The only thing in my way is you, Bruce thought but of course, he couldn’t say it to Dwayne, so he pushed passed him. Maybe Dwayne had read it in his mind, anyway.
“Are you willing to give all of us up for her?” Dwayne called after Bruce, but he just kept going. He wasn’t going to stop and try to justify himself. He was doing the right thing. Going after Jenna wasn’t going to put the Family in danger. He didn’t need a psychic to mess with his head now.
Bruce followed the bond. It was dim, and as a person he knew he would have lost it altogether. But he managed to find it every time.
It took him four days before he reached the city. It would have been easier if he traveled as a human did, catching rides or getting on buses. He had to stay away from human settlements altogether because he wasn’t in bear-country anymore. But he was risking being a bear for long periods of time so he could find her.
He stood on a ridge a couple of miles outside of town and looked at the twinkling lights that blinked throughout the night. Even though the night was black, it seemed as though El Verano was awake.
Bruce took a deep breath and took another step, drawing closer. He was a human now, and he was going to stay that way. Bears didn’t come this close to the city and he didn’t want to be seen.
It took him another couple of hours to get into the city, and by the time he walked down the streets it was daylight, with people milling around everywhere.
It had been years since he’d lived in a city. He had seen this kind of bustle before, he knew what it was like. And still it felt like it was all going too fast. He had gotten used to the slow life, and liked it more.
The bond was stronger now. He could sense her, somewhere in the middle of all the chaos. He kept walking, following his gut, and finally ended up in a neighborhood that didn’t look too good. The roads were dirty, the people that hung around in the streets looked like they were looking for trouble. This wasn’t a safe place for Jenna.
Maybe that was what Bruce had been feeling. The danger.
The bond led him to an apartment building and he knew it was hers. She was up there somewhere. He glanced at the rows of windows, identifying the floors one by one, and his eyes rested on the fourth floor.
That was her floor. He knew it.
He wanted to go up there. He wanted to talk to her, hold her in his arms, know that she was alright. He wanted to know that she didn’t hate him. Even if that meant that she didn’t want to be with him. The door to the apartment building opened, and Jenna stepped out as if she was summoned.
Bruce’s breath caught in his throat.
She looked different. Her hair was shorter, a different style. She wore clothes that worked in the city – jeans that were a lot tighter than she used to wear and a blouse that buttoned up with black low heels. She was smiling and her face made Bruce’s chest constrict.
She stopped on the curb and looked up and down the road. A taxi came past and she looked like she wanted to flag it down, but then she changed her mind and started walking. Bruce was relieved. It was going to be easier to follow her on foot than if she got in a car.
She made her way through the neighborhood. As she walked, stares followed her. Men looked her up and down like she was something they wanted, and it pissed Bruce off. He wanted to rearrange their faces. The bond was supposed to give her an aura of ‘taken’, but she’d decided against it. It was only Bruce, the mated male without his mate.
He let her go when she walked into a yard of a retirement home and closed the front door. He needed a strategy, a place to stay so he could keep an eye on her for a while. He couldn’t just hang around the streets. He found a motel not too far from Jenna’s neighborhood and paid for a room in cash. It was drab, decorated in faded shades of brown and beige. But it would do.
Anything was better than the cave.
The sun was starting to set when something suddenly felt off. Something was very wrong. Bruce was in his room, and he strained his ears, tried to listen for something that would give away danger. But there was nothing, just the gentle hum in the background of cars driving, people going about their tasks.
The feeling got worse. Bruce felt sick to his stomach and that hollow feeling opened up in his chest again, a sharp pain in his sternum. He put his hand over it, but the pain was off-center this time. Where before, when Jenna had left, it had been smack in the middle of his chest, now the pain was to the left, over his heart.
Bruce got up and walked to the door, opening it. He looked around. The motel parking lot was empty save for a white Jetta that stood in front of the last door and a human walking across to the main building with a leaf blower. The sun was so low it cast long thin shadows across everything. Shadows that held foreboding.
Bruce closed the door again and leaned against it, closing his eyes. The sense that something was wrong wasn’t just around him, it was in him, like it had crawled underneath his skin and seeped into his blood. It swirled through his body, a panic, an alarm.
He turned his attention to Jenna, and that was where it was. Pain flooded through him the same time the bond tugged violently. Bruce didn’t think. He left his room at a run and set course straight through the city. Jenna wasn’t home. The bond was leading him away from the apartment block where he lived, out of the ugly neighborhood. Bruce jogged along a main road. No one seemed to notice his urgency or care. He’d forgotten how much cities were every-man-for-himself.
Whatever had Bruce all tied up in a knot was getting worse. It pressed down harder and harder on him, making it impossible to breathe. He gasped for breath as he ran and it did nothing for him.
His muscles started screaming at him, his body got heavier, but he pushed on. This was Jenna. He had to get to her. Whatever was going on was going on now and if he waited he might be too late.
And then, not only would he die without her – one half ripped away from him – but he would never forgive himself if something happened to her. Because underneath all the pain and the panic and the pressing danger was the knowledge that this – everything she’d been through the past five years actually – was his fault.
