Her Bear Protector Trilogy

by Bonnie Burrows

  He winked at me, grinning, and I turned my back to him, hugging my ribs.

  "Oh, all right, then. You want to be surprised. Fair enough. Now, just so you know, I'm going to keep the force field around this hill intact during the fight, so you can't escape. Although, by all means, do feel free to try. Knock yourself out. Now, I've already unfrozen Aaron, so it's time for me to be off. Enjoy your boyfriend's annihilation, and do allow yourself to become stimulated by the sight of my power and domination. I want you to be nice and juicy when I return."

  Victor spoke a few Native American words, and soon I heard a low growl. I turned and saw he'd shifted into a medium-sized black wolf. He bared his fangs at me and actually winked. And then he trotted down to the field, howling.

  Within seconds, a roar louder than any I'd ever heard came from the forest on the other side of the clearing. Aaron emerged, massive in bear form, charging. After one last howl, Victor took off toward him.

  They crashed together, Aaron roaring and Victor growling. The very ground beneath my feet shook with the force of their collision.

  I stepped my way down the rocky hill, stopping at the bottom when I felt something invisible blocking me from going any further.

  My heart nearly soaring out of my chest, I saw immediately that it probably wasn't going to be a long fight. And that somehow, improbably, even though Victor had the strength of seven shifter wolves, Aaron was going to win. In a seeming absolute frenzy of rage, he fought Victor, clawing him, biting him, slashing his face to bloody ribbons. Even though Victor's fur was black, at least half of it soon became a deep dark red. He didn't even get any swipes or snaps in at Aaron. He couldn't. Rising to his full height, Aaron picked Victor up by the throat, squeezing him. Victor's eyes bulged. Aaron shook him like a rag doll and then slammed him into the ground. On his back, Victor looked up at Aaron towering above him. And even from thirty or so feet away, I could see an expression of complete shock and terror in his eyes. Aaron fell on him and ripped open his chest and bit his heart in one fast motion. It was over. Just like that. Victor was dead.

  I'd been leaning against whatever invisible barrier he'd created to hold me in, and suddenly, I stumbled forward. The barrier had disappeared.

  "Aaron!"

  I began running toward him, but stopped dead in my tracks after only a few paces. Shadowy wolf forms were streaking past me, heading straight for Aaron. I turned just in time to see the shadowy form of Victor tearing down the hill behind me at the back of the back. He raced past me, growling.

  The wolves, though all shadowy and kind of see-through, seemed to have at least some solid physical presence. Because they all pounced on Aaron and were able to knock him to the ground. One big silvery gray wolf I recognized as Alexander from the battle two months earlier went right for Aaron's throat, biting it, making Aaron roar in pain.

  I knew he was in serious trouble. I knew I had to do something fast. Realizing that the shadow wolves had probably come from the stone wolf amulet Victor had left on his clothes, I dashed back up the hill, wondering if the wolves would all disappear if I destroyed it. Wondering if I could destroy it. But I knew I had to try. Aaron was fighting for me, and I had to fight for him. And something just told me, based on what Victor had said about the amulet, if it were to be destroyed, the shadow wolves would go with it.

  When I reached it, I moved it to the stony ground and stomped on it as hard as I could. But no part of it even chipped. Not that I'd really expected it to, but I was just desperate. The sound of Aaron roaring in pain again made me shudder. I stomped on the amulet again, whimpering.

  "Just crack, you stupid thing!"

  But of course it didn't. My rubber-soled tennis shoes were no match for it. Suddenly, wondering why I hadn't tried this first, I fell to my knees, picked up a good-sized rock lying nearby, and bashed the amulet with it, over and over. But the amulet still didn't even chip. Shaking, I whipped my head in all directions, looking for a heavier stone and spotting the nearby boulders. Obviously, I knew I couldn't lift one, but one boulder sitting atop another gave me an idea. I knew it had to weigh hundreds of pounds, but if I set the amulet on the stony surface in front of it, and then got the boulder to tip off the boulder it was perched on, I knew there was a good chance it might crush the amulet. And though the top boulder looked pretty firmly situated on the bottom one, I knew I had to try.

