by Bianca D'Arc
Tales of the Were
Grizzly Cove
The Bear’s Healing Touch
by
Bianca D’Arc
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright © 2017 Bianca D’Arc
Smashwords Edition February 2017
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Tales of the Were – Grizzly Cove #7
Sven had given up on love, but in the midst of crisis, it showed up at his door.
Sirena has been gravely injured by an evil sea monster and put into the care of Grizzly Cove’s only doctor. Sven is a retired soldier, like most of the other guys in Grizzly Cove, but he’d dedicated his life to medicine and helping the new town get on its feet. He doesn’t think he’ll ever find a mate, but he’s content to let the others settle down and find happiness, while he tends to them all… Until they send a gravely injured mermaid his way.
Sirena gets under his skin. She brings out all sorts of protective instincts and desires. She infuriates him and beguiles him in equal measure, but most of all, she worries him. She’s not getting any better, despite his best efforts. He calls in magical reinforcements and the best experts he can find to try to help her, but the evil creature still has its hooks in her and it won’t let go without a fight.
Dedication
As all my work, this book is dedicated to my family, first and foremost. I would never have been able to follow my dream of writing if not for the support and encouragement of my parents, who taught me to reach for the stars.
I’d also like to thank my editor, Jess, and my good friend, Peggy, for assisting with making this a better, cleaner and hopefully, more enjoyable story. Thanks also to all the readers who have stuck with me over the years. You guys are the best!
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
Epilogue
Excerpt from The Luck of the Shifters
About the Author
Other Books by Bianca D’Arc
Chapter One
Sirena hated being laid up and out of the action. Her people needed her, and she was stuck in bed, too hurt to move. Damned sea monster had nearly killed her, and only her hunting party’s fast action and the timely arrival of a werebear, who had more than his share of chutzpa and magical ability, had allowed her to continue living. He’d saved her life and the lives of every member of her pod.
And then, he’d brought them all to safety in the sheltered waters of Grizzly Cove. It all seemed almost too good to be true…except for one thing. Or rather, one man.
The lone doctor in this small community had patched her up, certainly, but he was also driving her completely insane. He was some kind of giant bear shifter who looked at her in ways that made her uncomfortable…and very aware of her femininity. That wasn’t something she was used to in the hunting party. Her life in the sea, these past years, had been very different than how she had lived on land, and being around the handsome doctor brought that fact home.
The rest of the people who came in and out of his office—which had a private hospital-style room that she was currently inhabiting while she recovered—seemed to like him well enough. She could hear a lot of what happened out in the main area when the door was ajar. He seemed to be pleasant to most of the visitors who came by to get supplies or just chat with the doctor.
He didn’t have a lot of patients because the town was full of shifters and they healed fast. As did mer—when they hadn’t been sliced and diced in a zillion different ways and dragged out of the water more than half dead.
That’s the pathetic state Sirena had been in when her pod had brought her ashore and put her into the doctor bear’s hands. He’d had to stitch her together in a few places because her energy reserves were so low she couldn’t heal even the small cuts. All her healing magic had been going toward just keeping herself alive in the beginning, and she’d been drained to the point where she was recovering at a much slower rate than normal.
The good news, of course, was that she was recovering at all. She probably should have died of her injuries, but her people—and the doctor—had saved her. The bad news was that her energy was still at an all-time low. She was healing, but slowly. At something like a human pace rather than a mer level. And it was infuriating.
Sirena wanted to be better now. She wanted to be out there in the town, making sure her people were safe and helping to organize things. After all, the Alpha bear of the Clan, who had set up this town, had invited the mer here and given them safe harbor from the creature and its minions that were out there in the ocean, preying on magical folk. The creatures that had nearly killed her. The leviathan. And all its evil little friends.
They were things of legend, not of this world. Creatures of evil that consumed magical folk and swallowed their souls. A terror she never wanted to meet again.
She’d been traumatized enough the first time, and almost hadn’t lived through the encounter. And she’d only been chomped on by one of the smaller sea monsters that were somehow connected magically to the largest one—the one that led them all and had been brought through the rift from the forgotten realms to which they had been banished long ago. They seemed to travel and hunt as a group, the leviathan directing the movements of its smaller companions.
They were from another realm where magic abounded and they all fed on magic. At least, that’s what the bears thought. She’d asked many questions since coming to Grizzly Cove and being stuck in their clinic. There wasn’t much else she could do right now except talk, so she welcomed the times when her friends came to visit and pass on news of the things they’d learned about the creatures.
