By the time he’d circled all the way around, checking them all, he headed back. He was some distance away from Jenna’s cabin when he saw it. A shadow that moved through the trees, fast and completely noiseless. He sniffed the wind but it blew the wrong direction, which meant that the animal would smell him instead.
It put him at a disadvantage.
Bruce picked up his pace, trying to stay quiet, and moved through the trees. The forest was suddenly alive with magic, it felt like the trees made way for him and the ground whispered warnings every time he put a foot down. A breeze picked up and moved the leaves up ahead, the rustling joining in with whispering chatter of their own.
The leaves moved in a way that pushed them all aside at once, like it had been shoved by a giant hand, and a shaft of moonlight fell in between the trees. A flash of yellow and white fur, with small black circles, caught Bruce’s eye and his throat constricted.
It was Tara, the damn leopard herself, and she was headed for Jenna’s cabin.
He picked up speed, keeping silent to hell, and wove his way through the trees. He was close enough to see Tara, her large leopard body gliding effortlessly through the trees. She moved gracefully, fluid like water, and she reached the cabin before he could reach her.
He watched her jump up to the window and climb inside.
Shit! Bruce ran faster, and he reached Jenna’s cabin just in time to hear her scream.
He panicked. If he broke into the house to fight Tara now he would risk losing Jenna and he would endanger himself. No one would ever believe that it was a natural fight if he climbed in and fought Tara, besides that. The fact that they were shifters would be the next logical guess, and none of them could afford that, not even him.
Jenna screamed again and he heard something break. He stopped thinking and let his logic take over. He forced a change and within seconds he was back in human form. He ran around to the front of the cabin and shouldered the front door, using his preternatural strength. The lock splintered. He ran straight to the closet and dove into it. He knew Jenna had her father’s gun somewhere back there.
He ripped clothes off their hangers and threw it in piles on the ground, rummaging until he found it. He found a box of bullets as well, but he dropped it and the bullets scattered and fell into the clothes. He clicked the gun open and slid one bullet into the chamber that he’d managed to grab hold of.
One was going to have to be enough. He clicked the gun shut and ran into the bedroom.
Tara had Jenna on the bed, her teeth wrapped around Jenna’s neck. Jenna wasn’t moving and white light flashed in front of Bruce’s eyes, rage flooding through him, threatening to make him lose control of human. But he couldn’t afford to lose it now. Jenna needed him.
He aimed and pulled the trigger in one swift motion. The gun went off and a loud scream filled the cabin, one that didn’t sound like a human at all.
Tara glared at him, her eyes flashing a white light, and then she jumped through the window. She had blood all over her one shoulder and it left a trail over the windowsill.
Bruce set the gun down and rushed over to the bed. Jenna lay on it, whimpering. She was alive.
He breathe out a sigh of relief.
“Jenna,” he breathed. Her pajamas were covered in blood and she was bleeding from her neck, but when Bruce inspected her, she was alright. The blood on her belonged to Tara. When she sat up, she started trembling, and a butcher’s knife fell to the ground. Where Jenna had found it, Bruce didn’t know but she’d defended herself with it.
And by some miracle Tara hadn’t broken skin at all, which meant Jenna was safe from changing into a shifter.
If Tara had broken skin while in animal form it would have been enough for Jenna to catch a strand of lycanthrope – or whatever it was called when it was a leopard.
“Bruce!” Jenna said as if suddenly realizing he was there, and then she started hyperventilating. Bruce wrapped his arms around her. Murray stormed into the house with Phil and Chaz on his heels, all of them carrying rifles.
“A doctor, get the doctor!” Bruce shouted. “She’s going into shock.”
Chaz was the first to move and he turned and ran. Phil checked the house and Murray knelt by the bed. Bruce gave him the shortest version of the story before Murray jumped up and got Jenna water.
The doctor arrived not much later. Chaz must have run like the wind to get him. He came into the house with his black bag. He panicked when he saw all the blood, but as soon as he realized it wasn’t Jenna’s he calmed down and worked at getting her calm, too.
Finally she was asleep and Bruce walked to the front room where the men were standing in a group. There was a chatter outside and Bruce glanced through the door to see a group of villager assembled. He sighed. That was too close for comfort.
“What happened?” Murray asked, and finally Bruce had time to explain in detail. They all listened until he finished, and then Murray spoke.
“We’re going to have to set up a rotating watch until we can fix this mess,” he said.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that none of the wild animals are going for the cattle?” Chaz asked. “It’s only been aimed at the humans.”
Murray nodded and glanced at Bruce, and the look in his eyes made Bruce feel uncomfortable. He knew something.
It was almost dawn when the last people dispersed and Bruce finally left the cabin. Instead of going home he walked back into the woods and climbed to the plateau. Tara wasn’t there, but she wasn’t dead. He knew that. It would take a lot more to kill her, and she was going to be pissed off at him after this. It might even be ground for a duel. The others were out hunting, Bruce could feel them close by. Only Dwayne sat on a rock.
“What are you doing here?” Bruce asked. Usually Dwayne went home when the shifters started hunting.
