Bad, Very Bad Shifters- The Complete Mega Bundle

by Daniella Wright

Valerie Fireheart is a mage that once had the freedom to wander the kingdoms, using her magic for good wherever she could. One crime, however, gets her locked up. The murder of a prince of the Bear Kingdom. She's locked away for a long time, expecting death.

  When that day comes, she soon discovers that she's not being sentenced to death at all. She's been brought by a sibling of the prince she killed. A sibling intent on exacting revenge for what she did to his beloved brother. A fearsome prince with the ability to shapeshift into a bear. Valerie knows the only way she's getting out of this, is if she can somehow reveal to Eldan the truth. That his brother was not the wonderful prince everyone assumed...

  * * *

  Chapter One - Valerie

  I stare at the walls of my prison. By now, they’re covered in scratches from what I’ve done with my nails, and from the splinters I’ve managed to prise off the bed. My clothes are filthy and rank, and I’ve been wearing the same ones for a long time. The guards don’t bother washing their prisoners, so it’s up to them to not die from disease. It does mean sacrificing the water rations obtained for a meagre way to keep clean, but I find I can will away the hours by gradually daubing the water over my skin.

  The smells in these dungeons no longer bother me. They used to make me retch, because the conditions here are abysmal. I still remember the sneers and moans from the other prisoners, including the raucous noise from the men, who had gone for months without woman, banging against their cell bars, sometimes screaming for me to show my face so they can masturbate to it.

  I'm still damp with sweat from the last dream I had. It woke me up, never screaming, but with my heart thundering, pumping a sick, dizzy sensation through my body, and it has me checking my hands, to make sure they're no longer burnt from flames.

  There's blood there, though, that doesn't wash away. I'm always drowning in it, along with misery and depravity when I dream. It's a ritual, and even though I should be used to them, the memory is relived fresh, with all five senses cranked up, living in that cesspit of piss, shit and empty, sunken eyes. Seeing his face through the groggy blur of the drug-induced stupor.

  Seeing them die, over and over again, pounding guilt into my body.

  I’ve no idea how much time has passed, but it feels like forever, and the boredom eats away at my mind and sanity. There’s nothing to do here, no fresh air to breathe, no one to provide warmth or to give a smile. Most prisoners are trapped in their heads, unwilling to venture out of them. Most are thieves are murderers, awaiting execution or exoneration. About the one thing I've kept to myself and not whispered to any others is my name. Valerie. No last name. Not since the continents have been hunting fire mages. Otherwise it would have been Fireheart.

  I watch as a fly buzzes around my cell, drawing my attention. I scratch at the damned collar locked around my neck – the one that prevents me from casting any kind of spell. I’ve tried many times to take it off, but it’s impossible. The magic, once a huge part of me, is removed and destroyed, and as long as I have this infernal thing on, it’s forbidden to me.

  It would have been nice to feel the warmth of fire in my hands for one last time before they come for me.

  It gets harder to picture my former life, the more the days drag, and everything blurs into routine, rituals, things to stave off the madness.

  The guards eventually come, obliterating the routine of prison life.

  This is it, I think, fear and relief mingling. This is where I die.

  No last requests, it seems. Nothing for a criminal. They walk into my cell, and they force me to plant my hands against the wall, in case I have a weapon.

  “Filthy fucker, aren't you,” one of the guards spits “Suns, I hate doing this. I always feel like retching.”

  “Not their fault,” another crisp voice soothes, though I can't see the talkers, facing the dank gray wall as I am, hands pressed onto the cold, “They don't get baths. This one's cleaner than the rest.”

  “Womanly touch,” the previous guard laughs, before my hands are twisted behind me, and cuffs are snapped onto them. I'm sandwiched between the guards, trying to stare out of the snarls of my matted hair. I left it long and loose deliberately, just so I could run my fingers through to de-tangle, or have something to tug. The men sneer at me from their cells, and I notice the only other woman there is huddled up in her bed, her dark hair poking out. I lick my cracked lips, considering attempting to speak to the guards about my fate for a second, before declining, because I'm not sure if I still retain the ability. It's been so long since I've last exchanged words with anyone.

