Simon: Le Beau Brothers: New Orleans Billionaire Shifters with BBW mates Series (Le Beau Series) (3 page)

“I need an area twenty miles east evaluated.” He rubbed his baldhead absentmindedly. As if mumbling to himself, “I need to make sure you
’re out of harm’s way.” His scalp was turning red from the scrubbing he was giving it. “Can you sense through metal?” He eyed Simon like a bug again.

Simon
cupped his chin and rubbed his fingers across his lips to hide the fact he was trying not to smile. “I can sense through anything, distance is my only limit.”

“You will stay inside a tank for maximum coverage. That, or
God forbid you might be hit. A squad I can replace, you I can’t. Your squad will move out at twenty hundred hours. I want stealth, you will only go twelve mile east and sense the situation from a distance.”

Oh man! I tried to protect my squad and I
’ve put them in even more danger. They are going to be on the frontline every time I’m sent out
.

“Be at the staging area at nineteen thirty. I will brief your squad leader. I expect to debrief you the moment you return from the operation.”

Simon found it a bit embarrassing that he was required to ride inside a tank, but his Major wouldn’t take the chance that he’d meet a bullet up close and personal. Inside the armored tank it was almost impossible for him to incur an injury.

He sig
hed as he walked with the squad to load up. His friends didn’t understand why he was relegated to the inside of a tank and ribbed him incessantly. 

“Hey
, Le Beau, do you need help getting into your booster seat?” one of them jabbed.

“Sure, I could use a diaper change too
,” he shot back. If you can’t beat them, join them. He hoped the ribbing would end quickly.

An hour later
Simon joined Mark in Major Patterson’s office. “Sir, there is a small band of fighters eighteen miles east. The aggression level is medium to low. I would guess they are forced enlisted who are trying to avoid combat.”

The
Major was silent as he processed the intel. “Good work, Le Beau. The squad will be off duty tomorrow. Anderson, I want you here at ten hundred. Dismissed.”

The squad fell into a routine, night excursions to gather
intel followed by a duty free day. Within a week the ribbing about his tank rides ended. They appreciated the intel he provided. The men knew many of them would have been injured or dead without Simon’s unique ability.

A month later

Simon and his team were on a recon mission to an area twenty miles west of base. “Halt!”
he yelled over the roar of the engine. Everyone stood silent, awaiting orders. Simon may not be the squad leader but he ran the show when they were on a mission.

Something is very off in this area
, he couldn’t quite place what it was but it was not friendly. The men were on high alert. Utilizing hand signals he sent scouts out under the cover of darkness.

The enemy was
hunkered down in a pile of rocks west of their string of vehicles. Simon studied the situation thoroughly to verify the aggression level. If he ordered a sloppy hit on civilians, his gift of empathy would make him suffer horribly. Satisfied, he guided his men in. On his signal the small hive of fighters were hit with mortars. Once the debris cleared, Simon took a minute to scan the area.

Exhaling a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding,
he called all clear. He gave a silent prayer of thanks to the Goddess. Another mission completed without injury or casualty to his men. It was a heavy burden to bear for one man, but he felt he had to do what he could to keep his friends safe. He never considered the cost he was paying with his control and his wolf.

Simon tapped his pencil on the desk,
I need skin contact, as quickly as possible.
The spasms and anxiety were coming more often. After several months of ops, he noticed the more missions he went on, the more insurgents he was responsible for killing, the further he slipped into himself. As his need to seek out human contact became more and more often, the effects became obvious. Fighting his wolf for control had become more difficult. And the massages weren’t sustaining him as long as they used too.

He worried he was going to turn wolf in the middle of the base. He shuddered like a junkie in withdrawal as he lay in his bunk that night. He dreamt of a lovely
dove gray and white wolf with cute little tan trimmed ears. She had the most stunning eyes, the kind that look right into a man’s soul. She captivated his wolf.

Night after night, the female wolf quietly trot
ted into his dream and lay next to his wolf. They never romped or played. They just lay as close as they could, touched each other as much as possible. The nightly specter calmed his wolf in ways Simon had never been able to. Without her visits, he would have never survived his last year in the service.

He lovingly drew a life like color image of his wolf angel. On his next weekend pass, he went to the only tattoo artist available. He prayed the man had some talent as he showed him his rendering. One of his massage friends agreed to be his interpreter. “Can he do it?” Simon asked
.

She spoke with the man for a minute then answered
, “He can do it but it will take several extensive visits to draw the wolf and add all the layers of color. He has a book of past artwork he can show you if you want to judge his work.”

That was perfect as far as Simon was concerned. He could memorialize his savior wolf on his back and get extensive skin-to-skin contact at the same time. Win-win in his book.

He was riding with his squad for their weekend in town. He had used every pass he received over the past few months to complete the tattoo. The art was impressive and covered the majority of his back. Some of his friends thought it was rad, others thought he’d gone a little loco. But Simon knew the truth of it and that was all that mattered. The wolf and the time required getting the tattoo saved his life.

Simon sat on the edge of his bunk.
He was hiding in the barracks. He had only days until his final discharge after four long years. The Major had tried every trick in the book to get him to reenlist. He didn’t have a clue there was no way that would ever be possible. He breathed heavily with his eyes closed. It took every ounce of effort and deep concentration to fight the shift his wolf was trying to force. He kept his hands hidden in the folds of the blanket he sat on so the other soldiers couldn’t see his hands shift from human to wolf and back again. Finally Simon wrestled his wolf under control.

