Table of Contents
Chapter One
(Untitled)
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
About the Author
Nymphs are tiny little creatures. How can one possibly be the mate of two huge polar bear shifters?
Thal had never realized how boring her life as a nymph is until a group of ogres kidnap her and her kin. When she manages to help her friends and family escape captivity, she never expects to run into two men and three leprechauns intending to save them, as well.
When Kiran and Gaige mount a rescue with three unlikely partners, they couldn’t be more surprised to realize that one of the tiny nymphs is their mate. Has Mother Nature played a nasty joke on them or is there more to the tiny lass than what they see?
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Shades Of Green
Copyright © 2015 Tianna Xander
ISBN: 978-1-4874-0268-6
Cover art by Angela Waters
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
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Shades Of Green
Highland Bears Five
By
Tianna Xander
Chapter One
Thal ran through the forest. The scent of death and decay hung in the air. The thick layer of decomposing leaves and twigs mixed with the compacted dirt on the damp ground smelled musty.
Hundreds of shades of green followed in her wake as she made her way through the shadowy forest. She entered one of Tual’s glades and frowned at the complete lack of life. Where was everyone? It wasn’t her birthday, there was no need to hide from her, yet she couldn’t find one of them.
Was no one doing their job today? Right next door, her glade was green, teeming with life, as it should be. Tual’s glade was barren and brown, its trees and plants drooping with the temporary death of winter.
She glanced up and around. Where were her sisters, her cousins, her aunts? Even her mother, who never wandered far from Thal’s side, was nowhere to be found. Her heartbeat grew faster. Her breath hitched as she thought about what could have happened.
Spinning in a circle, Thal threw her arms out, bringing Tual’s glade to life. Moving on, she entered the next glade and thicket, the next stand of trees, bringing the Earth back to life, all the while searching for her woodland kin.
“Where is everyone?” Her voice echoed through the mostly barren forest. She’d hoped for an answer, a whisper, any hint of sound that would help her find those she missed.
Her magical energy spent, Thal headed home. Tears filled her eyes as she strode through the dormant trees and brush. She couldn’t awaken all of the plants by herself. It was too big a task. Where had everyone gone? Her entire family had disappeared in a matter of hours, and at the most crucial time of year. Why?
Spring couldn’t happen, wouldn’t happen, without the woodland, water, and earth nymphs. While either of them could take the place of another for an indefinite time, there was no way she could ever do everyone’s job on her own. The ground and rivers would lie dormant until they blessed them with their nymph magic. Without their enchantment, it all would, in the end, die. The entire Earth would eventually die. She couldn’t let that happen. Thal knew she must do something to find the others—but what?
When she was filled with magical energy, shades of green sprang up beneath her feet and over her head as she moved through the forest, but it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last if she didn’t return to the task and reinforce that life daily. It was why they were all assigned glades, to ensure they recharged each and every plant until the life force of the forest awakened to the warmth of the sun and began growing on its own. Daily they walked through their glades and glens, their fords and forests, spreading their magic over the awakening Earth.
Exhausted, Thal stumbled to her little home in the center of the forest. Concentrating on shifting her size, she shrank down to enter the tiny door just inside the knothole in the trunk of the biggest tree.
Swallowing thickly, she glanced around the great room, hoping to see someone—anyone—but she was alone. She’d never been so alone before. It was strange and scary. Every day of her life, her family had been near. Not today.
Where had her family gone? One by one they had disappeared, leaving her scared and alone. Even in her safe little house, the home she shared with her mother and her sisters, she felt fear. Something was wrong, very, very wrong.
Skipping her evening meal, Thal stumbled to bed. Too tired to bother changing into her sleeping clothes, she plopped face down onto her bed, asleep before her head hit her thick pillow of dry, fall leaves.
It was still dark when Thal woke. Frowning, she rubbed her eyes and looked around. The ground quaked and the tree above her trembled as a low rumbling grew louder and louder.
“I smell a nymph.” She heard a loud smacking sound. “She smells tasty.”
The tree shook violently. Thal ran for the archway and held on tight. It was an ogre. Everyone knew they hated the nymphs. Whether an earth, water, forest or field nymph, it didn’t matter. Ogres hated them because they loved the way they smelled. Luckily, though, they apparently didn’t taste good at all.
Hope flared through her. If the ogres had them, they would still be alive, though not for long. It wouldn’t take long for them to die of thirst or starvation. While the ogres loved collecting the nymphs, they had no idea what to feed them or, if they did, they never bothered.
