Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3)

by Becca Fanning

  “Who’s car is that?” He pointed towards Jackson’s car in the driveway. “I don’t remember you having new friends,” he added with a sneer.

  “Derek, what do you want?” Olivia shifted her weight and stared right at her ex. It was funny, how little she felt inside with him standing right in front of her. “Can I help you?”

  “Liv, I need to talk to you,” Derek said. His tone changed from nasty to almost kind, and Olivia sighed. “It’s important.”

  She swallowed hard. “Why? I think the time for talking is over, Derek. And if it wasn’t then, it definitely is now.”

  Derek shook his head. “Look, I get it, you’re still angry with me. I know. But hear me out, okay? Max deserves a father, Liv. And I slept with Lisa to make you jealous!”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right,” she said. “More like you did it because you follow your dick, not your brain.”

  Derek pouted. “Come on, Liv, hear me out, okay? Just for old times’ sake?”

  Olivia bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said, feeling uncomfortable. “I think you made your decision pretty clear, Derek.”

  “I didn’t, though,” Derek said. He tried to step inside the door. Reluctantly, Olivia let him.

  “Just hold on,” she said as her eyes flashed with irritation. “Wait outside.”

  A knot was forming in Olivia’s stomach but she did her best to ignore it as she walked through the house on unsteady legs. “Jackson?” Olivia called loudly. “Max? Are you here?”

  “We’re back here,” Jackson called from Max’s bedroom. When he saw the expression on Olivia’s face, he jumped up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Derek’s here,” she said miserably. “I think I need to talk to him…” she trailed off, unable to meet Jackson’s eyes. “I mean, I feel like I have to. Or rather, I feel like I owe it to him, somehow. Does that make sense?”

  Jackson sighed heavily. “It doesn’t have to make sense,” he said moodily. “It’s your choice, Olivia.”

  As she watched Jackson leave the house, she felt a pang of regret and longing. Part of her wanted to run after him, to throw herself into his arms and beg forgiveness. You were engaged to Derek, she thought unhappily. You at least owe him some closure. Jackson will understand. It’s okay.

  But it didn’t feel okay.

  Derek followed Olivia into the living room and flopped down on a couch. He kicked his feet up on the coffee table and she winced at the muddy bottoms of his shoes. Jackson would never do that, a little voice inside Olivia’s head chirped. You know he’s too well mannered.

  She shook her head, as if to rid herself of any lingering ideas about Jackson. When she lowered herself into a chair opposite from Derek, she stared at him.

  “So what did you want to talk about?”

  “About this,” Derek said. He gestured around. “You know, I think it’s time for you to come down from that high horse,” he added. “You need to realize how things are in the real world. Sex doesn’t mean anything to men, Liv,” he said, as if letting Olivia in on some kind of hidden secret. “And I love you.”

  “If sex doesn’t mean anything, why did you run off and have it with someone else while we were still dating?” Olivia glared at Derek. “Or rather, still engaged.”

  Derek laughed. He ran a hand through his short hair. “You’re such a puritan, Liv, loosen up! It was just sex! That’s how men are, honey, we have this biological imperative…” he trailed off and winked at Olivia. She shifted uncomfortably.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I think Max and I are doing much better without you.”

  “I highly doubt that,” Derek scoffed. “I can imagine he’s suffering, you know, you’re the one who keeps parading men in and out of his life. That isn’t good for a kid, Olivia. I thought you’d know better than that.”

  Olivia frowned and stood up with her hands on her hips. “What are you even talking about?”

  “That guy, who was here just now,” Derek said. He smirked. “Can’t have been good for our son, Olivia. He needs a real father, someone who won’t abandon his family for the next best thing when the going gets tough.”

  Olivia stared at Derek. As much as she hated him, there was a small part of her that was ashamed at his words. It was true. She’d brought a new man into Max’s life with little regard for how it would play out, and that made her a bad mother. She bit her lip as tears came to her eyes. Sitting back down on the couch, she looked down at her shoes.

  “I knew you’d come around,” Derek said confidently. He stood up and wiped his hands off on his jeans. Olivia noticed a muddy smudge on the coffee table. “I’ve actually got some of my stuff in the car, I thought I’d bring it back over.”

  Olivia put her head in her hands as she listened to Derek’s heavy footsteps walking outside. Suddenly, there was a loud sound, almost like a roar. Jumping to her feet, she ran to the front door and watched in horror as a big, brown bear chased Derek down the street.

  “Oh my god,” Olivia mumbled. She clapped a hand over her mouth and shut the door, running back to check on Max.

  A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Warily, Olivia grabbed a hammer and set Max down in his room as she inched towards the door. When she pulled it open, she was surprised to see Jackson standing there, heaving and breathing heavily.

  “There was a bear,” Olivia said in disbelief. “It…it chased Derek away!”

