Table of Contents
Excerpt
Bearly Accidental
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Note from Dakota Cassidy
eBooks by Dakota Cassidy
Excerpt
Finding Vadim’s number, she clicked on it and winced. Here went nothin’.
“Jesus Christ, Teddy, it’s been more than twenty-four hours! Are you okay? Do you need us? Where the hell are you and where’s Cormac Vitali?” Vadim shouted, his voice rife with panic and fear.
Blowing out a breath of pent-up air, she said, “I’m fine, Vadim. Relax. Everything is fine.”
“I’m putting you on speaker so Viktor can stop wearing a hole in the damn floor. Jesus and hell, Teddy! You scared the shit out of us!”
“Teddy?” her brother Viktor roared, curling her eardrums. “What in blazes is going on? Do you have any idea how worried we were? When I say call and keep in touch during a bounty, I mean call and keep in touch!”
She pictured Viktor and Vadim, pacing the worn length of the hardwood kitchen floor in their ranch house, running their hands over the light brown scruff on their faces, in tune with one another’s every move.
“Okay, okay! Wait, please! Just let me explain. Everybody calm down and let me talk. No interruptions. Agreed?”
“It better be good, Theodora,” Vadim hissed.
Most people couldn’t tell her identical brothers apart, but she didn’t have any trouble at all because their differences were distinct. Vadim was the less high-strung of the two; his swagger was more relaxed, his face less scrunched up in a frown, his overall vibe down to earth.
Viktor, on the other hand, was always wired for sound. Ready to go at a moment’s notice, all pent-up energy and motion. Both worried about her in equal measure, they just did so very differently, and right now, she wasn’t up to the interrogation.
Tucking her legs under her, Teddy sighed. “First, Cormac Vitali isn’t the bad guy here. Now, hold on…” She heard Viktor’s simmer, even over the phone. “Don’t start yelling about sympathizing or whatever psychobabble you two keep coming up with until I explain. And if you’re not going to stay calm while I do it, I’m hanging up.”
Bearly Accidental
Accidentally Paranormal Series, Book #12
Dakota Cassidy
Published 2016 by Dakota Cassidy.
Copyright © 2016, Dakota Cassidy.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.
Manufactured in the USA.
Blurb
At the request of their friend Antonia (Accidentally Ever After), Wanda, Marty and Nina find themselves trekking up a snowy mountainside, in search of Toni’s brother. Wanted by the mob, Cormac Vitali is hiding out in the Colorado Wilderness, where the ladies from OOPS finally catch up to him…freshly tranq’d by a bounty hunter.
Bear shifter Teddy Gribanov realized Cormac was her life mate about five minutes after shooting his big muscly bod with her trusty dart gun. She’d be shocked by that revelation, if she wasn’t too busy getting stabbed, shot, and hunted down by a crooked cop and the Russian mob. Oh, and her psycho ex, freshly sprung from the pokey, and hell bent on making Teddy pay for putting him there.
Sometimes love finds you when you least expect it—and when it’s least convenient. Join Wanda, Marty and Nina, manservant Archibald, sweet zombie Carl, and demon Darnell as they hatch a plan to bring down everyone standing in the way of Teddy and Cormac’s accidental happily ever after.
Acknowledgements
Illustration: Katie Wood
Cover: Valerie Tibbs
Editor: Kelli Collins
Dedication
Darling readers, Thank you, thank you for your love and continued support of The Accidentals since I’ve gone indie. Their ongoing success is due in great part to all of you—and I can’t ever thank you enough for helping me make this transition a painless one!
Huge thanks to fellow author Fiona Jayde for her help with the Russian in this book. You’re amazeballs!
Author Note: Bearly Accidental is Book 12 in The Accidental Series and is connected to Accidentally Ever After (Book 11). If you don’t wish to read spoilers, I recommend you read Accidentally Ever After first. Besides, Ever After has Nina in a yellow ball gown with big poofy hair and singing bluebirds circling her head. You don’t want to miss that, do you?