  Aaron roared in pain again. The wolves howled in a barking sort of way that made it seem as though they were laughing. I jumped up, set the amulet right in front of the double boulders, and positioned my back against the opposite side of them. The top boulder wasn't entirely rounded on the bottom, but it wasn't completely flat, either. I knew if I could just push it hard enough, if I could just get it to tip an inch, it would roll forward onto the amulet.

  I took a deep breath and ground my back against it, pushing with all my might. But it didn't budge. I took another deep breath and pushed again, crying out. But it still didn't budge. I leaned forward and then rammed my back into the boulder, knocking the wind out of myself, but not budging the boulder an inch. Aaron roared in pain again, his roar sounding a little weaker than the previous one. So much adrenaline flowing through my veins that my trembling hands were almost literally flapping, I turned and pushed the boulder. But to no avail. Aaron roared in pain again, but actually, the sound was more like a weak cry. The wolves yipped and howled. I took a deep breath. I moved my hands a little farther apart on the boulder. I pushed, yelling, my eyes shut and head thrown back.

  And the boulder finally rolled. It fell several feet, landing on the amulet with a thud that shook the ground. A great cloud of dark gray smoke billowed out from beneath the boulder. The wolves fell silent in mid-howl. I knew the boulder had probably crushed the amulet into hundreds of little stone shards.

  I stood, catching my breath, but for only a few seconds, before taking off down the hill toward Aaron. When I reached the grass of the clearing, I sprinted over to him, faster than I'd ever run in my life. He lay on his back, blood matting his fur all over, but his eyes were open and moving, focusing on me.

  I dropped to my knees on the ground beside him, tears streaming down my face. "You're alive. Oh my God, thank God. Oh my God, Aaron, you're alive. And you're gonna be okay. I crushed their stone wolf amulet, and I think it finally killed them all." I took his blood-matted face in my hands, hiccuping with sobs. "You're alive. And I'm alive. We're both gonna be okay. Victor didn't even hurt me; he didn't rape me. You're gonna heal, and we're gonna be okay. Just hang in there. I bet the others got unfrozen when you killed Victor, and I bet they're gonna come to help you any second."

  Just then, I heard several roars and the sound of Aaron's family crashing through the forest. Within seconds, they all emerged from the treeline, and I jumped up and quickly explained all that had happened.

  "So I think the wolves are all dead. But someone's gotta help Aaron. He's just bleeding from everywhere."

  Emily suddenly dashed back into the forest, her glossy ginger fur shimmering in the morning sun.

  I knelt beside Aaron, who'd closed his eyes. Sobbing, I gave his head a little shake. "No! Keep your eyes open, Aaron! You're gonna be okay!"

  Jasmine patted my back with one paw and then gestured to Aaron's bloody but not-ripped-open chest. And then she lifted her paw, curling her claws into a shape resembling a human thumbs-up sign.

  I let my breath out in a shaky rush, realizing she was trying to remind me that shifters could only be killed from a bite directly to the heart. "Oh my gosh, you're right. Of course. Oh, thank God. He's gonna be okay."

  I sat beside Aaron, smoothing his bloodied fur, my tears slowing. I leaned over and kissed a spot of unbloodied fur on his forehead. "So brave. You were so brave, Aaron. You killed Victor even with his additional strength. You completely mauled him. And then you took on all seven shadow-shifters at once. You're my hero." I kissed him again. "You're my hero, and I'll love you forever."

  Before long, Emily came running
out of the woods, dressed and in human form, holding several bags of clothes she'd retrieved from tree hollows. She distributed the clothes, and everyone picked theirs up in their mouths, headed into the forest, and soon emerged dressed and in human form.

  Seth held an extra pair of jeans and knelt down beside me and Aaron, who was slowly coming to. "Kyla, I'm gonna ask him to shift so we can better see his wounds and stop the bleeding. And maybe you'll want to turn around for a second, even though I'm sure you've seen Aaron naked a time or two before, just because maybe he wouldn't want you to see him naked in such a bloody and banged-up state."

  I realized he was right and turned my back along with everyone else.

