The Apex Shifter Complete Set: Books 1 - 3

by Emilia Hartley

  “Doesn’t matter—I can tell. She’s in love with you, too.”

  “Bullshit. But we’re not here to talk about my sad, fucked up life. We’re here to talk about your sad, fucked up life.” He stirred the soup and started hunting for bowls.

  Sally was silent for a while. She found bowls for him, and a ladle. They took lunch to the empty bar. “Am I really going to turn into a bear?”

  “Yep.”

  She blew on a spoonful. “That’s it? Just yep?”

  “Yep. Eat.”

  “I’m scared, Thorn.”

  He blew on the entire bowl, and tipped it to his mouth. After he finished in a few swallows, he set it down. “Don’t be. The bear inside you, well, it’s you, a part of you. You’ll like her, and she’ll like you. See, our inner animals work on different levels. They don’t think about things, they act on instinct. You will benefit from this instinct most of the time. I say most, because my inner bear likes to dumpster dive behind fish markets.”

  “Will my bear just do what it wants?”

  Thorn shook his head. “No, but you’ll let her. Because it’s fun.”

  “It’s fun to turn into a bear?”

  “It’s the coolest!” Thorn said. “It’s better than an amusement park. You get to understand the woods just by the smell. You can run free—and really fast, by the way—and really experience things on a level that most people will never understand.”

  Sally ate some soup. “You make it sound pretty good. Except I showed up naked at your house.”

  “You need to start talking to your bear. She’s new, and she doesn’t understand the world. Once you start talking, you’ll find that the animal is only another part of you, of Sally. It’ll take some time, but you’ll get the hang of it.” Thorn gazed back at the kitchen, thinking about another bowl.

  Sally held up the silver fetish. “This keeps me from changing?”

  “Yep. When the moon is full, you’ll change anyway. It’s your first one, so I’ll hang out with you. In the meanwhile, the way you talk to your bear is to just sit quietly, close your eyes, and call to her.”

  “Like meditating?”

  “I have no fucking idea. But okay, sure. Like meditating.”

  ***

  Outside Le Cheval Blanc, Felicity felt like throwing her fists in the air and shouting “Yes!” But she was a cat shifter, and cat shifters were cool. And then she set her case on the sidewalk, threw her fists in the air and shouted “Yes!”

  On her way to the car, she pulled out her cell phone. She had to let Barry know the good news. Felicity saw she had ten unanswered calls and six voicemails. They were all from the same number. Oscar León.

  What now?

  Felicity wanted to call the office first, but from the volume of calls, Oscar was desperate to get a hold of her. She hopped in her car and dialed his number.

  “Mi Tesoro, you are a tough one to find.”

  Felicity had the feeling her moment of triumph was about to slip away. “What’s so important, Oscar?”

  “The case you hired me for, frankly, did not feel right. Instinct put me back on the hunt.”

  “I have everything I need, thanks. I told you the matter was closed.”

  “Sí, sí, but I was compelled to make further inquiries. We did not follow where the evidence led us. Instead, we shoehorned it into a theory that best fit. However, I consulted an old friend, one familiar with los osos, the bears. He confirmed a suspicion I had. Much like us cats, bears never kill their young over territory. There is only one reason for infanticide, and that is pasíon.”

  Passion. Felicity sat very still. The idea formed in her head, yet she could not voice it.

  “Given that information, I made a few calls. Law enforcement in the part of Alaska where the bear attack occurred is spread very thin. Resources are limited. While there was an autopsy performed, the woman who died protecting the boy was identified through the documents in her possession. They had no reason to pursue the matter further, only to find relatives of the boy.”

  “What are you saying, Oscar?”

  “It seemed suspicious, so I dug a little deeper. I managed to obtain the medical records, quite illegally I might add, on the birth of the boy on that wilderness road. Between the autopsy report of the bear attack victim and the information about the boy’s mother, there is no doubt. These were two different women.”

  Felicity gasped. “You think Thorn’s mother is still alive?”

