by Amelia Jade
She wondered if this was just too much for him now.
“I was making sure some assholes didn’t rob you blind of beer. They took offense to that and dumped a pitcher on my head,” she explained, showing off her soaked clothing, not appreciating the way he admired the way it clung to her skin, showing off her curves. It was cold and her top wasn’t that thick either, and Allix tried to not to gag as he stared at her hard nipples as they pressed through the clothing.
She closed her eyes and pictured Luther standing in front of her instead, his big green eyes gazing down at her with their soft gentleness, even as he pulled her to him, wrapping her up in his arms, ignoring the wetness of her clothing.
I wonder what it would be like to rest my head on that firm chest of his. Or to feel his biceps as they held me tight.
To her dismay she felt her nipples harden even more at the thought. Her eyes popped open and she saw Marvin still looking at them hungrily. Not caring about what anyone thought, she set the broom down and crossed her arms over her chest. Although it pushed her cleavage up, it did thankfully cover her nipples. She could handle him looking at her cleavage for the moment.
Her boss shook his head. “So, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“Excuse me? I didn’t do anything wrong,” she protested.
“You should have stopped them from fighting. From destroying my bar!” Marvin all but shrieked, running his hands through his slicked-back hair as he turned to survey the ruined half of the establishment.
She had to admit, the entire side of the bar was completely trashed. Tables and chairs were reduced to kindling, the walls were dented and destroyed. It was a complete gut job, tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage, she was sure.
But he couldn’t blame it on her! She hadn’t caused it.
“Marvin, I did not do this,” she said firmly. “And, for your information, I did try to stop this. But if you’ve been driving through town, or talked to any of the officers, you know that something happened to the shifters tonight. Bars and places all over town are trashed. Two sides went to war tonight, and they weren’t going to be stopped by a five-foot-nine waitress in heels,” she finished, her temper rising.
Marvin looked at her. He was perhaps an inch taller than her, with a belly that made it clear he enjoyed the beverages served by his restaurant. His long black hair was kept slicked back, despite it being well past the stage of thinning. His thick wool suit was at least two decades out of style, and he wore glasses that sat low on his nose like some stereotypical accountant of old.
She wanted to punch him.
“You’re done,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You’re done. Finished. Fired. This is your fault.” He crossed his arms, looking at her smugly, happy with himself for finally having a good reason to get rid of her.
Allix bristled, standing up to her full height. In heels she was able to glare down at him. “You pathetic, mewling little creep. I had nothing to do with this, and you know it. You’re just panicking because you probably don’t have the money to fix it, and now you’ll be out of all your ill-gotten cash that you get from selling your staff! And you’re just angry that I won’t be part of that. Well fuck you, mister.”
She turned to go, willing to leave it at that.
“Prude bitch,” he muttered from behind her.
Allix whirled and delivered a vicious right hook to Marvin’s face, just like she’d watched Luther do.
Her hand connected solidly, right between his nose and his cheek.
Marvin grunted once and collapsed, blood spurting from his nose.
Allix cursed and swore as she shook her hand, trying to get the stinging to subside.
“Fuck you, asshole,” she said loud enough for everyone to see, and stormed out of the bar.
The officer just looked at her, looked at Marvin groaning on the ground, and stepped out of her path.
***
The anger swiftly faded as she walked home, arms wrapped tightly around her in the cold. Her earlier rage was replaced with a thoughtful sadness. Now she was going to have to find another job. Serving jobs in Cloud Lake weren’t the most plentiful, simply due to its size. Allix knew she was good, so that would work in her favor. But she also needed a place that would help her make as much money as she had at the Poached Arm, and that would be a lot tougher.
She had some money squirreled away, but rent was due soon, and she would need to eat. That was going to eat into her funds quickly now that no more money was flowing into her account. Allix tried not to feel depressed as she considered the shitty situation she now found herself in.
A chill caused her to shiver as the cold settled into her bones. It was going to take a very long and very hot bath to warm her up tonight.
Or just some time spent cuddling with Luther.
Allix’s purposeful stride came to an abrupt halt.
“I don’t even know him,” she muttered, ignoring the look from a passerby as she spoke to herself. “Why the hell would I want to cuddle with him?”
Once again his massive form appeared in her mind’s eye, wrapping her up in his embrace, holding her tight as his body heat enveloped her, warming her up all the way to her core.
Then it began to heat her up, and she felt her body respond in the real world as her imaginary Luther began to stroke her leg, his strong fingers evoking a reaction from her that made the real Allix and her imaginary self shiver with delight.
Yes. A bath will be most necessary.
Although now she wasn’t thinking about it entirely for warmth.
Around her, fresh snow began to fall, having halted earlier. It came on with a vengeance now, and Allix was glad that she was close to home. The flakes came down, neither light and fluffy nor wet and heavy. Her vision became limited to no more than twenty or so feet around her. At the same time, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
This time though, it wasn’t because of the cold.
