Green Bearets: Jarvis (A Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Base Camp Bears Book 3)

by Amelia Jade

  Jarvis

  He waited impatiently for his pitcher to arrive.

  Goddamn those rear-echelon motherfuckers! Don’t they understand?

  Of course they didn’t. They were more concerned with protecting their shiny asses than they were with winning the war. He fumed.

  Although the last attempt by Fenris to raid Cadia hadn’t actually succeeded, being stopped before it began, it had rattled the stay-at-home politicians and other bigwigs of Cadian society. In fact, although the Fenris forces had technically been defeated, they had actually managed to inflict damage far out of proportion.

  If the raid had succeeded, the citizens of Cadia—the non-fighters and peace advocates—would have been forced to fight to save their own lives. That would likely have incensed them into a furor, to the point where they would have been willing to pitch in for the cause. Committing troops and such to the fight on the front lines.

  But instead, the raid had been stopped by the military and volunteers only, keeping the rest safe, but they were shocked by how vulnerable they really were. Instead of the support that the military forces of Cadia desperately needed out in Cloud Lake and beyond, they were being raided for strength to keep at home, protecting the borders and as security forces for individuals.

  It was ridiculous.

  Why, just that morning he’d been informed of more bad news by Colonel Richter, though this time he hadn’t been able to deliver it in person.

  So obsessed with his anger and thoughts was he, that Jarvis failed to notice the person approaching him. So when the curvaceous woman settled into the chair next to him, he was caught by surprise.

  He glanced over out of sheer curiosity. His eyes were already falling back toward the empty bar in front of him before he realized who it was.

  Every muscle in his body locked up as he tried to figure out how to react.

  “Hi,” Carrie said shyly from the next seat over.

  Her legs hung from the chair, dangling dangerously close to him.

  “Hi,” he replied, hating the way his voice sounded so stiff.

  “You look stressed,” she said bluntly. “Want to talk?”

  Talk. Yes, talking he could do. Talking was the safest thing for him to do.

  “Talking would mostly just be me venting and bitching,” he admitted honestly.

  Carrie looked unfazed. “So? Sometimes that’s what people need to do. You may be half shifter, but you’re also half human. And bitching and venting is a very human thing to do,” she told him.

  “It’s just about the Green Bearets,” he said at last.

  “Something happened to them?”

  His upper lip peeled back in a silent snarl. “Not yet, but if the turds back in Cadia don’t get their shit together and give us the reinforcements we’re supposed to have, then Fenris certainly will make something happen.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be getting a bunch more troops?” she asked.

  “We were. Until I was told today that I’m getting exactly half of everything.”

  Instead of two companies of bears, a mixed shifter company, and a squad from the RAF, Jarvis was going to be forced to deal with technically less than half.

  He was getting one company of Green Bearets, a squad of wolves, and four Pegasi, not even half the squad. That was the hit that irritated him the most. A full squadron of Air Fillies at his disposal would have made Cloud Lake a very intimidating target for Fenris, forcing them to divert serious assets if they wished to take it from him.

  Four was still a boon, and he still had the sole gryphon shifter Andrew Raskell at his disposal. But it was much less intimidating than it could have been. And it wasn’t like the reinforcements were being diverted elsewhere. They were being kept at home, to keep Cadia safe.

  “Only half?” Carrie asked. “Where are they all going? To attack Fenris?”

  He laughed bitterly. “I wish. I would be completely okay with that. It would take more pressure off us here in Cloud Lake if a raid were launched on Fenris. That would be better than me receiving all the reinforcements I was originally promised. But no, they’re just keeping them at home. The Battle of the Cavern scared the shit out of some of the politicians back home, and now they won’t do anything. It’s paralyzed them. And because of that, a lot of good shifters are going to die out here when Fenris attacks again.”

  “Do you really think they’re going to attack again soon?”

  Jarvis nodded. “Yes. We’ve done nothing to stop them from pouring more troops this way, and Cloud Lake is the only real outpost we have before they reach Cadia. They can’t leave us at their backs, so they’ll come here first.”

  Carrie nodded. “How would you even go about attacking Fenris anyway? Aren’t they on another continent?”

  “Yeah. But it’s actually a lot simpler than you think. There is a lot of money in the shifter world. All we would have to do is rent a freighter. Load it up with tons of food, and then put the men on board. We could easily transport a thousand shifters across the sea that way.”

  He snarled. “With a thousand men over there I could end this war, or at least buy Cadia enough time to get up to speed without being attacked continually while we try and get on a war footing.”

  The cutlery the bartender had dropped in front of him moaned as it bent and twisted around his fist as he squeezed it tight, trying to diffuse his anger.

  “Hey,” Carrie said, reaching out and laying her hand atop his.

  Her soft skin felt heavenly against his hand, and he felt himself relaxing almost instantly. His fingers uncurled, allowing her to pluck the mangled metal from his grasp and push it across apologetically to the bartender.

  “Bill me for it,” Jarvis said in response to the look on the other man’s face.

  The middle-aged man shrugged and tossed the remains in the garbage, while simultaneously pushing his pitcher to him.

