Jade Crew: Forgotten Bear (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Ridgeback Bears Book 3)

by Amelia Jade

  Marcus frowned as he looked over the six bears standing in front of him. The look made his scar more vivid and imposing. Valen came to a stop at his side, face stern and made of steel, unmoving.

  “This would have been much easier if you could have just gotten along,” Marcus sighed. “But you didn’t. We have finished the trials. All of the condemned have been ended, as has been witnessed. Thus, we are left with you. Remnants, remainders, and all around dregs of our society.”

  Valen spoke for the first time, his smooth tenor managing to easily cut through the sounds of the mountains around them. “We believe in doing what is necessary to protect both the humans of the Valley and our operations here. We will not hesitate to end anyone who threatens that. But neither do we enjoy being wasteful.”

  The notoriously reticent shifter licked his lips, as if speaking so many words aloud was distasteful. He then glanced over at Marcus, who took the cue and finished speaking.

  “Thus, we are forming you into a new crew. The Ridgebacks. If you wish to live, you will all get along, and listen to your Alpha.”

  “Who is that?” Russell heard Evan say. The expectation that they meant him was evident in his tone and the sudden change in his body language.

  Valen’s eyes flashed as they focused on Evan, who wilted visibly under the steely gaze, his confidence broken without a single word being spoken.

  The doors to inside opened again, letting out another bear. He was tall, taller than Russell or Evan. His long strides carried him clear across the level ground quickly but without haste.

  Russell didn’t bother to look over. He was instead focused on the gryphon brothers. He was wondering what the hell they thought was going to happen by combining all these people into one crew. It was a recipe for disaster, he knew.

  “This is your new Alpha,” Valen said, speaking again. “His name is Garrett Hoffman, and if you disobey him, that will be the end. He will not be coming to us. He will have full control over ending any of you that require it. He is also aware of your recent history with each other, and will tolerate no stupidity on your part. Is that understood?”

  Russell didn’t hear any of the replies. He was too focused on staring at his new Alpha.

  “Garrett?” he heard himself speak, shocked.

  The crowd was already beginning to disperse, the formalities over with. It was Garrett’s crew now.

  “Yes?” came the reply as Garrett stepped closer, his eyes focusing on Russell.

  Russell frowned. There was no recognition in them. None at all.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked slowly.

  “Part of my crew. I know names, but I don’t have a face to put to those yet. What’s your name?”

  “You don’t remember me?” he asked instead in disbelief.

  “I woke up just outside of Genesis Valley two weeks ago with no memory.” Garrett looked over the others. “Have any of us met before?”

  Russell almost responded with the truth. That they were stepbrothers, and that they had been each other’s best friend for the past twenty years. He wanted to tell him about every crazy thing the two of them had ever done together.

  But he couldn’t. Garrett clearly did not remember Russell. Hell, he thought, he may not even remember himself. He looked around at the new members of the Ridgeback crew. This was Garrett’s responsibility now. He was going to be hard-pressed to be able to keep them together as it was. If Russell were to suddenly spring this on him, it could distract him at a critical moment. It could put Garrett in danger, and Russell couldn’t do that, no matter how much his heart broke to realize the only family he had left had no idea he existed.

  “No,” he replied dully. “Not really. We had a drink together three weeks ago. I didn’t get anything more out of you than your name, sorry. I was just shocked to see you,” he finished lamely.

  Garrett looked at him for a moment, then nodded.

  The pickaxe slipped out of Russell’s hands as he tried hard to ignore the pain that surged back to the surface as the memory hit him with full force. A snarl brewed on his lips that grew to full-blown roar as the handle of the tool bounced and landed heavily on his foot.

  “What the fuck man?” Corey said, looking over at him as he paused in his work.

  Russell glared at him, silently telling him that now was not a good time. Corey, for once, seemed to take the hint. He looked back at Russell for several seconds before blinking slowly and turning back to his wall.

  Closing his eyes against the pain that still resided within him, Russell grabbed the refuse cart and powered it up. Slowly the cart, only three-quarters full, began to move, guided down the tracks that lay across the center of the tunnel, headed back toward the surface. As he approached the main spine of the tunnel forty or so feet away, he reached out and angrily smashed his fist into the big, illuminated red button.

  Ahead of him the track clicked and the switch engaged, so that he could roll smoothly out onto the main line. The lights embedded into the ceiling told him nobody else was making a trip, so he closed his eyes and let the motorized machine do the work as he struggled to keep his composure.

  The week after the Kedyns had joined the two crews, as the Ridgebacks got organized and began to set up shop at the Lodge, were some of the hardest days of Russell’s life.

  Not only were they using the old Onyx mineshaft, preventing them from having to start fresh, but each day was spent in close proximity to his brother. The brother who didn’t remember anything about him. Their parents had gotten married when Russell was seven, and Garrett was nine. For the next twenty-plus years, the two of them had been practically inseparable, until Russell had been forced to make his way to Genesis Valley after becoming involved in one too many fights with local shifters as he moved around.

