The Bear's Hired Mate: A Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (16 page)

The warrior laughed. “Believe it or not, this has always been your destiny, Jane Arnold. Your role in our Clan was predicted many moons ago when your great-great-great grandmother walked the earth.”

Jane shivered at the prophecy, but lifted her chin. “If you needed me to play a part in your Clan all you had to do was ask. I’m really a nice person.”

The warrior walked slowly around Jane’s chair, placing his hands on her shoulders and speaking into her ear. “Oh, I don’t know that you would have agreed to participate if you knew the whole story. You play an integral but, shall we say, unsavory part in this ritual.” Jane’s body betrayed her and one terrified chill erupted through her body.

“You see, it was predicted that a human would be mated to the First Son of a rival Werebear Clan and her coming would be the downfall of the Longclaw Clan. You almost made it, rushing the engagement and mating ritual - but that party with your girlfriends...it tipped us off that you were close to fully mating the First Son. If that happened, then our Clan would cease to exist. Luckily we caught you before that could happen.”

Jane swallowed hard, trying to follow the logic. “So, all you want me to do is not mate Vincent? I don’t need to marry the man - we can all live in peace if I live in sin, right?”

The warrior slowly shook his head “No, there is no way a mated bear wouldn’t complete the mating ritual eventually, especially a First Son. There are laws preventing such things. No, you cannot simply walk away from this. In fact, we’re going to make sure you don’t walk away at all.”

THE FINAL
CHAPTER

So far, they had nothing. They had less than nothing, to be specific, because the address the Longclaw Clan had used for their headquarters was a front and the Werebear Board member they’d managed to contact for information was still passed out, due to an overzealous punch from Vincent himself.

The man had started by spouting off some prediction about how Jane was going to be the end of the Longclaw Clan and Vincent’s mating hormones had gotten in the way of his logic. It was lights out for the poor guy before Vincent could see that the opinion he was expressing was not his own. One of the board members had called his wife for old-fashioned smelling salts. Vincent rolled his eyes, thinking that this was one of the benefits of long life...outdated remedies were readily available. 

The other members of the board were running searches on their computers or trying to reach out through their networks to try and locate where the heart of the Longclaw Clan was held.

However, again and again, it seemed like they reached dead ends.

Unbeknownst to the Inter-Clan Board, the Longclaw Clan had been slowly slipping into the shadows for the last decade or so. From what the Mezzanotte Clan could gather at that point in time, the Longclaw Clan had started offering to come to other Clans’ territories when official business needed to be held. It wasn’t an unusual offer and most Clan Boards were happy to host a meeting rather than arrange travel for their already busy board members. However, no one had noticed that the Longclaw Clan hadn’t invited anyone into their territory in a decade.

This meant that gathering intel about where the Clan was based out of, had been difficult. Their best lead came from ransacking the original offices. A werebear had been there alone, simply sitting reading a book. It was as if he’d been waiting for them to arrive but before he could tell his whole tale, Vincent had knocked him out cold. The rest of the Board was obviously not happy with the development and Vincent would have beat himself bloody for the stupid move had it not been - well - himself.

Now Vincent paced around the unconscious man, adding his penchant for rash behavior to the list of things he’d need to work on before becoming Clan Leader.

As Vincent rounded the guy for the umpteenth time, the smelling salts arrived. Xavier took the stuff and rushed to break the vial beneath the werebear’s nose. The noxious smell permeated the room and one by one all of the werebears’  noses twitched, their sensitive sense of smell reacting to the fumes.

Slowly, the unconscious man groaned. His eyes blinked open and then drifted shut again. Xavier made a frustrated sound low in his throat and broke yet another vial. This time the man’s eyes popped open in a flash and he almost fell out of his seat trying to get away from the smell.

Vincent stopped his descent before the man toppled to the ground with his hands and feet bound.

“Steady, you’re bound and we don’t want to hurt you if we don’t have to. You’re being held in Mezzanotte territory close to the border of Longclaw. We just want more information about why my mate Jane was taken.” Vincent was proud that he’d managed to speak in a voice that sounded steady. He thought he was going to jump out of his skin with need to find out where they were keeping Jane.

The man gave Vincent a long low look before searching the other faces surrounding him. “I suppose it was a tactical error to tell my story with a little flair to the mate of the missing woman.” The wWerebear rolled his eyes and tried to roll his shoulders as well. “Care to unbind my hands?”

Xavier jumped in the man’s face. “Care to tell us what’s going on?”

“What time is it?” the man asked, finally taking note of the darkness outside the windows. Frantically he looked back to Vincent. “What time is it?” he demanded again.

“It’s six o’clock.”

“Gods, we have to go now.” The man started struggling against his restraints again, this time Vincent was afraid he was going to hurt himself in the process.

“Slow down, just tell us what’s going on - and do it quick.”