  “Can you let me in?” Jackson’s voice was shaking. “I need to talk to you.”

  They stepped into the foyer and Olivia shut the front door. “What is it?” She looked into Jackson’s face, feeling ashamed.

  “I had a bad feeling about that guy,” Jackson said uneasily. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “And I didn’t leave, I, uh, kind of hung around. When he came out of your house, he was on the phone with someone. And he was saying, well, he was saying that you fell for it, and that you have no idea about Lisa.”

  Olivia’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?”

  “No,” Jackson said. He winked. “Dead serious. Serious as a bear, even.” He cleared his throat. “You know, I didn’t know how to bring this up, but here goes…”

  Olivia swallowed, looking away.

  Jackson tilted her chin up, “I’m a Bear Shifter. You know what those are. Well, Max is a Bear Shifter too. That might sound scary, but I promise you that it’s not. You’ve had some idea, right?” he said. “You knew he was special.”

  “Yes, I knew he was special. Different. But-“

  “I know because we can usually sense one another. And,” Jackson said, biting his lip, “because I’m his father.”

  Olivia’s jaw dropped. “But how?”

  “There was a research project a few years ago. They wanted to analyze Shifter sperm. It was for science,” he said, a touch defensively. “Anyway, there was a mixup at the lab and my sample went into the donor pool.”

  “Wow,” Olivia said, her pulse racing.

  “Wow is exactly right.” Jackson looked away, his voice getting quiet. “So there it is. Are you ok with all this?”

  “I think so. I’ll need some time to process all this.”

  “Well,” Jackson said in a vulnerable tone, “You won’t have to do it alone.”

  “But-” Olivia said. Her heart skipped a beat. “We barely know each other, Jackson.”

  “Then will you have dinner with me? A real date,” Jackson asked. He winked at her again. “This time, we go out. Although, I have no problems with winding up in bed again…” He trailed off. Olivia threw herself into his arms, covering his face with kisses.

  “Yes!” She replied happily, closing her eyes and holding Jackson tightly against her. “Yes.”

  Breakwater: Leo

  Star Bears I

  by

  Becca Fanning

  As a little girl, Annie had pictured how her dream wedding would go. She’d wear a white dress and walk down the aisle, looking out over a sea of smiling faces as
she approached the altar. Her groom she had pictured less as a specific person and more as an amalgamation of traits she wanted: kind eyes, a warm smile, broad shoulders… things she associated with a gentle, good-hearted man. Her mother would be alive, and her father would be sober.

  She had always known this little fantasy of hers had been a mess of impossibilities. She just hadn’t pictured it going this awry.

  Running a hand over the bodice of her dress, Annie stared at herself in the mirror. Her reflection looked morosely back out at her. One pale, manicured hand ran over the bodice of her gown, fingers tracing over the thousands of crystals dotting the fabric like stars. Annie had never been this close to a diamond before. She’d certainly never thought she’d be wearing this many of them. Her auburn hair was piled on top of her head in an elaborate series of braids and curls and there was shimmering powder swiped across the lids of her grey eyes, making them seem bigger and brighter.

  Annie had never looked better, and she had never felt worse.

  Not for the first time since she had received the news of her own impending nuptials by way of her father drunkenly sweating through a confession, Annie cursed at the series of mundane-to-regrettable events that made up her life. She’d always been told growing up that if she worked hard enough, she could be and have anything she wanted. Bright-eyed idiot that she had been, she hadn’t realized that it was just a condescending platitude doled out to the have-nots of the universe to make them more complacent with their lot, to shift the blame away from the people overworking and underpaying their employees. Instead, she’d planted her feet, ignored the throngs of people she’d known growing up who worked hard day in and day out and barely had enough to eat, and decided to become a politician.

  She’d ended up as a waitress at dive bar instead. It hadn’t been all terrible—the other servers were friendly and she got free drinks—but spending anywhere between eight and fifteen hours a day avoiding groping hands and belligerent drunks hadn’t been how she wanted to spend her life. This was without her father showing up and explaining that he needed money—just this once!—and that he wouldn’t spend it all on cheap booze, only for a friend of his to call her to come pick him up once he’d drunk himself unconscious. At the time, it hadn’t seemed like much, just a continued state of existence tinged by the frustration that she could be so much more. Now it seemed like paradise. It was funny what made you learn to appreciate what you had. Sometimes it was a death, or a breakup, or getting fired. Sometimes it was your father telling you he’d accidentally sold you into being what amounted to a sex slave for a demonic autocrat with a warship that could eat the sun and a private army decked out in gear reminiscent of Civil War uniforms.