But she didn’t want to think about it anymore. Not right now, when frustration was riding her hard. Of course, all she did lately was lie in bed and think. It was all too much. Sirena was a woman of action. As the leader of a hunting party of mer, she decided where they would go, what they would hunt, and when they would return to the larger group that counted on them to provide food and protection from the threats of the ocean.
To look at her now, no one would ever realize that she was a warrior. One of the mer’s best. No, now, she was a weakling. An invalid. Stuck in bed, for the most part, needing help with the most basic necessities of life. Someone had to bring her food. Someone had to help her get up when she needed to limp over to the attached bathroom. Someone had to administer painkillers, just so she could sleep. It was unheard of. Mer didn’t feel pain away humans did. Not often, anyway.
Circumstances had to be pretty bad for a mer of Sirena’s caliber and experience to be laid so low. And they had been.
She had gone toe to toe with a real-life sea monster and lost. It was a crushing blow to her pride, but the encounter also had damaged her courage.
She now had nightmares—for the first time in her life. They were all about the leviathan and its minions—and the rows of razor sharp teeth that had savaged her skin and broken her body. She woke in a cold sweat every night, at least once, reliving the terrible moments when she’d thought for certain she was going to die.
Sirena hated feeling weak. She should be stronger than this, dammit! She shouldn’t be ready to leap out of her skin at the slightest sound and jump at every shadow.
But she was. And she hated it. She hated herself.
She hated the bear shifter doctor most of all, for reminding her of her own weakness. And for seeing her at her worst.
Oh, he was a handsome son of a gun, all right. Why couldn’t she have met him when she was in her prime, instead of broken down and nearly crippled? Surely the Goddess was punishing her for her vanity to show her what might have been with a man who could very well be Sirena’s equal.
It was obvious that he was a bear to be reckoned with, and his fellows treated him with cautious courtesy, except for the inner circle that dared treat him as an equal. That small group, she had come to learn, was the core group of ex-Special Forces bear shifter soldiers who followed the Alpha of the colony, John Marshall.
They didn’t follow him blindly, though. Bears weren’t like other kinds of shifters in that respect. They were mostly solitary beings, and this group had decided to band together as a sort of social experiment when the small unit of soldiers had decided to leave the armed forces behind. John had bought up the land, being the acknowledged strategist of the group, and had laid out his plan, hoping his friends would follow his lead.
They had, and almost overnight, the new town of Grizzly Cove had been born.
They’d put out the call through shifter networks for other bear shifters, hoping to attract females so the single men could find mates. What they’d attracted was trouble, in the form of the leviathan and its friends, that had been drawn—near as anyone could figure—to the concentration of bear shifter magic on this part of the Washington coast.
Bears were among the most magical of shifters. There weren’t a lot of them, and they’d never really gathered in such numbers before. So maybe that’s why the leviathan—a creature that devoured magic—had been drawn here.
Once they’d realized the problem, the bear shifters had begun to work on it. They’d achieved a no-go zone for the evil creatures inside the sheltered cove, but just beyond the beach, the leviathan and its minions lay in wait for any creature foolish enough to venture too near.
As a result, the mer had relocated to the cove, for the time being, at the invitation of the Alpha. Two of her friends had recently mated bear shifters, and it boded well for the unexpected compatibility of their species. Mer were shifters too…of a sort. But most mated with humans, or other mer, if they mated at all. This inter-species mating between bear shifters and mer was something new.
The mer had extensive networks on land, and they were bringing all their resources to bear on the town of Grizzly Cove. Sirena, as the leader of her hunting party and a member of the pod’s leadership, should be out there, helping organize things. Instead, she was stuck in the clinic, feeling useless, with severely damaged pride and hurt feelings in addition to the scars she would bear for the rest of her life.
At least she was alive. That was something to be thankful for, but she lost sight of that during the tedious hours spent in bed, bored out of her mind.
“And how are we feeling today?” The deep voice of the bear shifter doctor came to her from the doorway of her prison cell-like room.
“We are just fine, doc,” she told him, annoyed that she’d been so lost in thought he’d managed to sneak up on her. Again.
Her senses were really dulled here on land and especially since she’d been injured. Nobody had ever managed to surprise her before. Not in years, at least. And now, this bear shifter got the drop on her pretty much every time she encountered him. It was vastly annoying. Infuriating, even. She was losing her edge, and it was pissing her off.
“How’s the pain level? Tolerable?” he asked, seemingly unfazed by her sarcastic tone.
