Sly Bear
Justice Squad Book 7
Scarlett Grove
Contents
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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
Chapter 14
Also by Scarlett Grove
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An Omega’s fire … Charity Morning is a werewolf Omega held captive by Raze, a cruel Alpha who wants the power her mating thrall can give him. When a vision shows Charity her true mate, she flees to him. But will the cool, controlling man she finds be any better? An Alpha’s strength … Aaron Blake must prove his worthiness to become his pack’s new Alpha. To claim Charity as his Omega, he must fight off the other males who want her … and then pleasure and dominate her in bed until he earns her trust. Only then, with her true submission, will their mating be complete. A deadly challenge … As Aaron and Charity realize that their mating is much more than a tradition, Raze and his pack track the Omega to her new home. They want her back--at any cost. Can Aaron defeat them all, or will Charity lose him before they can confess their true feelings? Super hot read. 18+ Steaming hot love scenes and mild violence. HEA Standalone novella.
Under the light of the full moon, Avery experiences a night of endless pleasure in the arms of a seductive stranger. When she witnesses his transformation into a wolf, she's convinced their passionate encounter was part of an otherworldly dream. But her pregnancy test confirms it was all too real and now she must find the father of her child.
Chapter 1
Emma Dixon pulled into the gas station and cut the engine of her Subaru. She'd been driving all day, and still had a hundred miles to go to make it to Denver. She was spending New Year’s Eve with her college friends and hoped that it would be the vacation that she needed.
She'd been busting her ass as a graphic designer at a startup in Santa Fe, but it had been four years of fifty-hour weeks, and being available any time her boss called her day or night, and she still hadn't progressed up the ladder. The last time she'd asked for a raise, he’d told her it wasn't in the budget, but she knew that a male colleague — who had been working there less time, put in less hours, and had a fraction of her education or experience — made more than she did. Emma had a feeling it had more to do with the fact that he went to strip clubs with her disgusting boss than his work ethic.
She was so ready to leave, but she hadn't been able to find a new place yet. She'd been considering moving back to Colorado, but still hadn't pulled the trigger. Maybe spending time with her old friends would help her finally make the decision. She hadn’t even dated since college five years ago because she'd spent so much time, effort, and energy on her job. Not that it had made any difference. She couldn't get ahead no matter how hard she tried.
She got out of the car to pump gas and check her messages from her friend Dahlia.
“You should join mate.com,” Dahlia had texted. “I just met a guy on there a few days ago. We had our first date last night, and he is the nicest, most thoughtful guy I've been out with in years. Maybe ever. And I've dated a lot of guys.” Followed by a winking emoji.
“Maybe I'll give it a shot,” Emma texted.
She tabbed over to the app and downloaded it. Her car was completely empty of gas and it was taking time to refuel for the last leg of her journey.
Emma got halfway through the questionnaire when the gas was done pumping. After putting the nozzle back in the pump, she pulled her car up around the side of the station. She finished the questionnaire and then turned off her phone screen as the matches were loading. Emma needed to pee, which was a current priority.
She tossed her phone on the front seat of the car and grabbed her wallet. Inside the gas station, she looked around for the bathroom. No one attended the front counter, which was odd. It was a remote gas station in the middle of nowhere, but it still seemed strange not to have anyone in the store.
“Hello?” Emma said. No one responded.
She walked down the hall and tried the door to the ladies’ bathroom, but it was locked.
“Crap.”
It was one of those places that you needed the key to get in the bathroom. She went back to the front of the gas station, looking around for the attendant. No one was around. She groaned and rolled her eyes. She needed to pee. Emma wasn't above popping a squat in the forest, but it was freezing outside, and there was six inches of snow on the ground.
She walked out of the gas station and around the back of the building. She saw movement inside a covered shed in the distance. Maybe the attendant had gone out there. She walked closer and then she noticed there were red spots in the snow. What was that? Was it blood?
She stepped forward, the figures inside the shed becoming clearer. There was a body strewn on the ground and another on his knees. A man stood over the kneeling figure and pointed a gun to his head. Both men were in suits.
Emma couldn't understand why two businessmen were in the middle of nowhere at a gas station involved in what looked like some kind of hold up. The body on the ground wore a workman's shirt. Probably the gas station attendant.
All this flashed through her mind as a gunshot rang out in the crisp still air. Emma gasped and covered her mouth. The man holding the gun looked up and shouted at her, pointing the gun in her direction. She screamed and ran, dropping her wallet.
She ran to her car and jumped inside, turning on the engine as fast as she could. She pulled out of the parking lot and sped onto the freeway, car squealing like a banshee.
