by Amy Lamont
Bear to Want: Kodiak Den Book One
Alaskan Den Men Collection
Amy Bender
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Meet the Alaskan Den Men
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
A Note From Amy
The Complete Alaskan Den Men Collection
Copyright © June 2016 by Amy Bender
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Maria
Thank you for always cheering me on!
Meet the Alaskan Den Men
Six Alaskan Werebear Dens, Eighteen Shifter Happily Ever Afters…
The Alaskan Den Men are some of the hottest werebears you’ve ever encountered. These gruff and growling shifters live and hunt in six different dens throughout the backwoods of Alaska.
And the Alaskan outback has never been so wild! Because these rugged alpha males are about to meet their mates—some seriously sexy and sassy heroines who live to bring out the beast in their men.
Get ready for six best selling, award winning, and rising star authors to bring you eighteen brand-new, sizzling paranormal romances that are sure to keep you up all night!
Chapter 1
Kaden
I stepped into the Bear Trap Bar and Grill for the first time in more than seven years. The scent of old beer and fried onions was so familiar, it might as well have been yesterday. My stomach growled its own recognition.
Mason stopped short in front of me so I gave him a sharp shove. “Move out of the way, big man. You’re not the only one here hungry as a bear.”
“Kaden, that joke’s as old as the crust on…” he started.
“Don’t say it. Nothing is as old as that, brother. Not something I want to think about before I eat.” Nash pushed his way past both of us. He paused and did a scan of the room before heading to a round table in the corner of the bar, Gage right behind him.
I grinned at Mason and we followed our buddies to the table, shifting chairs around so none of us had our backs facing the rest of the room. Some habits never died.
I took in the room in a quick glance. Not much had changed. Still the same dark wood paneling and green leather seats. Same game room in the back with the worn out dartboards and pool tables. Looked like some new TVs were the only change.
“Oh my goodness! I heard rumors you four were back in Kodiak!” Kelly, the owner of the bar since before I could remember, hurried over to the table. She threw her arms around Gage as if he was her long, lost husband.
Gage sat rigid in her embrace. I couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t big on public displays of affection under the best of circumstances.
And Kelly Carson was far from the best of circumstances. She had a good twenty years on all of us, but that had never stopped her from trying to get one or the other or all of us in her pants from the moment we were old enough to carry our fake I.D.s into her bar.
Her way-too-skinny-to-be-healthy frame didn’t do a thing for me. I preferred a woman with some soft curves to sink into. None of us had ever been tempted to go there, not even as randy teenage shifters with our inner bears raging to be let out.
Even now I found my lip curling as her bony hands wrapped themselves around Nash’s biceps, holding on for dear life as she batted her eyelashes up at him. Nash quickly pushed her off on Mason, and Mason passed her to me like we were playing a warped game of hot potato.
She reached around my neck and my bear, closer to the surface in the last year or so, roared a warning. The skinny shifter woman with the over-styled, over-dyed blonde hair and pink lipstick on her teeth was not my mate. My bear wanted to tear her away from us and toss her as far as we could throw her. I figured that might be pretty far since she looked like she hadn’t eaten in a month of Sundays.
“Kelly, do you mind if we order? We’ve all been dreaming about your burgers since the second we got our discharge papers.” Mason, ever the diplomat, offered her a grin I’m sure Kelly found charming, though to me all those teeth flashing made him look more like a used car salesmen.
But it worked. Kelly hopped out of my arms to get our orders. In no time at all, our table was piled high with hot wings, nachos, bacon cheeseburgers with fries, and a round of ice-cold beers.
“Weird how good the food is here.” Mason dragged three French fries through the puddle of ketchup on his plate and shoved them in his mouth. “Skinny as she is, I can’t imagine Kelly ever tastes it herself.”
I grunted in response, too busy shoveling food into my own mouth to give any more of my attention to the bar owner.
Once we’d all eaten enough to take the edge off our hunger, the talk turned to business. I took a pull on my beer and glanced around the table at the men who’d been my closest friends for as long as I could remember. “So, we’re really going to do this?”
“I’m in,” Mason said.
Nash and Gage each gave me a chin tip.
“Ursus Security Solutions?” I asked.
This time I got a round of nods. Really, we’d already worked out the details. Once we realized our bears were getting too restless to stick it out in the military much longer, we’d started kicking around ideas about what we wanted to do once we got back to our hometown in Alaska. Jobs were not so easy to come by in Kodiak, especially if you had no interest in catering to tourists, and all of us had spent the bulk of our adult years as soldiers.
Starting this firm seemed like a no brainer. Between our natural shifter talents and the skill sets we’d developed in almost a decade in Special Ops, running a security business would be the best way to keep roofs over our heads and keep us sharp.
