High House Ursa: The Complete Bear Shifter Box Set

by Riley Storm

  “What do we do now?” Jessica asked once she was gone.

  Klaue grinned. “We assemble a team, and then we go get your sister back.”

  “Uh, didn’t your Queen just tell you that you can’t?”

  Taking Jessica by the hand, he strode from the office as well. “No, dear. Quite the opposite, in fact. She gave me permission.”

  29

  She was sitting on the couch when he came for her.

  “Jess.”

  His voice was soft, tentative. She could tell that he didn’t want to involve her, that if it was up to him, she’d be left behind where it was safe. That wasn’t going to happen, though, this was her sister. This was her secret. They weren’t going to leave her behind. Besides, of them all, she was the only one who had been inside.

  That was one thing Jessica had found interesting. The physical buildings, Ursidae and Moonshadow Manors, had been around for centuries. Expanded, remodeled, repaired, but they had existed for longer than anyone was willing to tell her, which probably meant they weren’t sure of exactly when.

  Yet none of the Ursa that Klaue had talked to knew the internal layout of the place. The most they got was their equivalent of the Grand Hallway and Throne Room, where visiting functionaries and dignitaries entered, were greeted, did business, and left. Nobody ever stayed. Not in hundreds of years. No communal balls or dances, no events of state. Nothing. The inside of Moonshadow Manor was a mystery to the Ursidae.

  Only she knew that, and once she’d found that out, Jessica knew she had her ticket in.

  “Coming.” Rising from the couch, she grabbed the black backpack that was next to her, putting it on. She wore tight black clothing that Klaue had procured from somewhere. It was somewhat overwarm inside, but once they were out in the early winter cold, she would be thankful for the insulation. Her footwear was black, all of it heat absorbing, designed to help her blend into the background of the terrain outside the manor itself.

  Jessica was the weak link in the operation, she knew that. Everyone did. Yet none of them had fought her overly hard when she’d made it known she was accompanying them. Each knew what was at stake, and that blood ran thicker than water every time.

  Following Klaue out of their quarters—she no longer thought of them as his, now that they had shared the bed for several nights straight—they walked to the end of the hallway in silence and got into an elevator. Jessica turned and stared down the hallway as the doors closed in front of her and they descended.

  Klaue shifted, but didn’t speak, his body doing all the talking for him. He didn’t like it. Well, too bad. She stood straighter, making it clear she wasn’t having second thoughts.

  A tiny sigh escaped him, but when she saw his face in the reflection of the doors, there was pride there too.

  They exited into the garage, then walked sidelong to a hallway that led to the storage rooms filling the lower levels of the House. Klaue opened the door to one of them, and she walked in, then stopped.

  “I thought you said it was a small team?” Looking around the room, she counted nearly a dozen faces. With her and Klaue, they were at eleven.

  “Turns out we have more support than we thought,” Klaue said quietly.

  She could hear the gratitude mixed with surprise in his voice. There were a few she recognized, including Kasperi, the sword-master who had nearly beaten Klaue in the ring a few days earlier. The two men exchanged comradely head-nods.

  Men were so weird. One moment they could be beating the piss out of each other, then the next they were buddies.

  I don’t get it, but if it helps, that’s all that matters, Jessica thought.

  “Thank you,” she said solemnly to the ten black-clad shifters that had joined her and Klaue’s unsanctioned action. This was enough, they might actually pull this off. “All of you, I appreciate you being willing to help rescue my sister.”

  Some nodded, but most just looked at her expectantly, waiting for more instructions. Jessica took a moment, then reached into her bag and took out a large rolled-up sheet of paper and spread it on the table in the center of the room. Huge men loomed over her, looking at it, memorizing it.

  “Okay, here’s the layout of the House as best I can remember it. Lucky for you, the area we need to hit is also the area I spent the most time in, so I know it best.”