  Out of the dark dungeon, illuminated only by the high barred window slits lining the top walls, I'm forced up a narrow stairwell, my bare feet freezing on the stone, the guard's boots clattering with vigor. They continue their nonchalant conversation around me, and I listen in apathy, hating them for the way they treat me, as subhuman, one of your common slaves, but also expecting it. I know I smell and look like some kind of alien being, with only a rattling hiss escaping from me, from being in a mildewed, mold choked dungeon.

  I cough as we walk through a cleaner section of the keep, and my eyes feast upon the lakes of green outside, the distant mountains, the yellow flowers. I imagine what they must smell like, and my heart twitches slightly. At least I got a glimpse of this. At least I saw something beautiful, before I die.

  I'm escorted into a large room, which doesn't resemble the executioner's chamber I'm anticipating, and more of a office, an area to check people through. Through the mass of paper work, the shelves filled with books and the blood red carpet, is a desk where a man with glasses is seated, scribbling on a scroll with a eagle feather quill.

  Another man stands next to the older, authoritative figure with the quill, and when his eyes latch on me, they burn with hate.

  I vaguely recognize his features, though I can't sift through my memory to discover how and why. I do notice, however, he has the intense blue burn in his eyes that denotes a shifter.

  Is this shifter my executioner?

  The older man clears his throat. “Thank you, guards.” His voice is flowing and cold, the onerous kind that could lull you to sleep on a restless night. His glasses are pristine and oval shaped, lodged on the tip of his nose as he peers at me. “Prisoner. I have a few questions for you, before we send you off to your fate. Can you understand me?”

  My legs tremble from weakness, from having walked so far from my cell than the exercise I manage to pull off within it. I sway on the spot, and one of the guards grunts in disgust as he catches me from stumbling, and yanks me viciously upright.

  “Prisoner? Speak.”

  The shifter continues to stare at me with that violent intensity in his eyes. I can almost smell the hatred and disgust. I tilt my head up, resist the urge to cough, and say, through my dry lips, my cobwebbed mouth, “Y-yes.” It rasps out like sandpaper, and already the word burns my throat, and I finally give into a bout of coughs.

  “Excellent. First question, prisoner known as Valerie. You know what you're in jail for, yes?

  I lock my jaw for a moment. “Yes.”

  “Do you confess to what you've done?”

  I don't like the way the questioning is going, but I answer anyway. “Yes.”

  The official shakes his head. “At least you're honest, unlike some who swear they didn't do it, even when they're caught red handed.” He then scowls at me, noticing my slightly puffed chest.

  Do you feel any regret for what you've done?”

  I squint at him. If he expects me to repent, he's sorely mistaken. “No,” I say. My voice is stronger this time. It doesn't shake. The shifter by the side of the official narrows his eyes, turning them to dagger points.

  The official clears his throat again. “The crime we have you here for is for killing a prince of the Bear Kingdom. He was first in line to inherit the throne, when he was found dead, charred to a crisp, and you were found next to him.”

  My mind flashes back for an instant, and col
d sweat lathering my skin. The dark chamber. The eyes. The smell. The guilt.

  “You killed the heir. But something puzzles me.” He examines the document in front of him. “You didn't resist when the guards came to take you in. With your power, you could have easily burned them. Why?”

  I glance at the ground for a moment. Now I recognize who the shifter is on the side. He's a bear shifter, with some identifying features with the former prince. A relative. “I wanted to die.”

  The official raises an eyebrow. The shifter curls his lips into an awful sneer.

  “Interesting. We had you lined for a public execution. The kingdom went into mourning for their lost prince. However... we've been given a less... conventional proposal.”

  The shifter's storm blue eyes glint in savage triumph. I fixate on his jet black hair, his handsome yet somehow cruel features, noting the broad, muscular build with a growing sense of dread.