“I’m fine,” she repeated through clenched teeth. She loathed being so weak.
The doctor—all six feet seven inches of him—regarded her critically. He really was too damned handsome for his own good. Blond with icy blue eyes, he had that Nordic thing going on, with just a hint of Native American influence that showed in his tanned skin and high cheekbones.
“Let’s just take a look at those dressings,” he plowed on, moving closer as he flipped through papers on a chart he’d been keeping of her progress. She’d tried to read the little notations he’d made, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of his abbreviations and codes.
Sirena was still swathed in bandages that had to be changed every day. The worst was around her midsection, where the creature had gotten hold of her and thrashed its head. She figured the evil thing had been intent on breaking her in two. Sawing her in half with its rows of teeth…or something equally sinister.
She held out her arm grudgingly. They’d settled into a routine where he did her arms first, then her legs, then saved the worst for last, checking out the wounds on her abdomen and back that wrapped all around her body. It wasn’t pretty. She was sure of that.
For a male, he had a surprisingly gentle touch as he unrolled the gauze from around her forearm. The dressings on her arms had gotten smaller over the past few days, the skin gradually healing. When she looked at what he uncovered, she was pleased—and a bit surprised—to find only scabs left on what had been deep gashes on her right arm.
“I think we can leave this uncovered now,” he said, surprising her again. Was she making progress? Slow-as-molasses progress, but still progress? Goddess be praised. “It’s coming along nicely. How about the other one?”
Mutely, she held out her other arm, and he repeated the unwrapping procedure.
“Hmm. We can leave off the lower part, but that gash on your upper arm still needs a bit of protection. We can go with a smaller bandage though.”
Putting actions to his words, he reached over to a supply drawer and pulled out a large adhesive bandage. He cleaned the area around the wound before applying the new dressing, working quietly and efficiently, as always.
He finished up there, then went to the foot of her bed and lifted up the sheet that covered her feet. He unwrapped her left foot, which had taken a direct hit on the instep that made walking not much fun. There was progress there too, which he rewarded with a smaller bandage, though she still felt a bit like a mummy. Her right foot was deemed in better shape, and he left off the wrappings, choosing a few large adhesive bandages instead.
He replaced the sheet over her feet and tucked it in gently, which was an odd gesture for such a manly man to make. She would have been touched, if she wasn’t so mad about being banged up this bad.
“Lie back, Sirena,” he said softly, coming to her side.
They’d worked out a system for this particular check over the past few days. She would lay flat, and he’d lift the gown to just below her breasts—the monster’s teeth had nicked the bottom of one, which the doctor treated with the utmost circumspectness, only baring the skin he needed to see to work. He’d then lower the sheet to just below her hip bones.
The majority of the damage was to her midsection, front and back. He’d see to the front side first, then help her roll onto her side so he could examine the back. He’d put extra cushions under her to make the otherwise hard hospital bed softer on the shredded skin of her back. He had some kind of gel-filled cushions that kept her cool and comfortable, almost making her feel as if she was floating—which was especially comforting to her, considering she had spent at least half her life in the ocean.
His touch was healing, even if his eyes were hard. He never
spoke much while he worked on her wounds, but as she’d started to regain her strength, little by little, he’d become a little more talkative. Not much, but a bit. He’d make the odd comment now and again, which was more than he’d done in the beginning.
“This is coming along. I think some of your magic is returning, but we’ll have to talk to Gus or a priestess to be sure. I’ve always thought it was our innate magic that aids in our healing abilities. Whenever I’ve seen a shifter unable to heal normally, it’s usually because he’s expended a great deal of his magic and it needs time to rebuild. The creature was still feeding on you, Sirena.” Those glacial blue eyes met hers, and she saw the outrage she experienced at those words reflected in his eyes. “But you weren’t an easy victim for the monster. You fought back, and you lived to fight another day. Take heart in that.”
It was as if he knew how bad she felt about needing to be rescued. Needing someone else to fight her battle with that cursed sea creature. She was a failure. A false leader. A fraud.
“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled, turning away. She heard him sigh.
“How about you roll over so I can check your back? Any discomfort?” he asked as if he hadn’t just reopened her worst emotional wound.
“My whole body is one big discomfort, doc. I feel awful,” she admitted.
“But better than you were before, right?”
Grudgingly, she agreed as she sucked in a breath at the pain rolling to her side caused.
She felt his warm touch on her back, and just that touch eased the pain a little. He had magic in his fingers, this bear doctor.
Chapter Two