Stranger Creatures 2: Bear's Edge

by Christina Lynn Lambert

  Carter came running over to Grant’s truck. “How bad is she hurt?”

  “A bullet to the chest. Left side, and she’s bleeding bad. Can I initiate her if the bullet’s still in?” That particular question had never come up in Aiden and Greg’s training. Bullets could kill shifters if death was immediate or a shifter lost consciousness and couldn’t change form. Initiating someone who had been shot hadn’t been covered. The bear indicated that he could try to heal many kinds of injuries during an initiation, but bullets were solid, and solid things were iffy.

  “Yes, but you need to get the bullet as close to the surface as possible. Either that happens, or this wound will probably kill her. The risk is that it’s still in or near her heart every time she shifts, and she can’t heal.” Sirens wailed around the corner. Cops cars and ambulances were closing in.

  “Give me your gun, quick. I’ve got a plan,” Grant told Carter.

  Carter handed the gun over. “Fill me in. Talk fast.”

  “First, I need to ask Shayla what she wants.”

  Carter nodded at that.

  “Shay.” Grant took her hand. “Baby, I love you, and I can save you, but you might come back a little different.” She looked confused, and he needed to explain it better, but time was limited. Fuck it. “Baby, do you trust me?” She nodded. That was enough to make his decision.

  * * * *

  Shayla screamed. What in hell had that woman just injected into her arm? It felt like liquid fire. Jesus Christ, she hurt all over. A woman in a uniform stood over Shayla holding some scary-looking tools. Whatever those freaky torture instruments were, Shayla wanted no part in getting torn apart by them. She knocked over a tray of stuff, but a huge lack of coordination kept her from landing any punches.

  A man, also in uniform, commented to the woman, “She’s a fighter, so that’s a good sign.” He sounded cautiously optimistic. The uniforms were… She couldn’t figure out the uniforms.

  Shayla kicked at the woman, who just pushed her leg back onto the bed-looking thing. The woman looked irritated and warned Shayla if she fought, they would have to tie her hands, so Shayla fought harder. She thought she’d already escaped. She had come out of the SUV away from the hungry, bloody salesman. Straps went around her arms and legs. She started to look for other ways to terrorize her attackers and was desperately trying to remember the other way she could strike out, but the knowledge was just out of reach. Cutting through her panic and desperation was the sound of Grant’s voice.

  “They’re trying to help you, baby doll. Let them do their job.”

  Shit! He’s right! I must have blacked out for a minute. A bullet inside her chest was killing her steadily. The man and woman really were trying to help her not die. She probably would anyway unless the ambulance could travel at the speed of light. I need to hang on a little longer. She didn’t fight back when the EMT she’d tried to kick earlier immobilized her arms and legs.

  “All right, she’s restrained. Let’s go,” the woman yelled.

  “Okay. Ready in a minute, Trina.” The man disappeared, and the ambulance started to move.

  “Can you get the bullet closer to the surface?” Grant asked Trina.

  “The doctors will be more qualified to do that,” Trina replied, then whispered, “I need you to be prepared. The blood loss is devastating, and the damage is severe. Her chances are…”

  Though the EMT’s words weren’t meant for Shayla’s ears, she’d heard anyway. She wouldn’t get to the beach after all. Her energy rush faded, and sadness dragged her down, making her body a sinking stone. Maybe if she went to sleep again, she’d get it back. Or maybe these were her last few minutes with Grant, so she fought with everything she had to stay awake.

  She looked at Grant, and he met her gaze, his smile filled with sorrow and grief. Tears were streaming down his face, and he was still so gorgeous, so real, so wonderful that it hurt to think of leaving him so soon. She should be saying good-bye, but she didn’t want to admit that defeat yet. He didn’t say it either, and she lay back, caught somewhere between sleep and pain, and then heard him agree to something.

  “I need you to pull over,” he ordered Trina. “There’s another transport for my wife.”

  “What? No. Are you kidding me? If you want another hospital instead of Mercy Ridge, let us drive you. Kevon up front is a speed demon. We’ll take you where you need to go.”

