Bear Me Away (Alpha Werebear Paranormal Romance) (A Jamesburg Shifter Romance) (16 page)

West tried the door. He squeezed as hard as he could, unconsciously trying to break the damn door off the hinges. Elena might be in charge, she might even be winning this mental duel, but he didn’t want to take any chances. His forearm swelled, the muscles bulging and filling with blood.

He grunted with effort as he strained, but the door simply wouldn’t budge. West stooped down and planted a shoulder in the center of it. With a heavy thump, he was able to move the door slightly, but that was all.

More screaming from inside, this time becoming more violent and less coherent.

“Elena!” West shouted. “I’m here! I can hear you!”

Suddenly, all the noise stopped. The hair started to push out of West’s arms, his fingers flattening into paws. He hadn’t meant to do this, it was just desperation, it was just the fear that something was happening to Elena that needed to be stopped.

The next shoulder block came from a half bear with a wild look in his eye. He was angry, but he was in control. The rage hadn’t taken him, it was
helping
him. Again and again he beat against it until finally, in one singular moment, he heard a crack, then wood splitting along a seam.

West backed up, still there was silence within, and rammed with every ounce of force he could muster.

With a roar that shook him to the core, he drove through the door, sending it careening backwards, off the hinges. The three deadbolts were all fully intact and still locked. Metal sheathes around them were dented, but whole, just blasted back out of the wood. He swept through the living room, careful to avoid damaging the dolls.

“Shut up!” Petunia wailed. “Shut up, you idiot!”

It sounded like the noise was coming from underneath where he was – some kind of basement or cellar. But there were no stairs, no trap doors or anything of the sort, at least that West could see. With clothes hanging in tatters around him, his fur-covered arms ached to break something else, to smash through a wall or bash through the floor, and hold Elena in his arms.

“She if he can find ush,” he heard the rabbit shout, this time lisping for some reason. “Let’sh just she.”

All around he stomped, listening for hollows, but found nothing. Through the bedroom, through the kitchen, West trampled around, desperately trying to find a way to Elena.

And then it hit him.

The bookcases, lined with dolls. One of them must move. But he didn’t have time to find the trigger. He started tugging at them, horrified as one of the dolls fell and shattered. He stared down, almost heartbroken at what he’d done, but those things didn’t matter right then. Not at all. Only one thing mattered.

He swallowed and kept pulling, hoping to notice any sort of movement at all.

If only I were a little stronger, a little more pissed off. I can’t get out of control though, or God only knows what I’ll do. I need to harness it, I need to—

He turned his head to the table, upon which sat an incredibly large, completely raw hunk of steak. His stomach turned at the idea of eating it, but he knew if he did, he’d get a burst of energy, a burst of strength. And maybe that was the only one he’d need.

“I can’t,” he said under his breath.

Another scream met his ears. “No! No! You’re
biting
me? Ah!”

West shook his head, fur going everywhere, senses flaring to life. He was close, so close, to his Elena, but he needed just a little boost.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
I can find her without it. I can do this
, he told himself.

But then he heard another scream. This one was pain, no denying it. That angry little rabbit was hurting his Elena, his mate.

Clarity streamed into West’s mind. He broke before, he failed his partner. He wasn’t going to fail again. “Not a chance in hell I’m gonna let her down, or let her get roughed up. Not a chance.”

Gritting his teeth, he steeled himself to do one of the things he hated most. He could already taste the foul, metallic flavor, the slightly-not-fresh juices. He swallowed hard, staving off the nausea he felt.

West wrapped his transforming paw around the steak, lifted it up, and gulped again.

Elena screamed. “You’re not getting away with this,” she shouted. “Ow! Stop fucking
biting
me!”

The sound of scuffling came through the floor. He only hoped that part of the scuffling was Elena fighting back. More screams, more shouting, more fight sounds.

“Enough,” he said. “That’s enough.”

One second, he was staring at the glistening hunk of cow ass. In the next, he was chewing. West winced, but he chewed through the discomfort. Almost immediately, when he swallowed the first bite, his muscles hardened, his mind grew instantly sharper.

