Simply Bears: A Ten Book Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance Collection

by Simply Shifters

  Suddenly, two things happened nearly at once. The alarm sirens blared, making me jump. Not a moment later, I heard Grant's voice on the phone, finally with crystal-clear clarity. He was speaking so loudly I could even hear him reasonably well over the sirens.

  "Get in the house. Get in the house, Lila! Can you hear me? Get inside!"

  "Grant, what-"

  "Steven's just spotted them from the sky. They're coming into the city in droves. Hundreds of them...thousands. They beat us to the attack, and they are going to make their attempt to take the city by force. Some of them are probably going to enter the city from the back, behind the house. You have to get inside, Lila. Can you hear me? Get inside right now! And tell me when you have the door safely locked behind you."

  "Okay, I will."

  I had already turned and started heading back to the house the moment he'd first told me to get inside. Instead of reaching the front porch like I should have done by this point, I almost ran right into a young maple sapling. A maple sapling that I knew wasn't really that close to the house at all, but was instead on one side of the long driveway.

  The fog was rising up increasingly thick, and rising up fast, and it was making it difficult to see where I was going.

  I turned myself around again, looking for the house, but a tall, wide evergreen was in my way. I walked toward it and to the side, until the house came into view again. I saw that somehow, I'd gotten much farther away from it than I'd thought.

  "Grant? Are you still there?"

  Silence.

  "Grant, I got really turned around for a second, because of the fog, and I'm a little further away from the house than I thought. Can you still hear me?"

  Suddenly, he came back on the line, but just for a couple of seconds, and his voice was muffled. He was shouting, and it sounded like he was saying he and Adrian were on their way. Then all I could hear was static. Right before the call dropped and my phone went to the home screen.

  I pocketed my phone with a trembling hand. "Dammit."

  I knew the house guard that had been around the front had to still be near, and I called out his name, which was Paul.

  "Can you hear me? Paul?"

  If he answered, I couldn't hear him over the blaring sirens.

  Still walking through thick clouds of fog toward the house, I tried again. "Paul? Please answer if you can hear me!"

  I wondered if he'd already shifted. Soon, a great roar let me know that he had. The roar had come from somewhere nearby, maybe only thirty or forty feet, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  However, my relief didn't last long. Paul's roar was almost immediately answered by snarling. And it didn't sound like snarling from one wolf alone. It sounded like at least a half-dozen wolves at once. The snarling was followed by howling. Then, more snarling.

  I froze dead in my tracks. Somewhere very near me, hidden by the dense fog, at least six or seven wolves were stalking the yard, probably preparing to attack Paul.

  Within a second, I heard him roar again, and his roar was answered by another one, just a bit farther in the distance. The other house guard was coming to help him. Thank God.

  Soon I stood stock-still, hardly daring to breathe, while sounds of a shifter fight rose above the sirens. Growls, snarls, and howls seemed to get a little closer to me, even as I remained standing still. I could see the house in view, maybe only a hundred feet away, though the fog was obscuring my vision to the point that I wasn't sure if I was accurately judging the distance right.

  I didn't want to start toward the house only to run smack into the middle of the fight. With the fog and so many similar-looking trees around, I was more than a little disoriented, and I was having a hard time pinpointing exactly how far away, and in which direction, the shifter fight was happening.

  While the sirens continued wailing, I moved my mouth in a near-silent plea. "Please hurry, Grant and Adrian. Please hurry."

  Just as soon as I'd spoken those words, the sirens stopped. However, I knew this didn't mean that the danger was over, and I could hear that the danger wasn't over. Now the snarling and roaring of the shifter fight sounded closer than ever. More than likely, I knew Grant had simply ordered the sirens off in order to hear me better if I called out to him and Adrian for help while hidden by fog.

  Still not wanting to head toward the house, and the shifter fight that was possibly between it and me, I began creeping over to a tall evergreen just to my left, suddenly feeling a bit exposed, even with the fog, and wanting some sort of additional cover. Once behind the tree while the shifter fight still raged on, I took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly, silently praying that Grant and Adrian would soon arrive. They had to. Because I knew the two bear guards couldn't hold off a half-dozen wolves forever. Particularly if any of those wolves were enormous northern wolves.

  For a few minutes, I just focused on taking deep, slow breaths, battling alternating waves of nausea and dizziness. It was late October, Halloween day, actually, and the damp air was chilly, eventually adding sudden fits of shivering to my bouts of dizziness and nausea. I wrapped my thick, cable-knit sweater around me tightly, shaking from both cold and fear.

  I knew Grant and Adrian would be arriving any second; I had to believe they would be, because while I listened to the shifter fight, I began to realize that it sounded like I was hearing the roars of only one shifter bear.

  For a while, I'd definitely been able to tell that both guards were still in the fight. Paul and the other guard, Matt, both had wives and children, and I prayed that whichever guard had been taken down wasn't dead, but just injured.