  The plan was fairly straightforward, and relied more on surprise than anything else. They were assaulting the home base of High House Canis. It was designed to resist all-out attacks, and their hope was that a small surgical operation would have more luck succeeding. It had been ages since anyone had tried anything like this, and they couldn’t wait to give the Canim bastards a rude wake-up call. House Ursa wasn’t going to roll over anytime soon.

  Even if this is technically an unsanctioned attack.

  Jessica let Klaue and the others with actual experience in this sort of operation dictate the plan. She chimed in with knowledge to help them out or to answer questions, but for the most part stayed out of the way.

  “Any questions?” Klaue said as they concluded.

  There was silence. These men knew their tasks and all had volunteered while well aware of the risks. She glanced at each in turn, many of them already having slid fearsome masks of cold silence into place, their features blank, except for their eyes. They were the eyes of soldiers. Of killers.

  “As you all know, this is an unsanctioned operation,” she said, speaking quietly, but plainly, not dancing around the language like Klaue had while recruiting them, to ensure his tracks were covered. This was the last thing before they left Ursidae Manor and went on the attack. She owed them this. “If any of us are caught, we will be disowned and disavowed, and more than likely put to death for what we’re about to do.”

  She paused, waiting for a reaction. “If any of you wish to back out, you can do so now. Nobody will hold it against you.”

  Silence. She looked at Kasperi, but he just stared back with a bored expression. Then he winked, forcing her to cover up a smile. She got it then. These men knew what they had volunteered for, and they weren’t going to back out. Not one of them had been forced to come, all had chosen to do so because it was the right thing to do, even if the Queen couldn’t officially come out and say so.

  “Thank you,” she said again, trying to hold back tears of gratitude at the potential sacrifice these men were making without even knowing who she was.

  “Move out,” Klaue said, and the attack team filed out of the room, leaving the two of them alone.

  “You don’t have to come,” he said quietly. “We can do this without you.”

  Just like she’d given them one last chance to back out, Klaue was taking one last stab at protecting her. It was sweet. But it wasn’t going to work.

  “This is my sister,” she said fiercely, meeting his eyes, letting him see the emotion in them. “My little sister. It is my job to protect her. I left her behind once, Klaue. I’m not doing that again. Now get your ass in the lead vehicle and help me bring her home.”

  “Yes, Ma’am!” he said fiercely, without an ounce of sarcasm, standing tall.

  Jessica gave him a smile and then went to move around him and join the others. Klaue shuffled to the side, blocking her path.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Kissing my good luck charm,” he growled, snatching her from the ground with one hand around her waist.

  She tilted her head back, relishing the warmth of his lips as he touched them to hers. There was a slight urgency that she’d never felt before, borne by the danger into which they were walking. She could feel the fear in him, the fear for her, and she kissed him back harder, letting her body do the talking, letting him know she wasn’t going to do anything stupid on the raid. Her kiss showed she had every intention of seeing him in their chambers a few hours from then, once everything was all concluded and they were home safe.

  “Save it for later,” she said, giving his crotch a grab as she felt it stir against
her. “You’re going to need it, trust me.”

  Then she slipped from his grasp and left the room, grabbing the paper and her bag on the way. The time for sitting around doing nothing and ass-grabbing with Klaue was over.

  It was time she got her fucking sister back.

  30

  They’d left the SUV’s behind, hidden in a ditch a good hike from the edge of Canis territory. Klaue knew they would never be found. The Canis were like his Ursa in that regard. The sheer size of the land upon which their House resided meant their manpower was fully used up patrolling the area inside their boundaries. With walls kilometers long, it was hard to keep up full-scale surveillance inside, let alone send patrols into the surrounding area.

  The last thing Klaue was willing to risk was them being discovered. The SUV’s were going to be crucial to their escape, considering the hornets’ nest they were about to stir up. He glanced to the side. Jessica was keeping up so far, but he knew it was already starting to tax her, and they weren’t even over the wall yet. Still, she didn’t complain, just kept her eyes ahead and kept moving with the group, focused on the mission at hand.