Someone was watching her.
She spun around, auburn hair swinging behind her as her hazel eyes probed the area around her. The snow made it impossible to see anyone that wasn’t extremely close, and she didn’t see anyone following her.
But the feeling didn’t go away either.
Allix suddenly felt very vulnerable and alone. The officers had never found the two remaining shifters, which meant they were still on the loose. Could they be following her now for some reason?
When they had taken off into the streets after Luther and his friend, she had figured it was over for her, that she was done with them. But now someone was following her, she was positive of it.
She began to see shapes lurking in every shadow as she hurried down the street to the false protection of her house. Figures hid behind lampposts and garbage bins, ready to leap out at her as she scurried past. Noises down an alleyway conjured up visions of demons and worse. Shifters and their animals faded in and out of the snow-covered street, gliding so silently through the night that they didn’t even leave tracks in the fresh snow.
Blood pounded in her veins as her heart raced, spurring her feet forward as her heels crunched through the snow as fast as she dared without risking losing her balance. She cast furtive glances left and right constantly, with the occasional look over her shoulder to ensure someone wasn’t about to catch her.
Finally her three-story townhouse loomed into view. Allix had the basement and ground floor, while another tenant had the upper two floors. She fumbled with her keys in the rush to open the door, but it finally swung open and she stumbled inside, slamming it closed and locking it as fast as she could.
Allix knew her door wouldn’t protect her from the shifters if it truly was them. But if it was just someone else out there watching her, seeing a girl ill-dressed for the weather, perhaps they would leave her alone now that they saw she had a place to go.
She was prepared for someone to come banging on her door, to try and break it down,
but nothing happened. The splintering of wood and angry growls never materialized.
Eventually the safety of her house began to overwhelm the feeling of being followed, and she allowed herself to relax slightly.
“What a night. What the fuck is going to happen next?” she asked herself aloud as she removed her shoes and headed toward her bedroom at the back of the house.
The bath was beginning to call her name, and she didn’t want to resist for much longer. Her heart, having begun to slow after the near-panicked flight of earlier, began to thump just a little bit harder.
Now that she was safe, her mind could be allowed to wander. To land, perhaps, on a tall man with short hair, clad only in a dark gray T-shirt and jeans that curled oh-so-perfectly around his tight ass. She couldn’t say it was a little ass either, because nothing about the massive shifter was little. Not his tight buns, his broad chest, nor his thick biceps.
Everything about him was huge. He probably has a huge—
Blood began to flow again, but this time it was all directed to one place.
***
Allix awoke in the morning refreshed from her sleep, feeling invigorated and…renewed. Perhaps her bath session had done more good to her psyche than she’d thought. It had, after all, been quite fun.
She snorted to herself. That was an understatement.
Dressing herself in proper clothes after a warm breakfast, she decided to head out and look into finding new employment. Right then any job was better than no job. Once she had money coming in, she could begin to look for the right job.
Zipping up her parka, she glanced through the peephole of her door, looking outside.
Just in case, she reassured herself. But there was nothing there, and so she pulled open the door, a little smile creasing her face at the beauty of the fresh, unspoiled snow on her lawn, covering the trees and bushes in its white embrace.
The grin widened as she realized she would get to make the first steps in much of the snow. She looked down in delight—
And froze solid.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
There in her walkway, were a clear set of prints. They weren’t hers.
Hell, they weren’t even human.
Chapter Six
Luther
He awoke with a start to the morning reveille call, dreams of auburn-haired beauties vanishing into the foggy crevasses of his mind.
Or they would have, if he wasn’t absolutely certain who his dreams had been about.
It had started on his journey home. Once the quartet had crossed the line that was the boundary of Cloud Lake proper, they had been able to shift into animal forms and lose their pursuers in the darkened terrain that they knew well from having traversed it many times.
But even as they had disappeared into the night, Luther couldn’t shake the thought of her from his mind. He barely even knew her name, and yet he could feel himself being drawn to her.
It wasn’t until his dream, however, that he’d realized why. In his dream, he’d been at the Poached Arm once more. Only it wasn’t a dream, but a memory of his first time there, several months before.
He remembered it vividly now. It was easy, because she had been there. The server. And he all of a sudden knew why he’d been dragged back to that same bar. It wasn’t because of the realization that he wasn’t supposed to drink alone. It was because of her. There was something about that woman. Something special that his subconscious, or his bear, or whatever, had recognized.
Luther needed to see her again, he decided. To talk to her, one-on-one. To figure out what it was his brain was trying to tell him about her.
And now she was out of his grasp, stuck firmly in enemy territory. Luther knew he wouldn’t be able to go back anytime soon.
“Luther!”
The call he’d been waiting for came a moment before a fist rapped smartly against his door. He surged to his feet, clothes slipping on easily, having been laid out the night before.