  Jarvis took a big long sip straight from the jug and then moved it to the side.

  “It’ll be okay,” Carrie told him, but he barely heard her over the roar in his ears.

  Her hand was still touching his, and even as he watched, her fingers dipped inside the circle formed when his thumb curled around to touch his index. They were basically holding hands.

  In the background, music from a jukebox blared out.

  “Hey, I love this song!” Carrie said, her hand bouncing excitedly up and down on his. “Come dance. You can vent some more about those stupid politicians of yours.”

  Dance? Him? Jarvis suppressed a laugh.

  “Carrie, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m a giant uncoordinated buffoon on the dance floor. I have two left feet.”

  She giggled. “I’ll be all right.”

  He looked at her skeptically. “Do you like having your feet mashed?”

  “I have quick feet,” she promised.

  “You aren’t going to stop until I go dance with you, are you?” he asked, trying not to smile at her persistence.

  Carrie did smile.

  “Well, you’ve been warned,” he said, grabbing his pitcher and taking a long drag of it. “Liquid courage,” he told her in response to her raised eyebrows.

  She giggled and took his hand, leading him out there.

  Just as they reached the floor, the song changed to a much slower tune.

  Shit.

  Carrie didn’t slow down, however, or even act like she realized what had just happened.

  But Jarvis knew it. She turned gracefully and stepped closer to him.

  He had no choice now. He’d agreed to this. Swallowing nervously, he took her one hand, placing his left hand on her waist, slowly beginning to sway in time with the music as he guided her around the dance floor. His heart hammered in his chest as they moved, mere inches between them.

  This was wrong. He shouldn’t be in such an intimate embrace with her. If he were her boyfriend, Jarvis would be furious to see his mate dancing with someone else, someone who clearly wasn’t “just a friend.”


  “Jarvis,” Carrie said as they moved together. Her voice was tight, husky, and filled with nerves.

  “Yes?” he asked, looking down at her, wondering what was going on.

  His eyes widened as she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him. No warning, no chance to move away. Jarvis was stuck.

  Electricity exploded in his brain as his bear roared its delight. His fingers tightened around her automatically, pulling her closer to him.

  He tasted her warmth, the slight tickle of her perfume drifting into his nostrils. Carrie nearly melted into him, the distance between them evaporating as their bodies came together as well. He’d been caught by surprise at first, but now that he was reacting, Jarvis felt the tentativeness disappear.

  Her body felt delicious as he held her against him. Blood flowed between his legs and it took a lot of effort not to let his body betray him any further than it already had.

  The song died away, replaced by a much more up-tempo beat. He pulled away at last, horror filling him as he realized what he’d done.

  Carrie bit her lip as she looked up at him, not moving away. “Jarvis, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  There it was. She was about to tell him about her boyfriend. To say that he didn’t need to worry about him. That she knew what she was doing.

  Jarvis couldn’t let her do that. She was a good person, and it was his fault she had just done something that she would regret once they found her boyfriend. Jarvis needed to act, to do something to prevent her from saying that. This needed to stop here and now if he cared for her. He needed to be her conscience if hers wasn’t working.

  “Don’t,” he told her, planting his feet.

  Carrie came to an abrupt halt, looking up at him in confusion.

  “I’m sorry, I should never have done this. I shouldn’t have let this happen.” He stared into her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  And with that he turned and fled out the floor, slowing only to toss a bunch of bills on the bar as he passed it on his way out the door.

  ***

  He disappeared into the night, his long strides taking him aimlessly through the city as he grappled with the crisis of conscience occurring within him.

  “You fucked this one up,” he muttered to himself at one point, his eyes downcast on the streets, barely watching to ensure nobody snuck up on him.

  Cloud Lake was considered secure now, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any holdouts still lurking about, and as an officer Jarvis knew he would make a juicy target for them. He always had to be watching.

  Eventually his wandering took him back to the neighborhood he’d met Carrie in the day before. The one where her boyfriend lived. There hadn’t been time yet for him to get a second set of eyes to come look at Angelo’s apartment, but he still had the key.

  Without anything better to do, he decided to go take another look himself. Something had been off about it, and it irritated him that he couldn’t pick up on what it was. Perhaps in his current frame of mind he’d be able to identify it.

  It wasn’t as if he was doing anything else with his life that night after all.

  He took the stairs in two bounds before moving slowly down the hallway. The door opened easily, revealing the contents before him.

  “Okay room, speak to me,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  There was little that had been unpacked. Had he just moved to Cloud Lake? Perhaps to be closer to Carrie, so that they could take their relationship to the next level. That would make sense. At her place he’d stored his hobby stuff, climbing and diving.

  So he was into that.

  Jarvis started rifling through the bins, looking at his possessions. Very minimalistic living. The stack of books that he’d taken out the other day was still sitting there.

  A few novels. Some biographies of sports players. An atlas.

  “Hmm,” he said aloud, going to the bin that contained some pictures and other mementos.

  Suddenly it came to him as he looked through the contents.

