Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Crash and Burn
Chapter 2 – Mystery Man
Chapter 3 – Swooping In
Chapter 4 – Unexpected House Guest
Chapter 5 – Closer
Chapter 6 – In Hot Water
Chapter 7 – A New Start
Chapter 8 – Road Trip
Chapter 9 – Betrayed
Chapter 10 – Unfinished Business
Chapter 11 – Protection
Chapter 12 – Fated Mates
Chapter 13 – Sealed
Chapter 14 – Return to Bearpaw Ridge
Chapter 15 – Mama Bear
Chapter 16 – Wedding Plans
Chapter 17 – Catching Up
Chapter 18 – Devil's Bargain
Chapter 19 – Ambush Predator
Chapter 20 – Plummeting Down
Chapter 21 – Unleashing the Sabertooth
Epilogue
Flame (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 4)
By Ophelia Sexton
Published by Philtata Press
Text copyright 2017 by Ophelia Sexton. All rights reserved.
Cover by Jacqueline Sweet
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dedication and Author's Note
Although the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Hot Shots smokejumper team is entirely fictional, I've tried to base it as closely as possible on existing smokejumper teams in California, Idaho, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
The men and women who work as smokejumpers in America's western states are real-life superheroes. This book is dedicated to them, with the utmost gratitude and respect for all that they do and all that they risk. Thank you for your hard work and your service to the communities and national parks in the western United States.
Excerpt
She was reaching around him to turn the water off, when he put his good hand on her shoulder.
When she glanced up to see what he wanted, she saw that his eyes were hazed with gold again.
"Cassie," he said softly. "I want to kiss you. May I?"
Oh yes. Her throat went dry again, so she just nodded. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of a high cliff. At least the view was spectacular.
No running. No hiding, she reminded herself as she raised herself on tiptoes and brushed her lips against his mouth in a swift, chaste kiss that nevertheless set all of her nerves on fire.
Danger! She thought as her cat roared to life at the contact and tried to take control of her.
It wanted her to push Thor against the tiles and rub herself against him, slowly and sensually, while kissing him slowly and deeply.
More disturbingly, she wanted to do that too. And she knew that if this went any further, she might do something that they'd both regret.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – Crash and Burn
Chapter 2 – Mystery Man
Chapter 3 – Swooping In
Chapter 4 – Unexpected House Guest
Chapter 5 – Closer
Chapter 6 – In Hot Water
Chapter 7 – A New Start
Chapter 8 – Road Trip
Chapter 9 – Betrayed
Chapter 10 – Unfinished Business
Chapter 11 – Protection
Chapter 12 – Fated Mates
Chapter 13 – Sealed
Chapter 14 – Return to Bearpaw Ridge
Chapter 15 – Mama Bear
Chapter 16 – Wedding Plans
Chapter 17 – Catching Up
Chapter 18 – Devil's Bargain
Chapter 19 – Ambush Predator
Chapter 20 – Plummeting Down
Chapter 21 – Unleashing the Sabertooth
Epilogue
Also by Ophelia Sexton
Chapter 1 – Crash and Burn
White River National Forest, Colorado
Thor Swanson felt a violent jerk as a sudden, powerful gust of wind grabbed his parachute and sent him on a course away from his smokejumper team's carefully selected jump spot.
Over the rush of the hot wind, he heard a faint shout as his jump partner Kara Latrans was caught by the same turbulence and sent flying away from him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Thor saw the wind catch the parachute attached to the big box that contained his team's picks, shovels, food, sleeping bags, and other vital equipment. The box began to tumble wildly and spin like a top.
Shit! This is bad.
If they lost the box, then Thor and his team would have only the water and whatever protein bars, jerky, and candy they had stuffed into their personal gear bags and the pockets of their Kevlar jumpsuits when Dispatch had sounded the signal back at base.
The bigger problem, which he was trying to shove down into the back of his mind so that he wouldn't panic, was that he didn't know where he was going to land.
His team's spotter and mission coordinator, an experienced smokejumper named Pete Brinkley, had carefully chosen their jump spot to ensure that his team and their supplies could land safely.
But now Thor was at the mercy of the wind, the fierce gusts and updrafts fed by the voracious fire that had already scorched thousands of acres of wilderness.
Although Thor could steer his parachute under normal conditions, today's windstorm was so far from normal that the best he could hope for was to avoid being slammed into the side of a cliff.
Far below the soles of his sturdy logger's boots, Thor saw a wide band of white smoke racing up a steep mountainside, pursued by the sullen red glow of flames that left blackened slopes and smoldering tree trunks in their wake.
The White River National Forest was a spectacularly rugged mountain landscape, with snow-capped peaks thrusting jagged bones of gray rock out of a blanket of dense trees. Between the steep hillsides lay narrow valleys with tumbling streams.
