by Kyrii Rayne
BEAR LODGE SHIFTERS – Book 4
Bear Trap
Kyrii Rayne
Dreamstone Publishing © 2019
www.dreamstonepublishing.com
Copyright © 2019 Dreamstone Publishing and Kyrii Rayne
All rights reserved.
No parts of this work may be copied without the author’s permission.
ISBN: 978-1-925915-07-5
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organisations, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Damage Control
Chapter 2 - Vendettas
Chapter 3 - Nightmares and Sweet Dreams
Chapter 4 - Not Just Warriors
Chapter 5 - Carly
Chapter 6 - A Flower on the Battlefield
Chapter 7 - The Ones Others Fear
Chapter 8 - Internet Heroes
Chapter 9 - Eve of Battle
Chapter 10 - Best Laid Plans
Chapter 11 - Monster at the Door
Chapter 12 - A Day Without Goodbyes
About the Author
Here is your preview of Bear Territory
Chapter 1 – The Funeral
Other Books from Kyrii Rayne
Other Books from Dreamstone Publishing
Chapter 1 - Damage Control
“So let's just go through this again, to make sure we're on the same page.” Darrin sat back from peering at his laptop, reaching for his ubiquitous coffee mug as he glanced around the table. The tech billionaire looked bad, his dark hair askew and his brown eyes sunken. Even the tie of his good suit was a little crooked. But his voice was firm and his expression focused as he checked his notes. “We have... six ex-members of the lodge who were exiled for organizing a hunt of human targets. I've been keeping tabs on them, but somehow one of them managed to get in contact with a bunch of shifter hunters and send them after us last month. And we don't know which among them is behind it yet.”
“That about covers it.”
Jake sat across the table from him, all six and a half feet of him crammed into the heavy wooden chair. He was close enough in coloring to Darrin that they might have been related, but so much bigger and heavier built that he dwarfed the older man. His gray work shirt and jeans strained against bulging muscles as he moved, and his chin and hair tended toward the scruffy.
“Seems like it's time to see what we can do about changing that, because otherwise the Renegades could just keep tossing problems at us.”
Sitting next to him at the table, Anna, Jake's fiancée, looked between the two men, and kept her own counsel for now. She was smaller than either and curvy, with wavy honey-colored hair she had braided up today, for the wind outside the Lodge blew hard through the Wyoming Mountains. She didn't want to come back from her post-breakfast hike with her hair tangled up hopelessly.
She wore dark wash jeans and a blue flannel shirt under a puffy black down vest, and big, clunky waterproofed hiking boots. Her eyes were green, and she kept them fixed mostly on Darrin as he pecked tiredly at his laptop.
The last few months had been a trial for everyone at the Lodge, whether human or otherwise. The Lodge had originally been meant as a haven for wilderness-loving Bear shifters— like both Darrin and Jake— and their human mates, like herself. It served as a private place where shifters of that breed could gather, hunt, drink and socialize in either form, without worrying about having their privacy or safety compromised. Normally, anyway.
But when Jake's father, one of the Lodge leaders and the property owner, had gone insane and arranged for some of the Lodge members to join him in an arranged hunt of human beings, things here had started a rapid downward slide. Now, several Bears had left the Lodge entirely, some others had been exiled, and the ones left were in an uproar currently over the recent brush with shifter hunters.
Lodge leadership had handled everything so far, but there were far too many loose ends for their safety, and now Darrin, Jake and Anna had to figure out how to deal with them. His father's death had left Jake in charge of the property, and with a significant say in leadership decisions. But he was new and young, compared to many in the Lodge, and so often found himself second-guessed by more senior members. He had the support of the Lodge's leader, Helga Thorsdottr. But Helga was back in the hospital now, exhausted by the trials they had all had to plow through, and struggling against health issues her healing and rejuvenation powers could no longer keep up with, in her advanced age. And without her around, more and more, Jake was forced to field questions about the safety and future of the Lodge that he just didn't have answers for yet. Hence this hasty breakfast conference.
So here they were, having barely ordered their food, sitting at a Canteen table in the Lodge. They had spent the last twenty minutes trying to figure out what to tell the Lodge members who wanted to know if the six renegades would cause more trouble. Considering that each of the exiled members was a full-fledged Bear shifter, extraordinarily difficult to kill and with all the significant power and options available to billionaires, it was a serious concern.
“We're going to have to seriously posse up on this one. If those six have scattered, we'll end up traveling around looking in a lot of places. But considering they were my father's in-group, they are more likely to be in one place, or largely in one place, working together. After all, who are they going to be able to trust besides each other? Everyone in Bear society knows by now that they decided to hunt humans. That's just not done.” Jake tried his own coffee and pulled a face. “Holy crap, Darrin, what did you tell the kitchen to brew us, rocket fuel?”
Darrin nodded unrepentantly.
“Better than that watered-down garbage they had before. Dump some sugar and cream in there and you'll be fine.”
“I dump any sugar into this and I'll be talking like a cattle auctioneer after one cup.”
Jake took another swallow anyway.