  “Just tell your partner to stop in about a half mile. This is Shayla’s best chance. And when we stop, use what you can to pull the bullet closer to the surface while doing the least amount of damage. It doesn’t have to be all the way out, but I need it close. I can’t do it myself without causing more harm. Then you and your driver are going to go on your way and tell your boss stopping was part of a plan to get an abduction victim to safety. And it is. Understood?”

  “Hell no. Not happening.”

  “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you what’s gonna happen. Keep your partner up front in the dark and leave your two-way radio alone. Press the Panic button, and you’ll need surgery.”

  “Oh my God,” Trina whispered. “What are you?”

  Shayla opened her eyes to see Grant holding a gun, pointing it at the EMT. The chocolate brown of his eyes was overtaken by onyx and his teeth bared in a snarling smile that showcased long, thick, pointy incisors. Okay, that part must have been a hallucination. The gun looked very real and deadly.

  “Why, Grant?” Her voice was so weak.

  Grant leaned over Shayla and whispered in her ear, “Do you trust me, baby doll?”

  Despite the weirdness of everything, she nodded. “Trust you,” she whispered.

  “Then hang on. Stay awake. I know it’s hard, but please.” His voice broke, and he scrubbed a hand across his face.

  “Wherever you stop, the cops will swarm the spot in minutes. You won’t get very far,” the EMT warned him.

  “I’m thinking I’ve got backup and we’ll be fine.”

  Shayla had a little bit of energy left, and she knew what she needed to do. She grabbed the EMT’s hand as if she were scared and met her gaze. “Make sure the location we stop at isn’t given to your boss, and do whatever the man with the gun tells you to.” Finding the right balance of force to compel without tearing into the woman’s mind and doing damage was easier than she thought. ’ Cause I’m hemorrhaging blood, maybe?

  Trina nodded and yelled to her partner. “Stop up here on the side. They’ve got another transport. They’re trying to keep her from being abducted again.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Just do it!” Trina yelled.

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  The ambulance rolled to a stop, and Trina dug a pair of long, skinny metal tong-looking things into the source of all her pain. Grant pulled IVs out of Shayla’s arms, took off the restraints, and scooped her up. Her ears were ringing too loud to hear anything else, and black spots overtook her vision, but she tried to stay awake as Grant carried her toward the tree line off the highway. Grant’s truck pulled up right after the ambulance shot away.

  A tall dark-haired man stepped out and yelled to Grant, “I’ll buy you time. Give me your phone and the gun. Stay gone for a few hours, overnight if you can.”

  “Who is…” Her question came out in a raspy whisper.

  “It’s all right,” Grant explained. “Aaron Carter is the owner of the security company I use for Brass Cat. He’s a good guy. I promise.”

  Grant handed Aaron Carter the gun and his phone. Mr. Carter pulled off his shirt and tossed it to Grant. “She might want this later,” He nodded at Shayla. She looked down. Yeah, her blood-soaked shirt was gone. Not really the time to be embarrassed about semi-nudity, though.

  “Thanks for everything, man.” Grant took off running into the woods with Shayla in his arms. “Hang on, Shay. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me,” he begged her as he ran. Each step jarred her chest until finally it didn’t hurt. When they stopped moving, she felt Grant’s lips
at her ears telling her something was going to hurt, which she protested because she had gone numb. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “I’m ready to sleep. I can’t fight it anymore.” She closed her eyes.

  “Fight, baby. Fight it hard. Stay with me.” And next, something was ripping into the artery at her neck. She screamed but couldn’t move. The numb feeling in her body left, and she boiled from the inside out. Grant picked her up again and ran with her in his arms. He ran for what felt like hours and then stopped and sat against a thick tree trunk. His chest rose and fell in ragged breaths against her back. After a moment, he turned her in his lap so they were facing each other.

  “So there’s something pretty major I need to tell you, baby doll.”

  “That you love me? I remember you telling me that earlier today.” Some of her strength was coming back. Maybe she would be okay.

  He smiled, but his brow was marred by worry. “Yes, that too. But when you got shot, things didn’t look good. I had a way to save you. I asked you to trust me, and then I decided for you. I took your choice because I didn’t think you would survive long enough for me to explain. And I wanted you here with me. I made a selfish choice because I didn’t want to lose you.”