As far as Thal could tell with her limited exposure to them, ogres were big and strong, but like most large animals she’d seen, they weren’t the sharpest thorns in the briar.
“I know you’re in there, nymph.” The sound of loud sniffing reached her ears. “I can smell you,” he said slowly, the words slurring together. Had he been eating the fermented berries the snow had hidden all winter? “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I want to catch you and stuff you in a jar.” His makeshift song did nothing to make her want to come out of hiding.
Thal bit her lip, hoping he would soon give up and she could follow him back to whatever hole he’d crawled out of. She had to find her family. Something told her that she would find at least a few of her relatives back in his home.
A loud, thunderous noise ripped through the room. Like a small explosion, it rattled he
r dishware and shook the furniture. She wrinkled her nose as a horrible stench filled her nose. What on earth was that? Was he trying to kill her with some malodorous poison she’d never heard of before?
“Ah...that feels better.” The ogre chuckled. “Better out than in, I always say.” He shook the tree again. “Are ya coming out, or do I have to knock the tree down?” He shook the tree again and it groaned. Thal didn’t know how long it could hold up to his abuse.
Glancing around, she searched for something, anything she could use as a weapon. After a moment, she smiled. Snatching up the small knives off the block on the counter, she stuffed one in each sock, one in each of her back pockets and one down the back of her waistband. With a deep breath, she closed her eyes, said a short prayer to the goddess and stepped through her door.
Someone had to attempt to save her family, and goddess knew she couldn’t awaken the world of green on her own. She needed help, or she might as well die with the rest of her family because, without them all, the death of the world wouldn’t be far behind.
Chapter Two
“What in bloody hell do ye think is going on here?” Gaige glanced at his cousin, noting that Kiran appeared as confounded as he felt at the moment.
The ground, which should be covered in thick-green grass and dark, fertile loam as it was every spring, appeared gray as the snow melted. There were no light-green blades of grass, no clover. The soil wasn’t as it should be, either. It was as though the very ground was ill.
The trees, usually sprouting leaves the size of squirrels ears by this time of year, still lay dormant. Nothing green peered through the bed of dead leaves and equally dead-looking trees. The forest appeared as lifeless and barren as it did in the middle of winter.
The scent of moist soil and rotting vegetation permeated everything as they walked through the woods hunting game for the day’s meals. There was nothing. The squirrels and rabbits stayed sheltered deep in their burrows. Some of them stared out at them as they passed, their little hearts pounding with fear at the sight and scent of the two predators striding through the quiet forest.
“I dinnae know.” Kiran glanced around them, his eyes narrowing as though he expected to find the cause hiding behind the nearest tree. “I only know that the wood nymphs should hae already awakened the forest and spread their magic.” He spun around. “This glade should be covered in shades of green, not these sickly shades of gray and brown.”
Gaige peered around them. In springs past, they had been able to witness the work of the wood nymphs as they sparked the arrival of spring in the forest. They had also seen the field and earth nymphs on occasion. Never had they gone out on a spring day and seen not a one, as they had so far, this day.
Frowning, he glanced back at Kiran. “Do ye think they perished over the winter?” The last winter had been unusually cold. Still, the nymphs were magical creatures. It didn’t make sense that the weather could do them in.
“The weather didn’t kill them, ye daft Scot. The ogres have them all. Open your eyes and clean the cotton out of that thick scull o’ yours and you’ll see I’m right.”
Both Gaige and Kiran spun around at the tiny-sounding male voice.
“What the bloody hell?” they both said at the same time.
Three little men stood staring up at them, two redheads and one blond, all with strange, silvery green eyes glaring at them as though they thought they were little more than a waste of skin.
“You’re a ways from home, aren’t ye, leprechaun? This is Scotland.”
The roundest of the three little men cleared his throat, his eyes growing shifty. “We aren’t leprechauns.”
“Ye needn’t worry.” He elbowed his cousin. “Kiran and I dinnae care for leprechaun treasure. We find enough trouble on our own. We dinnae need help from ye.” He narrowed his eyes. “And any man with a brain in his scull knows a leprechaun is trouble. Let’s get back home, Kiran.”
They turned to leave. Gaige meant what he said. He’d heard the stories of brownies and leprechauns among the other magical beings and knew that a man only asked for trouble when trying to trick them out of what was theirs.
“We’ve come to ask your help.”
Both Kiran and Gaige turned back to the little men. “What could ye need with our help? We’re mortals.”
“Ha!” The blond leprechaun rested his hands on his hips, threw his head back and laughed. “As mortal as a bear shifter can be. You know as well as we do that you both have a magic all your own.” He climbed up on a stump. “We need your help. The nymphs need your help.”