  “Our prince here wants to buy you from us.” The official nods towards the shifter.

  Damn. He's a sibling. This can't be good. The fear knifes me. I'd rather be publicly executed then face whatever intent lurks behind his hard face.

  “Normally we would proceed with the execution... but it's quite the sum of money being offered. You appear to be popular with him.”

  Popular is an understatement. His eyes burn with malice.

  “Aren't...” I wheeze, “aren't any of you even going to bother asking why I did it?”

  “It will be lies, anyway,” the shifter snaps, his voice a guttural growl. “Justifications to make yourself look better for the crime you've done.”

  “He deserved it,” I say, even as one of the guards slaps me about the mouth with a mailed fist.

  “Quiet, whore,” the guard says.

  I stand up, defiant. I sense I need to be executed, and now. “Better not let me out of here, or I might just do the same to you.”

  I'm hit again, but I don't care. The pain rings through me, almost making me gasp, but my thoughts are fixated on one thing. Please let them kill me. Anything but to be sold off to this bastard.

  “Take her away,” the official says. “Get her cleaned and ready to be given to the prince in two hours. And,” he adds, scratching his gray beard, a bored expression in his face as he drawls, “Don't accidentally remove the collar. She'll need it for where she's going.”

  The bear prince grins at me with seething hate.

  My heart drops into my stomach, even as my mouth and head throb. I'm taken away, and I'm shivering the whole time.

  Chapter Two - Valerie

  Washed and placed into what appears to be a slave toga, the collar is cleaned and checked to make sure it's not showing any signs of accidentally dropping off. I plan to utilize whatever tools I can, when I can, if the prince doesn't exact the revenge I think he's planning for his “beloved” brother. I get the notion that any insults I sling his brother's way will have me in a far worse position than I am already. Even if I do nothing, I'm likely going to be his chew toy.

  As long as I'm conscious and able to move, I'll find a way.

  And then I'll kill him too. It's possible he might be the same ilk as his twisted sibling. It could be a trait of bear shifters, for all I know.

  Steel enters my heart as I'm taken into a prisoner wagon and chained to the side of it. Always this cursed chains. I have to endure. I have to keep my sanity. I won't let these people defeat me, no matter how much they try to break my body, mind and spirit. A shudder of fear goes through me when I recall the prince's hate. I take solace in the idea that I can kill myself if it becomes too much. Death doesn't scare me the same way. I know I'll be embraced into the flame Goddess's arms. For burning her the offering of Yartusk, the prince I took pleasure in killing.

  Brother of Eldan, the one who bought me for an obnoxious price from the prison facility.

  Before my unfortunate stint in the Bear Kingdom, I used to travel between domains, from the wolf kingdom to the stag to the bear, all of them more or less in perpetual war with one another. I had no family to speak of, since infants who show a affinity for magic are taken away and trained. My training was halted when I reached twelve, due to an attack on our tower by a rival mage guild, who didn't like our leaders for whatever stupid reason they had. Some sort of fire purge, for the belief the destructive element of fire only revealed itself to souls inclined towards murder.

  After that, with nowhere to go, and a bounty on my head, I roamed. Eating wasn't an issue with my power, neither was keeping warm. I tried not to use my powers often, or for harm, but I encountered far too many things throughout the kingdoms that gave me cause to kill.

  Murderers. Rapists. Child killers. People who thought their power and status gave them leave to do anything they wanted without consequence.

  The nobles across the land placed a bigger bounty on my head, but they thought they were looking for a man. Since “only men” were more inclined to kill.

  Now, of course, I'm a nothing. The eternal flame inside me is quiet but simmering, longing to be used.

  If I'm a criminal in this world, then I don't care.

  Someone has to do something. But with that prince, that awful fucking creature, I tasted despair. True despair. I'd never seen anything like it. All my efforts to do what I could to save the people who suffered, but people like this kept breeding. Kept doing their fucked up shit.

  I admit it. I lost the will. I never wanted to see something like that again. It haunts my dreams.