  Annie had laughed when her father had first broken the news, and she hadn’t laughed again since. The next week had been a blur of the sickening realization that no, it wasn’t a joke, and she needed to go to a meeting point, where Captain Jacob Strathmore of the ITC Appomattox had looked her over with his pale eyes like she was a side of meat and declared her acceptable as a wife so long as she knew her place. She’d been whisked away for fittings and lessons. The dress, decorations, and a priest had appeared seemingly by magic. It was impressive what one could do when his footsteps echoed across the universe. It had been so hectic that Annie had barely had time to plan her escape.

  The best course of action, of course, would have been to disappear while still planetside, but that hadn’t been an option. As it were, she had looked at her choices, fluttered her eyelashes at the gaunt, spidery tyrant who owned her, and done her best to seem cowed. She had convinced him that he couldn’t see her in her dress, and he had smirked down at his pretty, witless bride-to-be and agreed to adhere to her charming little superstition. He had, of course, had a few of his agents watch her and serve as makeshift bridesmaids; all three of them lay unconscious on the floor, the spiked punch making a sticky puddle where one had dropped her cup on the way down. Annie felt a pang of remorse for the women who Strathmore would doubtlessly punish severely when he discovered her absence, but then again they had all continued to wake up and put on their horrendous uniforms and do an unhinged warlord’s bidding day after day when the mechanics behind putting a blaster to their heads and pulling the trigger were fairly simple. She quelled her sympathy and checked the hallway outside her door.

  She’d demanded to be taken on a grand tour of the Appomattox in order to “acquaint herself with her future home.” This had given her general knowledge of two things: where the escape vessels were and the guard’s patrol schedules. Since the rise of technology, few people had physical patrols anymore. Instead, most relied on security measures such as bio-locks and cameras. Strathmore used both. Luckily, the room that had been given to Annie had, by her request, come with a great view off the side of the ship, and since the escape vessels were located at either side of the ship, this meant she was relatively close to the portside emergency escape station. All she could do was book it down the corridor, key herself in with an ID card she’d swiped from one of her napping guards—along with the woman’s boots—and pray.

  Taking a deep breath, she did exactly that. She made it to the door just fine, which she’d expected, but as soon as someone saw her on the security feed or the emergency alert went off when she opened the doors to take off she’d have some of the best soldiers in the galaxy swarming her. Sure enough, she heard shouting as she closed the door. She looked around for something to block the doorway with, but didn’t see anything she could move. Instead, she hurried to one of the sleek, black Needles lined up for takeoff.

  Needles were escape vessels designed to maneuver out of combat situations, which meant that they had both full-cover plasma shielding and a simplistic flight situation geared towards avoiding pursuers. In short, it was perfect for Annie but only if she could get in one and start it before the guards got in. She lowered the interior bay door and released the boots keeping one of the Needles in place easily enough, but as the metal shutter began to lift, Annie heard shouting from just outside the door. Cursing under her breath, she hitched her skirt up and dashed for the newly released Needle. She had just managed to get inside and close the hatch when the bay door slid open and seven guards charged into the room.

  “Annie Heathcoat,” one boomed, “please exit the escape vessel. Compliance will earn you lenience.”

  “Shove a blaster in it!” Annie shouted back as the Needle’s engine thrummed to life. She hit the button to activate the plasma shielding as soon as she was able. A split second after the blue-white field appeared around her vessel, a blaster bolt slammed into it, dissolving in a flash of light. A screen on Annie’s dash showed that her shield was now at ninety-five percent. Needles had excellent shielding for their size, but that wouldn’t help her for long against many more point-blank blaster bolts.

  The interior bay door creaked upwards, almost complete in it’s ascent. Most modern ships required the interior bay door to be manually opened. After that, the exterior bay door was set on a timer. A countdown was programmed in, usually around forty-five seconds, from the time the interior bay door was fully up. After that, the exterior bay door would rapidly lift, allowing takeoff. This enabled the person commanding the bay doors to open to either get in a ship or get out of the room and avoid being sucked into space. As the beep sounded to alert the room the countdown had commenced, one guard hurried over to the station to stop the doors from opening. Annie watched out of the corner of her eye, breathing deeply and steading her hands on the steering column. It would take the guard far less than forty-five seconds to re-lower the interior bay door. It didn’t matter; this was why Annie had reprogrammed the countdown to two seconds.

  All sounds outside the Needle abruptly cut off as everything not properly latched down was swept into the inky vacuum of space. Annie took a moment to silently apologize to the seven guards who had been ejected from the ship and then entered warp 2. She double checked to make sure the autopilot was functioning, then slumped back
. Pressing a hand to her chest, she closed her eyes and breathed out. Her heart was thumping far too fast under her hand, but she refused to let herself begin to hyperventilate. She was already on a ship with limited shielding and limited fuel in the depths of unfamiliar space. She didn’t need to add “overtaxed the oxygen recyclers” to her list of problems.