Brothers - Pack Special- Complete Set (Books 1 - 8)

by M. L. Briers

  This was a problem for her now.

  She was highly analytical of everything. It was that which she credited her success in not becoming a casualty and ending up on a morgue slab somewhere in her teens – that and magic. But this was a problem with only two real solutions. She could flat out kill her mate and walked away, or she accepted fate’s plan for her and settled down to whatever form of domesticity a life with a bear shifter would have in store for her.

  A mate.

  Motherhood and bear cubs around her feet.

  Was that a challenge too far?

  Would it prove challenge enough for her easy boredom?

  She’d come to the mountain for the challenge of taking on a few werewolves and doing the world a favour by killing them. Like a big game hunter with a difference – the game that she’d been hunting could change her life forever, from Witch to Were with one bite. That was the thrill of the challenge – killing them was the easy part.

  Now she was faced with a brawly bear with a mood that sometimes resembled her own. What was a girl to do?

  “Ok. Simmer down, big man,” she said standing her ground and readying herself for an attack should one come.

  If he was her mate as the vampire had said, then he shouldn’t attack. But, he looked half insane as a human, and his bear wasn’t that much better.

  Tyler stopped and twisted his head on his neck as he regarded her with mixed emotions.

  His mate. The woman who would someday gift him with cubs.

  He should have been happy, and there was a spark of it inside of him, he could feel it like a buzzing in his very soul, a butterfly in his heart, and yet, right then, he hated with a vengeance.

  Fate was a cruel mistress. It had led him down the path of longing – needing – desiring this very moment, and yet it had sucker punched him with the curse of his bear being out of control.

  She was too late. If she’d arrived just a few weeks ago, a month, he would have welcomed her with open arms and wooed the panties right off of her…

  Now she was in danger. Not from Connor, from him.

  He was the danger in her life that he needed to protect her from – to kill.

  A part of him wanted to go to her. To take her within his arms and feel the way that it felt when you knew that you’d found the one. The love of your life. Your soul mate…

  And the best part of him knew that would never be.

  Tyler’s beast reared up on his hind legs, tossed his head back on his neck, and roared like one pissed off bear with anger issues. Then he dropped down onto all four paws in front of her and snorted his contempt for fate…

  “Not exactly Winnie the Pooh friendly…” Chelsea muttered, but he’d caught it. Caught her words and the edge of fear within her scent… honey and jasmine… and fear…

  Damn him, and damn his bear!

  Tyler turned on his paws and took off in the opposite direction to his mate as his bear roared and clawed within his very soul.

  “W-where’s he going?” Chelsea looked up to the vampire that had frozen in anticipation of having to rescue the damsel in distress if necessary.

  “Be right back!” Connor bit out as he took off on fast feet through the treeline in pursuit of the stupid man and beast.

  “Yeah,” Chelsea looked about her in the darkness of the woods. “I’ll not wait right here for your damn return.” She ground out, feeling as if there were eyes staring at her through the darkness.

  She put her best foot forward and reached out with her magic to follow the vampire and the bear. For better or for worse – she had to know.

  ~

  ~

  ~

  “Please don’t tell me that he lives in there.” Chelsea was out of breath from the run, but she’d managed to follow them as best that she could, the rest had been magic, and she was thankful for it, but more thankful that they’d finally stopped running.

  Connor stood stock still and stared at the entrance to the cave. He’d followed Tyler all the way back to his makeshift home, and now, well now; he didn’t have a damn clue what to do next.

  “You have something against caves?” Connor could see the funny side of it even if she couldn’t.

  “Dark, enclosed, small, dank places…” she took a moment to feign considering it. “What possible, conceivable problem could I have with that?” She snorted in as bland a tone as she could manage.

  “Oh, I don’t know… your hair might frizz.” Connor shot back as he matched her tone.

  “For a vampire, you’re a scream.” She shot back.

  “I try,” Connor shot her a grin and she returned it with one raised eyebrow of contempt.

  “Well don’t,” she bit out. Then she folded her arms and tilted her head to the right as she considered her options. “I take it that he’s not playing follow the leader?”

  “No.” Connor winced, and it was fleeting, but she’d managed to catch it on his side profile. “He’s…” he cleared his throat, “hiding.”

  “Like hide and go seek?” Chelsea found the amusement in that statement.

  “In… a – way.” Connor winced again.

  “What way?”

  “We’ll go with hide and seek. You go first.” Connor motioned towards the entrance and she snorted her contempt for that idea.

  “Age before beauty,” she shot back, and Connor turned his full attention towards her, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth as amusement filled his eyes.

  “I can’t very well argue that one now, can I?” He chuckled, and it was her turn to motion towards the cave. Connor hesitated…

  “Why aren’t you running in the opposite direction?” He narrowed his eyes on her as suspicion took a hold of him.

  “Because, this… is… where… the… bear… went.” She said it slowly, as if he was five years old and she was explaining it to him so that he wouldn’t get confused.