When he finally found the source of whatever it was he was feeling, he stopped in his tracks, confused. It was in a nice area of town, with shops and restaurants on both sides of the road. People were walking and laughing and a general feeling of happiness hung in the air. Nothing that shouted danger.
He took a deep breath, trying to stabilize his breathing. He focused on the bond. It was there and it was humming. Like a gentle buzz of electricity was running through it. Like some other energy was linked up to the bond.
He followed it, knew he would find her now that he’d found the bond again, now that the panic was over.
She was inside a restaurant. She wore a red dress that made her hair seem impossibly red, too. Her hand was on the table, and another man’s hand was on hers. A waiter was in the way, blocking the rest of them from view.
When the man moved, Bruce saw the full picture and stilled.
Jenna was leaning forward, kissing someone. Kissing someone else. Her eyes were closed and in leaning forward, her dress had gaped at the neck so that the swells of her breasts were just visible.
Bruce felt a low growl roll from his throat. He looked left and right to makes sure none of the passersby heard it. There were couples everywhere as if they were trying to rub it in his face that he was the third wheel and his mate was with someone else.
He turned his eyes back to them. They’d stopped kissing, but the humming was still there. He could feel it, washing through him, trying to access the power that was his shifting ability. Trying to access the bear.
And the bear was willing to come out and play. Seeing someone else with his woman was enough to make any mated shifter murderous.
Bruce took a deep breath and turned his back on what he was seeing. If he ran in there now, it was going to be a problem. He was going to lose all control and a rampant bear in a city restaurant was nothing short of a di
saster. No, Bruce had to wait. He had to bide his time until he could get that lowlife alone.
Three hours. That was how long Bruce paced up and down the road, walking from one end to the other and back so it wouldn’t seem suspicious. He could barely think straight. In his head, the bear was roaring mine, mine, mine and he had his hands full holding onto his humanity.
Finally, they came out. The Imposter pulled Jenna closer with a smile that made her melt. Bruce could feel it through the bond, the butterflies, the anticipation, the nauseating attraction. The man planted his lips on Jenna’s folding her body against his like it was his to have. When he let her go her eyes were shimmering and she smiled.
He flagged down a taxi, told the driver the address through the open window and helped her in. When the taxi left he started walking.
Bruce followed him. Two blocks further and the Imposter turned right into an alley that took them away from the crowded road and into the darkness that vibrated with power and potential. Bruce’s power. His intention’s potential.
He moved faster than any human could and caught up to the guy. He grabbed him by the neck and swung him around and then into a wall, slamming his back against the bricks so hard the man was winded.
Bruce wanted to shout obscenities at this man for being with his woman, but his vision had gone, his eyes had flashed white light with rage and there was nothing to say. He stormed the guy with a growl that was everything but human and punched him in the face. The man, still trying to catch his breath, made a strangled sound and tumbled to the ground.
Bruce stopped. He was breathing hard and the rage inside him had fermented into pure hatred, but he wasn’t going to keep going at this guy. He was just a poor human who’d had the misfortune of choosing Jenna to court. And Bruce was a shifter that at the end of the day still knew his own strength, knew that he could kill this man if he wasn’t careful.
The Imposter got up, coughing and wheezing. He held his stomach like that was where Bruce had punched him. His eye was swollen and already heading towards and angry purple.
Bruce clenched his hands into fists and tried to keep the anger at bay. He pushed the flashed of Jenna kissing this guy out of his mind, forced himself to see the reality, the damage he’d already done. It was enough. He had to keep telling himself it was enough. In the human world, self-control was a bitch.
Hands suddenly grabbed Bruce from behind. Not just two, or four, but more. They weren’t alone in the alley anymore. Bruce’s first thought was that it was law enforcement, that somehow, someone had seen what he’d done.
But then the hands roughly shoved him against the opposite wall he’d used for his target, and they pinned him there.
There were four men in the alley, besides the Imposter, and they all had eyes that were like glittering jewels. Emerald green, Sapphire blue, Amber yellow. And the electric blue of the man he’d attacked.
Fear lurched in his stomach for an unknown reason and he squirmed, trying to get out, but for all his preternatural strength they managed to hold him against the wall.
“Well, this is a nice surprise,” the one with the impossibly yellow eyes said. “Usually, we have to hunt you guys down.”
Bruce frowned. It didn’t make sense, and somehow at the same time, his subconscious was screaming at him. There was something he should have known.
The man he’d attacked walked closer and wrapped his fingers around Bruce’s neck. The moment he did that same hum he’d felt through the bond washed through his body. He felt warm and tingly all over, a warmth that could easily be misinterpreted for familiarity or safety. But it was the exact opposite.
Bruce knew this because he’d felt it before, when one of the bears that he’d been close to had died at the hands of the Assassins. He’d been close enough to feel the warmth, like a mother tucking you into bed.
But when the light went out the darkness was final. His friend had found that out.