  I couldn't stand the thought of any bear shifter being killed in a fight, but I especially couldn't stand the thought of children being told that one of their parents was gone. I knew from personal experience how devastating losing a parent, in my case four of them, could be.

  Seconds ticked by like hours. The wolf shifters howled and snarled from somewhere nearby, hidden by the trees and fog. The single remaining bear shifter roared, but it seemed to me that his roars were becoming quieter, less ferocious and intense. With my stomach churning, I shivered some more, silently praying that Grant and Adrian would arrive soon.

  When I heard dry leaves crunching behind me, I whirled around, breathing a sigh of relief, expecting to see one of them. But my sigh immediately got stuck in my throat. Because the man standing behind me wasn't Grant, and he wasn't Adrian. This man was much older, with dark hair streaked with gray.

  He leered at me, revealing cracked, yellow teeth. "This simply could not have been easier. The fog...you being outside of the house for some reason...everything. We actually brought grenades, thinking we were going to have to try to bomb you out.

  “See, just in case our attempt to take over the city for ourselves proves unsuccessful, I decided that killing you would make a great consolation prize. Just a little screw you to these high and mighty rich prince bears. And considering that things are already not going incredibly well for us wolves back in town..."

  The man standing not three feet away from me was Malachi, the alpha of Stony Rapids. The man who'd sold me after having killed both my birth parents and my adoptive parents.

  He moved his wide shoulders in a shrug, taking a step closer to me. "Well, let's just say I think we still have a chance of taking over the city, but...you're here right now. And I'm here right now. And I guess I've just decided to take my consolation prize right now, even though I may ultimately end up needing no consolation."

  Trembling, I tried to take a step backward but ran into the tree.

  Malachi took another step forward, making him less than a foot away from me now, then pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked the blade open. "I can slit your throat with this knife while in human form, or I can shift and claw your throat out as a wolf. Your choice. But you've only got three seconds to make it before I decide for you."

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  I'd always been a fighter. Growing up in Stony Rapids afte
r my birth parents had been murdered, I'd had to be. And now, with the man who'd killed them, and then later my adoptive parents, now standing right in front of my face, brandishing a knife, I wasn't about to stop fighting. Even if I died while I did so, which I knew was likely to happen anyway even if I didn't fight. So, if I was going to go down, better to go down swinging, I figured. Better to go down the same way I'd lived my life, fighting, as a tribute to my murdered parents, all four of them.

  I knew I had precious seconds to think about how exactly I was going to fight. I didn't have any weapons, and I didn't really have much time to think. Not to mention that I was suddenly so dizzy I was having trouble just remaining upright. Instinctively, I slid a hand in my jeans pocket, maybe having a vague thought about striking Malachi over the head with my phone. But I'd reached in the wrong pocket.

  However, what I felt in that wrong pocket was even better than a phone. Much better.

  After closing my hand around the thin plastic handle, I whipped out a metal nail file. The point of it was sharp enough that I knew it could do some real damage as a stabbing instrument.

  Taking a sudden wide step around the side of the evergreen, just to put a little distance between Malachi and me, I brandished the metal file at him. "Now you have three seconds. Three seconds to run."

  Lowering his knife, he laughed. Actually laughed at me. The sound was sharp, bitter, and grating.

  I supposed my threat had been funny. I knew it was ridiculous to think he might really become frightened of my nail file and me. I didn't care. I knew making him afraid might be a stretch, but maybe after I got a few good stabs in, he'd at least feel a pang of regret for taking me on, and that would be good enough for me.

  So long as killing me wouldn't be an easy task for him, and as long as I could prevent him from killing other people in the city, at least for a few minutes, I'd consider that a victory. It struck me that in this way, I could help protect the city like I'd wanted to, though of course, not from the safety of a steel-and-titanium cage.

  Malachi laughed again, even louder this time, the harsh sound drowning out the roaring and snarling still going on somewhere nearby.

  "Oh, Lila. Well...you're quite a joke. Think you might have a little revenge on me with that itty-bitty nail file of yours?"

  I shook my head, still brandishing the file at him, tightening my grip on the handle. "No. I don't care about taking revenge on you. See, I've learned a few things since I left Stony Rapids. Revenge means nothing to me now. All I care about now is protecting the people and the city I love. All I care about now is protecting my new home."

  Malachi snorted, raising his knife again. "Well...say bye-bye to your sweet new home."

  The next second of my life seemed to happen in painfully slow motion. He lunged forward and began sweeping the knife in a downward arc above me. At the same time, I ducked and thrust the nail file forward, aiming it at his stomach. But I must have blinked. Because one fraction of a second, he was there. Then, the next, he just wasn't. My file stabbed forward into thin air.

  It took me another quick second to figure out what had happened, but near-deafening roaring was a pretty good tip-off. I turned my head and saw two massive black bears rolling on the ground with Malachi very close nearby. Even through the fog, I could see the bears were Grant and Adrian. They must have crept up and tackled Malachi. And not a moment too soon.

