by Dakota West
A Bear’s Mercy
Shifter Country Bears Book Three
Dakota West
Copyright © 2018 by Dakota West
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Shifter Country Bears
Shifter Country Wolves
Copper Mesa Eagles
Contemporary Romance Novels
EXCERPT: Chapter One of A Bear’s Journey
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About the Author
Chapter One
Charlie
Charlie held the field glasses up to her eyes, almost afraid to breathe. She crouched between the roots of a massive evergreen tree, and she could feel the wetness of the moss below her knees already seeping into her pants.
It was going to be another long night on the cold, damp ground, but she hoped it would be the last one. Her pack was getting heavier by the minute, she was out of fresh socks, and washing her hair was a distant memory at best.
None of that mattered, though. After days of tracking, she’d finally found the grizzly, and he was in her sights.
As she watched, he put his huge muzzle to the ground and sniffed. Then he looked up, still smelling the wind. He was a stunning animal, his fur dark at the roots and fading to red-gold at the tips.
Standing there in the afternoon light, his nose up sniffing the wind, he almost looked like a painting of a grizzly bear instead of the real thing.
Then he snorted and shook his head, and Charlie smiled. There was something almost charming about bears, she thought, especially to people who spent a lot of time around them.
He’s not charming, she reminded herself. He killed two people.
Worse, he knows what he did.
It was hard to reconcile with the carefree, almost goofy animal in front of her, but there it was.
Charlie swallowed and got back to work, putting the glasses back to her eyes.
The bear was at least four and a half feet high at the shoulder, maybe closer to five. That was big, even for a grizzly. Charlie did some quick calculations in her head: he was at least eight hundred pounds.
Even bigger than the estimates they’d gotten back at the office.
Shit, she thought.
As quietly as she could, she took her pack off and opened it up, one eye always on the bear. She had a .45 holstered on her side, but it was only for absolute emergencies — besides, she wasn’t even certain that it would stop this grizzly. Slow him down, maybe.
Carefully, she took the vial of tranquilizer from the pouch where she’d stashed it. There was enough in there for two shots, but realistically, Charlie knew she was only going to get one.
Either she hit him and he went down, or she missed, and he charged.
Charlie also pulled a giant canister of bear spray from her pack. Between that and the .45, she thought she could probably get away.
She propped the syringe up next to the rifle, then re-loaded her pack, stashing it securely under the roots of the tree. If he did charge, she wasn’t going to want to take it with her. She wouldn’t want anything weighing her down, that was for damn sure.
The bear took a step forward, and Charlie’s stomach lurched. She held her breath.
Please don’t leave, she thought. I’m so close to finished.
Then he stopped, standing perfectly still, his side facing her. It was almost as if he was presenting himself for her tranquilizer dart, providing the perfect target.
What if it’s a trap? Charlie thought for a split second. It was so easy to forget, watching this bear, that inside the animal there was still a human mind, or at least, what was left of one. No one knew for sure how much rational thought a feral shifter still had.
As he looked around she thought she could almost see a human intelligence in its eyes, like he was considering something.
Do it now, she thought.
Charlie loaded the rifle, gritting her teeth as the tranquilizer dart clicked into place.
Immediately, the bear’s head swung around, his body lowering, his ears perking up.
Of course he knows the sound of a rifle being loaded, she thought, her teeth still clenched.
Charlie brought the rifle sight to her eye, the bear’s huge, furry shoulder squarely in the crosshairs.
“Sorry, Kade,” she muttered, moving her finger to the trigger.
Then she heard a growl right behind her, a split second before she felt the teeth on her neck and the claws on her back.
The last thing Charlie saw was a blur of sharp teeth and gray fur.
Chapter Two
Kade
Kade was so, so close. Standing in the clearing, he could tell that he was on the right track, and he was almost there. He just needed one more moment to follow the scent, and then he’d know.
The click of a rifle behind him ruined it.
His human instinct took over. He ducked and turned, trying to get his huge bear body lower to the ground, even as his ears pricked up, rotating toward the spot where the sound had come from.
It wasn’t far away, maybe fifty yards. He could barely see the top of a head over tree roots, the barrel of a rifle pointed right at him, but there was something else, something that made his blood freeze.
Wolves. That unmistakable unwashed dog scent.
They were right behind the human.
Then everything happened at once. The wolves sprang at the human, growling. Kade was already running toward them when he smelled blood combined with a human’s scent and heard a whimper.
It’s a woman, he realized. Somehow that hadn’t occurred to him, but as he charged up to the wolves, he roared.
He didn’t even slow down to swat away the first wolf, standing over the woman’s prone body. It yelped as it flew backwards, landing on its side and then scrambling up.