Land in the wrong place, and if you weren't dead or badly injured on arrival, you might find yourself hiking through challenging terrain for days trying to rejoin your team at the original jump spot.
Not that spending a week alone in the wilderness felt intimidating to a bear shifter like Thor. In fact, that was his favorite way to spend his time off.
The problem was that he wasn't here on vacation—he had an extremely important and time-critical job to do. And to do it, he needed to be near his jump point and with the rest of his team.
The fire burning far below him was the reason that the US Forest Service had dispatched Thor's smokejumper team, known as the Rocky Mountain Hot Shots, to parachute into this remote location in the Rocky Mountains.
Their mission was to clear brush, dig trenches, and do whatever else it took to create a firebreak and stop the surging wildfire from reaching the scattered vacation homes and the small town of Cougar Creek located within the borders of the White River National Forest.
Smokejumping was dangerous, exhausting, back-breaking work, and Thor loved it. He loved the adrenaline rush of jumping out of an airplane and gliding to earth in the parachute's controlled fall. His inner bear relished the sheer physicality of firefighting in the wilderness. And most of all, Thor loved the satisfaction he got at the end of a long day or week of work, knowing that he had helped to save homes and people.
He felt privileged to be a part of the Rocky Mountain Hot Shots, one of the newest smokejumper teams in the country.
Thor had worked for the Denver Fire
Department since graduating from the University of Colorado. Before that, he had spent his summers working on his family's ranch back in Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho, and volunteering for the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department.
Firefighting ran in the Swanson family's blood in the same way that bear shifting did. Before his untimely death, Thor's father Ashton had been a volunteer firefighter in their small rural community. So had Thor's grandfathers Edward Swanson and Thor Einarsson. And all of Thor's brothers currently worked as volunteer firefighters in Bearpaw Ridge.
When the US Forest Service had announced the formation of a brand-new smokejumper team in Colorado to supplement the teams already working out of other western states like California, Wyoming, and Montana, Thor had jumped, so to speak, at the opportunity. With his shifter strength and reflexes, supplemented by his previous firefighting experience, he had been selected as one of ten firefighters to receive special training in wilderness firefighting and skydiving.
Not surprisingly, he wasn't the only shifter on the team. Of his ten team members—seven men and two women—only two were Ordinaries, which was what shifters called non-shifter humans.
The members of the Rocky Mountain Hot Shots had quickly become his second family. These days, their base at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport felt more like home than his lonely apartment did.
Abruptly, the wind changed directions again. Thor felt it slap him with invisible hands of air and grab his parachute. The trees and sharp-toothed outcroppings sped by below him as he was driven away from the fire line in a sloping descent.
Looking around, he realized that he'd completely lost sight of his teammates. He made a quick but sincere wish that they would all be able to land safely in this clusterfuck of a situation, then he had no more room for thought.
The wind, an updraft that had carried him over the top of a steep ridge with terrifying speed, now seemed intent on flinging him down into the slopes on the other side of the ridge as quickly as possible.
Thor spent the next few minutes frantically trying to avoid catastrophe by pulling on the steering lines attached to his parachute and veering away from the steep granite outcroppings that lined the slopes above a small valley.
The valley itself was heavily wooded. As he continued to descend rapidly, Thor realized he needed to find a safe place to land soon. But where?
Nothing but trees all around him, with a narrow stream forming a shining path down the middle of the valley.
I'm screwed.
If he hit the trees, he risked injury and even death. His Kevlar jumpsuit would help protect him from punctures, but it couldn't shield him from broken bones.
If he landed in the stream and wasn't able to ditch his parachute quickly enough, it might drag him under the water and drown him.
In the distance, Thor saw the rooftop of what looked like a vacation cabin set on the edge of a meadow near the stream.
If he could make it to that meadow, he might be able to land safely and call for helicopter pickup on his radio.
Thor was losing altitude rapidly now, and the tops of the trees were rushing up to meet him. The meadow was several hundreds of yards away.
Am I going to make it? Shit, I have to make it.
That was Thor's last thought before the wind abruptly shifted yet again, and a vicious downdraft slammed him into the trees just short of the meadow.
* * *
Cougar Creek, Colorado
Up until the moment that a person fell out of the trees and onto the gravel road directly in front of her battered old Subaru station wagon, Cassandra Long had been thinking about taking a hot shower and then maybe watching something on Netflix before she fell into bed.
She might be a shifter, but even her preternatural strength and stamina were exhausted after working yet another double shift at the busy Cougar Creek Diner.
School was out for the summer, and before the fire started, the White River National Forest had been crowded with families who wanted to camp, hike, kayak, and relax in a place of incredible scenery.
Now, with a wildfire burning out of control nearby, people just wanted to leave the area, and the diner, situated along one of the roads in and out of the park, had been overwhelmed with hungry adults and kids.
It was late afternoon now. As she drove down the narrow winding gravel road that connected the highway to the cabin she was house-sitting, Cassie saw a haze of brown smoke staining the normally clear sky above the mountains.