“Do it. I could use the laugh.”
“So what have the investigators you put on these guys said? It's possible for them to be working together without being together physically. All it would take would be for them to each have Internet connections.”
Anna took a careful bite of her bagel. She was a few months pregnant, not showing yet but queasy most of the time. Any food she put in her mouth had the chance of turning sideways on her before she could get it down her throat. But she had to gamble on it, because otherwise she would keep losing weight, and that wouldn't help her or the baby. She chewed slowly and swallowed, feeling her throat tighten a little but managing to get it down. “Ugh.”
“You OK, Baby?”
Jake looked at her in concern. He was always protective, but since discovering her pregnancy last month in the middle of the Hunter crisis, he had become positively hovery. She didn't mind. It was pretty useful when one of the risks she was trying to avoid was falling on her ass on the icy streets.
“Just the usual. I'll push down the rest of this bagel and some fruit, but that's probably it for me for a while.”
She smiled at him tightly.
He nodded with a little sigh. Anyone who thought a pregnancy was only hard on the one partner didn't have a partner who truly cared about them. And Jake cared for her – intensely. She felt a little bad for him. He was powerful enough to protect her from almost any physical threat or trouble. But this one was something he could do absolutely nothing about, aside from a few things to tend to her and avoid irritating her stomach. And so he seemed to be spending a lot of his time frustrated, and sometimes
genuinely more worried than he had to be.
Darrin downed the remainder of his cup of coffee, and slid it to the edge of the table for the server to grab.
“We're only fortunate that Hunters operate in separate cells, and do not generally communicate with one another. Doctrinal differences, and some of them are organized around this or that religious sect. If they did cooperate much at all, we would probably have even more of them on our backs already. But as it is, once the renegades find another group of Hunters to throw at us, there's no reason why we won't have to face the same crap over again.”
“Well, at least if they do, we have some experience now in kicking Hunter ass.”
Jake sounded more confident than he probably felt. Anna glanced at him and he banished the doubt from his expression, and gave her a smile. Anything to reassure her. She adored him for that, but she also wished he didn't feel it was necessary.
But Darrin stayed closed-faced and tense, as if unwilling to accept reassurance.
“Last time, we had luck, surprise, a turn-coat with information on the Hunter group, and a lot of backup. Next time a group like them rolls into town, we may not be so lucky.”
“Okay, that's true, but that goes back to my question about what your investigators have dug up,” Anna pointed out gently.
Keeping him on track while he was this stressed out wasn't easy. She wondered how his work assistants managed it.
Darrin nodded distractedly. He was the only one among them who seemed to have felt no relief at all when they had successfully fought the Hunters. It seemed a little bit as if he was stuck in a state of fear about them, which didn't make much sense to Anna. Granted, she had only known him a few months, but he had been Jake's friend for a lot longer. Jake had never mentioned anything about Darrin that would lead her to believe he had trouble getting past stressful situations. But every time anyone mentioned Hunters, from the very beginning, Darrin would get touchy and distracted, his mood dropping into a sort of morose guardedness.
“Darrin, are you all right? You look like you haven't been sleeping.”
Sleep deprivation shouldn't have troubled him much; he had a Bear's superhuman constitution. But the more she looked at him, the rawer he seemed. His eyes were even bloodshot.
He scoffed a little, and his smile trembled on the edge of extinction.
“Hunters... the ones that we ran into are pretty typical. They're fanatics, they don't care if innocent bystanders die, and they will use any tactic that is convenient, no matter how horrible.”
Something Anna could certainly confirm. The last group had tried to kidnap her, and had ensured her compliance by threatening to open fire on a crowded theater lobby.
“How do you know so much about them?” she asked Darrin gently. “I noticed you talking about them like this before, but I didn't have the chance to ask.”
His smile died completely as she and Jake watched. He poked at his keyboard a little, his eyelids lowered almost too far. Finally, he looked up, his expression grim.
“They killed half my family,” he replied softly.
Jake sat back, eyes wide. “Jesus, dude. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well. I don't talk about it. It's not exactly a good conversation to get into with people, and it brings up a whole lot of really bad memories. But it's the reason I'm alone at Christmas, and the reason the remainder of my family headed off to Canada a decade ago. All the arguments of what a safe, civilized place the States are for shifters goes out the window when some fucking lunatic hits the side of your family van with a blast from a rocket launcher.”
“S... something they would have a lot harder time owning or transporting in Canada?”
“Exactly. God bless America.”
Darrin did smile, then, but it was bitter and his eyes squinted, as if he were tasting something unpleasant.
“So this whole situation must feel even crazier for you than for the rest of us.”
Jake rubbed his face.
Darrin fidgeted with his laptop restlessly before replying. “When I found out that these Bears were sending Hunters after us to do their dirty work, I have to admit, I couldn't believe it. Not even after all they did.” He looked at Anna apologetically. “I'm sorry. I know they targeted you and Mark for their hunt. But it's different when your own people send these... fanatics... against you.”
