by T. S. Joyce
GRAY BACK BROKEN BEAR
(GRAY BACK BEARS, BOOK 4)
By T. S. JOYCE
Other Books in this Series
This book was not written as a standalone.
The author recommends to read these stories in order for optimal reader enjoyment.
Gray Back Bad Bear (Book 1)
Gray Back Alpha Bear (Book 2)
Gray Back Ghost Bear (Book 3)
Gray Back Broken Bear
Copyright © 2015 by T. S. Joyce
Copyright © 2015, T. S. Joyce
First electronic publication: September 2015
T. S. Joyce
www.tsjoycewrites.wordpress.com
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Published in the United States of America
Chapter One
The thwack, thwack of Easton Novak’s ax driving into birch logs echoed through the quiet clearing.
In a smooth motion, he pushed the split wood off into the growing pile beside him and stacked another wide log onto the old chopping block. After swinging the ax handle behind him, he lifted it in the air and blasted the blade through the wood. Again and again, he swung his ax until he had enough for a cord of firewood. That wasn’t the point of this, though. The purpose wasn’t to prepare for winter. The cold months were behind him, after all. It was early spring and he already had enough wood to last him a month of deep snow, plus a couple of cords to sell.
The point was to settle the animal that snarled constantly deep inside of him. He had work to do. Oh, he saw how the other Gray Backs looked at him. The girls, Willa, Gia, and Georgia were more tolerant, but he still scared his crew on some level.
As he should.
If they knew what was really going on inside of him, Creed would’ve put him down years ago.
This wasn’t working. All of the physical exertion wasn’t settling him enough. It never did. He’d have to Change. Maybe fight and bleed, too. The restlessness that washed over him lately was suffocating. His bear was struggling for breath inside of him, clawing and tearing. He didn’t know what the damned thing was fighting against. And he sure as shit couldn’t tell anyone else what was wrong. He couldn’t even figure out his own animal.
The other Gray Backs called themselves misfits, but none of them could even touch the baggage he carried.
The flutter of wings sounded behind him, and Easton threw a narrow-eyed glare over his shoulder, but the branches of the old pine that shaded his trailer were empty, save needles and pine cones.
Gritting his teeth, Easton peeled his shirt off and wiped the sweat from his face. With an irritated sigh, he tossed his shirt onto the railing of the stairs that led to his front door, then pulled another log onto the chopping block.
Another flutter of wings, and he was going to kill the fucking bird who was scratching at the memories he wanted to keep buried. No, the memories that he needed to keep buried, or his bruin silver bear was going to rip him to shreds on his way out.
Flap, flap, scritch, scratch.
She wasn’t real. Not real, not real. The raven was a ghost, just like Tessa had been Jason’s ghost. The bird had left him alone all these years, but now that he’d admitted to seeing Tessa, the ghost raven was back to torture him.
He cracked the blade down the center of a log.
Flap, flap.
“Stop it,” he murmured.
He laughed as the knee high grass tickled his frail shoulders.
Easton blinked hard and slammed the ax down. He couldn’t do this again. Not today.
Flap, flap.
“Leave me alone,” he growled out.
Dad picked him up and swung him around and around. Easton laughed louder as Dad tickled him and rasped his beard across his face. Silly Dad, always ready to play.
“Dinner,” Mom yelled from the front porch of their cabin. Mom. Home. Safety. Everything was cherry. Mom made a pie for desert. The sweet sugar granules smelled so good on the wind. Sugar and wheat, and his stomach growled, ready to eat.
“My hungry little bear,” Dad said, tucking him under his arm and tromping through the tall grass.
Easton smiled up at the tree branch where his raven sat, watching him. Her head was cocked, and she blinked slow as Dad carried him up the stairs. Easton waved just before the door closed behind them.
Hungry little bear.
“I said stop it!” Easton’s legs buckled under him as he dropped the ax.
Flap, flap.
With a snarl, he pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt and turned. In one swift motion, he flipped the blade and threw it at the branch where the ghost raven sat. The knife sunk into the bark, and the flapping of wings filled his head. She was gone, but a single, shiny, black feather floated this way and that in front of the trunk of the pine. Easton drew back in horror. “You’re not real.”
She wasn’t. Couldn’t be.
He lurched forward and picked up the feather. It felt real enough, soft and light. Smooth as he ran his finger down the length of it. The feather even smelled like her—his raven. Chills blasted up his arms as he searched the branches above.
He would have to burn her things.
He would have to set fire to the trinkets he cherished the most.
Chest heaving, Easton climbed the stairs to his trailer and threw open the door. He kept the gifts she’d brought him under his bed in an old, plastic tackle box. Each section was labeled with a year, and filled with the tiny treasures she’d dropped in places for him to find.