“Why would they need our help? We can only shift our shape. They hold the magic of life inside them.”
“You’re right. They do.” The thinner of the two redheads stepped forward. “I’m Larin.” He pointed to the blond. “That’s Liam and the round one, here, is Ian.”
“The round one? You call me the round one?” Ian sputtered.
“Well, you are round, brother,” Liam said.
“Kiss my rosy round ass.” Ian glowered at the other two. “Are you going to tell them about the nymphs, or are you just going to continue to insult me?”
Gaige wanted to laugh, but thought better of it. Ian didn’t look happy, and there was an undercurrent of apprehension in the three little men.
“Why would ye need help from two daft Scots, as ye put it?” His curiosity got the better of him and he wanted to know.
“Well, the ogres have the nymphs, and before long, they’ll either try to eat them, play rough games with them, or starve them to death. Either way, they’ll be dead and so will we. Without the nymphs to awaken the Earth, there will be no one to awaken the plants and renew their life this spring,” Liam explained. “Without them, the planet dies, and us with it.”
Shoving his fingers through his hair, Gaige glanced at Kiran. “Bloody hell.”
Chapter Three
Thal glanced around her small cell, hoping to find a way out. She didn’t hold out much hope that she would escape before the ogre came back. She tried not to take deep breaths. The stench of the place was nearly unbearable. The ogre and its family were gassy, to say the least.
“I could die here, from the smell alone.” She wrinkled her nose and waved her hand in front of her face.
“Thal, is that you?” The muffled sound of her mother’s voice came from somewhere beyond the walls of her cell.
Leaning against the door, Thal pressed her ear against the thick wood. “Yes, Mother.”
“I had hoped...” Her mother sighed. “I wish they hadn’t captured you, too.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Mother.” Thal’s eyes burned and her vision blurred. “I think I was the last. Soon, everything will die, and us with it. Perhaps it is better if we go quickly. Do you think they will try to eat us?”
“No. I do not. They have already killed Jilly Greenleaf.” The sound of her mother’s soft sobs wrenched Thal’s heart. “They already know our flavor is unpalatable.”
“They killed Jilly?” Turning, Thal put her back to the wall and slowly slid to the floor, giving way to tears. Jilly had been her best friend. Not only would they die the slow death of starvation, she would do so knowing that the ogres had murdered Jilly. Hugging her knees, she closed her eyes and wished there was something she could do to save the rest of them.
“How often do they stop by to check on us, Mother?”
“They come in the evening. After that, they retire for the night. In the morning, they hunt anew.”
If only there were a way to escape. If only she could make herself huge, she could escape from this cage and overpower the ogres, but she couldn’t. She had two sizes only. Her working size, which was similar to that of a human, and her evening size which made her small enough to live in the hole of the tree.
With the ogres only checking on them once a day, they would have almost twenty-four hours to run before the beasts discovered their disappearance. Thal patted her legs for r
eassurance. Just as she’d hoped, the ogres had only found the knife at her waistband. The beasts hadn’t been bright enough to check her for other weapons. The knife had surprised them, because nymphs generally didn’t carry iron.
She smiled as she thought of the faery who had given her the useful tools. The knives weren’t made of iron. They were made of something the fae warrior had called steel. If there was iron in the steel, it wasn’t enough to interfere with a nymph’s magical powers, and the knives had proven useful. Perhaps they would be even more useful today.
Pushing her emotions aside, Thal reached up and felt along the cold door, hoping to find the latch. Maybe she could use one of the knives to cut the door open or wiggle the catch loose. Whatever she managed to do, it was certainly better than doing nothing while she waited to die.
As she shifted her size to her working height, her fingers found three large bumps along the length of one side of the door and one small hole on the other.
“What are those things?” A better question. What held the door closed?
What felt like an eternity later, Thal sat down, exhausted and thirsty. Her stomach growled noisily, reminding her that the ogres had grabbed her before breakfast and it was now dark. She didn’t know how she knew, but all Nymphs could tell the moment the sun set.
Shifting her size to her smaller evening size, Thal leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. Bringing her legs up, she wrapped her arms around them, rested her head on her knees and cried.
“Who’s cryin’? You still in there, Nymph?” The deep growling voice of an ogre shot into her cell. The sound wasn’t muffled at all. It was as though he stood in the room with her.
Thal glanced up. Light from the other side of the door shone through a small opening in the center of the door that she hadn’t realized was there.
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