  “That was the conclusion I came to. I was able to access the family service records in Alaska. It seems Baby Boy: Thorn ran away from every foster home he was placed in. Although the issue was buried, it turns out Thorn was never placed with anyone. He ran away, and disappeared.”

  “But he lived with his Aunt Lily.”

  “I have not been able to identify this aunt. She may be clan, a friend of Mathilda Sommers, a place to hide Thorn.”

  Felicity understood. “The invader apex would still be after him.”

  “And the only motive a male bear shifter would have to attack a cub, even a grown cub—pasion. I was very wrong about this case, and I am very sorry.” It was rare for Oscar to admit an error, even more so to apologize for it. “However, another aspect you might need to consider is this. If you have swindled the poor bear out of his range, and if you haven’t I’m disappointed in you, you should know that you’ve removed him from a place of power. With no territory, he is no longer apex.”

  Felicity gazed at the briefcase on the passenger seat. “Oh, shit.” She pulled out onto the street to a chorus of honking and pointed the car east.

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  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Although his job was done, Thorn still had stuff to do. He returned to Topiary Bob’s house and picked up his cash. Steve gave him the address of a body shop. It was half an hour away. They supplied him with a loaner car, a Japanese import he could just barely squeeze into. Since he was in a populated area, he stopped at a supermarket. The invader bear had eaten all his food. Thorn stalked the frozen food section before realizing that he wasn’t sure his microwave still worked. He opted for lunch meat and bread.

  As he drove the claustrophobic car home, he thought his visit to Sally had turned out pretty good. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when the moon filled out. She would still be in heat. Well, hell, he didn’t have Felicity to worry about anymore. It wouldn’t be cheating. What else was he going to do, chain her up in the back yard like a dog?

  It wouldn’t be cheating. The thought echoed. It wouldn’t be cheating. Anger heated him from the inside, growing like a wildfire. It was his bear who first spotted Felicity, his bear who wanted to cuddle up to her, to roll over on his back and get his belly rubbed. Well, the bear’s instinct sucked. He was the one who had been cheated.

  Finally reaching home, anger flared into full-on rage. A shiny muscle car parked in his driveway. How many cars did Felicity have? She probably cheated some other boyfriend out of this one. For a second, a fleeting hope rose inside of him, that she had returned to explain some emergency. Fury tamped that down fast. Right, an emergency that involved sneaking out into the night with the deeds.

  Thorn was going to give her a piece of his mind, get his deeds back, and tell her to fucking go away. He slammed the car door so hard that the little vehicle rocked. Fists and teeth clenched, he lumbered toward the trailer. Then, a distant sound slowed him. Drifting in the wind was the sound of a wolf’s howl.

  The Marinos liked to keep a low profile. Thorn had never heard them howl, except out in the deepest woods. With full-on bear senses, he caught wind of Laramie Marino. A second later, Thorn found him. Although his face was bloody and swollen to unrecognizable proportions, Thorn saw the construction logo on his claw-torn shirt.

  What. Thee. Fuck?

  “What. Thee. Fuck, Marino?” he asked, crouching down.

  Laramie’s one working eye rolled toward him. “Thorn. The bear…” The eye ro
lled back in the wolf shifter’s head.

  Thorn darted for the trailer. He saw that the door was re-hung, and that was nice. An instant later, he crashed through it. His heart nearly stopped when he saw the man inside. For one, the man lowered a sawed-off shotgun at Thorn’s balls. For two, Thorn felt like he was looking in a mirror. The guy had brown hair, sun bleached at the tips, a full beard, stood about six-eight in his boots. His broad face bore more wrinkles, his hair some gray, his eyes green and charged up with the high voltage of insanity.

  “Hey, there, nephew. It’s been a long time. Put ’em up.”

  ***

  Felicity floored it, swooping up Highway 84, dodging between the traffic. Rain started coming down hard. That meant half the drivers stepped on the gas, the others dropped to ten miles below the speed limit. No one seemed to care which lane they were in. Oregon drivers.