  “Yes.” Connor’s grin widened. He kind of liked these smartass witches’ that were showing up. Life around the pack had become somewhat tame before they came. “But mates usually run in the other direction.”

  “I’m an unusual woman.” She raised her chin as if that was a great point of pride for her, and Connor respected that.

  “You’ll have to be for Tyler’s bear,” he muttered.

  “So now why don’t you tell me why my so-called mate is hiding in a damn cave instead of trying to woo the knickers off of me.”

  “It’s… complicated.”

  “I have nowhere to be.” She shot back.

  “Tyler’s… how can I put this?”

  “Shy?” She placed her hands on her hips and waited patiently for his reply. Even though patience wasn’t a virtue that came easily to her, she was trying to work on that problem.

  “More… deadly.” Connor offered back and saw the smile drop from her lips and her hands do the same as they rested at her sides. “At least, he thinks he is.” Connor added as her eyes flicked to the cave before snapping back to him.

  “And what do you think?” Chelsea asked.

  “I think he’s just misunderstood.” Connor’s grin widened to a full blown smirk.

  If that didn’t send the witch running for the hills, nothing would.

  ~

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ~

  “Leave!” Tyler’s voice boomed out from inside of the cave, echoing off of the stone walls, greeting her ears and causing her to wince, then pout, as she tossed the vampire’s words around within her mind.

  “Such a happy, welcoming, kind of a guy.” She mused, still thinking about what the vampire had told her, but needing to break that moment’s silence after her mate’s… request…

  “His bear kind of got away from him a little while ago, and hurt a friend.” Connor had turned his whole body towards her. He wanted the whole floorshow as he tried to judge just how much hand holding this witch might need from him.

  “Hurt?” Chelsea did the same. Turning towards Connor to get a good view of the look in his
eye as he recounted the events. Although, she did keep one eye on the cave entrance… just in case.

  “Almost killed,” Connor offered back.

  “Very different to hurt.” Chelsea eyed the man.

  He looked like every other damn vampire that she had ever known in that moment in time. Blank. An expression so closed off that a hammer and chisel couldn’t find the answers that she was seeking from his manner alone.

  She liked to judge peoples words and mannerisms on two separate levels. There was what someone said, and then there was reading between the lines of what they actually said and what they actually meant, or what they were hiding, and she did that by using their body language as a guide.

  He had no damn body language with which to speak of. He might as well have been a statue, carved in marble.

  Connor raised his hand and motioned with his finger and thumb about an inch apart as he gave a small helpless shrug of his broad shoulders.

  “I say potato, you say-”

  “Psychotic bear.” She cut him off.

  “Not exactly,” Connor twisted his hand until his index finger pointed upwards and she waited for the punchline. It never came, he was procrastinating.

  “Oh, do tell, I’m riveted to the spot in anticipation.”

  “Magic.” Connor offered with something of an apologetic shrug to his shoulders and a grimace on his face.

  “Magic?” She folded her arms across her body and waited.

  “A warlock, rather an unhappy one…” Connor offered and watched her raise just one perfect eyebrow. “Probably more unhappy now because he’d a dead one.”

  “He kill him?” Chelsea nodded just once towards the cave and heard a grumbled growl echoing off of the inside walls.

  “No.” Connor held up his hand. “My bad, or good, considering your perspective.” Connor grinned, but his eyes were empty of that smile.

  “Never had much time for warlocks.” Chelsea offered.

  “So, the warlock cast a spell that sent the local bears into a frenzy to kill the local wolves, and there you have his dilemma.” Connor motioned towards the cave.

  “I like concise as much as the next girl in all things but sex.” Chelsea heard a different kind of a growl coming out of the cave and ignored it. “But, just to recap, and so that I’ve got the bull well and truly by the horns here…”

  “He hurt a friend under the influence of the warlock’s magic and now he’s pouty – bear…” there was another deep rumble, back to its original, hungry, best. “And hence, he’s convinced that he’s a danger to everyone and hiding out in the dank cave.”

  “Ah.” Chelsea nodded for show while her mind whirled and swirled with everything that she’d just learned.

  “Ah, is that the best that you can come up with?” Connor shot back. “I was hoping for an epiphany, at the very least a reasoned argument.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. I’m just a simple woman with simple tastes.” She shrugged.

  “I doubt that very much. Even very low maintenance women have their dark side and hidden cravings and pleasures.” Connor grinned a winning, knowing smile. She snorted, but didn’t challenge or correct him.

  It was true – she had her guilty pleasures that couldn’t be denied, and that she would crawl over hot coals for, but she wasn’t in a sharing mood.

  “To get back to pouty-bear,” she noted the growl from inside and dismissed it again.

  “Ah, sidestepping the issue at hand, a good background for a politician.” He offered her a smirk.

  “I’ve never been good at the diplomacy thing-”

  “You prefer to shoot first and ask questions later.” Connor nodded. “I get that.”

  “So what do we do about your friend the bear?” She folded her arms across her body again.

  “You mean… your mate.” He offered back, scoring a homerun.

  “That too.” She shrugged.

