Stone Bear: Sentinel (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Stone Bears Book 1)

by Amelia Jade

  “I hope so,” he muttered angrily.

  The two of them had been following Evan for over a week and a half now, without anything incriminating.

  “I thought we had a break last week when he left Garrett’s wedding,” she said, shaking her head.

  Emma had called Gabriel in a rush the past Saturday when Evan had left their wedding reception in a hurry. The two of them had hopped in Gabriel’s truck and raced off to find him, but Evan hadn’t done anything. He had simply gone to a bar and had some drinks. They had waited outside in hopes of seeing someone go inside, but after a while they had called it a dead end.

  Today the Jade Crew was not scheduled to be up in the mountains, and Gabriel was hoping that they might be able to catch Evan doing something.

  “According to Emma, Evan left a few minutes before I picked you up, heading in the direction of town. We should be able to get to a position to watch him and follow,” he told her as they made their way across town as rapidly as possible.

  As it turned out, they barely made it. Evan came barreling along the road before they’d even had a chance to pull off and wait. Gabriel saw his blue truck go flying by in the opposite direction, and he waited until it was around a bend before he pulled his own truck through a sharp U-turn and sped off after him.

  “Easy there speedy,” Caia urged from the passenger seat.

  “I just want to get him back in range, that’s all.” True to his word, once Evan was within visual range, Gabriel backed off. They followed Evan as he headed through town. At one point, he went right, and Gabriel went straight.

  “Where are you going?” Caia asked, peering over her shoulder as she tried to watch Evan for as long as possible.

  “Hunch,” he said.

  A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of a building.

  “This is the Sapphires,” she said uneasily as she recognized the back of the building.

  “Yes it is, isn’t it?” he said mysteriously, smiling when she glared at him.

  “Now what do we have here?” he asked. Down the street, Evan had appeared around a corner, making a beeline straight for the Sapphire building.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” Caia breathed. She clearly hadn’t believed that his “hunch” would play out.

  If he was honest, neither had he, but it felt great to be vindicated.

  “So now what?” she asked as they waited in the truck.

  “Think he’s upstairs yet?”

  “Probably. It doesn’t take all that long if you don’t have to flirt with the lookout,” she said sarcastically.

  “No flirting today,” Gabriel said, and his voice had gone as hard as stone. “Follow my lead,” he told her, getting out of the truck.

  “What?” Caia yelped, hopping out of her side and trying to intercept him. His legs were too long, however, and she was forced to run to keep up. “Gabriel, what are you doing? This isn’t the way we were supposed to do things! We need a plan, an idea of what we’re doing before we go storming in there!”

  “I have a plan. Catch them in the middle of it,” he growled. He wanted this to be over and done with so that he could come out into the open with Caia. The sneaking around at night and pretending that they were just coworkers whenever anyone was around was getting to him. He just wanted the trouble to be solved, and this time he intended to bash a few heads in if it sped the process up.

  “This is ridiculous!” she yelled, getting in front of him and trying to stop his momentum.

  Gabriel simply picked her up and carried her with him to the door as she beat on his chest, trying to get him to stop.

  Just before he opened the door, he looked down at her. “They likely have no idea that we’re still interested in them. We haven’t touched or talked to any of the Sapphires since the last time we were here. No surveillance, nothing, we’ve let them go. They probably think that they’re in the clear. So we go in there without warning, knowing that the two of them are up to something, and we find out what the hell it is.”

  Caia stood back, blinking rapidly. “You put some thought into this,” she said slowly.

  He smiled. “Me smash,” he said, mocking her gently for her immediate assumption that he hadn’t thought anything through.

  “I still don’t think this is a good idea, but there is a possibility it might work,” she admitted.

  “Good enough for me,” he said, blowing her a kiss before pulling the door open.

  Across the lobby, the newly repaired lounge area for the Sapphire on lookout duty gleamed. A head popped up into the opening in the wall.

  “Touch anything and you’ll regret it,” Gabriel said as he covered the distance between them in a handful of swift steps.

  “Hey man, I don’t want any—”

  Gabriel’s fist closed around his shirt and he bodily hauled the shifter over the counter and tossed him on the floor. “Shut up,” he said stonily.

  The shifter’s jaw snapped closed, his protest dying abruptly.

  “You’re coming with us,” he said, pointing to the elevator that Caia had already summoned.

  The Sapphire guard nodded meekly and preceded Gabriel into the elevator, followed by Caia, who punched the fifth floor button.

  “Don’t,” he growled as the Sapphire opened his mouth once more. “Trust me, it’ll be easier if you just don’t say anything.”

  Teeth clicked as his jaw closed quickly.

  The door opened, showing them an empty hallway. Caia exited first, followed by Gabriel, who then turned and pushed the Sapphire back inside. “Go back to your post. Stay there.”

  The shifter nodded jerkily and the doors closed around him.

  “Which way?” he asked Caia as they stood in the hallway.

  “This way,” she pointed. “I can hear yelling.”

  He heard it too now, as he listened to try and make out the words. They were too muffled through the walls, however, but it was clear that two people were likely rather mad, possibly at each other.

