by M. L. Briers
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
BEAR-LY TIME
BY
M.L. Briers
And
A.B. LEE
Copyright © 2017, M L Briers
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced whatsoever without written permission of the author, except for brief exerts in reviews. Any unauthorised reproduction or distribution of the material herein is illegal and may result in criminal proceedings. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to the internet or distributed via electronic or print without prior consent.
Note from the Author;
All names, places, and incidents contained herein are purely fictional and have no basis in actual events or linked to actual Humans, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Lycans, Werebears or persons living, dead or undead.
Copyright © 2017, Cover Design by; Rebecca Pau at The Final Wrap.
Table of Contents
BEAR-LY TIME
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER ONE
~
Harvey stalked down the aisle of the store like he was hunting his prey. His left hand shot out and he snatched a large pack of his favorite treats from the shelf. He lifted the basket in his right hand, and chucked them inside. He had a system for shopping that involved minimum effort and he was sticking to it.
He hated shopping. It made his bear feel inferior – as if the beast couldn’t hunt its own dinner. It could.
The animal seemed to be getting a foothold within him more and more as the days ticked by and that wasn’t a good thing.
Harvey knew what it was, the bear was lonesome, and it didn’t help that he’d sworn off females since the last nut job, bear shifter groupie had rolled out of town. He’d sworn never again, and he meant it.
His bear, on the other hand, liked having females around, and it wasn’t just the sex, although, that was all good, it was the need to protect that his beast felt so damn deeply about.
Harvey hated shopping with a vengeance because he couldn’t scent the air or smell the breeze. Even if he’d tried to do it inside the small confines of the shop then he’d be sneezing for an hour from the stupid scented candles that human females loved so much.
He twisted his head slightly at the sound of something smashing to the floor. That sound came from the back of the store and grunted at the multitude of curses that followed. That was exactly how he was feeling. The sooner he got out of there and home the better.
Harvey had been planning how his night was going to go all day while working on old man Taylor’s barn. He was going to get home, shed his clothes, shift and let his bear have some leg room for a good few hours. Then he’d pig out in front of the television watching sports.
It sounded good to him.
“There’s a line,” he turned his head at the sound of the female voice and looked down. His bear grunted within him.
A little person. Just about waist height. Her big blue eyes stared up at him like he was Satan in the flesh. Her full red lips pouted as if he’d wounded her, and her curly brown hair held a certain frizzy halo around her head.
“You in it?” Harvey’s deep, gravelly tones made her eyes narrow at him just a little, and she gave a small nod. “You got money?” Harvey demanded and watched the ivory skin on her forehead crinkle a little.
“No…” she started, looking a little sheepish.
“You got food?” Harvey’s tone made her frown harder.
“I’m saving a space,” she announced, so precisely that she could have been one of those child actors on a television commercial that annoyed him so much when they interrupted his viewing.
“Yeah, well, I got money, and I got food, and that makes me a customer and you a lurker,” Harvey tossed his basket up onto the counter and turned his attention towards the teen who was serving.
The young lad reached into his basket and took out his favorite treat, and Harvey could have sworn that he could already taste them on his tongue. The beep of the scanner annoyed him.
“Those are bad for you,” someone’s little mini-me announced with those precision words, and he felt a flare of annoyance.
“Yeah, I know,” Harvey offered without looking at her. “Give me one of those large bottles of Scotch…”
“That’s really bad for you,” she offered up, and Harvey’s annoyance flared once more.
“That’s what makes it so good,” Harvey grumbled, shuffling on his feet, and resisting the urge to shout out for the youngster’s mother to control her child.
“People get mean when they drink that stuff,” she announced, and Harvey’s eyes practically rolled back in his head.
“I’m already mean,” he snapped back.
“Then you’ll be double mean and hurt people,” she said.
Harvey’s bear took exception to the child’s words. A low, deep growl rumbled within his chest.
“Can you hurry up, I don’t have all night,” he growled at the young lad behind the counter and the guy nodded fast, his hands moving faster as he scanned and bagged the groceries.
“You’re a shifter!” The child announced with something that sounded like wide eyed excitement and Harvey snapped his gaze downwards to glare at her.
“What gave it away?” he snapped back.
Harvey just wanted to escape to the woods. Sports be damned, he just might let his bear run loose until the sun came up.
He didn’t want anything to do little people, especially not a little girl. They were so – fragile. He didn’t trust himself or his bear around them.
This one was especially annoying, tweaking his pissed off gene to the point where he wanted to run from the store and shift in mid stride.
“The growl,” she said like he hadn’t used sarcasm at all.