The second wolf growled at him, all its teeth bared, but it backed away slowly. Kade growled right back, showing every last one of his own teeth, sinking his back claws into the soft earth so he could get better purchase in case he had to charge.
I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt her, he thought.
Then he thought: What? I don’t even know her.
The wolf knew better, though. While wolves were overly territorial, posturing, aggressive animals, they also weren’t stupid. Two wolves couldn’t take on a single grizzly. Four, maybe. A really even fight was more like six wolves.
Of course, they did travel in packs.
The first wolf was on its feet now, and it snorted at the second wolf. Both of them took one last, long look at Kade, still growling and ready to charge, their yellow eyes unearthly and unnatural.
Then they trotted off into the forest.
Kade looked down at the woman. Her eyelids fluttered once, and then closed. Her face was so pale it was nearly translucent, and the moss underneath her was quickly soaked with her blood.
Without thinking, he shifted back to human. He kneeled next to her frantically, and rolled her over.
Kade gasped when he saw the wounds on her back, long claw sets that wrapped around her ribcage onto her side. Those wolves had almost killed her, and the rage flared up again through him, his bear roaring murde
rously.
Later, he told himself. Right now you need to get her to safety.
Even though she was about to shoot you?
He looked around for something to wrap her wounds in while he carried her back to the cabin, his gaze finally falling on a pack crammed under a tree root. In seconds, he’d torn into it, yanking out a backpacking towel and a few shirts. He tied them around her as tightly as he could, thankful that she’d already passed out.
If she were conscious, she’d be in a lot of pain, and it was only going to get worse.
Once her makeshift bandages were secure, Kade lifted her to his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and started hiking cross-country as fast as he could. He needed to get her to safety before the wolves came back, because when they did, they’d have reinforcements.
He wished he could shift, but he could never hang onto her in his grizzly form. Maybe if she’d been awake she could have ridden him. Rocks and pine needles scratched at his bare feet, and stray branches scraped his limbs, but he didn’t care.
All that mattered was that this woman was okay.
Kade had no idea what he was doing. He didn’t know why this woman’s life was so important. She’d been about to shoot him, for the love of God, and now he was naked and carrying her through the woods at the possible expense of his own safety.
How many wolves did he think he could fight off for her? Seven? Eight?
He looked at her again, bloody and flopped over his shoulder, as he half-jogged through the forest, and he felt something stir in him, deep down.
I’d fight as many wolves as there were, he realized. I’d fight twenty. Fifty, if it meant saving her.
His head spun, and he adjusted her body on his shoulder. He was only a little more than a mile from the cabin, and he picked up the pace a little more, ignoring the burning in his arms and legs.
When he finally heard the wolves again, the cabin was nearly in sight, but they were closing in. He could hear their panting and almost see their tongues hanging from their mouths, almost dragging on the ground.
His bear bristled and then reared back on its hind legs, ready to fight anything that came near her.
Don’t be stupid, he thought.
Instead, Kade broke into a run.
He burst into the clearing, the wolves right behind, running as fast as he could for the cabin in the center.
“Daniel!” he shouted.
A wolf snapped at his heel, its teeth just grazing him, and Kade whirled around, ready to face all of them, his mouth opening in a roar even though he was still human.
There were six of them.
Bring it the fuck on, he thought.
Then the door to the cabin slammed open and his mate, Daniel, stood in it, his huge form nearly filling the doorway. He took one glance at Kade, covered in sweat and gasping hard, and the bloody woman slung over his shoulder. Then Daniel faced the wolves.
“Leave,” Daniel told them, his quiet voice brimming with menace.
The wolves looked at each other, tongues lolling, sides heaving.
“You’ve got five more seconds,” Daniel went on. He took a step out of the cabin, and the wolf in front lifted one paw uncertainly.
Kade bared his teeth and growled, still human.
The lead wolf snapped once, then turned and trotted off. The rest followed, and Kade and Daniel stood, watching, until the sounds of wolves running through the forest had faded completely.
At last, Daniel turned to Kade, his dark, serious eyes taking in his mate’s situation.
“What the hell is going on?” he finally asked.
Minutes later, the woman was face down on their big kitchen table and Kade was unwrapping the shirts and towels from around her, tossing the bloodied cloths aside.
“What do you need?” Daniel asked, softly.
“There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom,” Kade said.
Daniel snorted. “That’s not going to do it,” he said
“We have to do something!”
“I’ll go get it,” Daniel said, disappearing into the next room.
