Green Bearets: Gabriel (Base Camp Bears Book 6)

by Amelia Jade

  Gabriel nodded. “Sounds good.” He turned to Luther. “Are we ready?”

  “We are,” Luther stressed, making it obvious he was leaving Gabriel out of the equation.

  “I’m ready,” Gabriel said with a frown.

  “No, you aren’t,” Luther said, and then tilted his head to look past Gabriel.

  Stiffening, he slowly pivoted to follow the other captain’s gaze back toward the intersection from where he’d come.

  There, standing on the sidewalk, looking in awe at the number of gathered shifters, was Stephanie.

  “Oh shit,” he said angrily.

  “Go,” Luther urged. “We have a bit of time yet. The last patrol hasn’t quite gotten back from the south. Until then we’re not heading out.”

  Gabriel didn’t wait. He was already moving, vaulting the half-dozen steps down to land on the ground. There was no hesitation from his men as he charged through them toward her. Toward his mate. They cleared rapidly, only one of them being sent stumbling backward as he didn’t move in time.

  The wind picked up as he did, and overhead he could see dark clouds blowing in from the west. A storm was coming. He wondered if it would break before the fight began.

  His boots nearly left skid marks on the sidewalk as he came to an abrupt halt in front of her.

  Deep blue eyes regarded him intently. They were guarded and wary, darting around everywhere as if expecting a trap. Her hair, he noticed, wasn’t in its customary pigtails. Instead she’d let it down, using bobby pins to keep it back out of her face, though the wind was already starting to undo those efforts. Much longer and she’d be forced to put it back into her pigtails.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but a sharp glance from Stephanie had it slamming shut just as quickly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Stephanie

  The last thing she wanted right then was for him to talk.

  But he was there in front of her, and something was clearly going on. She’d known from idle chitchat with Gabriel that there were many more shifters in and around Cloud Lake than were ever gathered at one time, but she’d never thought there were this many.

  “What’s going on?” she asked after silencing him. Whatever he was going to say, she didn’t want to hear it unless it was a response to her question.

  “Stephanie, I—” he began, but stopped when she slashed a hand at him.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, rephrasing her question. “You and your men.”

  His shoulders sagged as she made it clear she was only there to talk business.

  If you wanted to have an emotional chat with me, you shouldn’t have called me a mistake.

  “To do my job,” he said dully, his normally vibrant green eyes devoid of their sparkle and personality.

  “Your job?” she pressed.

  “Yes. My job. Our job.” He looked unhappy. “We’re going to fight.”

  “All of you?” She asked in surprise. “That’s a big fight.”

  He nodded. “The Fenris rebels are on the move. They’re going after Cadia itself. When they cross the border they’ll be in our territory, and we can finally deal with them. We can finally end this.”

  Stephanie had so many questions. She finally settled on the biggest one. “Why would they do that?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “No idea. And frankly, I don’t care. If we can do this, then perhaps we can finally end this war.” He sighed. “We could be at peace.”

  “What?” She was surprised. “You want peace? I thought you loved killing. You longed for it.”

  The huge shifter reared back in surprise. “What?” he seemed genuinely stunned, but she wasn’t falling for it. “No,” he said. “No, I hate it. Deplore it. It’s such a waste.”

  An unhappy look entered his eyes and he looked away from her at last, his attention focused elsewhere in his mind.

  “But I’m good at it, Stephanie. I wish I weren’t. I’d much rather be a carpenter, or a mason. Something where I can use my hands to create instead of destroy.” His tone firmed. “But I’m a good fighter. And there are those in my homeland who are not. Who cannot stand up for themselves. I do what I do for them so that they may have a life of peace and prosperity, without the worry that some foreign entity is going to come after them and take it from them.”

  Stephanie didn’t move as he spoke, his words imbued with a passion for protecting people, and a sadness at what it had forced him to do.