  “Grant, I hurt everywhere. Don’t the doctors need to finish getting the bullet out?”

  “It’s close. I just need you to listen. And, uh, don’t freak out.” He started taking off his clothes. When he was naked, she started to tell him that now wasn’t the right time, but Grant morphed into a gigantic bear. Seconds later, he was a sexy naked man again. “That’s how I saved you. I bit you and started the initiation process. In a few minutes, you’ll make the transformation. Your body will change back and forth into a bear until the bullet is gone and your body is healed. Once you’re healed, you won’t stay a bear all the time. You decide when to change.”

  Before she could give him a “what the fuck” and demand a deeper explanation, she was hit with an all-encompassing agony that started in her head and radiated to every nerve ending and limb. Grant stripped off the rest of Shayla’s clothes. She screamed and suddenly saw Grant through eyes that didn’t feel quite like hers.

  Hang on. Don’t fight me. I think we’ll be okay. That voice didn’t sound like her voice, but it came from inside her head. Oh jeez, the pain was causing her mind to create an imaginary friend with motivational messages. Not a good sign. Blood poured from her nose and her bullet wound, and Shayla ended up on her hands and knees coughing and gagging on the ground. She threw up something that looked like liquid silver and a strawberry-banana slushy. That must have been what her kidnapper had mentioned—stuff to keep her from healing.

  Guess the silver’s gone now, she thought, looking at the horrible mess on the ground.

  Not quite, her imaginary friend answered, right before she choked on the bitter taste of silver puke and then threw up again.

  THE INITIATION HAD to work. Grant didn’t want to face a life without Shayla. Her coughing stopped, and she looked at him for a moment. A split second later, he heard bones breaking and then Shayla’s sobbing. He closed his eyes. It killed him to see her suffering. He took in a ragged breath to get himself together, or as close as he could get. When he opened his eyes, there, on the ground next to him, stood a fox. The fox lifted a paw, puzzled, and looked at him as if he had answers.

  He stared at Shayla the fox. She was larger, more muscular than the average fox, with a beautiful coat of sunset-orange fur. Though she made a lovely fox, he had no explanation for how a bear shifter could create anything other than a bear shifter. The bear explained that Shayla was more of a fox than a bear.

  How the hell does that make any sense?

  The bear gave him a mental shrug. In a flurry, the fox vanished, and Shayla lay on the ground in its place. She started to close her eyes. Under her left breast, the bleeding seemed to have stopped, and he could see the tip of the bullet hole. He kissed her lips and begged her to shift into the fox form again.

  “Please, baby, I know it hurts, but the bullet’s still there. Let’s finish this. Come on. Get up. Get up.” He pushed her until she shifted again and showed him a mouth full of insanely sharp teeth. He shifted to bear form so she couldn’t tear his flesh open, just in case she wasn’t in her right mind.

  The next time she shifted, the bullet fell to the ground. Grant morphed his bear body back into human form and grabbed Shayla, hugging her way too hard. He pulled away from her only long enough to put the bullet in the pocket of his pants, which lay on the dirt and leaves of the forest floor. He’d figure out what to do with it later, but he couldn’t leave it in the woods.

  The adrenaline coursing through his system began to wear off, and the reality that Shay was alive and well began to set in. Because he had initiated her, they would have that bond for life. He was grateful the initiation had worked, sick with fear that she’d be angry with him, and so in love with her that he could barely breathe. He didn’t know how to say anything he needed to say and didn’t want to feel the fear that he would lose her ever again. He had to feel something else. Anything else. So he pulled her into a crushing kiss. She kissed him back, just as hard.

  Deep in the woods, he didn’t have a spare condom, but it didn’t matter.

  “I know we’ve always been careful, but this time, we don’t need to be. Shifters can’t get pregnant right after initiation or during the mate-bonding process. So we can skip protection. If you’d rather wait, we can—”

  “Now, Grant!”

  Without hesitation, he took her down to the ground and pushed her thighs apart. He yanked her body against his and thrust inside her in one rough stroke.