  Only now, as I feel the wheels rattle upon cobbles in the dark, restricted space of the wagon, do I feel some of that original feeling return again.

  I must hold onto it for as long as possible.

  When the wagon stops some hours later, and I'm jerked out of my fitful sleep, where I see Yartusk towering above me again, laughing, the blood strewn around him as if manically splashed by a paintbrush, and I'm hauled out of the cage by a new contingent of guards, after a bag's placed over my head. I hear voices speculating on who I am, noting my slave toga, and I figure that the bag over my head is to prevent anyone from recognizing me and then slitting my throat. I'm not a popular figure in Bear Kingdom.

  My feet stumble and scrape against rough stone ground with grass growing between the cracks. My breath is horrible and suffocating in this opaque bag. I'm stopped for a moment as I hear the rusty grind of what's likely the portcullis of the royal castle, and I'm forced into a new area, where the ground turns to soft carpet that tickles my feet, and the noises of the city outside are tuned out to bubbling murmurs.

  When the bag is finally taken off my face, I discover I'm in what looks like a private chamber and suite. There's a manacle and chain right by the bed. The chain looks like reinforced steel, hard to melt even with my flames, though I'm sure I could with enough patience. The bed is a four poster, with deep gouge marks all along the beams, and plain white covers. There's a table next to where the chains are, but before I contemplate this further, I'm unlocked from behind, and reattached to the chains on the walls.

  Always these chains.

  The guards examine me with leers on their faces.

  “Shame you're the prince's new slave. Wouldn't mind having some fun with you,” the blonde one with dark eyes chuckles, placing a finger under my chin. I immediately move and clamp my teeth down on his finger, and he howls as the other two guards prise my mouth open. I spit out blood as he raises a fist to punch me, before one of the other guards stops him mid-blow.

  “No. The prince won't be happy if she's damaged before he's had a chance to use her.”

  “Curse this whore,” the blond growls. I know he's not a bear shifter, because his eyes are normal, but one of the other guards is. He looks at me with those blue eyes without the slightest ounce of pity.

  “I hope you get what's coming to you. I would have executed you myself. But we can't deny our prince his revenge.”

  They leave, and I'm left, chained to the wall. The chains give me enough flexibility to be able t
o lie on the floor, and partially reach the bed. Even without the chains, I doubt I could get out of this suite anyway. The door, when I examined it, looked reinforced and secure. There's a bare minimal amount of objects in this place, other than the obligatory bathroom, kitchen, visitor's lounge and this humongous bedroom. My eyes peer at the iron chest under the prince's bed. It seems to fill and expand the room, whispering to me of the deadly things that must be inside it. I've seen a trunk like that before.

  I try to gather myself into a state of calm. All I can do is wait.

  The fate that awaits me might not be a fun one, but I've not had a fun life, really. The people I learned to love have died. The people who brought me into the world, I know nothing of. The friendships I struck in the tower are long since gone. I've been travelling so long now without a home, without a purpose other than to exact justice where necessary – being chained up here, like how I was in the dungeons, in that place, shows you what any type of heroic impulse does.

  You don't get thanked. You're hated. Reviled. Cursed. No one dares to say what they're really thinking.

  Prince Eldan enters his chambers some time later, possibly an hour or two, and he instantly morphs into his bear form upon seeing me. It's an enormous black grizzly, and the blue eyes examine me balefully, and the lips draw into a snarl. He roars and thunders towards me, and I know instantly this is his attempt to intimidate me, to make me scream and cry out.

  I merely smirk, even though my heart's hammering fast, as he shambles to a stop, inches from my face. He roars again, displaying long yellow teeth and a cavernous mouth, dripping with saliva.

  “Roar,” I say back, not quite as impressively.

  He snaps the jaws, and I flinch back involuntarily, before again composing myself. Mustn't show fear. Don't let him have the satisfaction.

  I bristle up as if developing imaginary spikes, and keep my neutral face on as he shifts into his human form, storm blue eyes not taking their gaze off mine.

  We stand in silence for a long time.