For anyone new to The Accidentals, I’ve included a link to Interview With An Accidental, http://dakota324.wix.com/dakotacassidy#!__accidental-series/freebie! a quick, totally free (and mostly painless) interview-style introduction to the women who are the heart and soul of this twelve-book series, originally published traditionally. If you’re a repeat offender (YAY to repeat offending, you rebels!), skip right to chapter one!
Love,
Dakota XXOO
Chapter 1
“I swear to God, ass-sniffer, if you don’t slow the eff down, I’m gonna—”
A woman named Marty—or “ass-sniffer,” as he’d heard—cut the pretty brunette off and, with hands on slender hips, bellowed into the cold late-afternoon air, “You’re gonna what, Not-Mistress-Of-The-Dark-Anymore? Rip my intestines out via my throat and wrap them around the nearest tree? Tie them into a big girlie bow? Or wait—maybe you’re gonna chew my face off? That’s always high on your list of threats. But guess what, Dark One? You can’t do that anymore, can you, Nina Statleon? Know why?”
Cormac Vitali winced. This Marty was taunting Nina. Outright daring her to take a shot at her. It was in her tone and in her stance. She’d been doing it since he’d discovered them here in the woods of Colorado while out on a run, and she hadn’t let up since.
What made him wince was how the brunette would react. He didn’t understand what the issue was between the two women, but the dark-haired woman was as testy as a sleeping bear poked with a stick.
Hah! Poking a bear. Funny, Cormac. You’re a laugh riot these days.
Nina made a fist of her gloved hand in response, her teeth clenched tight in her streamlined jaw. She was as stunningly beautiful as she was disgruntled, with her scrunched-up face peeking out from the furred hood of her coat, her almond-shaped, coal-black eyes narrowed.
She jammed her hands inside the pockets of her thick black jacket, but her lips instantly stopped moving, save for puffing out condensation in harsh gasps as she fought her way up the snowy hill.
So the question was, why couldn’t Nina chew Marty’s face off anymore?
Obviously, this woman Marty knew why Nina couldn’t chew her face off. Her question had certainly been asked rhetorically. Which made him curious, too. Who—on a regular basis, if Marty’s words weren’t an exaggeration—threatened to chew someone’s face off? And why was this beautiful woman so damn violent?
Marty stopped in
the middle of her seemingly effortless uphill climb through at least a foot of snow and winked over her shoulder with a saucy blue eye.
“What? No answer, Mouthy McMouth? S’okay. I got your answer riiight here, Snookie. You can’t chew my face off or tie my intestines in a bow because you’re—not—a—vampire anymore, Statleon! You have neither the strength nor agility to carry out said threat. So take a breather from the I’m-so-scary crap you’re always flinging at everyone like a monkey with poop. In fact, just take a breather. You look positively winded.”
Oh shit. This Nina wasn’t just winded. She was winded and seething. And not a vampire anymore… Curious indeed.
Out of nowhere, the third woman of the trio appeared, moving into his line of vision from where he hid behind a thick pine tree.
She stomped across the length dividing the two women, kicking up packed snow like the ice was nothing more than a gaggle of dust bunnies, and held up a gloved hand with the speed and grace of a panther.
“For the love of all that’s holy. Shut. Up. The both of you just shut your flappy lips! I’m sick to death of the bickering.” The woman affected a hunched-at-the-shoulders posture with an angry expression, and growled, exactly like the brunette named Nina, “Aw, eff you, Miss Clairol 222. You don’t know shit—zip your fucking piehole or I’ll wax your damn eyebrows off!” Then she used a finger to twirl the length of her ponytail and bat her eyelashes as she said, in a breathy tone an octave higher, “I’d like to see you try, Faux Elvira! How will you ever catch me if you can’t even get past the refrigerator without a pit stop for another batch of Buffalo wings?”