  Soon Aaron shifted, and Seth got the jeans on him and told everyone we could turn back around.

  I turned, relieved to see Aaron not only alert, but propped up on his elbows with a little grin on his bloody face.

  "Well, if this is what it takes to get such special treatment, I might have to get this banged-up every day."

  I collapsed next to him, burying my face against his neck, sobbing again. "You're okay. Oh my gosh, you're really okay."

  He lifted a hand and began stroking my hair. "Kyla, marry me. I want us to be together forever. I want to spend every day making you happy. Will you please be my wife? Please say yes, so I can pass out again the happiest man alive."

  I lifted my face. "Are you...I'm sure you're probably a little disoriented and dizzy. Are you-"

  "I am a little woozy, I have to admit, but I've been planning to ask you this for weeks. I want to be your husband more than I've ever wanted anything in all my days. I want to spend each and every day making you smile and laugh. So will you say yes? Will you say yes so I can pass out again? Will you marry me?"

  I nodded, tears streaming. "Yes. Yes, I'll marry you. Nothing would make me happier."

  He grinned, pulling me close, and I buried my face in his neck again, crying tears of joy and laughing a little. Several family members clapped and cheered, and Emily burst into tears.

  "That was so beautiful."

  Aaron didn't pass out again. And in fact, after an hour or so of resting in the clearing once his wounds had been bandaged with strips of t-shirt, he limped back to the cabin settlement with us all on his own. One of the advantages of being a shifter was having speedy healing and recovery from physical injury.

  While Aaron had been resting, Seth, Andrew, Samuel, Cole, and Calvin used large flat rocks to dig a shallow grave for Victor. After dumping him into it, Seth spit on his carcass before kicking the first clod of earth back into the hole.

  Over the next several days, it became clear that Aaron had been right when he'd guessed that the shifters Victor called with his mind wouldn't continue to the wilds once they realized he was dead. Not a single one ever showed.

  After about a week, Aaron recovered completely, and we began planning our wedding. I picked Emily to be my matron of honor, and he picked Seth to be his best man. Emily, Jasmine, and Sarah made a special meal to celebrate our engagement, and afterward, Aaron and I made love in his cabin, which, he told me, was now officially our cabin.

  Later that night, he held me in his strong arms, thanking me for probably the third or fourth time for crushing the wolves' amulet before they could kill him.

  "You displayed almost superhuman strength and bravery, Kyla."

  I smiled. "Well, so did you. The way you destroyed Victor to protect me...I'm surprised there was even any of him left to bury."

  Aaron fell silent for a few moments, stroking my hair, before speaking again. "I should have trusted your intuition about Victor more, and I'm so very sorry I didn't. I also should have trusted in Seth's intuition more, and I've already told him how sorry I am about that. But with you, it took me a little longer, because...I just feel so deeply ashamed. I'd been telling you over and over to trust me that everything would be okay, when all the while, I should have been taking your intuition more seriously and trusting your gut feelings more. But this will never happen again. I now realize that the trust between us has to go both ways, equally. I'm so used to being the leader and ensuring that everyone has trust in me that I've neglected to practice fully trusting in others. And I know I've got to change this in order to become the kind of husband you deserve. And I will change this. But in the meantime, do you think you can possibly forgive me?"

  I brushed his mouth with a kiss. "Of course. There's nothing to forgive."

  He kissed me back. "Thank you."

  I snuggled into his arms, soon fell asleep, and dreamed about walking down a grassy aisle to him, wildflowers in my hair.

  BOOK 3

  MARRYING HER BEAR PROTECTOR

  BONNIE BURROWS

  CHAPTER ONE

  I'd just paid for my wedding dress when my dream to live happily-ever-after in the wilds with Aaron was shattered.

  The bridal boutique sales clerk, an elderly woman with hair pinned back in a bun, frowned. "I'm sorry, dear. I thought you folks knew. It's all over town....how the developer is going to buy the land your family's cabin settlement sits on and all the land around it. I think all the land in a five-mile radius is what I heard at the diner. Everyone's been talking about it all day...how your family is most likely going to have to move. I'm very sorry. I just assumed you'd all heard."