  A blast of wind tugged some of her hair free, drawing her attention skyward. Above them thick black clouds were ominously moving over the town, black thunderheads that while silent for now, promised to be trouble soon. They would start to press up against the mountains in a few more hours, and then who knew what would happen.

  “So this,” she said with a wave at the massed ranks of the Green Bearets, “this is just to help out others?”

  He nodded, the jade gemstones in his face one again oriented on her. “Yes. I’ll gladly pay the price exacted on me if it means that those who cannot don’t have to face what I do.”

  “The price?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  Gabriel looked away again. His jaw worked slowly. “Yes,” he replied at long last. “I’ve been here in Cloud Lake since we first came back. I’ve never left, except to take the fight to Fenris. I couldn’t, you see. If I left, then my men would be sent into danger without me. I couldn’t let that happen.” He frowned. “If they died while I was back resting, letting my bear recover, I would never be able to live with myself.”

  “That sounds stressful,” she said, wondering if all he was going on about was the stress.

  “It was. But it was worse on my bear. Keeping it in a heightened state of alert for weeks and weeks on end. It started to tear me apart, mentally.” He hung his head. “I should have gone back. I should have rested. Instead, I tried to be strong, to be invulnerable. But I couldn’t. I lost control.”

  “So why didn’t you take some leave?” she asked.

  “Don’t you see?” he said, his eyes coming alight at last as he spoke of his men. “I couldn’t leave my men here to be led by someone else. What if they got stuck in an ambush and I wasn’t there? What if Fenris launched an offensive against Cloud Lake and I couldn’t be there to give them proper orders? What if one of them died because I wasn’t here?” he finished in a whisper. “I couldn’t do that. They deserve better than that from me.”

  Something twinged in Stephanie’s heart as he voiced his fears. Not about himself, but for others. He was so scared that some of his men might die that he was letting his brain get torn apart in an effort to protect them.

  How could a man who cared so much for others think of her as nothing but a mistake? For the first time since she’d stormed out of the motel earlier that day, Stephanie wondered if perhaps she’d made a mistake. But there was more she didn’t know yet.

  “So what was this morning all about then?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her. “I saw you run inside, covered in blood.”

  “I lost control,” he said unhappily, not hesitating in his answer. “I needed to go for a walk, to calm myself down. My bear was too riled up and…and I couldn’t contain it. I barely made it to the woods north of town before it took over. It…went wild, running through the forest.” He took a deep breath. “I was set upon by a group of Fenrisians.” Gabriel paused. “It didn’t go well for them.”

  “You killed them,” she said bluntly.

  “Yes,” he snarled. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I killed them before they could kill me. That’s what war is, Stephanie Holmes. People kill each other.” His eyes bore into her, the full weight of his stare, of the knowledge of what he’d done, bearing down upon her. “It’s something I hope you never have to know the truth of.”

  Despite her earlier anger, and her promises to herself never to forgive him, Stephanie found herself wondering if perhaps she’d heard things wrong. Or that he hadn’t meant his words the way they’d come out.

 
“Captain Korver!” a voice boomed over the assembled shifters.

  Gabriel straightened and looked over his shoulder. She saw another shifter make some hand motions in his direction.

  “Shit,” he swore. “Listen, Stephanie, I have to go. We can’t delay. If we do, the Remnants will hit the troops assembling to meet them from Cadia without our support. People will die. I wish I could postpone this to talk more with you, but I have to put my personal life aside for this. Lives depend on it.”

  He stepped forward and took her by the shoulders. “I don’t know what I did, but you’ve got to believe me when I say I didn’t mean for anything to hurt you. I could never do that. You mean too much to me for that.” Anger—at himself, not at her—appeared in his face. “I should have told you that this morning. Or last night. But I couldn’t find the words. So know this. If I make it through today, if I survive, and we finally find peace, know that I will do whatever it takes to make you the happiest woman alive. Because you deserve it.”