“I know you know what I am,” the Assassin said the moment Bruce recognized what Bruce was feeling. Bruce tried to twist his body to get out, tried to turn his head away from what he was looking at, but it didn’t work.
“And I know why you’re here,” he kept going. “But I’m not going to let her go until I find all of it. And then I’m not going to stop until I find all of you.”
Bruce tried to speak, but the hand on his throat pushed down harder so his words were twisted puffs of air instead.
“I’m not going to kill you yet. That will make her useless to me. I need that bond you made with her. But you’re not going to be able to stop us. If you try, I’ll kill her too.”
Bruce wanted to argue. Wanted to fight. Wanted to do anything other than hanging helplessly against the wall while five pairs of glowing eyes mocked him. But he couldn’t.
Something came from the left and before he could register what it was, it struck him on the temple. Darkness followed the blow, and then the hands let him go. He fell to the floor, sinking into the black that was suddenly very welcome. The last thing he heard before it all slipped away was an echo of the Assassin’s voice.
“If you try, I’ll kill her too.”
Chapter 4
Jenna hadn’t wanted a relationship, but somehow her nights with Darren had started to become just that. Nothing was official, nothing was labeled, but still it was more than friendship.
He kissed her whenever he wanted to. In fact, it felt like he kissed her whenever she wanted it, even though she never said anything. And she let him because his lips on hers felt amazing. They were always accompanied with the feeling that everything was alright in the world, that her past didn’t matter, and she was starting to believe it.
When she’d left Williamsburg she’d felt like she was leaving her life behind. She’d ached for her people, craved the mountain air and the sunshine and wanted to go back so many times.
But since Darren had arrived that had been fading. She’d started spending more and more time with him, and everything she’d been running away from had dimmed into the background until thinking about it didn’t scare her anymore. In fact, thinking about her made her feel almost nothing at all. She was sufficiently numb. Maybe, she thought, this was what it felt like to move on.
The seasons had changed. The cold had come and brought now show. She’d been used to the white powder that had coated the world, but in El Verano, so far south, there was no snow.
It was the last piece of the puzzle that was her new life. Everything was different now, even the seasons. Christmas was on its way, and it wouldn’t be a white one.
She thought back to Williamsburg, probably coated in snow by now, with patches of ice where puddles used to be and Christmas trees in the square. A pang shot through. She wasn’t going to spend Christmas with any of her family. Her parents were both dead and Williamsburg was in the past.
Besides, Darren was like a loved one, wasn’t he? She couldn’t say she was in love with him, but she definitely liked him, and he made her feel like she wasn’t alone. Maybe he would spend Christmas with her, or take her home to meet his family he talked about once or twice.
It was hard to believe that she’d only known him two or three weeks. Things had gone so fast, and so slow, all at the same time.
The buzzer went off and Jenna pushed the button.
“Coming,” she said into the speaker and then grabbed her bag and locked her door behind her. She ran all four flights of stairs down to the lobby and then out the door where Darren was waiting for her on the steps to her building.
“Hey,” she said and kissed him when he pulled her closer.
“Ready to go?” he asked. She nodded. He was going to take her to the lighting of the tree that was taking place at St. Joseph hospice. They did a lighting of the tree every year, apparently, to celebrate the festive season, the loved ones still with them, and the ones they’d lost.
The hospice raised money and helped with the care of cancer patients.
When they arrived at the hospice
they were allowed inside, and then walked through the door to the courtyard. The buildings were in a square around the courtyard and they’d managed to make the entire place white with fake snow. The tree was in the middle, larger than life, a real life Spruce that was in the ground and had been for over fifty years.
“This is beautiful,” Jenna breathed. Darren gestured to a spot where a blanket had been opened for a picnic and there was a basket with food.
“Did you do all this?” Jenna asked. Darren nodded.
“I know you’re used to white Christmases,” he said. She felt emotional, all of a sudden, and not just because Darren was being amazing. When she sat down and watched the tree, a giant against the dark blue sky that was sinking into night, she felt nostalgic.
They ate and talked, and Jenna managed to distract herself. But when night fell and it was full dark, the festivities began.
The tree was wrapped in Christmas lights and it made the ball decorations and tinsel sparkle. There were candles everywhere, and one by one people started getting up and lit one.
“Do you want to?” Darren asked.
“Light one?”
He nodded. “You’re allowed to light a candle for someone you’ve lost if you like,” he said. “That’s what this is about. Even if it’s not someone you lost to cancer or another terminal illness.”
Jenna hesitated for a moment before she nodded. Her mother had died of old age. Her father had been slaughtered by animals. Neither of those had been illnesses, but they had been terminal. She got up and joined the queue. To her surprise, Darren came with her.
When she was in front she lit a candle. It had been for her parents, initially, but when she watched the small little flame dance on its wick, emotions welled up inside of her and she couldn’t hold back the storm anymore.
She started crying. She started mourning. Not just her parents, but everything. Everyone she’d left behind. Murphy, Murray, Lisa, Carla, Phil, Chaz.
Bruce.
She felt like something inside of her was ripping apart.
BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) Page 96