The fur lining his arms grew thicker and covered him when he swallowed again, and on the third choking gulp, he was finished. As much as he hated it, there was no question about the results: his arms and legs flared to life like he’d been asleep and just shot out of bed. He inhaled a lungful of air through his nose. Smells all around him caught his attention.

It was like he’d been half asleep, half dead, and then got shocked in the chest.

He slumped to the floor, taken by his transformation, and then slammed a massive paw-fist into the ground. The entire house shuddered with the impact. Two dolls fell off their shelves, one of them shattering and the other bouncing, but West had no room for concern about the dolls.

The board underneath him split when he punched again, and then splintered.

A grim smile crept across he bear’s face as he pounded the floor again, busting through a subfloor. All the sound beneath him had stopped, and probably for a real,
real
, good reason.

*

“W
hat the hell is that?” Petunia asked, paused an inch away from where she was about to sink her teeth.

Elena thrashed, knocking her aside momentarily, swooshing her hip into the side of Petunia’s head. “I
told
you that you weren’t gonna get away with this,” she hissed. “You coulda stopped with the gardens, you coulda stopped with destroying the Cannery, and you would have gotten away with everything. Why the hell don’t criminals ever realize that as long as they stop while they’re ahead, they’ll never get caught?”

“I’m not caught yet!”

The ceiling burst open, light streamed through, and then something else – something much larger and hairier – fell to the concrete floor with a grunt.

West hopped to his feet, shook his massive head, and looked at Elena for a second, with the kindest, gentlest, dark blue eyes. Even though she’d kept her cool, more or less, that gaze calmed her through and through. With a swipe of his paw, what she then saw was a length of electrical cord binding her to the ceiling, broke, and she fell to the floor.

“You don’t get to do this! You don’t get to ruin me!” Petunia squealed, as she leapt onto West’s back and sank her dentures into his thickly muscled neck. West roared in pain and tried to swat at her, but the tiny rabbit woman flattened herself against him, let go of her bite, and dug in again, this time on the side of his head.

He howled again, and slung his head side to side, finally dislodging his nasty little passenger. Petunia hit the wall with a thump, and a grunt, and then rolled to the side, jumping right back on.

From where she was on the floor, Elena was able to wrap her bare feet around part of the flooring that fell through the cellar ceiling with West, and started sawing at the band around her ankles. Every back and forth motion bit in deep, bringing pain and blood to the surface, but she knew her bear couldn’t handle that rabbit.

She might not do much damage to him, but he’d never get her off. Eventually, she’d wear him down.

Petunia screeched again, gnawing into the side of West’s face, drawing blood that soaked into the patterned fur around his eyes. He thrashed his head again, and almost threw her off, but that time she dug in her curling fingernails, and just bit down harder.

“Why are you doing this?” Elena asked, trying to distract the were-bunny as she also kept right on sawing those bonds. The one between her ankles grew thin and then snapped.

The answer from Petunia was just a feral squawk. When West fell still for a moment, she let go of him, moved around to the front, and sunk those horrifying dentures, along with her growing buckteeth, into the bear’s bottom jaw. He was bleeding, and badly, but nothing he could do would dislodge the damned rabbit.

West tried slamming his head into the floor to crush her, but she just scrambled out of the way at the last moment, around to the back of his head, and took a chunk out of his ear.

Elena contorted into something resembling a pretzel, and lifted the piece of sharp concrete between her feet, sawing hard at the plastic between her wrists. There wasn’t enough room to really make much headway, so really it was more like she was grinding away at the plastic that lay on her wrist.

She bit her lip to stave off her screams as the concrete dug hard into her flesh.

West was wobbling. Somehow, impossibly, Petunia had drawn enough blood, had punctured him enough times that the blood loss was staring to affect him.

He staggered left, and then right, in long, loopy steps. For a moment he stumbled to the ground, and then pushed himself back up, once again trying to slam her into the wall but completely failing to do anything effective except for cracking his own head, and then roaring out in confused pain.