  His chest puffed out ever so slightly with pride. That was his mate. It was still insane to have her come along, but there had been no denying her, not after the fury she’d unleashed upon him when he’d made the mistake of telling her she wasn’t coming. Klaue had learned quite quickly, and forcefully, that she was in fact, going to be joining him. So he’d said yes, despite hating the idea.

  The walls loomed into view. Nervously, he glanced around, fingering a short rod of intricately-carved wood attached to his hip. It was close to two feet long, and covered in runes. All his men carried something similar. All of them that is, except for Jessica. She wore a pendant necklace.

  As part of his planning, Klaue had met with Kvoss before the Assassin set out on his own mission, this one completely sanctioned by the Queen. With a rogue mage on the field practicing banned magic, Kvoss and his Asps were on the hunt. Klaue smiled, knowing the mage’s days were numbered now. Kvoss was the best Assassin he’d ever met, even if he was an ass.

  Klaue had discussed how to defend against the mage, pretending he wanted to outfit his soldiers with more powerful magical artifacts. None of them could summon their own magic, but anyone, human or otherwise, could use an artifact and the magic it contained. So, after Kvoss had given him a tour of what he would recommend within the armory at House Ursa, Klaue had waited until Kvoss and his men left, then broken in and stolen each and every one.

  Oops.

  Now he and his men were as ready as they could be to deal with the mage. Most of them had no skill with magic, and thus would be mostly ineffective, but numbers mattered as well, and maybe they could overwhelm him—or, distract the mage long enough for one of the three men carrying pistols to use them.

  The special uranium-bullet firing weapons were much harder to get a hold of than most, contained in a special armory only open to the Queen’s Own. Access was rigidly guarded and monitored.

  That was why Klaue had found it odd that apparently his passcodes from his time in the Queen’s Own hadn’t been removed from the database, despite him having left it five years earlier. Still, he wasn’t about to question how that bit of data had been overlooked, and he’d waltzed out with three of the pistols.

  They were armed. They were ready. Now, it all came down to the execution of their plan. The ten of them huddled together in a mass of shadow and darkness at the base of the wall. There they waited, blending in, letting the animals and night sounds return, so that none would be aware of their presence.

  Klaue glanced down at the watch he wore, eyeing the green digits as they clicked over to half past one.

  A boom, dulled by distance, reached his ears. Seconds later, they heard howls, one of them startlingly close by, as the wolves raised the alarm and raced to the north side of the property to investigate the disturbance.

  Grinning, he wondered what they would make of the massive bulldozer that two of his men had rigged up and driven into the wall, bowling it over and hopefully continuing on to ravage the inside of Canis territory.

  “That’s our signal,” he said, speaking quietly but without the harshness of a whisper.

  The shadows around him unfolded and men began leaping the wall on the western edge. Klaue got up, grabbed Jessica in his arms and, with a powerful bend of his legs, landed on top of the wall. Another quick hop and he sank several inches into the ground on the far side, flexing his knees to absorb the impact as gently as possible for Jessica.

  Then they quickly erased the signs of their passage as best they could and crossed the service road that ran against the wall, disappearing into the forest beyond. His men were specters of death as they moved, blending speed with stealth, moving silently. Even Jessica moved swiftly, following in their steps.

  It was a long journey to the edge of the property, and more than once he saw his mate flag, but never did she ask for help, and even bared her teeth in a silent growl when one of them offered to carry her. She was going to do this, and Klaue let her. Jess knew the stakes. If she fell behind, she would have to wait for them to return. Stealth wouldn’t be a big deal on their way back, and she was fully prepared to be carried at that point. But not now.