  Without waiting for an explanation, Gabriel turned the handle for the door nearest the yelling. It was locked.

  “This is gonna come out of my paycheck,” he muttered, before throwing his body into the door.

  The flimsy latch gave way easily under his assault, and the door burst open.

  “Hello gentleman,” he said with a smile, strolling into the room.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Ben snarled from where he was standing opposite Evan. The two of them had obviously been in a heated argument. Their faces were already flushed as they turned toward him.

  “Good to see you too,” Gabriel replied, wandering around the apartment, inspecting various things.

  “You’re on my territory,” Ben growled.

  Gabriel turned and in the blink of an eye his face was an inch from the angry Alpha’s. “No fucking shit? Am I on your property? Because, and now correct me if I’m wrong, but all of this belongs to the LMC. Am I wrong in that? I don’t think I am, but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.”

  Ben’s lip curled back in a snarl, but he didn’t say anything.

  “That’s what I thought. So why don’t you tell me what you two were just arguing about? We had a noise complaint from next door, so we’re here to check it out.”

  “A noise complaint?” Evan said with a nasty laugh.

  “Yes. We might have ignored it,” Gabriel said, leveling his stare at Evan. “But just before that we received complaints about a smell. We figured perhaps we should come by and help take out the trash.”

  Evan bristled at the polite insult. Unfortunately Evan was too smart to engage in a fight, Gabriel thought. Shame. The Stone Bear was really hoping to be able to smash some heads together, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen, much to his dismay.

  “Did you have a reason for being here Gabriel?” Ben asked, his voice more exasperated than angry as the shock of being interrupted faded.

  “Just checking in on things,” he said with a smile, hea
ding for the door. “Enjoy your day.”

  “Go to hell,” Ben told him as the door closed.

  For fun, Gabriel gave it a sharp kick, which broke the door off its hinges and sent it flying into the room. The two shifters still inside yelped and dodged the flying object.

  Gabriel smiled and began to whistle a tune as he sauntered back to the elevator behind Caia. He knew she was going to tear him a new one as soon as the doors closed, but that didn’t make what he had just done any less satisfying.

  As it turned out, Caia waited until they were outside.

  “Well that was just amazing,” she muttered as they pushed open the doors to outside.

  “Absolutely,” he told her, but his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking about everything, and something was nagging at him. His brain was trying to tell him something about what was going on, but he couldn’t quite focus on it.

  He heard Caia snort in frustration as they got in the truck, but it didn’t really register.

  “What do all of these have in common?” he said, interrupting her as he pulled the truck out onto the street and headed back for the mansion. The idea was starting to form in his head, but he wanted a second opinion.

  “All of what have in common?” she asked dangerously.

  “The initial Onyx-Amethyst fight. The Opal crew, the general existence of the Sapphires.”

  Caia stared at him, her eyebrows raising in confusion as he glanced over at her.

  “Arrogance. Extremely quick to anger. Violence beyond the norm. A lack of sense of restraint. Disregard for their own well-being.”

  “Where are you going with this?” she asked.

  “If I told you someone who was generally normal but with a bit of a temper suddenly started exhibiting all of these traits, what would you say that sounds like?

  Caia’s jaw dropped.

  “I would say they were on something, a drug of some sort.”

  “Exactly,” he said, pounding the steering wheel in exultation. “A fucking drug. That’s what we’re looking for Caia! Someone is making, or buying some new drug that we didn’t know was out there. One that works on shifters, and turns them into maniacs.”

  Caia looked at him thoughtfully as she thought it all over. “That doesn’t explain the Sapphires though,” she said slowly.

  “Lower doses, or a tolerance,” he said after thinking it over. “It would fit with our thoughts that they were at the center of this too. That would mean they’ve been exposed to it longest, so they can either handle the effects, or they take it in weaker doses.”

  “And Evan?” she prodded. “He hasn’t done anything of note as far as we know since that fight. How does he figure in to it?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabriel admitted. “Perhaps he took it once to try that night his crew went crazy, and now he sells it for them? That would explain why he’s seen with them. Hell, maybe today he was yelling at Ben for a larger cut? I’m not sure.”

  “That doesn’t quite sound right, but it would make sense,” Caia said, then sat upright.

  “What is it?”

  “I wonder if we did autopsies of the Opal crew,” she said. “If we did, there should be something left in their blood, some sign of it.”

  He watched as she pulled out her phone and called in. The medical section at the mansion wasn’t overly large, but it did have several full-time staff, just in case. Shifters healed remarkably well on their own, but sometimes the bones were too destroyed or out of place for them to be set without surgery. Because they could heal so fast, the doctors had to be available 24/7 to perform surgery before any deformities set in.

  She hung up the phone several minutes later, obviously frustrated. He hadn’t tried to listen too hard to what she was saying. Hearing half of a conversation would have likely left him almost as frustrated as she looked.

  “I take it they didn’t?” he asked after a minute.

  “No, and they need the Kedyns’ permission to exhume the corpses.”

  “Probably not worth it at this point,” he commented. “It likely was even too late by the end of the day. But over a week and a half later? Nothing is going to be left.”

