dress.

  “What are you doing?” she asked finally. Stella looked up from tying her laces, face determined.

  “I’m going after them.”

  Laura perked up immediately. Don’t tell me that she was scheming that whole time? She scrambled for her own shoes, itching to get to the agency and find Sam.

  “Hold on a second.” Laura bristled. She leveled Stella with her best glare.

  “Don’t you dare fucking tell me to stay here and out of trouble!” she warned. Stella smiled at her fondly.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweet thing,” she assured her and motioned for her to come back to the kitchen where she started once again pulling sweet-smelling herbs from her endless cupboards. “But I’m not completely stupid.” She mixed what looked like rosemary, garlic, nutmeg and lavender into a bowl and funneled the whole thing efficiently into what looked like a perfume bottle. “This is a protection charm,” she said, presenting the bottle to Laura with a flourish. “You use it a little like holy water – it should protect you if we get separated.” It was still a weird thing to get her head around: Stella being a witch. She fit the look perfectly, Laura had to admit, but she was still half-expecting her to whip out a wand and start yelling phrases in Latin. She looked at the bottle. The liquid within was a deep amber and when she uncapped it, it smelled heavenly. If this was going to protect her in a fight, she had to get Stella to teach her how to make it.

  “How do I do it?” she asked. Stella took the bottle from her and anointed her neck and forehead with the sweet-smelling solution and then closed her eyes.

  “As Artio is my witness, I ask that this human be protected.”

  Something settled in Laura, like a warm blanket had been draped over her shoulders. She sighed, rolling her shoulders. She felt incredible.

  They could hear the agency long before they arrived. It was obscene to hear such awful sounds in the middle of the day, screams and growls, but as they walked down the street, not a single person seemed to care. Laura watched, hands clamped over her ears, as families walked along in the sunshine and businessmen and women on their lunch breaks, none of them paying the slightest attention to the truly horrific sound.

  “What gives?” she asked, following Stella around the back of what looked like an old decadent library and down a shadowed alleyway, the cream and russet bricks checkerboarding in mesmerizing patterns in the sunlight. “Why is no one screaming or calling the police?”

  “There must be a silencing charm in place,” Stella replied, rattling the door handle of a rusted door and making a little triumphant sound when it opened after the third try. “No one outside of the building can hear what’s going on – it comes in useful when angry shifters start territory wars in the middle of the town.”

  In any other situation, Laura might have laughed at the image of several angry people all yelling and being unable to hear a thing but, as Stella pulled the door open fully to reveal a long dark hallway, all she could do was fight the urge to turn and run.

  The dark uninviting hallway turned into many uninviting hallways. Stella led them in silence and Laura trusted that the witch knew where she was going. They paused every few seconds when the sounds of fighting got louder and louder, rattling the doorways and vibrating the floor as they held stone-still, praying they didn’t get too close. Laura’s heart was in her throat, so loud she was sure those monsters would hear it and come barreling out of nowhere to tear them apart. S
he felt like a child wandering around in an animal’s enclosure, could feel eyes on her everywhere, waiting to pounce.

  “So, where are we heading?” she whispered, startling at how even that seemed so loud in the empty hallway. Every one of them looked exactly the same and Laura made sure she stayed close to Stella. She did not want to get lost. Wherever they were going, Laura prayed they’d get there soon. “Not exactly the most welcoming of places is it?” she murmured. The walls were all the same shade of cream and the carpet beneath their feet was a muted brown. Stella sent her a glance over her shoulder.

  “These are the witches’ labs – it doesn’t need to be fancy. The rest of the place looks like it was taken straight of the nineteen-hundreds.” The witch was surprisingly light on her feet as she rushed them around yet another corner and then, finally, into a darkened room just as a dark shape streaked past. Laura ducked, praying it hadn’t seen them. The click of the lock sliding home did little to dissipate her nerves. If those creatures really wanted to get them, a stupid little lock wasn’t going to stop them.

  Suddenly charging in blind seemed like the worst idea ever. But Sam’s in here somewhere, she reminded herself. And so was William. And Axel and Even. She might not have known them for very long but they were her friends and they’d looked after her. She was a part of this now, whether she liked it or not and she was not going to cower in a corner whilst they risked their lives to save hers.

  Neither of them turned on the lights, scared to draw attention to themselves. The ceiling was pockmarked with several skylights that let just enough sunlight into the room for them to make out the layout of the room. It was littered with exactly the sort of decoration Laura had come to expect from Stella, including a skeleton model wearing eyeliner and a bowtie with bats on it. Most of the room was taken up by various machines that Laura had long forgotten the names of. In scientific terms, Stella was something of a chemist which had always been the subject Laura got on with the least.

  Stella wasted no time, marching across the room like she knew exactly what she was looking for, pulling her long hair back and out of her face.

  They hadn’t spoken much since they’d entered the building, too on edge from the constant deafening sounds of the fight going on all around them but in here, the sound was somewhat muffled and Laura took a few grateful breaths, reveling in the blissful quiet.

  “What are we doing here, Stella?” Laura asked, hovering over her shoulder.

  “I think I’ve found a way to neutralize the mutated shifters but I didn’t realize everyone was going to be so spread out…” She took a ziplock bag out from her pocket, the swirling green mist inside spinning crazily as she opened it. “The best chance we have at this thing working is mixing it with a high volume of water and the agency doesn’t exactly have a swimming pool laying around.”

  Shit. Laura tilted her head back, trying to think of something useful to offer her. She knew she was the weak one here; not a shifter, not a witch, just a human scientist trying to prove she wasn’t crazy. The ceiling swam into view and Laura found herself tracing her way across the skylights while she thought. Something caught her eye, red and flashing faintly and she squinted to get a better look.

  “There’s a sprinkler system in here, right?” she asked. Beside her, Stella made a non-committal hum.