  He searched her face for any sign that he needed to stop, that she didn’t want him after all. A lot had happened in a short amount of time. She might decide she needed some time to process everything. Her blue irises were now mostly brown with glittering blue sprinkles. Her lids were half-open, and she grabbed the back of his head.

  “Don’t stop!” she growled in his ear. The sweet, raspy sound of her voice made his dick harder. He thrust deep and fast inside her welcoming body until her pussy tightened around his cock. “By the way, I love you too, Grant. I would have done the same for you, because I don’t want to live without you.”

  Grant nearly lost his mind and sank his long incisors into her neck, this time in a bite that would mark Shayla as his shifter mate. He held on to whatever shred of control and sanity he had left to keep from marking her. He wouldn’t take that decision away from her. She needed to know a few things about him first, and while she was moaning his name and coming around his cock was not the time for a discussion. Her pussy squeezed his shaft in possessive pulses, and Grant gave up the fight to hold out and take it slow.

  Each stroke into her tight, wet heat took him higher. Shayla’s sharp nails scored his back, and he held on tight to her sexy thighs. Nothing could compare to the feel of her bare pussy, wet and coming hard for him. Because of him. Grant came apart inside her, trying in vain to hold on to some of his heart just in case she decided later not to take that last final step with him, the step that would bind them together as mates.

  Grant’s shifter hearing heard footsteps in the distance, leaving them no time for snuggling. The footsteps might belong to a couple of friendly hikers, but since he was most likely wanted for abducting Shayla from the ambulance and, oh yeah, for using a firearm to threaten the EMT, they would need to stay moving.

  They’d have to stay gone a little while longer while Carter and anybody he recruited ran interference. They traveled in human form so they could take whatever was left of their clothes with them. He couldn’t chance losing the bullet in his pocket somewhere in the woods. The story would be that Shayla was not injured more than a nosebleed to account for her blood in the ambulance. He couldn’t have more crazy motherfuckers like Hunter looking for answers and scars if word got out Shay had managed to survive a bullet to the heart.

  Shayla knew Grant was a bear
shifter now, so that secret was out of the way, but she needed to know that he wasn’t daddy material, that he came from a criminal father and a stripper-turned-prostitute drug-addict mother, that his skills with numbers and building things were off the charts, but he wouldn’t ever be a people person. She needed to understand that he wasn’t like her. He had been prepared to kill Hunter if he hadn’t backed down from his threats to Shayla, because Grant was a harder, less kind version of the man Shayla thought he was. Fuck, he hoped she wanted him in spite of all that. But those truths had to wait.

  Finally, after the sun set, they found a fort in the woods they’d been traveling for hours.

  “I know you probably want to get home and rest, baby doll, but I think it’s better if we stay gone until morning.”

  “Yeah, since you abducted me from an ambulance at gunpoint and all.” She laughed. “Thank you, by the way. For taking such a risk to save me. I wasn’t ready to leave this world behind yet. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of questions about being a shifter. Right now, I’m just happy to be alive and also trying to get used to the fact that a fox is sharing my mind and speaking English up in my head.”

  “Yeah, I’m still not used to that kind of shit. I’ve only been a shifter for about six years. I was in an accident, and a couple of shifters on a search-and-rescue team found me when they were searching for a hiker who’d gotten lost. Greg, he initiated me, and I resented him for it. For a long time. But the bond between a shifter and the one he or she initiates, Shay—it’s a pretty big deal, and I hope you’re okay with that.”

  “I love you, Grant. I’m okay with a bond between us.”

  Grant just nodded and checked out the fort and the surrounding area. He hated to seem like a stereotypical mute caveman, but words would trip him up, have him sitting on the ground sobbing out his fears and begging for her to always be safe. Better to keep quiet for a while. No fresh scents permeated the air around the fort, and judging from the faint smell of gunpowder and animal blood, the fort was something used by hunters during season. A look inside revealed a metal rack for skinning deer, a big weathered wooden table that bore slice marks and smelled of fish, and a worn-out bench were the only things inside the fort. The space would have to work for the night. They’d walked through enough creeks and streams to mess up any dogs looking for their scent. That would have to do for now.