  He had been so excited for Garrett to come join him. The two made an amazing team. A team that no longer existed. Each night, Russell attempted to drink himself into a stupor. Once he had even dabbled with chameleon, the nickname for the superdrug that directly affected a shifter’s system.

  It had been a low time, especially as he and Evan had begun to distance themselves from “Garrett’s Ridgebacks.” Russell disliked what Evan was doing, but loyalty to his old Alpha died hard. He would never support an open conflict with Garrett, or anything that might see him hurt, but he needed to ensure that Evan had someone to take care of him to prevent him from doing anything stupid.

  Russell had done his mourning, shed his tears privately and tried to move on.

  “Idiot,” he cursed, frustrated with himself. How could he have thought that pretending that Garrett was nobody to him was a good idea? In hindsight, it was the stupidest thing he had ever done.

  The cart dinged and slowed as it approached the end of the line. Russell opened his eyes, automatically looking for the crane he would attach to the cart and use to dump it into the waiting dump truck. Someone came by every few days from the LMC to empty it.

  “Russell, just the person I wanted to see.” Evan’s voice came from behind him.

  The Ridgeback second was emerging from the trailer that served as their on-site office and lunchroom, trotting briskly across the open ground toward Russell.

  “What do you want Evan?” He was not in the mood to put up with any of the other shifter’s usual antics.

  “I have a proposition for you,” Evan said, his tone searching, hinting at a less-than-noble intent.

  “Now is really not the best time for that,” he replied, trying to get rid of him quickly so that he could be in peace and think about everything.

  “Now is the only time for it. In fact, time may be running out,” Evan said. Russell noticed how he looked behind him toward the mine shaft. It was like he expected Garrett to come charging out at any moment. The change in his normal uncaring behavior got through the fog that had settled over Russell’s brain.

  Evan was involved in something serious.

  “What have you done?” he asked suspiciously.


  “Nothing. Why? What have you heard?” Evan fixed him with a stare, trying to pry the words out of Russell without saying anything more.

  Russell shrugged, the glare sliding off of him easily. He had been glared at by some of the best out there. Evan’s stare had nothing on the likes of Ajax or Valen Kedyn.

  “Do you want in then?” Evan asked after a moment of silence.

  “Not without knowing what you’re up to,” he told his former Alpha. Russell held back a sigh of disappointment. He wished fervently that Evan would admit that he wasn’t going to be an Alpha again and settle in with the Ridgebacks. They were a damn good crew, and they would be far more effective with Evan working with them instead of against them.

  “I can’t tell you yet. Not without knowing. So, in or out Russ? What’s it going to be? This could be the opportunity we’ve been looking for all along.”

  “The opportunity for what?”

  “To get rid of Garrett for good!” Evan crowed, before glancing over his shoulder again.

  “Do you ever think that maybe Garrett isn’t doing that horrible of a job?” Russell said, asking a question instead of giving a reply.

  “It’s not about that,” Evan snarled. “It’s about me getting what’s rightfully mine. What they owe me.”

  “Nobody owes you anything,” Russell told him harshly.

  “Oh, you siding with Garrett and that little bitch of his now?” Evan said.

  Russell knew he was taunting him, and that he should just ignore it. But he couldn’t.

  “I’m telling you that you need to drop the act. You fucked up, and now you have to deal with the consequences.”

  “She wanted to be with me!” Evan snapped.

  He was referring to Emily, the woman Evan had wanted so badly he had started a fight with Michael and his crew, which resulted in three dead shifters, two dead humans, and twelve bears on trial, seven of whom would be ended. Shockingly it wasn’t the bloodiest fight that had ever happened in Genesis Valley, but it was far and away the second.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said again.

  “It matters to me! Just because none of you ever believed me that he was forcing her to go, doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. So we ended up here. And now, because you’re a coward, this is where you’re going to stay.”

  Russell launched himself at Evan.

  He hadn’t been meaning to turn it into a fight, but he couldn’t ignore being called a coward. Russell Warne was many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them. He was not going to stand by and let Evan smear his name like that.

  The two shifters went down in a heap, fists and elbows flailing wildly as they tried to get the upper hand. Evan curled his legs up below him and kicked out hard, launching Russell away from him.

  Hitting the ground, Russell rolled and shifted as he came around, his bear bursting from his skin and landing on all fours with a roar. A solid fifteen feet away, Evan shifted as well, answering the battle cry with one of his own. The two of them charged at each other, colliding with bone-rattling force as they rose up on their hind legs at the last moment.

  The two beasts went to war on the open ground surrounded by trees and a mammoth mountain. Teeth snapped, paws flew with colossal force, and blood flowed, dripping between them or sprayed around as it was thrown from drenched claws. Russell latched onto Evan’s neck with his teeth, but the other shifter shook his head violently at the same time he opened furrows across Russell’s stomach with his other paw.

  Roaring in pain, Russell let go. He feinted a retreat, and then darted back in as Evan let his guard down temporarily. Blood drenched the fur on his arm as he hooked his claws into the wound his teeth had started and opened Evan up from neck to stomach in one vicious blow.