  He bent down, kissed her forehead softly, and then with one last look of regret, dashed through the crowd, bellowing at his men to fall in line.

  Moments later the assembled group of Green Bearets began to jog down the street. Then they were gone, leaving her standing alone as the wind skirted down the street, blowing debris everywhere as it went.

  A single tear rolled down her face.

  Stephanie had been wrong. She just knew it. The words he had just spoken rang with a clarity of truth that couldn’t be faked. Whatever mistake Gabriel had thought he’d made with her, it hadn’t been about being with her. She knew that now.

  You idiot. Why didn’t you just ask him before you left? You could have saved yourself so much trouble! Now he’s marching off to battle, and neither of you even know if he’ll survive.

  Because asking him would have been too damn logical, and emotions don’t run on logic! She’d been upset and hurt, and needed to be alone, and… oh God.

  She’d given her boss a nasty story attacking him and his men. If that story got out…And if he died, he’d never be able to refute it, and. And. And.

  “STOP!” she screamed at her brain as the consequences of all her actions, and of where he was going, all began to come home to roost within her mind.

  Stephanie shoved that all aside. She needed a course of action.

  It was time to set right the wrongs she made.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Gabriel

  He and Captain Klein led the formation from town.

  Word spread faster than they ran—which was impressive considering they were moving at a pace that would put any human out jogging to shame—and crowds began to line the street. Not many, as Cloud Lake wasn’t overly populous to begin with, but enough to make them feel almost like celebrities.

  Gabriel didn’t pay any attention to it. He barely kept it together enough to follow Luther as he took them through various turns as they headed for the northeast corner of the city. His mind was elsewhere.

  “What did I do wrong?” he asked aloud.

  “What?” Luther asked, leaning in.

  Overhead the Pegasi glided by, pacing the much slower moving ground-bound formation. Far ahead of them he could see the four gryphons, though their forms were almost lost against the dark background of the clouds. It was almost one in the afternoon, and already the sky was darkening as the storm built up steam. It was going to be a bad one, he could tell.

  “Stephanie,” he said, finally remembering to answer his friend.

  “I thought things with you two were good?”

  Gabriel frowned. “So did I,” he replied. “But apparently I was rather wrong. I didn’t have enough time to get it out of her, but she’s pissed at me.” Another frown. “And hurt, too. As if I did something to her. Purposely.”

  “What the hell could you have done? You’ve barely spent any time apart,” Luther said, his voice sounding as confused as Gabriel felt.

  “Tell me about it! We’d just mated for the first time and…” he trailed off.

  “Mated?” Luther asked in surprise. “I didn’t realize things were that serious between you. Is she yours?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “No idea. I think so, but I’ve never, well, you know.”

  “Been with a woman before?”

  He snorted. “I’m serious, Luther. Try and be serious for once, okay?”

  The other shifter quieted down, his head turned to regard Gabriel as they jogged at the head of the long column of warriors behind them. The pace was slow for them, but once they reached the forest at the edge of town, they would be able to shift and make much better time.

  “You’ve never felt like this before,” he said at last.

  “Exactly.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  Gabriel fell silent.

  “Well, there’s your problem. You marched off to battle without telling the woman that you loved her!”

  “I want to be sure before I say it,” he resisted stubbornly.

  It was Luther’s time to snort. “Are you for fucking real? You think this woman is your mate, but you don’t know if you love her?”

  “I…” Gabriel faltered, falling momentarily out of step with the others. “Shit,” he said as he double-stepped to return to formation. “Yeah, I never thought of it that way. But how do I know whether she’s my mate or not?”

  “You really are dense, aren’t you?” Luther said. “You ask your bear, you big idiot.”

  Even before the words were out of his mouth, Luther stiffened and turned to look straight ahead. “Shit, I’m sorry Gabe, I wasn’t thinking.”