  “There is absolutely nothing to do with climbing or diving here. No pictures, trophies, badges, books. Nothing.”

  He looked around at the other bins, opening them up quickly and going through them, but there was still nothing.

  “Okay. What else is out of place?”

  His eyes landed on the stack of books.

  The atlas.

  Taking it out, he began flipping through it. As he did, a piece of paper slipped from the pages. His supernatural reflexes let him snatch it from mid-air. It was folded. Placing the atlas to the side, he opened it up.

  It was a map. Jarvis had to flip it around to orient it properly before he realized that it depicted Cloud Lake and the surrounding area. It was topographical, showing the various hills and valleys.

  “What the hell…?”

  There were three circled locations on it. Two hills, seemingly unremarkable, and then the sole road that led from Cloud Lake to Cadia.

  He and his fellow shifters were notorious about their privacy. They didn’t allow anyone in or out of their strongholds, unless it was under very special circumstances. But neither were they stupid. Cadia didn’t produce enough goods to subsist on its own. Neither were many of the shifters into things like farming. So food and other products were imported from the outside regularly.

  The road from Cloud Lake was the sole paved way into Cadia.

  Jarvis’s suspicions that Angelo had been up to no good were rapidly becoming more apparent. The question now was…what?

  Tomorrow he resolved to head out and check on the marked areas. Perhaps he would find some clues there. Something was going on in Cloud Lake, and it was his responsibility to find out just what.

  Nobody was going to cause any harm on his watch.

  His bear growled its agreement.

  Chapter Six

  Carrie

  “What the hell happened?”

  Carrie shrugged, her eyes staring off into the distance as she slid back into the chair next to her sister.

  “I have no idea. We kissed, it was—” she stopped speaking, just smiling. “He’s a good kisser,” she finished.

  “It looked like it,” Andrea said. “So why did he run away? Are you that bad?”

  “Fuck you,” Carrie said, though she couldn’t help but laugh. Her sister was just trying to lighten the mood, she knew, so that Carrie wouldn’t mope about.

  “Did he say anything?”

  She shook her head. “No. I was about to tell him the truth about Angelo, but he got this deer-in-the-headlights look, told me not to say anything, that he was sorry for kissing me, and then he just took off before I could even speak!”

  “Men,” Andrea said, motioning to their server for another round of drinks.

  “I need to find him again,” Carrie said, making up her mind. “This is not going to end like this, dammit. He’s going to let me say what I want to say. That’s only fair. If he still doesn’t want anything to do with me, fine. But I’m not letting him end this based on false assumptions”

  Her voice was fiery as she vented her frustrations at the big shifter’s narrow-mindedness.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Carrie downed the rest of her drink as the server came back their way. “I’m going to get nice and drunk tonight. Then tomorrow I’m going to march right into his office and make him listen to me.”

  Andrea grinned. “That sounds like my sister. Bottoms up!”

  They clinked their glasses together.

  ***

  Carrie was extremely glad that she’d told her sister that “tomorrow” she would go back to the Green Bearets headquarters, and not anything more specific. Because something like “tomorrow morning” would never have happened.

  It wasn’t until just after lunch—which in reality was a late breakfast—that she finally felt good enough to shower, put on some half-decent clothes, and head out. Her head still pounded slightly until she got outside. But once the
re, the walking and the nice breeze served to wash away the last effects of her night.

  The hangover had been worth it. The two of them had always been close, with nothing ever truly straining their relationship, especially once they both came back from school wiser and less willing to put up with stupid bullshit. That similar mentality had meant that their relationship, if anything, had gotten stronger.

  And nights like last night only serve to reinforce to me how happy I am to have her.

  Andrea had done her best to help Carrie forget about the incident with Jarvis. Drinks, pool, and dancing with a small bachelorette party that came to hang out had done plenty to improve her mood. They’d stayed until late in the night before stumbling home, stopping only for some pizza.

  The fact that she hadn’t been planning on seeing Jarvis in the first place, that it had been a random encounter, helped to ease the sting of him leaving her on the dance floor.

  But she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. Her face tightened as she neared the old motel that the shifters had commandeered as their base of operations. No, he was definitely not getting let off the hook until she chewed him a new one. Jarvis was allowed to have his own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and desires. She had no interest in overruling how he felt.

  What he did have to do, however, was allow her to speak, to treat her like an adult with an opinion and feelings. If he still felt the same way after, then there was not much Carrie could do about it. Until then though, Jarvis would need to shut up and stop pretending like he and only he knew what was good for her.

  The click of her shoes on the pavement sounded louder to her ear as her strides became more forceful, carrying her past the external sentries posted around the building, and into the interior.

  Nobody stopped her until she approached the hallway that led to Jarvis’s office.

  “Excuse me ma’am,” a large shifter said, stepping in front of her.

  Carrie locked up at the sight of an unknown shifter confronting her.

  Dammit! I thought I was past this! She cursed at herself internally as her stomach weaved itself into knots, her limbs refusing to respond to her mental commands.

  This is not the same as them breaking into my house. This is simply a Green Bearet, a friendly, doing his job. Stop having a breakdown!