“Hurry up,” Harvey growled at the teen, and the man nodded faster and worked faster. He guessed the guy didn’t want Harvey in the store as much as Harvey didn’t want to be there.
“Are you a wolf?” she asked, and Harvey grunted in annoyance.
“No.”
“Cheetah?”
“Hell, no,” Harvey growled back.
“That’s a bad word, and I’m telling my mother,” she said.
“You go right ahead, right now, run on, get going.”
Harvey waved one large hand in her direction and heard her gasp in a breath. For a moment he’d thought that he’d inadvertently hurt her. His beast roared within him, his guilt gene went into overdrive, and h
is protective side flashed into being.
He snapped his head around on his neck and stared down at her, praying to whatever God would listen that she wasn’t hurt, and begging anyone, including Satan himself not to let her cry. He hated tears.
“A bear!” she announced, her eyes full of wonder and with the kind of a smile on her lips that kicked him right in the stomach.
“Thought you were going to tell you mother what a bad guy I am?” he growled longer, harder, deeper, and all because she wasn’t injured.
It wasn’t that he wanted her to be injured. It was that he’d just endured a mini-roller coaster ride of emotions and guilt for nothing. Human children annoyed the hell out of him.
“You’re a bear, right?” she demanded, grinning from ear to ear with a knowing look in her eyes.
“Are we done yet?” Harvey demanded on another growl as he turned towards the cashier and thrust a handful of bills at the lad.
“Done,” the man rushed out, his hand shaking as he reached for the money.
Harvey felt doubly guilty. First for the child, and then for the pubescent teen that acted as if he was robbing the store at gunpoint.
Damn, he was acting like a bear with a sore head, and he felt like one. He just needed to escape the store, the cashier, and the child, and not necessarily in that damn order.
“Guess it’s true what they say…” the girl’s sing-song voice annoyed him once more, but still, he fell for it.
“What?” he growled.
“Bad mood bear,” she said and poked out her tongue; a second before she turned on her heels and ran away.
“That’s…” he growled, and his top lip twitched in anger. “She yours?” he growled at the spotty youth and the man balked.
“No!”
“Well, there should be a policy about annoying kids in shops,” Harvey grumbled as he snatched the change from the teen, fisted his grocery bags, and fled the store before he shifted right there in front of everyone.
Yeah, he was going to run until the damn sun came up.
CHAPTER TWO
~
Harvey was tired. He’d done what he’d needed to do and allowed his bear to roam until the small hours. He’d stuffed his gut with a hearty breakfast, showered, and changed into his work clothes, and then he’d driven to Taylor’s barn and taken his sleepless annoyance out on hammering every damn nail that he could into some poor, helpless wood.
He was hot and sweaty in the afternoon sun, and he’d shucked off his shirt a good few hours ago as he labored away. His muscles were tense as he lifted the hammer and aimed for the head of the nail, picturing the first thing that came to mind that annoyed him as he swung.
“You look bigger with your shirt off,” she announced, and he thought he might be having a senior moment or something because that kid’s face from the night before popped into his mind just as the hammer came down on his thumb.
“Damn the hell out of it!” he growled, chucking the hammer down onto the workbench and sticking his throbbing thumb into his mouth as his dark eyes flicked towards the sound of that voice.
There she stood. All smirking enjoyment and wide eyed innocence mixed together as she stared back at him. A nightmare right there in the flesh of her little person body.
Harvey’s bear roared within him. The beast either wanted to eat her or just chase her around for a good long while until she left him the hell alone. He yanked his thumb free and glared at her.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He gave the kind of growl that he only usually reserved for the moment before he was going into a bare-knuckle fight.
“I live here,” she offered back.
She looked kind of entitled at that moment like she knew something he didn’t and was superior to him. Well, he guessed that she was, she was human after all and didn’t carry the burden of the beast inside of her.
“No, you don’t,” Harvey growled back.
“Yes, I do,” she sounded a little more snotty, and it annoyed the hell out of him.
“This isn’t your land,” he growled, worried that if he took a step towards her, then he just might shift and eat her.
“It’s my grandpa’s,” she informed him, like a little Princess. She even raised her chin in the air and looked down her nose at him.
Harvey grunted in annoyance. Taylor had a daughter, and a Grandkid, he knew it, but he didn’t think they lived anywhere nearby.
“Then go be with your Grandpa,” Harvey growled, turning his back on her and reaching for his hammer once again.
“He says I can’t be hanging around him while he’s working,” she said, and Harvey snorted.
“That’s cos you’re annoying,” Harvey growled.