He sank to his knees and yanked the lid open. Hair berets, rubber bands, paperclips, and anything small that glinted in the sun. The last compartment was empty.
Easton swallowed down the loss that filled him and pressed the feather into it.
She was a ghost, and he couldn’t keep her. Not anymore. He owed it to his crew to move on.
Every trinket held a memory, and he would have to watch them burn, one by one.
Not today, though.
Today he wasn’t strong enough, but maybe tomorrow he would banish the ghost raven.
Chapter Two
It was him.
Aviana King clutched her arm to her middle, wishing for the pain to stop.
A sob clawed its way up her throat.
It was him. Her bear. Easton.
Easton, the one she’d grown up with.
Easton, the one her heart had latched onto.
Easton, the boy who broke.
It had to be him. His eyes were that same bright green color she’d never seen on another person. He looked different now. Harder. Feral. He felt different, too. Scarier. The power that rolled from his shoulders had washed over her raven form and terrified her. Her feathers had lifted uncomfortably from her skin just being that close to him.
Now, he was one of the wild bears her people spoke of. One of the dangerous ones.
Tears blurring her vision, she studied the long slice under her arm. Blood streamed from i
t like a crimson river. He’d become better with blades. Much better than when he was a boy.
She hated the bears, but she envied their healing abilities. Raven shifters didn’t repair themselves so easily.
Easton had hurt her.
Clutching her arm, she curled in on herself, naked in the woods and miserable at the memory of his wild face.
The sweet boy she’d known was gone.
The flutter of bird wings drew a gasp from her lips. When she looked up into the evergreen canopy, it was only a woodpecker, not a raven. Still, it was a stark reminder that she shouldn’t be here. This was against all the rules, and if her people found out she was so close to the bears, she’d be shunned.
Aviana stood, ignoring the jolting pain in her arm. Her pile of clothes was neatly folded over a young tree’s low-hanging branch to keep the forest floor bugs from them.
She dressed quickly and jogged down to her car that was at the end of a deer trail she’d followed in. She drove a trusty white sedan whose easily muddied color and shoddy suspension were not made for the rocky terrain and pothole-riddled roads in these mountains. More proof she didn’t belong in the woods. Not anymore. She’d been ripped from them long ago and had fought tooth and nail to move on.
And dammit, she’d led a good life. A safe one with friends and family and adventures. She’d never wanted for food or clothing, and she’d been able to follow her dreams of becoming a school teacher. So why hadn’t she been able to stop thinking about Easton after all these years?
With a long, steadying exhalation, she slid behind the wheel. She turned the car around and headed for the main road that would lead to her childhood home.
He’d been here all along. She’d gone back to his territory once a couple of years ago, but it had been apparent Easton had left it long ago. She’d been riddled with such guilt when she’d left, she had forced herself to stop searching. It was the promise she’d made to her father. The first promise she’d ever broken.
Even now, another overwhelming wave of remorse washed over her. Aviana gripped the steering wheel and willed herself to stop feeling bad. If anything, seeing him like that was for the best. Now she could stop thinking and obsessing about him. She could stop imagining him in his adult form, fantasizing that he was as happy and fetching as she’d thought he was when they were younger.
Now, equipped with his angry snarl and the vitriol with which he flung that knife to kill, she could get over him. She could move on and accept Caden’s proposal. She’d already quit her job at his request. All that was left to do was say yes to the small ceremony he’d proposed. She was of breeding age, and Caden had been kind to offer her a place at his side.
She was lucky. He was handsome and cunning, and his proposal had been highly sought after. He was perfectly nice. Perfectly nice. She could bear him children and raise them, create the perfect nest for the family she would build with Caden.
Her life would be easy.
Her life would be planned.
Another tear rolled down her cheek.
Her life would be perfect.
A flawless, emotionless existence because she’d given her heart away years ago to a broken boy with a silver grizzly inside of him.
And now that boy was dead.
After driving miles of winding backroads, Aviana pulled her car to a stop in front of the cabin she’d grown up in. It was abandoned now, but the house from her memories was beautiful. Mom had set up summer rose gardens all around the porch and hung potted plants from the rafters over the porch swing. Inside had been small, but tidy and comfortable. It had been a home, and one she’d connected with more than any other that followed.
Now, the logs that made the walls had faded to gray and splintered. The thick grout between the lumber had cracked and chipped. The roof sagged, and on the north side, moss had grown over the wooden shingles, giving it the look of a fairy cottage. Some of the wooden floor boards were missing and split on the front porch, and the railing was broken and sagging off the side, but that didn’t bother her as much as what had happened to the inside.
Leaks and rot had ruined all of the furniture her family had left behind. The plumbing didn’t work anymore, and her parents’ bed was nothing but soft wooden shards in a pile on their bedroom floor. The place smelled musty and dank, and the lack of electricity made staying in this place rough. The windows had been broken, and seeing it like this now, the cozy home from her childhood memories wavered.