  “Yeah I guess so, gotta make sure we don’t burn the place down when we let the shifters use the bunsen burners.”

  “And are they everywhere in the building?”

  “What are you, health and safety?”

  “Stella.”

  “What?”

  “We can put the neutralizing agent in the sprinklers.”

  Stella looked puzzled for a moment and then looked up, a grin spreading across her face.

  “You’re a fucking genius.”

  22

  Sam

  It was carnage; everywhere he looked, shifters and mutants were throwing themselves at one another. The air was thick with the scent of blood and Sam tried not to gag at the stench. The hallways were narrow and hard to navigate in the chaos but Sam managed to catch a glimpse of Even and William as the two of them fought off two mutants each, ducking and lashing out when they got too close. The wound on his sternum ached in protest as he lumbered through one of the meeting rooms, barely managing to stay ahead of three mutants chasing him and Axel. The mutants were feral and vicious, nothing like the controlled fighting of ordinary shifters, but their movements were easy to predict. They were fighting with animal brains, always going for the most obvious attacks but their attacks weren’t really the issue. It was the sheer number of them. Sam had been expecting an elite task force, maybe fifteen shifters in all but this was an army.

  One of their pursuers got within biting distance and managed to sink its teeth into Sam’s injured side. Pain exploded behind his eyes and he faltered, unable to keep up the pace. He swiped out, trying to make it let go and connected with a sickening crack.

  The other two had gone straight past him and Sam rolled over just in time to see Axel sprinting out of the room, two mutants hot on his heels. They were heading for holding cells, it’d be easy to meet back up with him. He hoped.

  The dead mutant lay unmoving beside him and Sam tried his best to ignore its lifeless eyes as he scented the air, looking for more enemies nearby.

  He froze. Rose and sage.

  Laura.

  He got to his feet, ignoring the flare of pain in his side and started running, pushing himself faster and faster. She smelled like fear, sour and overpowering. Why was she here? He was going to kill Stella.

  His nose led him to the main stairway and there she was, cowering away from a mutant, backed up against the wall. Sam’s vision went red and he roared. How dare this thing attack his mate.

  He slammed into its side, landing on top of it with a snarl and batted its head with a paw, feeling a surge of satisfaction as his claws ripped into the flesh of its ugly face. After a moment, the thing went still and Sam immediately rounded on Laura. She was staring up at him with wide eyes and Sam’s heart panged. He shifted, arms reaching for her and she surged forward to meet him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him close.

  “You’re alright. Thank god,” she rambled into his ear. Sam hugged her tighter, never wanting to let her go. “Sam, I love you.” She said it fiercely; proudly and Sam pulled back to look at her.

  “I love you too.” He couldn’t live without her. The fear that had clutched him when he’d smelled her fear. He never wanted to feel like that again.

  “No, Sam, I love you. I remember loving you before I-” she faltered, holding a hand to her head. Sam stared at her, eyes wide and disbelieving.

  “You- you remember?” he asked, voice hardly climbing above a whisper. Please, he thought, please let it be true.

  There were tears in Laura’s eyes and she nodded furiously.

  “I’m sorry I ever forgot you. Who could forget you? You’re everything-”

  He kissed her, hot and heavy and so fucking grateful to have the love of his life back. The pain in his body disappeared and Sam felt unstoppable.

  But wait.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked suddenly, pushing her back so he could look into her eyes. “I told you to stay with Stella- where is that witch? I’m gonna kill her.”

  “We found a way to neutralize the mutants!” Sam blinked. A way to- Sam sagged, shaking his head.

  “You clever, brilliant girls.” Laura blushed at the compliment and Sam couldn’t resist pressing a kiss to her temple. “What do we do?”

  “We need to get to the water tank at the top of the building,” she said, climbing unsteadily to her feet. “If we can get this solution into the water tank and hit the sprinklers, it’ll douse every mutant and, voila, no more mutant hybrids.”

  It’s a ballsy plan, not to mention dangerous; there was a lot of ground to cover before they got to the storage room with the tank in it. And lots of mutants. But it was the
only plan they had and Sam knew they didn’t have time to argue – he could hear more monsters making their way toward them. He scented the air once more and frowned.

  “What is it?” Laura asked quietly, already edging her way behind him.

  “It’s not just mutants,” he said, steadying one arm around her. “There’s other shifters here too.” He shifted without thinking and together, he and Laura took off running. The shifters noticed and Sam could hear them picking up the pace. Fuck.

  They skidded to a stop in the holding cells and there was Axel, fighting off a few shifters, much smaller and easier to deal with than their mutant counterparts and soon enough they were lying unconscious on the ground between them.

  “How are you holding up?” Axel’s voice sounded exhausted in his head and Sam moved toward his brother.

  “As good as can be expected. We’ve got more company coming.”

  “I know. Could smell them coming. You might wanna send Laura somewhere else.”

  That was a good idea. He turned to Laura, shifting back quickly and grasping at both her shoulders.

  “Laura, I need you to keep going.” She opened her mouth to respond but Sam continued. “I know you don’t want to, I know you want to stay with me. I want to stay with you too, but you need to get to that tank. Axel and I are gonna hold them off here.” Laura looked like she wanted to argue and Sam prayed to god that just once, she wouldn’t be so stubborn. “Please,” he begged. Her face crumpled and she kissed him, climbing to her feet.

  “You better not die on me, Miller,” she said sternly.

  “Never,” he promised. She nodded stiffly, turning to Axel who raised an eyebrow at her. A remarkable feat coming from a huge black bear.

  “That goes for you too, Axel.” Axel tilted his head and shifted back.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a boyish smirk.

  Laura took one last look at them and bolted from the room. Sam listened to her footsteps fade and looked back at Axel, taking a deep breath.