He opened the door to see a young shifter standing there.
“Yes?” he asked.
“The colonel has requested your presence, sir,” the recruit said, coming sharply to attention.
“I’m on my way,” he said, and closed the door.
“Yes sir,” the recruit said before the door could close. “I’ll let him know.”
Luther didn’t bother replying. There was no need. He wasn’t fooled by the wording. The recruit had phrased it that way because he knew he was speaking to someone who outranked him. But a colonel simply did not request the presence of a junior officer, even if that officer was theoretically no longer part of his command.
After all, it had been the colonel himself who had dismissed Luther from his duty.
But old habits die hard, and when the colonel at Base Camp wanted to see someone, that someone went to see him, unless they were the commandant himself.
Luther shook himself into a fresh pressed white T-shirt and black pants, his boots lacing up smartly after that.
Base Camp was the home of the Green Bearets. It was there that the bear shifters trained to become the elite. Upon graduation from Base Camp, the newly minted Green Bearets might be sworn in as Guardians of Cadia, the police/peacekeeper/protectors of his homeland. So high were the requirements, however, that even Green Bearets often spent several more years training before they could meet the standards to be admitted as a Guardian.
Cadia itself was a shifter territory, carved out of one of the human nations, a sovereign entity self-governed and set apart from humans. The duty of the Guardians was to protect Cadia from humans who sought to enter, to keep their own kind inside—except for those given permission to leave—and to ensure that no foreign entities, human or shifter, brought harm to Cadia.
Each race had its own equivalent to the Green Bearets. Wolves, the big cats, gryphons, and dragons all had a training program that produced Guardians of their respective races.
He walked across the parade ground of Base Camp, looking at the bustle of activity. Bears were the most populous species, and thus Base Camp was the biggest of the training academies, where shifters went from incompetent to extraordinary. At any given time, several hundred bear shifters were at Base Camp, teaching, instructing, or both. There was always more to be learned.
As a shifter, like the rest of his kind, Luther hadn’t shifted for the first time until he was almost sixteen. After spending a decade and a half as a human, learning to move as a four-legged animal that massed almost eight times his human form was no small challenge. Most shifters mastered the basics like walking and running.
But to become a Guardian, one needed to be an expert in that and so much more. At Base Camp, Luther had trained for two years to become a Green Bearet. Then he’d spent four more training and honing his skills as human and as a bear, until finally, six months ago, he’d been accepted as a Guardian and deployed to watch the eastern border.
Then last month he’d been unceremoniously told that budget cuts by the Cadian Council had forced them to cut back numbers even more. As a newbie, he’d been one of the first to go.
Other bears, recruits mostly, came to attention as he walked, his rank of captain printed onto the sleeves of his arm. A spark of pride ignited inside him. Although he’d spent only six months as a Guardian, his four years as a Green Bearet had moved him up the ranks.
There were more of them than he remembered seeing. A lot more, actually, now that he thought about it and looked around.
He made his way across the base to the administrative section, where he knew he would find Colonel Richter. There was only one colonel in the Green Bearets, so when the young recruit had said the colonel had requested his presence, Luther knew that it could only been Garrin Richter, the second in command of the Green Bearets.
“Lana,” he said to the secretary outside the colonel’s office.
“Hello, Captain. Go right on in, he’s expecting you.”
Luther nodded his thanks and approached the open
door. He knocked sharply on the frame and came to attention.
“Come in, Klein,” the colonel said, addressing him by his last name.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, stepping inside and closing the door. “I heard you were looking for me.”
“Indeed,” Garrin said, sitting back in the chair at his desk and observing Luther, who took the chance to do the same.
Garrin was four or five years older than him, but had also started out in the Green Bearets nearly five years earlier in his life than Luther had, allowing him to become the youngest colonel ever in Green Bearet history.
“As much as I’d like to go through pleasantries, Captain, I don’t have time today. So, I heard the report you filed, but I want your impression. What the fuck happened last night?”
Luther noted the other officer’s use of his rank. Although he’d still been a Green Bearet after being removed from the active roster of Guardians, most of the officers had simply called him Klein out of respect, so as not to remind him of the position he no longer held.
“Sir?” he asked, confused at that.
But Richter waved it aside. “Last night in Cloud Lake.”
Very well, they weren’t going to discuss the rest of it just then.
“Fenris declared war, sir. I don’t really see how it can be viewed any other way. They sent a company of shifters into Cloud Lake and hunted us down. This wasn’t a fight that got out of hand, sir. They slaughtered us for sport, after claiming Cloud Lake as theirs.”
“That’s how I read it too. You’ve been gone for two weeks now, correct, Captain?”
There it was, his rank again. “Yes, sir,” he said slowly, hoping to draw out an explanation of what was going on.
“Well, you’ve missed an eventful time,” the colonel said with a wry grin.