As a child, she’d felt safe here.
As an adult, she felt vulnerable and exposed.
She wouldn’t be here long, though. Just another night, and she’d go back to Rapid City and give Caden her answer. She’d kept her suitor waiting for a year. Longer than she had any right to make any man wait. She wasn’t plain, but she was no beauty. Her jokes made her people uncomfortable. Her human friends at the school she’d worked at had laughed, but she was inept at deciphering between pity laughs and genuine amusement. Caden was a good man, and she was lucky he’d offered to give her a home.
Maybe if she just kept telling herself that, it would feel true.
Aviana took a drag of the musty air inside the door and shook her head. This place had gone to ruin without someone here to keep it alive.
It reminded her of Easton.
Another wave of disappointment clogged her throat as she opened her laptop. Thirty percent battery left, but it was enough to say goodbye to Easton in her own silly way.
She made her cell phone into a hot spot and pulled up Cora Wright’s pro-shifter Web site. This was where this whole adventure had started. There was a link to a list of registered bear shifters in the country.
This was where she’d found Easton. How could it not be him? She’d never met anyone else with the unique name, and he was a bear shifter to boot, registered with a crew of notoriously violent, aggressive, unsavory bears called the Gray Backs.
She skimmed through his registration information again. Six-two, lean build, green eyes, dark hair. Silver bear. Surname: Novak. She hadn’t known that from before.
Aviana Novak.
Stop it.
She was destined to be paired with Caden. She would be his perfect match. Everyone said so.
From there, she clicked over to Jason Trager’s social media page. None of the other Gray Backs had one she could find.
A jolt of shock zinged through her as a picture of Easton showed up at the top of his feed. In it, Easton stood in between Jason and a woman with medium-length red hair, obviously dyed and straightened so thoroughly, it spiked out of a high ponytail. They were all smiling, even Easton. His was smaller than the other two, and a little bewildered, but it was there.
Aviana frowned and tried to connect this face with the ferocious one he’d worn when she’d seen him.
Underneath the picture, Jason had typed hashtag sammysbar, hashtag cteamcocaptains, hashtag willawonka, hashtag releasethebeast, hashtag beastonbromance.
Beaston?
The nickname certainly fit the monster who’d cut her with a knife today.
He seemed to have friends if this picture was anything to go by. Aviana leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. She squinted at his smile. He was very handsome with his face relaxed like this—more like the boy she’d known. So why did he live in a trailer separate from his crew? She’d done her spying on them, and the Gray Backs lived a good three hundred yards away. And it was plain as day the man was fighting some mighty big demons the way he was chopping that wood so relentlessly. A terrifying growl had been constant in his throat.
But then again, she’d seen what happened to him. She’d come here hoping he turned out okay after everything, but he hadn’t. The circumstances of his life had turned him into a monster.
She was disappointed.
There it was. Okay, she was disappointed that he hadn’t been strong enough to find happiness. The Easton she’d known was invincible.
She’d come here in hopes she could convince herself he had
turned out all right despite all that shit that had happened to him, but he hadn’t. And now she would have to go back and live this empty life with Caden, and all the while she’d wonder what if?
What if she’d been able to stick around for him when they were kids?
What if she’d come back to find him earlier before he’d turned dark?
What if she’d ever revealed herself as a person—a real flesh and bone friend—instead of just an attentive raven?
What if she was the reason he was so lost now?
Her low battery signal flashed and the screen went dark.
“No,” she whispered as Easton’s slightly baffled smile faded to black.
She couldn’t go now. Aviana shook her head and closed her eyes at the thought of leaving. Easton, or Beaston, was terrifying. Hell, his entire crew brought shivers up her spine. Bloodthirsty, violent apex predators who obliterated everything in their path. They would eat a peacekeeping raven like her for breakfast and pick their razor teeth with her bones.
But Easton’s life was now more mysterious than it had ever been, and she had to heed whatever was drawing her to him.
She would see this thing through.
She had to.
Because a life of what ifs was no life at all.
Chapter Three
Easton pulled his knife from the sheath at his hip and cut in one swift motion the zip tie that bound a trio of thick cable loops.
Matt watched him thoughtfully. He did that a lot—tried to figure Easton out. It was annoying, but then again, everything was annoying.
Matt shifted his weight and leaned back on the giant stack of processed logs behind him. “I bet the real reason Clinton left is because you never made a knife for him.”
Easton huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Clinton left because he’s a D-team dick. His bad decisions had nothin’ to do with me.”
“Think about it,” Matt said. “He begged you for one from the first time he figured out you made them. Maybe if you gave him a knife, he’d come back to the Gray Backs.”