So Ursus Security Solutions was born. Now all we needed to do was set up shop somewhere and take care of all the bureaucratic shit. I sighed.
“I vote we hire some help. I don’t feel like spending my first days home bogged down in paperwork.” Mason shook his head, disgust pulling the corners of his mouth down.
“You read my mind, brother.” I clapped him on the back. “But maybe we need to find some office space to put all that paperwork in before we hire help.”
I sent a glance toward Nash and Gage. Nash lifted a shoulder in a negligent shrug. Gage didn’t say a word.
Not much for talking most of the time, these two had been even more stoic since they came back from a mission that went sideways. I figured if they had a problem with any of our plans, they’d speak up, but I had to admit, their unusual silence was starting to worry me.
I downed the last of my beer and exchanged a look with Mason over the top of the bottle. His tight mouth told me he was concerned about what was going on with them, too.
Mason flexed his shoulders and got back down to business. “I say we hire an office manager. We can give a local a job, and they can help us find office space and take care of all the red tape involved in getting the business set up.”
“Good plan. I can run by the newspaper office in the morning and place a help wanted ad.” I grinned. I loved the idea of having a business without the headache of all the tedious office crap. The less time I had to spend behind a desk, the happier my bear and I would be.
My mind q
uickly turned to the next item on my mental agenda. I scratched the back of my neck. The last thing I wanted to do was bring this up with these guys, but I needed their help. “I think I have our first client, too.”
“Already?” Mason tipped his chair back, balancing it on just two legs.
Nash reached out and shoved him back down so all four legs hit the hard wood floor with a clatter. “What’s the case?”
I resisted cracking the joke I wanted to about Nash making a good den mother. I was about to get enough grief without poking the bear across from me. “I need your help finding Alyssa.”
Three sets of eyes shot to me with the precision of sniper sights. These guys knew who Alyssa was. And who she was to me. That didn’t make asking for help finding my mate any easier.
My mate. Something deep in my gut clenched at just thought of the petite beauty with her masses of honey blonde hair and enormous hazel eyes. I fought down my bear’s urge to claw his way out. I’d waited long years for her, and each one made my bear more restless, harder to control. Being this close to finally claiming her brought out my fiercest and most primal instincts.
Mason grinned and slouched back in his chair. Shit. I was not going to get off easy here.
“So this is like a case? You want us to hunt her down for you?”
My jaw clenched and my bear growled. I couldn’t stand the thought of another shifter on the scent of my woman, even if it was one of my best friends.
But I knew when I joined the military this day would come. Part of the reason I’d made the decision to join up was that my bear recognized Alyssa when she was way too young to take a mate.
Hell, my mate was human. Even the idea of taking a mate and all that meant would be hard for her to swallow. I knew when I left that I had to give her the chance to grow up and to follow her dream going to college. I had no doubt she’d hightailed it out of Kodiak the second she had the chance.
That meant, as much as it sucked, I needed help to figure out where she’d gone. By now she must have graduated college. Maybe she’d be working somewhere or in graduate school.
I’d done my best to leave her alone in the years since I left. No matter how tempted I was to look her up when I was on leave, I knew my bear wouldn’t be able to let her go when we saw her again. But that meant she could be anywhere.
“I need you to help me find her.” I leveled a look at each of them, letting all signs of joking leach from my face. “I’m not going to be any good to anyone until I have her with me.” I left off the fact that the longer I went without my mate, the more dangerous I’d get. For a long time, this clawing urgency made me one of the deadliest soldiers on my team. But let loose on my small hometown, my need to finally claim Alyssa could make me a real threat to anyone who stepped in my path.
Mason, Nash, and Gage met my eyes with the cold-eyed stares of the soldiers I knew them to be.
Good. They were beginning to understand the seriousness of the situation.
“Anything you need, brother.” Gage spoke for the first time in what seemed like days.
I nodded my thanks.
“From me, too,” Nash echoed Gage’s vow.
Mason stared at me a few beats before his eyes flicked over my shoulder and then back to my face. He eased back in his chair again, kicking his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles.
I recognized his shit-eating grin and braced myself.
“So what do we get if we find her?” Mason asked.
I blinked. Not the reaction I was expecting. I narrowed my eyes at Mason. “What do you want?”
“Maybe a kiss from your woman? You know like a little token of appreciation for my superior tracking skills.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
My bear all but roared and my teeth curled back from my lips. “You might want to ask for something else real quick.”
Mason shrugged, completely unconcerned with the imminent threat of attack. “You know what? No worries. You can owe me one.”
“I think we need to locate her before you start getting cocky, asshole.” It was all I could do to keep myself planted in the chair. Everything in me wanted to jump across the table and take him down just because he teased about putting his lips on my woman.