  He waved it off. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own that he and his bear weren’t talking. There was no sense in tiptoeing around the damn issue either. He needed to confront it head-on, and deal with it. Otherwise he might never repair the damage.

  “I’ll fix things after this,” he replied.

  “Fix things with her, or with yourself?” Luther asked softly.

  “Both,” he replied firmly. “I can’t afford to lose her, Luther. I can’t. She makes me feel…” he sighed. “I don’t even know. She frustrates the hell out of me, yet I can’t stop thinking of her! I want to roll my eyes when she tries to interview me, but the moment I touch her, my skin on hers, it’s like nothing else matters. Even just holding her hand is sheer ecstasy.”

  A small smile appeared on Luther’s face. He was likely thinking of his mate, Allix, and how she made him feel.

  “Yeah, I know that feeling,” Luther said dreamily.

  “Is that what it was like between you and Allix?” he asked tentatively, not sure if he was allowed to dive into the personal life of another shifter. They were notoriously reluctant to talk about things like emotions and love with each other. The conversation was already bordering on being more intimate than either would prefer.

  “Was?” Luther replied, the little smile becoming a bigger one. “No, it still is. Every morning, afternoon, and night. Each and every day is the same. Amazing. She can drive me up the walls, sure. I know I do the same to her as well. But nothing ever makes me want her less, and I can honestly not imagine what my life would be like if she weren’t in it. I would…I would be…”

  “Lost?” Gabriel supplied, using the only word he could think of to describe how he felt at the moment with the knowledge that Stephanie was mad at him.

  “Yes. Lost.”

  “But I’ve only known her for a few days,” Gabriel said, expressing some of his doubts now.

  “Uh-huh, and?” Luther said. “You know it doesn’t take long with us. Once we find them and mate with them for the first time, we either know or we don’t. That should come as no surprise to you.”

  Gabriel frowned. “I guess not. But…well, I’ve just never been there before. It seems so abrupt, like I shouldn’t be believing it to be true.”

  “None of us have been there before, until we go through it,” Luther said with a laugh, clapping his friend on the back. �
�That’s part of the fun!”

  “Fun, right,” he muttered, pain once again flowing through him as he remembered the way Stephanie had looked at him just before he left her standing in the street.

  He’d left her. Fuck. What if he didn’t make it back? Many shifters were going to die that day, and he could easily be one of them. What if he didn’t get a chance to tell her the truth? To tell that he l—

  “Here we go!” Luther shouted as they reached the forest, interrupting his thoughts.

  The moment they crossed the border of the city, the Green Bearets began to shift. It started with the two captains at their head, and then continued, rank by rank as they ran on.

  Changing on the fly was a complicated procedure, but something that every Green Bearet trained relentlessly to be able to do with coordination.

  Even as their limbs stretched and realigned, adding bulk and power to them, they fell onto all fours. Instead of slowing, they increased their speed. Behind them the rows of shifters all began to do the same, each row starting their change at the same time, and flowing forward until the change was complete.

  Less than five minutes after the first rank started their change, the last rank had finished theirs. The bears moved faster, though they stayed in their ranks as they crashed through the forest, splitting into columns as necessary to move around trees and other obstacles. They were a living, breathing river of death bearing down on their enemies.

  Although someone like Colonel Jarvis should theoretically have been leading such a large contingent of Green Bearets, Gabriel was happy and proud to be doing so. It was a huge honor for him, and it also meant he could do his best to ensure his men survived the coming battle.

  Overhead he heard a screech, and moments later as they moved into one of the many clearings in the forest, he saw a trio of shapes high in the air above them moving into position.

  Dragons.

  They must have come from Cadia, sent to help protect his men. Gabriel breathed a huge sigh of relief at that, one of his biggest worries evaporating at their presence. As powerful as his column of warriors was, even with the six members of the RAF and the quartet of rogue gryphons under the command of Andrew Raskell, the column would have been very, very vulnerable to attack by dragons from the Remnants.