  It was yet to be proven, but she accepted the possibility, at least, that was why she’d run over uneven, muddy ground in a nice pair of boots to find out.

  Another growl rolled out of the opening towards her. Connor tapped his finger against his chin and feigned considering it, and then he swept his hand towards the entrance.

  “After you.” He challenged her to the echoed sound of another, longer, warning growl from inside.

  “Love too.” She rose to that challenge and grew in stature as she pulled herself to her full height, shoulders pulled back, and her hands at her sides with her magic buzzing and fizzing at the ready inside of her.

  This could, of course, be some kind of trap.

  ~

  ~

  ~

  Tyler cursed the vampire, but not as much as he cursed himself for coming back to the damn cave. He was trapped. One way in and one way out, and his mate was heading in his direction.

  He could hear her footsteps getting closer by the second as his heart raced increased and his palms grew sweaty inside the fists that he held at his sides.

  This wasn’t good. He wasn’t in control of his bear, just like he hadn’t been in control of his bear the night that he’d attacked Mari in her cabin, and he had almost killed her.

  He needed an out. He needed his mate to get out of his cave.

  The vampire should have known better than to challenge the damn witch to come inside with a bad tempered killer grizzly…

  Tyler kicked out at the dirt of the ground and extinguished what little fire there had been left inside the ring of stones. It plunged the cave into darkness as he backed away from the sound, the scent, of his mate coming towards him…

  He couldn’t kill his mate.

  He couldn’t allow his bear to get loose one more time.

  He needed to control his heart, his fear, and his desperation to never hurt another living soul no matter what…

  How the hell was he supposed to do that?

  She was putting herself in harm’s way and the damn vampire was helping her.

  His back hit the jagged rock of the wall and he grunted as the pain shot through him. He’d live… he only hoped that he could say the same for his mate.

  The sound of her footsteps echoed off of the walls and made his heart skip more than one beat as she drew closer and closer and he became more and more panicked. Then, without warning, a bright flash shot through the cave and ignited the fire back to life, blinding him for an instant to everything around him…

  “Well, aren’t you cute…” Chelsea’s feminine tones riled the bear within him and caused him to growl out a warning in his blinded, semi-helpless state.

  Chelsea eyed the man standing with his back to the cave wall.

  Naked.

  Totally naked for her viewing pleasure, and boy was it ever a pleasure.

  His eyes might have been closed to her, but the strong lines of his face was like an open book. Dark stubble gripped his chin and swept up the sides of his face towards a mop of dark hair, tousled and spiky – just the way she thought it would have been after a night of showing her what that body could do for her libido.

  His shoulders were wide – side of a barn wide, and his arms were thick with muscles and corded all the way down to two big fists that he held beside even thicker, muscled legs the size of small tree trunks. But it was his chest that she was eager to get to. Ridge, after ridge, after ridge of packed muscles that made her fingers just itch to touch, to trace, and to discover them moving beneath her fingertips…

  And then there was his other attributes. Between the two thick muscles that rode his hips, and rising up to meet the thick band of dark hair that pointed downwards over his taut stomach, was something that she had no choice but to lick her lips for…

  His hard length twitched a greeting at the sound of her voice. Its girth gave her pause for thought alone, but the length was unmistakably a womb tickler.

  “Whoa!” Chelsea bit out on a muttered curse.

  Her eyes couldn’t seem to stop looking…

  Her brain swirled w
ith one curse after another…

  The man was a damn horse…

  So that’s what naked bear shifters looked like…

  Bring it on, sisters!

  No, wait… maybe that was a wee bit big to be entirely comfortable…

  Kind of like sitting on a barge pole…

  Maybe a cucumber…

  Possibly a watermelon… no, watermelon was too big!

  That was… big… That was…

  “She’s impressed,” Connor announced from somewhere not too close beside her.

  Not close enough for her to smack him one at any rate…

  “Get out!” Tyler roared with a rumble that carried on in his chest long after the words had finished echoing off of the walls and inside Connor’s head.

  “Or what?” Chelsea cocked her head to one side and eyed him.

  Tyler blinked a few times. It was as if he couldn’t understand her words, as if she was speaking in tongues. She took one step forward and helped him out a little.

  “Are you going to throw me out, big man?” She challenged him.

  “I said-” He started on a growl and a curled up top lip.

  “I’m not deaf and you’re loud enough to wake the dead,” she shot Connor a sideways glance. “No offence.”

  “None taken.” Connor’s lips drew wide in a big old grin as he watched the witch with a newfound respect.

  He liked her.

  He liked her a lot.

  “Leave while you are still-” Tyler growled, snarled, and grunted air down his nose…

  “Alive?” Chelsea demanded. Taking one more step.

  Tyler twitched in place. His fists clenched harder at his sides until he’d forced his nails into the palms of his hands.

  He could scent his own blood as they pierced the skin.

  That’s not good… blood. My bear and blood…

  He could feel the pain burning in his hands, up his arms as he gripped tighter, tried to hold onto his anger…