“There’s something riding on the darkness tonight,” he said. “Danger is heading this way.”
Bruce nodded, thinking he knew what Dwayne meant, but Dwayne shook his head.
“Not that,” he said like he knew what Bruce was thinking. “It’s the Assassins. They’re not leaving. Something’s up, they know something. Someone around here knows something they shouldn’t and the psychics the Assassins use have picked it up.”
“Are we in danger?” Bruce asked.
Dwayne hesitated as if he was sending feelers out and then he shook his head. “Not yet, but soon.”
Bruce nodded. He knew what was going on. If there was someone that knew, it was Murray. They were in trouble. Not yet, as Dwayne had said, but it was coming. And with Tara trying to kill Jenna, he already had his hands full.
They sat side by side until the sun came up. Dwayne finally got up.
“Well, that’s me,” he said and headed off into the trees, going to god-knew-where. Bruce got up too, and started his route back down the mountain. The night had been a rough one, and his muscles ached. The change had hurt him, doing it that fast, and the amount of blood he’d had a few nights in the row couldn’t give him enough energy now. He’d almost depleted his levels.
He walked down past his own cabin, and knocked on Jenna’s door. She was up, and she opened.
“How are you doing?” he asked. She looked haunted, with dark circles around her eyes, and her cheeks were sunken into her face, lifting out the contours of her skull so that she looked dead on her feet.
“Come in,” she said and her voice was empty. She stepped to the side and Bruce walked in. When Jenna closed the door she held onto her one arm with the other hand. She looked lost, even in her own home.
“How are you feeling?” Bruce asked again.
“Alive,” Jenna answered, her face still an expressionless mask. “Thanks to you.”
“I’m so glad I didn’t lose you,” Bruce said, and Jenna’s face crumpled. She started crying and he pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her body. He felt her sobbing against him, and he held onto her. He wanted her to know that he would keep her safe, th
at he was a fortress she could run to.
Her sobbing blew over and then calmed down. She hiccupped against him and he could feel the wetness of her tears soak through his shirt.
“Marry me,” he said. Jenna stilled in his arms.
“What?” she asked.
He would have liked to wait for the right time to propose. He would have liked to tell her everything first and have her decide with all the knowledge. There were a lot of things he would have liked, but what he wanted most was to have her alive. If he waited maybe it would be too late.
“Marry me, Jenna,” he said. “I can’t bear to lose you.”
Chapter 1
Bruce stood outside his cabin between the trees and breathed in deeply. The air smelled like winter. It wasn’t there yet, but it was coming. The Syracuse Mountains caps were capped with snow and it seemed like the white blanket creeped further and further down the mountainside, closer to the valley.
It was impossible to step outside now without a coat, and then the wind still cut to the bone. It was going to be a hard winter, harder than it had been for a while.
But not yet. The winter wasn’t coming just yet.
He’d been out hunting again through the night. He did it to keep control of his beast, so that the bear in him wouldn’t rip out of his body when he didn’t want it to. Being a shapeshifter wasn’t always easy, but he’d learned over the years how to deal with it.
Now, with his face turned toward the east, in human form, he felt the blood of the animals he’d hunted, surging through his veins and resonating with the animal inside of him.
The sun rose over the mountains and cast light onto the valley, chasing away the silver shadows of night and arriving in a chorus of color. The village was still asleep, but they wouldn’t be for long. But no one was going to rush off to work today. No one was going to open up shop and make a living like any other day.
No, today was a day for celebration. Bruce and Jenna were getting married.
It hadn’t come about the way Bruce would have liked it to. He’d always thought that when he found the one, the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with, it was going to be more romantic.
Not that it wasn’t romantic with Jenna – every moment he spent with her was a combination of an electrical surge and the soft warmth of peace and love. It was addicting all in itself. But he would have liked to court her for longer, and made the proposal something romantic with rose petals, or a picnic by the lake, or something.
Not the odd way in which he’d asked her, the night after she’d been attacked by the leopard. The wereleopard. Tara, the alpha of his pack of misfit shapeshifters up in the mountains.
But he loved her, that much he knew. And he couldn’t stomach the thought of losing her. He’d had to offer her his protection, make it so that if Tara challenged Jenna, she had to challenge Bruce first.
That was safer. Bruce would rather die himself than lose Jenna. It was the only way out he could see if Jenna didn’t want to leave Williamsburg with him. Which she hadn’t wanted to, he’d asked.
He took a deep breath and blew it out with a shudder. Excitement hung in the air. He could almost taste it. Marriage was a big thing in the village, and everyone was involved. Bruce and Jenna didn’t have to pay for anything. The villagers took care of everything from the venue and the cake and the sermon all the way through to the food and the alcohol, instead of wedding gifts.
It was sweet. It was close and personal.
It was terrifying.
These were the people that were in danger because of Bruce. It would have been better if he could just leave, but he wasn’t going without Jenna. And if he stayed, the people in the town were always in danger. Tara was a force of nature to be reckoned with, and the other shifters were loyal to the death to her, not because of respect but because of fear. Put fear and animals in the same room and it got ugly.