And then a man came out of nowhere and landed right in front of her. She slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. She watched with horror as he bounced off the hood of her car and went flying.
He hit the trunk of the nearest tree, hard, and fell limply to the ground.
Shit! Shit! Shit! I've killed someone! Panic threatened to overwhelm her as she scrambled out of her car.
The scent of blood—human mingled with a hint of something wild and musky—hit Cassandra like a rusty spear
She froze, the car door still half-open, and stared at the accident victim.
Shifter! He's a shifter! Another shifter found me here!
Her heart began pounding wildly, and every one of her enhanced senses came alert.
Blood. Violence. Death.
A tidal wave of bad memories swept over her.
Patching up Daddy's wounds after he'd fought yet another challenge duel in an attempt to improve his rank within the New Braunfels pride of sabertooth cats.
Patching up her own wounds in the days before she'd resigned herself to her place at the bottom of the pride.
Desperately trying to fight off Ed Baldwin as she bled from a dozen deep claw marks…
She felt the familiar sensations of an incipient panic attack: cold sweat on her forehead and down the middle of her back, and the feeling of not being able to draw enough breath.
Cassie concentrated on her breathing—in…out…in…out—as she reminded herself that she was two states and nearly a thousand miles away from her pride's home territory. Only a few trusted people knew she was here.
For years, everyone in her pride had told her that she was a disgrace to her lineage and that she needed to develop the aggression and killer instinct required of a successful sabertooth shifter.
Someone has to be the loser of the pride, she remembered Daddy lecturing her bitterly. And that someone will always be you, kiddo, unless you find your inner lion and learn to kick some ass around here. And soon.
The problem was, Daddy had been right. Cassie knew she wasn't much of a sabertooth shifter. Unlike the other shifters in her pride, she actually liked Ordinary humans.
She didn't want to hurt or kill anyone, and she was terrified that if she ever let her inner cat slip its leash, she wouldn't be able to get it back under control. Its blood lust and primal rage scared the crap out of her, and so she kept it firmly pushed down.
And to be honest, she didn't really care about her position in the pride, except when her low rank obliged her to obey the higher-ranking members.
While she had still been living at home in Texas, she had just wanted to be left alone. She had avoided the rest of her pride as much as she could, using the excuse of high school homework at first, and her studies at UT Austin later on.
But it hadn't been enough to save her. She was a young, potentially fertile full-blooded sabertooth shifter female, and her kind were a dwindling lineage. She'd been naïve to think that the males of her pride would simply forget about her existence if she avoided them.
Following ancient tradition, Daddy had been the one they approached with mating offers. And her father had done his duty, as he felt obligated to, and negotiated what he considered the best possible mate for his daughter: Edward Baldwin, the First of the New Braunfels Pride.
And when push came to shove, and her only real options had been to fight, run, or submit, she had chosen to fight, though she hadn't dared release her cat.
Ed Baldwin had had no such scruples, and he had taught her a lesson that st
ill haunted her nightmares.
After that, she'd chosen to run away rather than fight again. She hated herself for her cowardice, but really, what real option had there been?
Because she would never submit to Ed Baldwin and become his mate, not after what he'd done to her. No matter what kind of deal Daddy had struck with him. Not if she had to run for a hundred years.
Not even if she had to kill herself to escape Baldwin's clutches.
And now, here in her new home in Colorado, she was afraid that trouble had found her yet again.
Oh God. Please let me be wrong about this.
Cassie thought she had found a refuge here. Her house-sitting gig for her former college roommate Amanda, who owned this cabin and was spending the summer traveling through Europe, had been an enormous stroke of luck.
Cassie loved it here in this snug valley, surrounded by miles of breathtaking wild country where she could roam freely in her cat shape but where she was still within easy driving distance of her job in the little town of Cougar Creek.
Right now, the panicked part of her wanted to back up her car and drive as fast and as far as she could away from here. But her conscience reminded her that shifter or not, she couldn't just leave an injured man by the side of the road, could she?
Especially since she had been the one to hit him with her car.
A movement somewhere above her caught her eye. She stared up at it in bewilderment.
The bleached skeleton of a huge dead tree stood at the edge of the narrow gravel road. About halfway up the tree, a large piece of red-and-white fabric rippled and fluttered, apparently caught on one of the leafless branches that stuck out like a broken bone from the thick trunk.
The wind, which had been gusting intermittently since Cassie got home, shifted again, bringing with it the faint scent of smoke from the wildfire that was burning miles away. It lifted one corner of the billowing fabric long enough to reveal the limp straps of a harness.
Parachute! It's a parachute! she finally realized.
And reason finally began to penetrate the fog of shock and panic clouding her brain. The injured man—shifter—whatever the hell he was—must have been skydiving and somehow landed in the tree.
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