His eyes were hot with rage, but they were also clouded, confused, turned around and perplexed.

In the distance, sirens sounded.

“Hear that, Petunia?” Elena said, still painfully grinding her wrist with the concrete. “You hear that? You’re not getting out of this. Hyenas are coming, and they’re not gonna leave without you.”

She was making a wild assumption. How would they have known to come here? Who would ever have made the call? It didn’t make any sense, but then again, neither did her predicament. One minute, they’d been running through the forest, doing a little stupid lovey-dovey playing, and the next she was in this room being bit by an angry rabbit.

West slumped again, shoulder butting the wall. This time though, the ceiling let out a pained creak and a shower of dust. All at once it hit her.

“You’re gonna bring down the whole house!”

“For a private dick,” Petunia said in between bites, “you catch on kinda slow.”

West roared in pain again, flailing around, and bashed into the same place on the wall.

More dust, more creaking.

The sirens grew louder, but nowhere near enough.

The plastic broke on Elena’s hand, freeing her but nowhere near soon enough.

Petunia bit down again. West howled in pain, lurched again, and slammed face first into the wall. Elena got her claws around the rabbit’s neck, wrenching Petunia off West’s back, and hurling her violently to the floor. The rabbit yelped and looked up, her face covered in blood streaming down from her nose.

Elena saw her smile, a ghastly, horrific grin of metal dental mechanics, false teeth, and red streaks. Petunia let out a bellowing, absurd laugh

The next crack was the biggest. The next shower of dust was the heaviest.

“
None
of us are getting out of here, fox,” Petunia shouted as the world collapsed. “None of us!”

Forgetting about the rabbit, Elena leapt to cover her unconscious mate, for what little good her tiny body would do, she wasn’t going to just give up. Whatever it took, she told herself she’d keep him safe. Whatever pain it caused... she didn’t care.

Elena decided a second before the world fell in, that she was going to see this through to the very end.

Petunia howled in laughter.

West breathed, barely.

Elena braced for impact.

A tiny chunk hit her first, then a bigger one.

She wrapped her arms tight around West, closed her eyes and bit her lip. His hand closed around hers, and in the last moment before she was knocked out by falling concrete, Elena saw her mate open his eyes, stare into hers, and smile.

I love you
, he mouthed.

The world went black, but at least, in that one moment, she had him.

She had her West.

––––––––

A
cough wracked her body that came out with a fine mist of blood.

Elena opened her eyes and sucked wind, expecting to find her ribs broken, her lungs punctured, but when she did, she realized that the blood was just from a busted lip. She sucked a deep breath, tasting a mouthful of concrete dust, and when she closed her teeth the grit scraped in a way that made her wince.

“Jesus H!” Paul’s voice reached Elena’s ears. He rushed to her side and pushed a chunk of masonry off of her back.

She coughed again, but that time, no blood came, just a cloud of dust.

“I’m either still alive, or in hell,” Elena whispered.

“Don’t think so,” Paul said, moving more stones. “What makes you say that? No wait, let me guess – because I’m here?”

“Because... you’re here,” Elena said, twisting her broken lips into a smile. “How’s your head?”

“Mine’s a lot better than yours, probably. Can you move? Is anything broken?”

She twisted her head around to look up, and at exactly the same time, saw West’s huge, muscled arm around her back, badly bruised, and also felt him curl a finger against her skin. She turned back to his face to see him smiling up at her. Tiny cuts from concrete shards marked both of them, and stung like absolute hell, but nothing major, somehow, had mushed either of them into fox goo or bear jelly.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I think,” she paused to breathe for a moment. There was a jolt of pain when she filled her lungs completely, but after having had a couple tons of concrete fall on her, a cracked rib seemed like just about a best case scenario. Then again, not being dead was a pretty best-case scenario.

Paul grabbed her wrist and eased her to her feet. She slumped over, but caught herself on her weakened, scraped knees, and managed to keep her feet underneath herself.