“You don't have to apologize,” Anna replied softly. “At least now I get more where you're coming from. And I can understand how horrified you are. It's like siccing a group of serial killers on some of your own family members.”
She wondered, looking at him, his haunted eyes and the way his hands shook just a little as he smoothed one back through his hair. Had he been in the car when the rocket had hit? He must have been in his late teens at the time. Maybe he had been away at college and gotten the news that a bunch of his kin had just been blown off the road by a psychotic paramilitary group. Maybe he had been close when it happened, and been forced to hide and watch while his family was killed. Anna had too big a heart to ask him for details.
Morbid curiosity might be a human universal, but it didn't have to be satisfied every damn time. Especially when someone else might pay for it in flashbacks.
Jake coughed awkwardly into his fist. The little gesture seemed to snap Darrin out of it, and he looked up from his screen again.
“The latest news from the investigators I put on watching our suspects is that three of them flew to Denver at the same time a few days ago. For the good of the Lodge, it might be best if we consider investigating there physically.”
“Try to take the fight to them, again.” Jake sounded a little dubious.
“It's better than sitting around here with a bunch of useless, nervous old Bears whining at us, while we pretend that we know what's going on,” Darrin's voice had a tiny edge to it.
Jake held up a mollifying hand.
“I'm not arguing that. I'm just figuring out logistics. There's no one here who can run the place in our absence, is there?”
“Not easily, not with Helga in the hospital and her assistants busy with her there. We may be able to come up with someone, but even then, you and I will probably end up running things by phone a lot, with the help of whoever we picked.”
“That's not the best situation, no.” Anna frowned... and then frowned more deeply when the two men turned to look at her. “...what?”
“You're pregnant, and we're going up against multiple Bears who use Hunters as proxies, and have already tried to kill you. And we need someone to look after the place.”
Jake's voice was firm in a way that made her cheeks heat up. He was trying to put his foot down on a matter where he shouldn't. She couldn't really blame him; it was that protectiveness again. But there was no way in Hell she would let them leave her behind. And in the end, it was disrespectful of him to expect that.
“Yeah, I suppose that sounds pretty logical to you. Except that every damn time we get separated when there's a crisis, something happens to make things worse.”
It was true. During the human hunt she’d had to run for her life through the surrounding wilderness, with only Mark, a completely new ally, to help her. Fortunately, Mark had turned out to be a discharged Army specialist, whose skills had almost single-handedly saved their lives for a significant part of the hunt. But she had stayed at horrible risk. If she and Jake had not been reunited before their final confrontation with Jake's father and his cronies, she would not have survived.
And then there was what had happened a month ago. When Jake had not been around, she had nearly been kidnapped by the Hunters. They seemed to have a knack for seeking people out when they were isolated, and had killed an innocent doctor just to replace her so they could get close to Anna. And the more she thought about it, the more she realized.
“If you go off hunting them abroad, you'd better leave someone here who can fight harder than I can. Because if those Bears' real aim is to take revenge on the Lodge, they'll be looking for a
n opportunity to attack it.” She turned her gaze from Darrin to Jake, very pointedly. “And you know what keeps happening whenever you and I get separated.”
He opened his mouth, probably to contradict her, but then thought about it and subsided.
“Well, that's true. I just don't want you in the thick of things.”
“I don't want me in the thick of things either. I'm pregnant and I can barely shoot straight. Okay, then, who do we have?”
Darrin frowned thoughtfully. The server came by and filled his coffee mug, dropping off another tiny silver cream dispenser. He poured a small cloud of cream into his mug and topped it with too much sugar from the jar on the table, then stirred it all up meditatively.
“No outsiders.”
That left Mark, and the crow shifter Esme who was now living with him in Jackson, out of the equation. It did mean, though, that they might be able to get the pair to tag along with them to Denver. They would make for great backup. Not quite as great as the juggernaut-like Gray, but with more skills between them.
Anna smiled a little as she thought about the two of them. Now that was the most ironic relationship she had ever heard of. Mark had been so traumatized and embittered by the human hunt they had both been caught up in that he had nearly become a shifter hunter himself. But instead, in the midst of their first struggle against Hunters, he had fallen headlong in love with one of their allies— a shifter, and one who would have unrepentantly shot him had he thrown in with the Hunter group completely. Shifters of all types held the belief that each one of them was destined to find a specific human being, with whom they would mate for life.
The attraction between the two was fated, as was their meeting. It was the closest thing to faith that they seemed to have, at least from her experience. She wasn't sure how much she believed in it herself, but enough things had happened to make her really wonder.
When she and Jake had met, there had certainly been a powerful attraction, and he had recognized her as his mate through whatever instinctive means Bears used. She had seen his brother, Gray, cross hundreds of acres of woods in pursuit of his own mate's scent, even though he had never seen Julia in the flesh. She could believe in a love so powerful that it would drag the honorable but embittered and broken Mark bodily from a path of blind vengeance. And she was glad that now, Mark understood. Though she was dead curious as to how he was handling it, she hadn't felt right about prying. Which drove her a little crazy at times. Stupid ethics.