  Evan’s beast made a high-pitched cry of pain, but he didn’t let up, coming straight for Russell, trying to bowl him over. The move caught Russell off guard, and the dark brown bear went down hard, rolling out of the way to avoid the slashing claws that would have dug deep into his unprotected underside. He was fast, but not fast enough, and fire erupted along his flank as the claws found his hide anyway.

  Using his momentum as a springboard, Russell propelled himself back at Evan as soon as his feet hit the ground. His giant body slammed into the other bear just as he landed on all fours. It was a decidedly human-style move, but it worked just fine in animal form. Landing on Evan’s back, he lifted both massive paws above his head, and brought them crashing down on the top of Evan’s skull.

  The other bear let out a whuff of air and collapsed flat onto the compact dirt, unmoving aside from his lungs, which gulped down air as fast as they could.

  Russell rolled off and shifted back, calming his bear to the best of his ability. Then, as if nothing had happened, he hooked his refuse cart from the mine to the crane, and lifted it up.

  He debated hard with himself, but in the end he took the higher route and dumped the large chunks of rock into the truck instead of depositing them all over Evan, who was gathering his senses below. It took a lot of willpower, however, to avoid it. The other shifter, Russell realized, was never going to change his ways. He was never going to come around and accept that life with the Ridgebacks was good. That they had a great Alpha in Garrett, and were steadily forging their own niche within Genesis Valley. The shifters, if they kept in line, could actually lead a decent life.

  They had a shelter over their heads that they didn’t have to pay for. They received a solid wage for their work, and they were starting to make friends as Ridgebacks. The Silvertips, likely at the behest of their Alpha, Ajax, were starting to become friendlier, as were some of the others.

  Russell wanted that. He wanted that life, the stability of it, after everything that had happened to him over the past few years, including his move to Genesis Valley. But having it meant leaving behind his old Alpha, and a shifter’s loyalties took a long time to change. He grimaced, realizing that it hadn’t been he who had changed, but the woman he loved, Gwen, who had told him he needed to change.

  Sometimes having someone tear a strip off your hide awakened you to reality. He snorted aloud. Well no shit. About time you came to the smart conclusion. There were still two more wrongs he had to rectify, however, now that he had made his decision to abandon Evan to his own devices.

  “We’re done,” he told Evan after setting his cart back down and exiting the crane. “Don’t include me in any more of your schemes, and don’t expect me to come to your rescue when you fuck up.”

  “And don’t expect me to think twice about you when it comes time,” Evan told him darkly.

  He almost asked “comes time for what?” but he just shook his head and hit the Return button on his cart, which started taking him back to his mining area that he currently shared with Corey.

  Russell’s mind was elsewhere now. Fixing one of his wrongs was easy. But the other? The other was more difficult, and he wasn’t entirely sure how to proceed with it.

  He needed to ask for help.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gwen

  Her entire day had been thrown for a loop after Russell’s explosive revelation earlier. The two of them had talked about it all through breakfast at Luna’s Grill, an all-day breakfast place just down the street from the hotel. They had had to make it short, however, so that Russell could get to work on time.

  Now that she was on her own, Gwen had time to ponder it. More time than she had intended, in fact. She was still new enough to the area that Origin was mostly a mystery to her. So after Russell had departed, she had set out to explore. It seemed more and more likely she was going to be spending a large chunk of time here, which meant getting to know the town was a good idea. Her original goal had been to walk the streets for a bit, maybe pop into a few shops and see what they were selling, before going over to the place that she and Emma had picked up Trestin from the other day.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember what it had been called, and nothing that she had come across had jogged her
memory either. Now she was simply wandering around until she found it on an increasingly hungry stomach. She vaguely knew her way back to the hotel, or at least the area of town that contained it. Origin wasn’t that big, so getting lost shouldn’t have been an issue. Apparently she was wrong on that front. But the time wandering had allowed her to consider Russell’s situation in-depth.

  A large part of her still could not believe that Russell had managed to keep it a secret the entire time. He had recounted to her the first day they had come across each other’s paths here in Genesis Valley, and she had wondered why Garrett hadn’t caught on to Russell’s reaction. The more she thought about it though, the more it made sense. Garrett had just been introduced to his new crew, a bunch of misfits that he knew were likely to go for each other’s throats at any time. He had been focused on exerting control and ensuring that they fell into line. The thought that one of them might have known who he was in a past life was likely the farthest thing from his mind.

  She let out a low whistle, shock at the whole situation still fresh in her mind.

  “Oh yeah? You like what you see honey?” came the voice from behind her.

  She turned to see a large man in a red jacket and khakis practically leering at her.

  “What?” she asked, surprise momentarily ridding her of her manners.

  “You whistled at me as I walked by,” he told her, confidently striding closer as if he knew how things were going to end. “If you want, we can go somewhere a little more private and you can tell me just how you feel about me,” he told her, a smile on his face that didn’t extend into his eyes.

  He was trouble, she knew it. A quick glance around told her that perhaps she had wandered into a section of town that she should have avoided. The buildings looked older, and the upkeep on them was clearly not of the highest order. She had heard that the Kedyns tolerated no vagrancy, and that no building was to fall below a certain standard of upkeep, but these clearly toed that line as close as they could.