“Oh,” she said back, and he could hear the small catch in her voice.
His guilt gene kicked in again. His bear growled like he’d just taken it to the vet and had its fur removed and Harvey felt the need to make amends. The trouble was he didn’t know how.
“Look, kid, just go away,” Harvey grumbled.
“Ok.” Now she sounded a little less sure of herself. Her voice was quieter, and Harvey’s bear pointed an accusing claw in his direction.
Harvey took a breath in through his mouth and sighed it back out. He’d hurt her feelings. He knew it, and he hated himself for it.
That was why he didn’t like kids. Fragile – in mind and body, and there was him, a bad mood, gruff bear that growled and swore at anything that annoyed him.
He was a beast and he knew it. She’d tapped into that guilt gene and jumped all over it, and now he needed to make things right. Damn it.
“Look, kid…” he turned on his heels to find her gone.
He scanned the area, and he was more than tempted to sniff the breeze to find her scent, see which way she’d gone. The woods were no place for a kid and he didn’t want to think what could happen to her if she was alone in there.
Harvey knew scenting the air would be bad. Wrong. He didn’t need any more hassle in his life, and that little bundle of mischief was a hassle.
Still, he felt like a dick.
Harvey’s beast growled a warning inside of him, and he snorted his contempt for everyone and everything. It wasn’t like it was his fault that she was so damn annoying that even her flesh and blood didn’t want her around.
But still, the woods? Harvey bit down on a curse as he dropped his hammer back on the woodpile and reached for his shirt.
He’d just check to make sure that little Miss Precious had gotten home. Then he was done. Then he would tell Jon Taylor to keep his grandkid to himself and not share the misery around.
~
~
~
Harvey didn’t need his nose to track the kid. She left little people footprints in the dirt and broken twigs and leaves in her wake. The bad news was, she was pushing further into the woods.
His bear wasn’t happy, but he couldn’t tell if the beast was mad because that was his normal state of being. If he was mad because they were trailing after a kid. Or if he was mad because he was trying to make him feel like an even bigger bastard than he already felt.
Being mean to a kid… What the hell was wrong with him? Sure, she was annoying, well, kind of, she’d only spoken to him – she’d only told him things were bad for him.
Hell, he knew Scotch and gooey junk was bad for him, he didn’t need to be schooled by some kid, but…
People get mean when they drink that stuff. How the hell would she know that unless someone had been mean to her?
Damn it; I’m a dick.
No, I’m worse than a dick I’d pond scum… And a dick.
What kind of a jerk off was mean to a kid?
Except for me.
But, I’d been words means. I hadn’t tried to scare her or anything.
How were they mean?
Damn, I can’t be dealing with this. I can’t get involved in human problems.
But, she’s a kid. Taylor’s grandkid.
Did t
he old man know that someone was getting drunk and being a dick around his grandkid?
Was it Taylor? Her mother? Father?
Harvey sped up at the sound of a couple of twigs crunching underfoot. If it was her, then she’d changed direction, and he didn’t like where she was heading.
The east side of Taylor’s property backed onto the bear clan’s land. Now, those guys were mean, and not the kind of mean that would make her feel bad, but the kind that would scare the hell out of her at best.
They didn’t like people trespassing on their land. They didn’t like humans. But a kid? Even they weren’t despicable enough to hurt a kid – maybe.
“Hey, kid!” Harvey called out into the stillness of the woods and got silence back as his only reward.
Another crunch came from his right, and he might have kept walking, but he also twisted his head on his neck to listen. Silence.
Something wasn’t right. It was too quiet, like all of the mini-beasts had taken a vacation.
Harvey stopped dead in his tracks and waited. His beast was ready to burst free from within him at the first sign of trouble. His claws were itching to be flicked out, and his fangs pushed against his aching gums.
He was ready for whatever supernatural being was lurking in the woods.
CHAPTER THREE
~
“Hey dad, I’m back,” Jordan called slamming shut the door of her old car and spinning on her heels towards the boot of the car for the groceries.
Jon Taylor padded out from the house, wiping his oil stained hands on an old rag and eyed his daughter.
“You get the coffee?” His smoke aged tones drifted towards her and Jordan grinned.
“I thought we could go coffee free for a few days,” she lied.
The day she gave up coffee would be the day her father stopped smoking – maybe not – just in case the urge took him to do the right thing after all those years of her begging. She guessed father and daughter had that in common; they were hooked.
Jon snorted his contempt and total disbelief for her words. Then he shoved the rag into the back pocket of his low hanging jeans and padded across to help her retrieve the groceries.