  Near Mount Hood, she headed southeast. As she climbed, dense fog formed in the valleys. Banks of it loomed in her headlights ahead of her before swallowing her in blinding mist. After nearly rear ending a sluggish camper, she forced herself to slow down. Not even her cat senses were enough to best the poor visibility and the randomness of the traffic.

  Her greed, her ambition, all of it seemed like a pile of steaming crap now. By swindling Thorn, she had pulled the rug out from under him. He wasn’t an apex anymore, and the challenging bastard was still after him. Felicity couldn’t live without Thorn. No matter how much she tried to fight it, she was in love. She would do whatever it took to have him back. Well, short of sending her car into a guard rail. She slowed down some more.

  Black, rain-heavy clouds and the setting sun conspired against her speed. Even as traffic, and civilization, thinned, the weather worsened. White-knuckling the wheel, Felicity drove on.

  ***

  “You signed over your range, didn’t you?” asked the Thorn lookalike. He gestured with the shotgun. “Funny, the things your bear can sense.”

  Thorn raised his hands. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I am kinda sorta your great-uncle. See, I turned your father years ago, which became a huge mistake. I’m here to correct it. Finally.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  The guy bobbed his head from side to side. “It’s a little complicated. What it comes down to is this: I was destined to mate with your mother. She was the most beautiful creature, both as a woman and a sow, the most desirable female in the clan, and she was fated to be mine.”

  “You killed her,” Thorn’s teeth ground together. “In Alaska. You thought you killed me.”

  “I could never hurt your mother. I’m in love with her. But she will never love me, not while you still live.”

  “So who did you kill?”

  “One of her sisters of the Kodiak Clan. They were bringing you to safety. Your mother was good at hiding. It took me a very long time to track her down. But the Kodiaks are fierce. The fight nearly cost me my life. I thought you would surely die from exposure, but your mother never came to me. It has taken me all this time to find you again.”

  “Maybe my mom doesn’t want to mate with you. I mean, you’re kind of a dick.”

  “Fate is more powerful than base needs. It was destiny that brought her to me in the Rockies. You’ve experienced this yourself with this feline of yours. The stars align, and you are brought together.”

  Thorn shrugged. “It sounds like bullshit. You didn’t end up with my mom.”

  “Only because your father’s bear was so much like my own. He was my friend, my best and only friend. He had saved my life many times. But he took ill, incurable, at that time, so I returned the favor. As a shifter, he could heal himself and live on, live on for many lifetimes.”

  “And then you killed him?”

  “You mother fell for him, when she was destined to fall for me. Instinct gave me no choice. But it was too late—she was pregnant with you. She can never be mine until I kill you. Which will be in a few minutes.”

  “That makes no sense. Bears mate when their cubs grow up. She’s still not coming to you, and I’m an adult now.”

  The guy who looked a lot like Thorn burst into laughter. “Adult? You live in a trailer, you eat microwave food, you knock down trees for a living, and you pay no attention to your range.”

  “Well, yeah, but I found a mate. Doesn’t that technically count as adult?”

  “With a feline?” the guy made a face.

  “You know, maybe this fate thing isn’t what you think it is. You seem pretty fucking nuts to me.”

  The invader’s face grew dark, his eyes dead. Maybe Thorn had said the wrong thing. What was the right thing to say to a guy holding a shotgun at you?

  “Because you signed over the deeds to this cat, it would be a simple thing to shoot you dead and place the blame on her. A murder over millions in real estate—that’s what she does, right? That could go all kinds of sideways, given human laws and courts and all that. But since I’ve been planning this for a while, I decided to stick with the original idea.

  “Instead, I’m going to shoot you in your bear form. There’s silver mixed in my shot, so you’ll stay a bear. I’ll claim you attacked me, the nuisance bear that’s been terrorizing this area. People are pissed off, so I’ll probably get a medal.

  “Then I’ll mount your head, and your glass eyes will stare down from over my mantelpiece when your mother comes to me. Perhaps we’ll mate on a Thorn-skin rug.”

  Thorn raised his brows. “That confirms it—you are fucking nuts. You’re Ed Gein fucking nuts, Jeffrey Dahmer crazy. And it’s no wonder my mom doesn’t like you—you’re such a pussy.”