  Weak with relief, I exhaled, suddenly shaking like a leaf from head to toe. Malachi shifted into wolf form and became a blur of silvery gray against Grant and Adrian's dark fur. Though within seconds, Malachi's silvery gray fur became covered in large bright red blotches as Grant and Adrian slashed at him with their razor-sharp claws. Malachi howled in pain, the piercing sound echoing in the yard.

  My legs began shaking so badly I didn't think they could hold me up much longer. When Malachi howled the loudest he had yet, and then something that appeared to be a wolf limb flew past me not a foot in front of my face, my legs began shaking even worse still. Grant and Adrian were literally ripping him apart, limb from limb.

  Everything began spinning, the trees, the cloudy sky, everything. My vision began swimming with hazy gray dots, but only for a moment or two before I fainted, my legs finally giving out beneath me.

  When I opened my eyes again some time later, I felt like I'd been sleeping. I felt like I'd been deep in a dream. Or a nightmare. I couldn't quite recall which, but a feeling of unease made me think it had been the latter. All around me, machines beeped and chirped. I wasn't in my bed at home; judging from the noises around me, I seemed to be in some sort of medical center.

  My vision seemed blurry somehow, and it took me a moment to realize it was because my eyes were only open a sliver. Using more strength than it seemed like I should have had to use for such a simple task, I opened them all the way, and immediately my vision became clearer.

  Grant and Adrian were both sitting in chairs by my bedside, and they now both sprang up at the same time, their handsome, strong-jawed faces identical masks of anxiety and concern.

  Grant very gently picked up one of my hands. "How do you feel?"

  I thought for a moment, the events of the day suddenly flooding back. "The guards...Paul and Matt. Are they...?”

  "Both in the room next door." With his expression now one of relief and tenderness, Grant picked up my hand and pressed his full mouth to the back of it. "And both of them are all right. They're both going to make it. They were brave...though not nearly as brave as you." After pressing another kiss on the back of my hand, Grant continued, his voice thick with emotion. "Not nearly as brave as you."

  With his green eyes kind of shiny and pink, Adrian leaned over the bed railing and pressed a tender kiss to my forehead. "Not even a fraction as brave. Or as strong."

  I managed a weak thank you before my eyes closed, seemingly of their own accord. I just couldn't keep them open any longer. Grant said something about Dr. Bradley having given me something to help me rest, and he said I should just try to go to sleep again.

  I gladly took his advice, already drifting off. But not a moment later, I remembered something, something that gave me a little jolt of energy. At least enough to speak, and open my eyes a sliver again.

  "I'm pregnant. Twins. I want to tell you both something. I'm not choosing. I just decided that. I don't care who the father of the twins is, I'm not choosing between the two of you. I love you both. I want to spend the rest of my life with you both. And...." I paused, struggling to keep my eyes open even a sliver. "That's that. And if either of you have a problem with that...."

  My eyes closed, and I fell asleep before I could finish the thought.

  I didn't wake up again for several hours, and when I finally did, I felt refreshed, alert even. Grant and Adrian were still by my bedside, now joined by Fiona and Mil. For the next little while, I was showered with kisses, over-the-bed-rail-hugs, and countless inquiries as to how I felt, which was perfectly fine.

  I did, however, feel a pretty urgent need to use the restroom, and Mil volunteered to help escort me there. Along the way, I asked her if all the wolves were dead, and she said all but a few dozen, who'd escaped to parts unknown, probably never to be seen again.

  "And although many of our men were injured, no deaths, and everyone will recover."

  I breathed a sigh of relief, literally a bit weak with gratitude. Fortunately, Mil was half-holding me up with an arm around my shoulders.

  Immediately after I'd returned to my bed, Dr. Bradley came bustling in and kicked everyone out while she gave me a brief physical exam to make sure everything with me and the babies was fine, which it was. Once she'd assured me of that, she told me that she had the result of the paternity test back, though there was no rush for me to hear that result.

  "I can wait to deliver that news until you feel completely up to it."

  I felt completely up to it right then, and I told her so.

  "But first...can I please have a minute alone with Grant and Adrian? C
an you please send them back in?"

  She said of course, and left the room, and Grant and Adrian soon came striding in. Once they were both standing by my bedside, each of them holding one of my hands, I didn't waste any time.

  "I was a little out of it earlier, but I remember what I said, and I meant it. I'm not deciding between the two of you. Ever. I just can't. And I won't. Before Dr. Bradley gives us the paternity test results, I just wanted to make it crystal clear that no matter which one of you is the father of the twins, I want you both to be my mates for life." Realizing something, I paused, swallowing. "That is...if you'd both be okay with that as well."

  Grant and Adrian exchanged glances, their expressions unreadable.

  Adrian looked at me with the hint of a smile curving his mouth. "We've actually already discussed it, and whatever will make you happiest is what we want, too. The babies will be ours...the three of ours...collectively. I think the most important part is that they're raised surrounded by a lot of love...which they definitely will be."