  “I know,” she said angrily. “I was just hoping that perhaps there had been some foresight when the office was informed. I think I’m going to ask the Kedyns to implement a change there.”

  He smiled. Gabriel liked her intensity and her drive. It made him feel more alive simply by being around her. Part of him wished yet again that they could simply make things public, and begin to explore their relationship in more depth. The sex was great, he had no complaints there, but there was so much more to her than that, and he was missing out. He craved just being around her, inhaling her scent and being with her. But at the moment, he couldn’t risk that. Neither could she, and it hurt him more than he was willing to admit.

  “Okay, I’m going to go tell the Kedyns what we’ve learned and suspect, and see if they have any more insight,” she said as the mansion came into view.

  “Sounds like a plan,” he said, grasping the wheel with one hand so he could hold hers with the other, a last bit of contact between the two of them before they had to resume their professional personas and forego any contact for the rest of the day. She smiled up at him and gripped his twice, giving it a double squeeze, which he returned.

  “I’m going to make some calls to the other Alphas. I want to know if any of them have heard any rumors of a new drug that maybe they thought was just silliness and not worth reporting. I’m sure one of them has heard of something or come across something. Hopefully they’ll share and we can come up with a new lead.”

  Caia nodded, and then quickly looked to ensure there was no one around. Then she unbuckled her seat and leaned over, planting a kiss on his cheek quickly before exiting the vehicle.

  Gabriel stared after her, his hand rising to gently touch where she had kissed him.

  Damn, I love her.

  Although it seemed rushed, he wasn’t surprised one bit. His bear was absolutely crazy for her; it craved having her near every minute of every hour, and made its unhappiness known when she wasn’t around. On top of that, he wanted her around all the time as well, and when they were together everything just felt complete and his life full. Or at least, he amended, full enough until we can have some cubs. The two of them hadn’t discussed children yet, but the few comments Caia had dropped told him she was likely as interested in the idea as he was.

  The idea of spending his life with Caia and raising their cubs together kept him warm and happy during the entire chilly walk across the courtyard to the Stone Bears garage. He slipped inside an access door and headed toward the offices. Two of the three heavy-duty trucks made especially for their use were missing, letting him know that Raphael and Uriel were likely out on a pickup, which was perfect, because he didn’t want them to overhear his phone calls. He knew they were good men, but he didn’t want one more person than necessary to be aware of what was going on in Genesis Valley.

  Picking up the phone, he dialed the first name.

  “Michael here,” came the smooth tenor voice of the Alpha of the Whitepines.

  “This is Gabriel,” he said, before letting him know why he was calling. “I need to know if you’ve heard any rumors about a new drug in town, or if any of your crew have exhibited signs of increased arrogance, lack of respect for authority, and disregard for personal health.”

  Michael thought about it for a moment before replying. “No, nothing like that has come across my desk,” he replied.

  “Okay, make sure to let me know if that changes, or if you hear anything, but don’t go asking around either. This needs to remain secret. When I can tell you more, I will,” he said, adding the last bit to cut off any inquiry. He didn’t want to spend all day on the phone explaining what was going on.

  Michael seemed to understand. “Very well. I’ll call you if anything changes.”

  Gabriel thanked him and hung up the phone. He then tried Marcel, Alpha of
the Frostclaws, and got the same result, though he wasn’t surprised there. The Frostclaws were the clear “B” team in Genesis Valley. They were heads above the next crew, and some days even challenged Michael and his Whitepines for supremacy, but overall they were the second-best crew in the Valley. They were also all polar bears, and preferred the cold. They spent most of their time in the high reaches of the mountains, mining the shafts the other bears would rather not. This also meant that they did not interact with those in the city much, so it came as no surprise to Gabriel that Marcel didn’t know a damn thing about what was going on.

  Feeling hopeless, he called Ajax. The Emerald Crew was rather well-known for being well behaved, so he wasn’t expecting any luck there either.

  But Ajax surprised him. “I can’t say I’ve heard of a drug, specifically,” he said. “But, I have heard rumblings of something, but not enough to track it down.”

  Gabriel felt his initial hopes falling.

  “There was, however, one of my crew who exhibited those signs. This was several months back, just after the Ridgebacks were formed. One of my crew impersonated me, sending a report to you, saying that I felt Garrett was useless as Alpha of the Ridgebacks, and should be removed in favor of Evan. I ended him, because that was the last straw, but his prior warnings all came about because he was being cocky and arrogant beyond what was the norm for him. I figured it was just because he had been spending more time with the Sapphires and they were rubbing off, but now I wonder if it was more than that.”

  “I think it’s safe to say it was definitely more than that,” Gabriel confirmed. “It would line up with everything else that we’re discovering, that’s for sure.”

  He heard an unpleasant sounding grunt from Ajax, before he spoke again. “Shame.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked the Alpha.

  “I assumed it was just Alex’s personality showing through,” he said, naming the ended shifter for the first time. “But if it was a drug, then I am to blame. I could have done something to help him, to get him clean. Instead, I ended his life.”

  Gabriel grimaced. He hadn’t thought of it that way, and now his digging had given Ajax—one of the Alphas he liked most—something that he would probably hold against himself for a long time.