  The invader angled his head, cracking his neck and took better aim with the shotgun.

  “C’mon, you’re such a big man, such a bad-ass, let’s fight. Put down the gun, and we’ll duke it out, man to man. Face it, there’s no way you’re gonna make me shift, asshole. Either shoot me or fight me.”

  The asshole shook his head. “Fighting is for idiots. There’s no need to fight yourself when you can get others to do it for you. That’s why I know you’re no adult, Thorn. You’re a big, brutish toddler.”

  With that, the enemy shifter reached into his breast pocket and dangled a small silver fetish, a tiny bear shape at the end of a long chain. Thorn turned at the sound of footsteps.

  Sally appeared in the doorway, eyes unfocused, shambling in like a zombie.

  The invader put both hands on the gun again. “Why, I can even get my new sow to do my dirty work. Sally, babe, shift into a bear. I want you to kill Thorn.”

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  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The hour-long drive took her nearly three, but Felicity finally arrived at Thorn’s woodsy trailer. What were all these cars doing in his driveway? With no room, Felicity parked on the street. She grabbed her briefcase from the seat and hurried toward the trailer. Her sensitive cat ears picked up a distant sound. Was that wolves?

  Holding the case over her head to fend off the rain, she picked her way across the driveway in her heels. A sight stopped her short.

  “Oh. You. Sonofabitch!”

  Sally stood at the trailer door, unbuttoning her shirt.

  Felicity stormed closer, tossing the briefcase into the mud. “I knew it! You. Fucking. Bastard!”

  The bar owner tossed her oversized shirt aside and went to work on her jeans. As soon as they were shucked, Sally sprouted a coat of fur, her body swelling, bones creaking. It took nearly a full minute, but Sally managed to change into a bear.

  Felicity didn’t need nearly as long. She raced across the driveway, shoes flying off, her favorite power suit shredded to rags. At full speed, the cougar pounced, launching herself at the bear. The cat’s front paws hit Sally hard enough to bowl her over into the trailer.

  The she-bear grunted and squealed in surprise. Surprise became mutual as Felicity used her claws to stop herself inside the trailer. A man who looked very much like Thorn held a sh
otgun on the real Thorn. She’d seen this guy before—outside the bar. There wasn’t time to think about it.

  Sally rebounded against the far wall. Instead of turning to attack Felicity, she lumbered toward Thorn.

  ***

  The asshole with the shotgun jerked as the big cat slammed into Sally so hard the whole trailer shook. Thorn instantly took advantage of his shock. He grabbed the shotgun. Instead of trying to wrestle it away, he slammed the barrel into the invader’s nose. Blinded by the blow, the pain, the invader stumbled back.

  Thorn’s roundhouse to the gut started as a fist, but as it reached the target, exploded into a paw. The invader screamed as Thorn’s claws gutted him sideways.

  The gun fell to the floor, the man sinking to his knees. Halfway down, his bear form ripped from his clothes. Up again on his hind legs, the grizzly’s head knocked the trailer ceiling.

  Thorn tried to scream, “Fuck you, asshole,” but it turned into a bellowing growl as he shifted.

  Kodiak and grizzly collided with enough energy to nearly topple the trailer from its foundation. Behind Thorn, Felicity faced off with the smaller Sally bear. Though the cat was smaller, Sally had no experience fighting as a bear, let alone against a cougar. Felicity pounced on her back, fangs biting into Sally’s neck as her hind legs slashed at the small bear’s belly.

  Girl fight!

  The bear would not allow Thorn to be distracted. He landed a mighty swat on the invader’s barely healed nose. He then rose halfway on his hind legs, both forepaws ripping at the invader’s flesh. To Thorn’s surprise, the enemy lurched forward, plowing into Thorn, fangs chomping into his belly. The force of it knocked him back, and the two apex predators crashed on the couch, cracking it in half. Thorn was tangled in upholstery and stuffing. His enemy delivered a swat to the head that made Thorn’s vision swim.