Simon and his unit were assigned to scout an unfamiliar sector. He stretched his senses as far as they would go. Something had his radar on high alert but he couldn’t pin point the problem. It was like a strobe flashing but in the guise of emotional energy. One second it felt aggressive then BAM! It was joyful. He halted his unit and signaled Mark over.

“Sir, I sense something but it’s extremely erratic. I can’t pin point if it is a threat or not. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“We’ll have to investigate the old fashioned way then.” Mark signaled the unit into recon formation and put them through the drill they knew so well.

Moment’s later gunfire erupted and chaos reigned.

An enemy cell high on the local street drug, wildly fired upon the unit. Most of the men were able to find cover, Mark wasn’t so lucky.

The battle ended as abruptly as it began and Simon sensed the enemy moving away. A medic field dressed Mark’s leg as they swiftly prepared to move out. They needed to get him to the hospital ASAP.

Simon blamed himself for his best friend’s injury. He should have known the threat was there.
Why didn’t my gift work this one last time?
Try as he might, the answers didn’t come.

He visited Mark to check on his progress. It didn’t matter how many times Mark told him it wasn’t his fault, that he’
d given the order so he was to blame, Simon didn’t hear it.

The struggle
with his wolf worsened with each passing minute until Simon didn’t know if he could hold him back any longer. He had twenty-four hours to maintain human form and then he would be in the clear. It proved to be the longest, roughest, twenty-four hours of his existence.

He grit
ted his teeth in concentration.
I can do this, just a few more steps.
Slowly he exited the transport plane to the tarmac. He shook with the effort. He held his human form, but barely, until he was safely in the back seat of his parents’ car. Headed home to the plantation, he lay silently in wolf form.

Emma Le Beau took her mate
’s hand as tears slowly tracked down her face. Her baby was suffering,and she couldn’t help him. At least not until she understood it. If anyone could help Simon it would be her. She needed to speak with the spirits and devise a plan to make him whole. She wanted her Simon back, no one said no to Emma when she was determined
.
.

Chapter 3

Simon’s Recovery

Simon
emerged from the forest as his wolf. Closing his eyes, he raised his head to the warm sun and cooling breeze. It didn’t help, the ache in his chest remained. Opening his eyes, his gaze zeroed in on his personal home. If he concentrated really hard, he could imagine his mate walking along the porch, waiting for him to return. A familiar yearning filled him, the desire for his one true mate. When would he find her? Was she living close by or in another country? He’d found a modicum of peace in shifting and going for long runs. But it didn’t fill his need.

He was restless; the feeling had hound
ed him for a while. There was no understanding it; it just was. Shifting to human, he walked across the expanse of lawn nodding to himself. He was going to do it, he would enlist for a four-year stint today. Perhaps the physical aspects of Marine life and the travel would bring him some peace. If the Goddess was in an especially good mood, he might even meet his mate. He sure wouldn’t find her sitting at home.

Isaac shook the wolf sleeping on the sofa
. “Come on, Simon, you really need to try to be human more. You are shedding like a husky in the summertime.” Isaac sounded exhausted.

With a start, Simon woke from the dream or should he call it a nightmare
? That fateful decision led to his present condition: every time he attempted to shift to human, it felt like being a hundred feet below the surface of the ocean, he could see a sliver of light but not reach it.

S
omeone stroked his fur in slow rhythmic glides. It felt like heaven and helped slightly but wasn’t enough. At this rate, it would take two years before he could shift back.

As they say, hindsight is twenty
-twenty. If he’d known joining the Marines would be tantamount to a jail cell for a shifter, he would have never enlisted.

I now understand why we don’t have jails as a system to reform shifters.
You can’t lock a shifter away from others and expect a positive outcome. Put a shifter into a cell and he’ll waste away and become lost in his wolf form. Shifter law had two solutions for crimes depending on their severity. For breaking a lesser law: always put your mate before yourself, respect another shifters’ mate, and respect all nonhumans, there was the sentence of blood rights. A brutal and barbaric ritual where the criminal was tied to a stake and the offended party beat him to within an inch of his life.

For the unforgiveable crimes of exposing shifters to the world or harming another shifter for any reason other than self-defense, the sentence was death.

The only exception to this simplistic system applied to the royal family, a crime against the royals was death, period.

After an hour of attempting to shift, he harrumphed in disappointment. A few weeks had passed and he’d hoped there would be more improvement. He desperately wanted to meet Cade’s mate at the barbeque today
, but he couldn’t make it to the surface. His repeated attempts left him exhausted and he now lay on the couch napping.

Drifting in and out of dreams,
he jolted awake as pain, like an icepick in his temple, shot through his skull. His moans of agony came out as whines and whimpers.

In addition to being stuck in wolf form he had almost no control over his empathy. If he had hands he would be cradling his head
. This was bad! There were too many people here for the barbeque and he was in emotion overload. No longer able to block or filter emotions as they struck him, he was battered unmercifully, and damn it was painful. He could handle a few people at a time but this exceeded his limits. This was a migraine times a thousand.

Was that a female’s voice coming from the kitchen?
he wondered through his haze of torment. Pressing his eyes shut tightly, he heard soft footfalls cross the room and smelled the sweet scent of woman.

“Hello, Simon, I’m Anna James, Cade’s mate. May I touch you?”

He couldn’t speak in this form even if his head wasn’t cleaved in half. Instead, he made a small harrumph sound and opened his eyes. It took a second to focus, she had squatted next to the couch about ten inches from his face and waited for his permission. With only paws available, he couldn’t shake her hand. Doing the next best thing, he reached forward, stretched his neck toward her, and licked her cheek. His wolfy hello made her giggle. He loved the sound of a woman’s laughter. She tentatively began to pet him, and scooted a little closer.