The Family, the pack he belonged to, didn’t know he was getting married. They would know eventually, but he hadn’t told them, not even Cleveland.
The bird of prey shifter was more loyal to him than to Tara and it was him that had told Bruce about mating Jenna to ensure her safety. But Bruce didn’t want to tell him, because Tara was a loose cannon and she could get into people’s heads. It just wasn’t safe.
Bruce emerged from the trees and started walking into town. Here and there people were up and about, taking care of the livestock, waving at him and calling out their excitement about the wedding. He waved back and laughed. A thrill went through him.
No matter how much he belonged to a pack of shapeshifters, belonging to a community of friends like this was just something else. And sometimes, he would only admit to himself and no one else, it was something better.
He walked to the trees that started on the other side of the row of shops. The trail was clear, trodden more often by many feet, and finally it came out onto the cemetery.
Bruce had no relatives here. He’d only been in the town for five years, or just a bit more. Everyone he loved here was still alive, save for the few elders he hadn’t known so well that had passed away. But Jenna’s parents were here, and he was driven to visit their graves. Jenna wouldn’t be there today. She was getting ready for the ceremony that was going to take place at midday. It was a relief because he wanted to see her parents alone.
Bruce had never known Jenna’s father, and only spoken to her mother a handful of times. He stood in front of the graves, practically strangers, and sighed.
“Today your daughter will become my wife,” he said. “And I will do what I can to keep her safe. She’s as precious to me as must have been to both of you, and I will lay down my life for her if I have to.”
It was as close to asking their blessing as he could get, but somehow it still didn’t feel like enough. There was more pressing on him.
He took another deep breath and glanced around him. He didn’t want anyone around, didn’t want anyone to hear what he was going to say next. But he had to say it out loud. He had to get it off his chest or it was going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
He had a feeling it was going to, anyway.
“I have to lie to her,” he said. “To tell her what I really am is only to put her in more danger. For that I am sorry. She deserves the truth and I know I’m not worthy of her love. But her safety means more to me than my honor.” He took yet another deep breath, struggling to breathe under the weight of his confession. “For that I truly am sorry.”
He turned his back to the graves and walked into the trees, straining his ears for any sound. If anyone had heard his confession… it had felt awkward speaking it out loud. But all he heard was the sound of birds calling to each other in the trees, the sound that always accompanied the dawn. He picked up speed and broke out of the trees back into the village.
The next stop was the Banbury Inn, the local watering hole. It was the regular visiting spot for all the men in the town, and the odd woman that liked liquor. It was almost always open, and Murphy behind the bar was the whole village’s grandfather, so to speak.
When he walked inside he let his eyes adjust to the dim lighting before he walked over to the bar and sat down. Murphy stood behind it, hands folded on his big belly, looking like he just woke up. His apron looked like it was the one from the night before.
“You’re in here early,” Murphy said.
“Just here for a drink. Big day and all.”
Murphy eyed him, but found a bottle of whiskey and poured him two fingers.
“Cold feet?” he asked. Bruce shook his head and threw back the contents of the glass. It wasn’t cold feet, was it? No. He wasn’t scared to marry Jenna. He was scared he couldn’t protect her. It wasn’t the same thing. Not marrying at all would be worse, so definitely not cold feet.
“What’s eating you?” Murphy asked.
“I guess the same thing that eats every groom on the big day. Marriage is a big deal.” It wasn’t the same thing at all, but he was the on
ly one to know that.
Murphy nodded. He’d never tied the knot, but everyone listened to his snippets of wisdom anyway.
“Jenna is a good woman. She’ll make you very happy.”
He pegged Bruce with a hard look, and Bruce knew what was coming before Murphy opened his mouth again. He nodded even before Murphy started talking.
“If you hurt her,” it came, “I’m going to make you sorry you ever met her.”
Bruce sighed and pushed his glass toward Murphy for a refill. He believed the man. His intentions were good and Jenna was like a daughter to most of the older men in town. But Bruce was strong enough to take Murphy out without blinking. Preternatural strength just wasn’t the same thing. That wasn’t what he was worried about.
What got to him was the fact that a tiny part of him, a part that he shoved away so far it was hidden in the darkest shadows of his soul, was already sorry he’d met Jenna.
Without him in her life, she would be safe. All of this was his fault, and now he was marrying her, not because he loved her – even though he did – but because he feared that if he didn’t, she would die. If that wasn’t a hell of a way to start the ride as a new husband, he didn’t know what was.
“You ready for this, son?” Murphy asked, and Bruce wasn’t sure what he meant – taking care of Jenna, being a husband, doing a wedding today. The answer was ‘no’ on all counts. He threw back the second glass of whiskey and smiled brightly, nodding.
He headed back to his cabin after that. The alcohol had done nothing to make him feel better. With his immune system he just couldn’t get drunk – the curse of being a shapeshifter. And today he really would have been happy to be at least tipsy. He couldn’t remember when last the alcohol had done something to him. Before the change happened the first time? He must have been fifteen or sixteen.
BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) Page 85