  Klaue looked around, barely able to pick out the shadows in the woods around him as they moved. Gratitude filled him. When he’d first decided on this course of action, he’d expected to receive no support. What he’d found, instead, was a wellspring of those who wanted to do something. To prove that their House was still a power. Most of them weren’t there for Jessica, but for Ursa, even if it was an unsanctioned hit. They wanted to remind Canis this wasn’t over. Not even close—even if that meant losing their lives.

  The men were all friends of his, which was no surprise considering Klaue felt the same way. It would be good to teach Canis a lesson. The bloody wolves had gone too long without suffering, the bastards. It was time they had their noses punched in.

  “Hold up,” he called as they reached the edge of the woods. Beyond were acres of manicured lawns, gardens and pathways, but his attention was fixed past that, on Moonshadow Manor itself. There were lights on, more than normal for this time of night, but that was a risk they had deemed necessary.

  There was no way his team would have been able to reach the edge of the forest without being detected if they hadn’t drawn attention to the north side of the compound. It was still a little close for him, but they had a plan for that.

  He sent a text message, and moments later, heard more howling followed by several deeper thumps—explosive charges designed to weaken multiple sections of the eastern wall. And then…

  The howls redoubled as high-pitched engines screamed to life. Klaue could only imagine the chaos as the two specially-modified SUV’s crashed through the weakened walls and began tearing up Canis property. More shifters streamed away from the House to deal with the intruders. Now all his men needed to do was ensure they escaped and didn’t get pinned down. But their distraction was working perfectly.

  “Okay, boys and girl,” he said. “In pairs, let’s go. This is the most dangerous part. Until the next one. Get across these lawns undetected, and we have a serious chance of success here. Roll out.”

  Two-man teams of shifters split up and fanned out, each heading for slightly different entry points on the manor. The ground they had to cover was enormous, and it was the only way Klaue had been able to see the potential for victory.

  Reaching out, he motioned for Jessica to join him. They stepped forward, running low and slow toward the building. He waited for a spotlight to flick on, to pin him or one of his teams in its glare, but it didn’t happen. They were a quarter of the way across. Then a third. He grinned at Jessica. They were going to make it. It was going to work.

  “Told you everything would be f—”

  His world exploded in a haze of red. Klaue pinwheeled through the night sky. Shouts broke out. More waves of re
d, then a blast of white as the space in front of them split, energy cascading up and down the sides of the rent and the mage stepped through.

  “Take him down!” he bellowed, then bent over in a fit of coughing. The property was laced with a magi-minefield, and he’d walked right into one of them unsuspectingly.

  Around him, others rushed to his aide, but many of them were flung back, up, or slammed straight down as they tripped the invisible traps. And, in the middle of it all, was Jessica.

  At least she’s safe.

  Even as he thought it, the mage seemed intent on proving him wrong.

  An evil sneer split his features as he leveled a staff of dark wood at her, blue energy building at the tip.

  31

  Red light flashed, and suddenly, Klaue was gone.

  Looking around wildly as the world went insane around her, Jessica tried to locate him. Her night vision was completely destroyed by the bursts of red. Shouts filled her ears, and snaps of energy assaulted them. She hunched down, trying to make sense of the madness, but only becoming more distraught, and more disoriented.

  Something blue glowed in the sky and shot toward her. She raised a hand to block it, realizing at the last minute it must be blue magic. Death magic. Her arm wasn’t going to stop it. If it went through a massive tree, it would go through her.

  Brilliant white exploded in a sphere around her and the pendant Klaue had told her to wear started to grow warm. It was a shield, she recalled vaguely. The magic artifact automatically repelled other magic.

  Still, she couldn’t see, and the force of the blast had thrown her backward. Red suddenly flashed against the far side of her shield as she encountered some other sort of magic, and the pendant grew even hotter. The assault from above and to her front hadn’t weakened.

  It must be the mage. He’s here. He anticipated us.

  The world around her split with green and red, and the occasional blast of blue as the shifters fought back, trying to distract the mage from his target: her.