Both the blonde Marty and the brunette Nina openly gaped at this woman—tall, elegant, and one helluva referee—as though she were the one who’d gone mad.
Now she waggled her finger, swishing it at the women. “Don’t you two look at me all wide-eyed and aghast while you clutch your proverbial pearls like you haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about. Don’t even. Since Nina’s vampiric demise in Shamalot, if she’s not stuffing her gullet with food, she’s arguing with you, Marty. Who, I might add, just can’t seem to let it go. Okay, so Nina has no powers anymore and she doesn’t want them back. She’s reveling in her returned humanity. So the hell what? If she had no legs, would you razz her like this?”
Marty pursed her lips in thought, her soft cheeks sporting two bright red spots. “Could we try the scenario where she has no mouth as our example for today, Principal Wanda?”
“Shut it! Shut it now, or I swear on your fruity color wheels I’ll GD well kill you, Blondie!” Nina bellowed, her husky voice reverberating around the forest as she attempted a run at Marty, only to get caught up in her bulky boots.
“Again I ask, how?” Marty yelped back with devilish glee. “A chicken wing to my head, perhaps? A six-pack of brewskies to the throat? A slip and fall in a melted puddle of the gallons of ice cream you’ve consumed since Shamalot?”
Wanda the Elegant lost it then. Something Cormac rather had the notion she didn’t do often. In fact, the entire time he’d been tracking them, she’d not been the least ruffled as they’d charged through the snow, battled a squall of even more of the white stuff (bickering the entire way), and eventually landed mere moments from the cabin he’d so carefully pieced back together away from prying eyes.
But right now, Wanda’s eyes grew all hot and furious, while her spine went rigid. “Eeeenough!”
Aw hell. She’d yelled so loudly, snow from the branches of the tree he was beneath shed in icy clumps, thumping to the ground and just missing his head.
Obviously, Wanda had been dealing with the sort of grief these two doled out on a fairly regular basis, and her eyeballs were floating from trying to keep her head above water.
“I won’t have this anymore—understand?” she said with a hiss. “We’re here for Toni, got it? All the rest of the crazy from Shamalot, like Nina losing her powers and making cheesecake the new breakfast, will have to wait. Got it? We have a lead, ladies, a solid lead after a month-long search for Cormac. Are we going to do what we came to do for Toni or are we going to continue this pointless argument about Nina’s choice not to return to her vampiric ways? Because honestly, I’m up to my eyeballs. It’s not up to you to help Nina find a way to become undead again, Marty. Nina didn’t have a choice when she became a vampire. It was an accident. She can certainly choose not to be one now. It doesn’t mean she’s less our friend if she remains human. We just have to adjust to her human needs.”
Wait. What the what? Toni was alive? They knew his sister Antonia? They knew him? And where the hell was Shamalot?
Cormac wasn’t sure whether he should bust out from behind the tree and demand they explain why they were looking for him and how they knew Toni, or if he should continue to eavesdrop before making a final judgment call.
Marty bristled, adjusting her blue knit hat. “You mean like adjust to the fact that she’s slower than molasses uphill in the winter time—literally—or that she’s always whiny and cold now? Or that she’s no longer the muscle of this trio yet continues to behave like Thug Lite? Fine. Forget it all. She can do whatever she wants to do. I agree. Don’t be undead, for all I care. But quit your bitching about not being able to keep up with us to a minimum while you fill your big mouth with whatever isn’t nailed down, or I just might see if intestines really can be yanked out by way of your ever-increasing gut!”
Ohhh, Marty sure was damn angry Nina had chosen humanity. Almost as though being human was going against her belief system—a betrayal of some kind. But wait. Were Marty and Wanda vampires, too?
How could he tell? He was still learning to parse scents, but he had no clue what a vampire would smell like anyway.
Nina’s deep dark eyes went wide with hot fury, her next question asked in total girlish horror. “Did you just call me fat?”