Gunshots rang out behind her. Her back window shattered. Emma screamed again. A notification pinged on her cell phone. Emma clung to the steering wheel, gritting her teeth. The man with the gun was behind her in a Lexus SUV. He reached out his window and shot again. This time it hit the back taillight of her vehicle. A warning light came on her dashboard.
She screamed again. Music blared through her radio. Her heart slammed in her chest. There was no one else on the secluded stretch of highway.
She had just witnessed a double homicide! She floored the gas pedal, but the Lexus was gaining on her. The man shot again and this time it hit her back tire. The tire popped, she hit a patch of ice and began to slide. Emma screamed, trying to turn out of the skid, but it was no use. The ice and popped tire sent her spinning wildly toward the edge of the road. There was no railing to protect her as her car careened off the road and hurtled down the steep hill, charging faster than she'd been driving down the road.
Her car sped straight toward a bank of trees. Emma screamed, bracing herself for impact. The trees grew closer and she couldn't slow down no matter how hard she stomped on the brakes. In a blazing flash of light, her vehicle crashed into a tree trunk. Her head slammed against the steering wheel as the airbag smashed into her face. She lost consciousness for what must have been several minutes. When she finally looked up, she was bleeding from her forehead. Her whole body ached. Through the rearview mirror, she saw the man with the gun carefully descending the hill behind her.
She pushed open the door of her vehicle, then stumbled out into the snow, blood trickling from her head. She limped into the forest, trying to run. The man was getting closer. He fired a shot that hit a tree a foot from her
. Emma gasped, and started to run faster, though her leg was killing her and her head pounded.
The snow was deep and hard for her to walk through even in her winter boots. She hurried through the woods, leaving a trail of blood and footprints too easy to follow. Her mind was awash of confusion. She’d left her phone in the car. She should have dialed 911. Now no one could save her. No one would get here fast enough. She’d dropped her wallet at the station, too, so all she had were the clothes on her back.
She rushed deeper and deeper into the forest and came to the edge of a sharp cliff that extended in both directions. She started back toward the road along the edge of the cliff, hoping that maybe she could lose him.
She heard another gunshot and the man shouted for her to stop — that wasn’t going to happen. She hurried along the cliff, willing herself to keep going. She could sense the man was closing in on her. He would catch her soon. She attempted to look behind her. And in that split second of distraction, her foot caught on a root. She lost her balance, and with a desperate shriek, Emma tumbled over the side of the cliff. She fell down into the depths of the ravine, smacking her head against a rock at the bottom.
Chapter 2
Zander Shaw heard his phone ping with a notification and put down his book. What he saw on the phone made his breath catch. The text message said, “Congratulations, we’ve found your fated mate.”
Zander pressed the button to open mate.com as fast as his trembling fingers would let him. He was the last member of his crew who still didn’t have a mate. He was one of the younger members, but he wanted a mate to settle down with and start a family as much as anyone.
Most shifters were the same. Unlike many human men in their late twenties, Zander deeply wanted a wife and a family of his own.
He was a member of an elite clandestine military operation called the Justice Squad. Before he’d joined the Squad, he’d trained as a spy and military sniper. Now he spent his spare time as a psychological profiler for the Police Department and wrote a blog on the same subject.
But even though he found his life satisfying, there was definitely something missing. Until now. He tapped open mate.com and saw his mate's face for the first time. She was absolutely gorgeous, with dark black hair, pale skin and green eyes.
Her profile name was Emma, and she was a graphic designer from Santa Fe, New Mexico. It didn't say much more than that. He immediately hit the “message now” button.
“Hi, it's me, Sly Bear. We were matched on mate.com, and I would love to get to know you.”
He sent the text message and gritted his teeth. He usually didn't have a problem communicating with people, or reading between the lines, but this was different; this was his fated mate. Since she was a human, it was unlikely that she would be as ready to get involved in a relationship as he was.
He let out a long sigh, waiting for her to return his text. Of course, he knew that she probably had other things to do besides return text messages from lonely bears on the internet. Still, he couldn't help but feel anxious for her reply.
Minutes turned into hours, and she still hadn't messaged him back. He made his dinner and sat down in his living room to watch one of the police procedurals that he enjoyed on TV. Then the phone rang. It was Detective Sparks, his contact at the Police Department.
“The mayor has been killed,” Detective Sparks informed him. “His body was found on the side of the road fifty miles south of Fate Rock. It was an odd crime scene. Forensics suggests that his body had been moved. I was hoping that you could take a look and tell us what you think was going on in the mind of the killer.”
“Send me the details. I’m on my way.”
“This is a tragedy; we are keeping it from the public. So don't share this information with anyone.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Zander said.