“Oh, yeah, about that. Mission accomplished. Looks like your girl just walked through the door.”
Chapter 2
Alyssa
I hurried into the back room to hang up my jacket. Somebody needed to tell Mother Nature it was spring. Judging by my numb fingers and frozen nose, she hadn’t gotten the memo.
“You’re late.” Kelly stormed into the break room to harass me.
I sighed. So what else was new?
College tuition, college tuition, college tuition. I kept my back to her while I repeated the mantra in my head. The last thing I ever wanted to do was end up working for Kelly Carson at the Bear Trap.
But I was so close to having enough money to move down to the lower forty-eight and go to college full-time. If that meant picking up extra shifts at the Bear Trap any chance I got, I would suck it up.
I pasted on a grin before I turned around. “Sorry. I didn’t think I started until six tonight.”
Kelly huffed out a breath, but I knew I had her. My shift did indeed start at six. A glance at the clock hanging on the dark paneled wall told me I had another five minutes before I was due out on the floor.
I snatched up an apron and tied it around my waist, tucking a pad and pen in a pocket. “Has it been busy tonight?”
Kelly pursed her lips, looking for all the world like she was sucking a lemon. I held back a laugh.
“It’s always busy on Fridays. Make sure you get out on that floor right away.” She marched out the door and I saluted her retreating back.
I ducked into the small powder room and checked myself in the mirror. I smoothed down a few strands of the hair that had escaped from my ponytail and rubbed a finger under my eye to get rid of a spot of smeared eyeliner. I applied some pink lip-gloss and stared at myself for a second. Guess that’s as good as I was going to get.
With a sigh, I headed out to the barroom, snatching up a tray as I went.
As soon as I hit the busy floor, the bartender called out to me. “Hey, babe. Can you pick up table four?”
I threw him a smile instead of the lip curl I wanted to at hearing him call me babe, and headed over to the table under one of the ginormous televisions. Four of my regulars sat at the battered round table.
“Hey, guys. How were the tourists today?” I offered them a smile. They owned an outdoor expedition company and were always good for a few hilarious stories about their customers. It didn’t hurt that they were great tippers, too.
“Surprisingly quiet,” Asher, a guy who graduated high school a few years ahead of me, shared. “Not one of them tried to get up close and personal with the local wildlife.”
I laughed. “You sound disappointed.”
A wide grin took up residence across the bottom half of his face. “It keeps things interesting when I have to pull one of them out of the Bay or rescue one who thought it was a good idea to take pictures with a cute moose.”
“I think you just might have a mean streak, Ash.” I shook my head and laughed along with the guys before slipping my pad and pen from my apron. “You guys up for your usual?”
I got their orders and headed toward the bar. A glance over the room told me Kelly hadn’t lied. The place was jammed with a mixture of locals and tourists.
Bits and pieces of conversation drifted my way as I skirted tables, chairs, and patrons. Most of it filtered out, but then…
“…I heard Kaden, Mason, Nash and Gage are coming back for good this time. I’m so happy to hear it…”
I froze in place for a long moment until someone jostled me from behind. I shook off the stupor and hustled to the bar with my orders. Usually I’d pick up another order while the bartender filled this one, but at this moment my mind wasn’t functioning well enough to make me capa
ble of coherent speech. I kept my back to the crowd and stared off into space as I fought to get my breathing under control. I quickly found something that helped me—mental math.
I stood there and started to add up the numbers in my bank account, plus the scholarship money I’d been offered, and compared it to the cost of living I’d come up with. My plan had been to stick it out in Kodiak until next November before I finally, finally headed off to Oregon to start school in the spring semester.
But the mention of Kaden’s return blew all those plans right out of the water. My heart raced at the prospect of coming face-to-face with the shifter I’d done my best to avoid since around the time I’d hit puberty.
Kaden was the one werebear who could tempt me to throw away all my plans with just the crook of his finger.
I shuddered at the thought. As hard as I’d fought my mother’s reputation my entire life, my reaction to Kaden Black made one thing crystal clear—I was just like her.
But I refused to make the same choices she’d made. I wouldn’t throw away my dreams just so I could get the attention of any werebear who showed the slightest interest. Wouldn’t the locals just loved that?
My eyes scanned the men bellied up to the bar, mostly locals and mostly werebears, though a few humans mixed in, too. Mostly they lived and worked together in our small town just fine. But I’d have to be blind and deaf not to hear the opinions that got slung around the bar from time to time.
We had old shifters living here since before the rest of the world knew shifters existed. They’d wanted to preserve the werebear bloodlines and had no trouble expressing their disgust when they saw humans and werebears pairing off.
And the humans weren’t any better. Those around long enough to remember a time when they lived in blissful ignorance about the existence of shifters wished they had been able to go right on living with their lack of knowledge.