Marty sucked her cheeks in, making her lips purse, as though she were utterly appalled. “I did no such thing. I said a body part was increasing. Which, like I’ve been saying, isn’t a surprise, seeing as you’ve made it your mission to work your way through an entire ice cream case at the grocery store one pint of Ben & Jerry’s at a time.”
Nina pulled one of her hands from her incredibly bulky down jacket and gave Marty the finger before she began an awkward attempt to unwrap a bite-size Snickers with gloves so thick, she fumbled and dropped it smack in the snow.
“Oh, fuck you, Werewolf. If you couldn’t eat real food for eight GD years like the blood diet I’ve been on, once you got your hands on some vittles, your ass’d be the size of a freightliner. Wait. It is the size of a freightliner. So quit paranormal-shaming and piss the hell off!”
Picking up the fallen Snickers, Nina held it up to the sky, kissed it and popped it in her mouth, smiling in defiance at Marty as she chewed.
Okay, so Marty was a werewolf. Arooooooo.
Interesting.
Wanda closed her eyes before lifting her face to the heavens and blowing out a disgusted sigh.
Clearly, she’d asked the universe for patience on more than one occasion.
When her eyes popped open again, she looked as though she’d come to terms with her lot in their friendship. “Look, if the two of you are going to argue, I’ll just do this alone. We’re here to find Cormac, and find Cormac I darn well will. After what the Great and Wonderful Roz told us, we need to find him. All we have to do is locate him, fix the problem, and we go home. Now, I’m going to do that. With or without you two pains in my derriere.”
With that, Wanda stomped up the hill at a speed so rapid; he almost couldn’t believe he was actually witnessing a feat so incredible.
But then he reminded himself, you turn into a grizzly bear at random, moron. At least, that’s the breed of bear he thought he was, but it was all still very unclear. Even after three years and fifty or so romance novels on the subject of bear shifting—his only resource for research.
And hello. What was there to find at all unusual about a w
oman who moves at the speed of light or, for that matter, a werewolf and a former vampire who knew someone named the Great and Wonderful Roz?
Nothing. That’s what. Who was he to discriminate when all he needed was a mama bear and baby bear to complete this nightmare of a fairytale gone painfully awry?
So whoever these women were, they were like him—whatever that meant. They clearly understood what had happened to him. And they knew his sister.
And she is alive.
Christ, Cormac had to hold on to the tree he was propped up against to keep from crashing to the floor of the forest in relief.
All this time, three solid years, hiding out in this prison that was frozen more often than not, trying to find out what happened to Toni without being discovered himself had been a continual nightmare.
So why not go and introduce yourself to the nice, if not squabbly ladies, Cormac? Find out what they’re up to?
Because how did they know Toni? Maybe they worked for Stas, the fuck who’d kidnapped his sister to begin with and owned every cop this side of the universe. Maybe these women were just his polite henchmen. Okay, so the Nina woman wasn’t so nice, but maybe these paranormal people stuck together, and finding Cormac meant they got some kind of bounty.
He did have very sensitive information—even if the police wouldn’t take him seriously.
You’re paranoid—she is alive and well, Vitali. Look at them—look at all three of them. All drama doused with perfume, pricey boots, and potty mouths. Do they really look capable of working for a freak like Stas?
No. But one could never be too paranoid when it came to what had happened to him and Toni three years ago. Nope. He was going to silently wait this one out.
The last time he’d rushed, he was turned into a goddamn grizzly bear.
So wait he damn well would.
Quietly. From behind them, as they all began to move upward and far too close to his cabin for comfort.
Flexing his fingers, he felt the phantom ache of his missing digit, hacked off by none other than Stas himself, a total maniac who just happened to be his sister Toni’s ex-boyfriend and a mid-level player in a much bigger Russian mob organization.
Bearly Accidental (Accidentally Paranormal Book 12) Page 1