She was still breathing and had a pulse, and those were both good signs, even if both vital signs were weak. As Kade began to pull the clothes she’d been wearing from her wounds, she twitched and moaned a little, but thankfully stayed unconscious.
Kade had to grit his teeth together, ignoring the signs of her pain. He didn’t know why, but this girl’s small, helpless gasps cut him to the core in a way that nothing else had in a long, long time.
Daniel came back with the first aid kit and handed it to Kade, who had her shirt nearly off.
“What now?” Daniel asked. Kade knew that later, they’d talk about why, exactly, he had come home human, naked, carrying a girl and being followed by a pack of wolves, but Daniel knew how to handle himself in a crisis.
It was one of the many things Kade loved him for.
Kade handed his mate a pair of scissors.
“Get the rest of her clothes off,” he said. “Do your best to make sure that there’s nothing stuck in the wounds, or it’ll get infected.”
Kade brought over a desk lamp — the best light he could find — and went to work getting fibers and moss out of the huge claw mark on her back, washing it every so often with a saline rinse that had also been in the first aid kit. She was still bleeding, but thankfully, the blood had slowed to a trickle instead of a gush.
Still, she was in trouble. She didn’t have much more to lose.
Daniel cut a sleeve off, then gently tugged her shirt out from under her. Then, with his fingertips, he gently brushed the light brown hair off the back of her neck, carefully placing the wet, dirty strands behind her head.
In that moment, Kade looked up at his mate’s face, and he saw himself reflected there.
Neither of them knew why, but they’d both fight fifty wolves for this girl. A hundred. The number didn’t matter.
“Who is she?” Daniel asked softly, his face determinedly neutral.
“I don’t know,” Kade said. He plucked a long blue strip of cloth from the wound, wincing as the girl gasped in her sleep. “She was about to shoot me.”
Daniel’s eyebrows went up.
“And?”
“And the wolves attacked her.”
Daniel went quiet again, carefully cutting up each of the girl’s pant legs. Despite his enormous size, he had fast, meticulous fingers, rough with callouses. He had no problem easily lifting each of the girl’s legs to yank her pants off. Now the girl was naked and face down on their kitchen table, still unconscious.
Kade stepped back and looked at his work. Her wounds were mostly clean now, though the table was an awful mess. If she lived, he’d probably hear about it from Daniel — he’d have to sand the table down to get the bloodstains out.
Daniel had made that table himself, years ago, when he and Kade had finally become mates. It was the place where they ate their meals, did their work, shared their lives. Daniel’s version of an engagement ring, almost, and now it was stained with a human’s blood.
Kade hoped that wasn’t a dire symbol of some kind.
Any other time, he thought, he’d have appreciated her body. Underneath the ugly, masculine clothes she’d been wearing, she was muscular but curvaceous, the sort of thing that ought to make his mouth water.
There was too much blood for that right now, and she was unconscious, besides.
“Kade,” Daniel said, his voice finally breaking through Kade’s thoughts. The other man stood at the foot of the table, his arms crossed. He looked somber.
Kade looked up at his mate.
“Her wounds are too deep,” Daniel went on. He had a powerful, low voice, but he rarely raised it. “She needs stitches.”
“I can’t give her stitches,” Kade said.
He felt the panic begin. Was this girl — this incredibly important girl, whoever she was — another person he couldn’t save?
How many are there going to be? He wondered, the adrenaline dri
ving a spike though his heart.
He felt a big, warm hand on his shoulder, and there was Daniel, looking into his eyes.
“I’m not taking her to the hospital,” Kade said. “I’m not taking her anywhere they can get her.”
“Call your cousin Hunter,” Daniel said.
Then the girl gasped, and her eyes flew open.
Chapter Three
Charlie
Everything fucking hurt. Charlie was pretty sure that her back hurt the most, followed by her side, followed by her right leg, but her whole body just felt like it was on fire, a burning, deep pain tearing through her.
For the first few moments after she woke up, she couldn’t even speak, only hold her mouth open and gasp in air, hoping that somehow, it would make the pain stop.
In front of her eyes, everything seemed to shake and wiggle. All the colors looked wrong, somehow — they were too gray, and things moved slowly, almost like she was underwater. Every time she blinked she felt a little dizzy.
I don’t think I’m dead, she thought.
She tried to move her arm, and a fresh pain roared through her body.
Maybe I wish I was, though.
Then, her vision filled with two faces. Charlie couldn’t judge the distance between herself and them, but they were close.
One said something, and she blinked slowly, suddenly feeling like her eyelids had weights on them. She was just so tired.
The other face spoke, but Charlie still couldn’t understand what they were saying.
She let her eyelids droop shut, relieved to go back to sleep.