  Emily, my soon-to-be sister-in-law, had been standing there, just as speechless as I was, but she finally put an arm around me, nodded at the woman, and spoke. "I'm sure this is all some sort of misunderstanding. Thank you."

  She began guiding me out of the store, and I let myself be guided, shocked into a sort of numbness, my limbs moving as if through quicksand. Once outside, I put my dress in the trunk of my car. I was beginning to tremble, and asked Emily if she'd known about what the elderly clerk had been saying.

  She shook her head, her normally pale face now almost as white as a sheet against her bright red hair. "No. I'm just as stunned as you are. I haven't heard a word about any of this. But I'm sure it's just some sort of misunderstanding. Let's get home so we can talk to everyone about it."

  A short while later, while driving out of Houghton, a small town about four miles east of the cabin settlement where I lived with my bear-shifter fiance, Aaron, and his entire bear-shifter family, I asked Emily how it could even be possible that a developer could buy the land our family's cabin settlement was on.

  "I mean...don't we own it?"

  Emily shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. All the land around our settlement is owned by the Blakely family...or was, anyway, but until we get this whole misunderstanding figured out, I'm going to assume it still is. But anyway, the Blakelys used to own a lot of the mines around here in the late eighteen-hundreds."

  We lived in Michigan's upper peninsula, called the U.P by most Michiganders, and the western part of the peninsula used to be home to hundreds of copper mines, although now it was mostly all forested wilderness.

  "When all the mines closed, the Blakelys bought up the remaining few parcels of land that didn't already belong to them, and then they've just held on to it all for the past hundred-something years, I guess. They've just passed it on down their family." Emily glanced at me, her light gray eyes the same color as storm clouds gathering outside. "That's not to say that we've been squatters or anything, though. The Blakelys have always said from the very beginning that anyone who wants to live peacefully on the land is more than welcome to. And so we always have."

  "What if they changed their minds And what if we get kicked off the property? What if we get kicked outside of the immortality boundaries? Do they even own all that?"

  Emily nodded. "I think so."

  Emily had been a part of Aaron's bear-shifter family for almost a decade, whereas I'd only been living at the cabin settlement and engaged to Aaron for about two months, so she knew way more about family history stuff than I did.

  "I think they even own the land a little beyond the immortality boundaries, actually."

  I sighed, hands tight
on the steering wheel, while we began driving down the winding, four-mile-long dirt road that led to my cabin, where I still parked my car even though I didn't live there anymore, because Aaron and his family lived so deep in the wilds that there wasn't even a road that led there.

  I asked Emily if the Blakelys also owned the land my own cabin was on. "Because when I inherited the cabin from my parents, I remember their attorney saying it was completely mine."

  "Well, I'm sure the cabin is. Just not the land it sits on. See, if our big section of the wilds is going to be bought from the Blakelys by a developer, I bet they'll tell us that we're free to move our cabins wherever we like. We built them and we own them. But they'll probably just tell us that we can't have them on their property anymore. Which would be...." Emily groaned, burying her face in her hands. "Kyla, this is terrible. Especially so close to your wedding."

  Aaron and I planned to have our wedding in a meadow behind the cabin settlement two weeks from then, in mid-October. When all the leaves would be brilliant shades of orange and gold at the height of autumn.

  "I know...but we can always postpone the wedding, I guess. Even though I really don't want to. But if the Blakelys really are going to sell the land within the immortality bounds to a developer, I think we've got bigger problems than my wedding."

  Aaron and his six brothers had been copper miners who'd lived in the wilds in the eighteen-fifties when a group of Native Americans had been kicked off the land by mine owners. The Native Americans went peacefully, but not before one of them, a mystic, had turned Aaron and his brothers into shape-shifting bears entrusted with a responsibility to always protect the land. And as long as they did this, and remained within certain boundaries of the wilds, they would be immortal. And this immortality now extended to my three soon-to-be sisters-in-law, Emily, Sarah, and Jasmine, who'd been turned into bear shifters when they'd married their husbands, Aaron's brothers. After my wedding to Aaron, I'd also be turned into a bear shifter.