He hung up the phone and took the last bite of his meal. The mayor being murdered was not good news for Fate Rock. The Justice Squad had been instrumental in taking out the hyena terrorists once and for all, but there were still bad people in the world. Even in the sleepy little town of Fate Rock, Colorado.
He picked up his phone and checked to see if Emma had replied. She still hadn't. He grumbled at himself, trying to maintain his patience. Of course she had other things in her life to do besides replying to him, but he couldn't help the sinking sense of disappointment. Maybe she would never reply, and he'd never get the chance to even talk to her, let alone make her his forever.
He knew that if he let himself have that defeatist attitude it wouldn't help him or anyone else. He had a new case to attend to.
Information was already coming in from the Police Department for him to look over, and he read the forensics files from the autopsy as he made his way to the door. The mayor was shot at point-blank range from above. Detective Sparks called again.
“We've had a development in the case. It seems that the owner of a gas station about twenty miles from where the mayor was found has been located on a back country road. From what we can surmise, he was shot with the same gun.”
“Interesting.” Zander put on his jacket.
“We are sending you the address of the gas station. Our team are out there now.”
Outside, snow fell in massive flurries. Zander continued to read the files as he walked to his car, wondering how the gas station owner and the mayor were connected. It simply made no sense. But this was why they brought him in to consult on cases like this: he was able to see things that the regular detectives were not.
As he got behind the wheel of the car, he took one last look at the beautiful young woman he'd been matched with. Deep in the recesses of his consciousness, he felt as if something was wrong. He’d just been brought in to investigate two homicides, though, and he wondered if he was just feeling the repercussions of that as he pulled out of his driveway. As he drove down the road, he tried to rationalize the sense that Emma was in trouble and needed his help.
3
She opened her eyes. Snow fell heavily on her cheeks. She groaned and sat up, her head pounding. It was dark and cold. Snow had piled up all around her. How had she gotten here? She climbed to her feet, the disorientation as deep as the biting chill of the snow. As she began to walk through the dark forest, she realized she couldn't remember anything. Not only could she not remember how she'd gotten here, she couldn't remember her own name.
Her entire life was a complete blank. All she knew was she needed to get warm. She needed to find a way out of this forest. She stumbled through the snow. Tripping over a log, she fell face first into a drift. She gasped and cried out as her face hit the cold ice. Pulling herself up yet again, she saw a glimmer of light in the east. It moved quickly away. Was it a car on the road?
She shoved her frozen hands in her pockets. So cold, so numb. She was lucky to be wearing winter clothing, or she wouldn't have made it. Her head ached. She reached up and touched her forehead and her fingers came back wet. How much blood had she lost? What had happened to her? How did she get down here?
She whimpered as she continued to walk. Her whole body felt as if it was a writhing ball of pain. It tormented her. Not only was she consumed by physical distress, psychologically she was close to panic.
She had to keep going. She couldn't break down or she would be done for. Her one hope was to find a road and flag down a motorist. She didn't know what state she was in. She didn’t know how she'd gotten here. What she did know was that finding help was her only hope of surviving.
She needed to get to a hospital. Her fingers were so numb with cold they were beginning to turn warm again. That was the first sign of hypothermia. She didn't know how she knew that and not her own name, but somehow, she did. She was not in good shape. If she didn't get out of this forest soon, anyone who might care about her would never see her alive again.
Another light zoomed by in the distance. She pulled her hood up over her head and shoved her hands in her pockets, trying to keep them warm. If she just kept mov
ing, she could save herself. She had a head injury. That must have been how she lost her memory. How had she gotten out here? Had she fallen? She couldn't remember anything, and it was so distressing she wanted to cry. But even as she whimpered in the cold, tears wouldn't fall from her eyes. She just didn't have the strength.
But she kept walking, pushing herself on as the tiny passing lights got bigger. To her utter relief, the forest cleared at the edge of the freeway. She stumbled out onto the side of the road. A semi truck barreled past without stopping. Still within the shadow of the trees, she groaned and pushed herself further into view of the road. She saw another car coming and pulled her hands from her pockets and began to wave them over her head.
“Stop,” she yelled at the oncoming car. “Please help me.”
The car screeched to a stop as it pulled off the road in front of her. The driver opened the door and stepped out. He walked toward her, and the light hit his face. He was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. As her legs finally gave out, he rushed toward her and caught her just before she hit the ground.
Chapter 3
Zander slammed on his brakes, skidding to a stop in the road. The woman in front of him was clearly in distress. He stopped the car and opened the door. As he drew closer, he could see her face was streaked with blood. And then realization dawned on him. Despite the blue lips and head wound, he was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was staring into the face of his fated mate.
Sly Bear (Justice Squad Book 7) Page 1