Looking up, the man stilled.  “There was a prophecy three generations ago that predicted the human mate of the Mezzanotte Clan would be the end of the Longclaw Clan as we knew it. The current Sitting Bear was just a cub at the time. When his father was Sitting Bear, he thought that the prophecy indicated a new stage of growth for the Clan.

“But when the current Sitting Bear took over and watched as the Mezzanotte’s territory grew in prosperity, the interpretation of the prophecy changed. He grew paranoid and claimed that the human mate would be the end of the Longclaw Clan altogether. Sitting Bear decided that the mate had to die before the mating process was complete. We thought there was more time, but you fast-tracked the engagement. We thought we had at least a year to contact you.”

Vincent’s stomach dropped. “The Clan can’t protect her if she’s not officially mated to me. We were expediting the process to protect her from your Clan.”

“That’s what the meeting was supposed to do - to scare you into making a move like that. I’ve been working with a subset of the Longclaw Clan that still believes the previous Sitting Bear’s interpretation of the foretelling. As your own Clan Leader said, human blood can only strengthen a werebear’s bloodline. It’s rare to have a mating of the two species but when it happens, only good comes of it. There are many of us who believe that it’s good for all of us, not just your Clan.”

Vincent stared hard at the man in front of him. He was obviously someone who had risked his life and position to warn them of the impending attack. It had taken guts to risk being beaten and kidnapped to share the innermost details of his Clan’s board. However, at this moment, everything rested on the choice to trust this man - would he lead them to the truth? Or would he lead them away from Jane and her salvation. Vincent’s gut said to trust the man with the honest eyes.

“Xavier, cut him free,” Vincent said with authority.

Xavier looked to Vincenzo for confirmation and at the Clan Leader’s nod, he took a knife and slit the ropes open. The Longclaw man extended his hand to Vincent and introduced himself. “I’m Ronan, one of the members of an underground board of the Longclaw Clan. It’s nice to finally meet you in person.”

Vincent, and then Vincenzo, shook the man’s hand. “I’m glad you took the risk to tell us what you know. Without you, we wouldn’t have a chance to save Jane.”

“Speaking of saving,” Ronan said, moving toward the room’s door, “We need to head to a place called Fortune Falls. Sitting Bear operates out of an abandoned gold rush town - well washed up would be more apt. He has a healthy dose of paranoia and tries to stay as off the grid as possible, but he needs the modern conveniences of electricity and running water. I’ve got the GPS coordinates.”

“What’s the plan for the attack? If it’s off the grid and barely populated, it’s not as if we’re going to be able to surprise anyone.”

Ronan was patting himself down, searching for something and coming up empty. “Who took my phone?”

Xavier stepped forward and handed it over. “Oh, sorry man - here you go.”

“Thanks. The plan was to call the point person on my Board and have them begin the attack as we enter the town. There’s fifteen bears inside the building ready to go. But they’re going to be up against at least thirty. We need to invade the space and attack in our bear forms.”

Vincenzo directed the group toward a selection of armed cars. They were black Hummers  outfitted as if the President was going to be traveling in them. “Alright men, this is going back to our roots. We’ll attack as bears - no holds barred. Jane is our target - get her out and get her out safe.”

The men nodded and filed into the vehicles. Most of the thirteen men were mates and/or fathers themselves and yet, Vincent noted, not a one hesitated from his duty. This had quickly grown beyond his own need to find his mate, Jane didn’t know it, but her life held the difference between two paths for the Werebear Clans and all hope lay in her surviving this day.

---   ---   ---

As the vehicles approached the faded town, Vincent saw little sign of life in the buildings around him. No cars were parked on the street, and every storefront except for a small convenience store, seemed to be boarded up. How that one business stayed afloat threatened to boggle the mind.

When the convoy of armored vehicles had passed the town sign for Fortune Falls, Ronan sent the text out to the point person inside Sitting Bear’s stronghold. The assumption was that the werebears on the inside had shifted to their bear forms and had managed to surprise at least a few of the Longclaw Clansmen who were still in human form. It was far easier to kill a bear as a human - bear to bear, the fight was tougher.

In less than three minutes, they arrived at a nondescript office space. It’s only abnormality to the town surrounding it was the building’s height. At least ten stories tall, it towered above the three to four story structures that defined the architecture of the rest of the buildings. Exiting the vehicles, men were stripping themselves of belts, ties, and accessories, in general. The rest of their clothing would be shredded in the change from man to bear. As they approached, a door at the side of the building opened up and a real live, Native American warrior stuck his head around the doorway.

The Mezzanotte Clan froze, ready to attack if necessary, but Ronan ran toward the door and patted the man on the back. Shouting back to the Mezzanottes he explained, “Someone had to stay in human form to open the door. It’s a doorknob - impossible to open in bear form.”

“Good call,” Vincenzo called out as he and the rest of the Clan ran toward the door as well.

Entering the building, the group was assaulted with an unexpected mix of sensory data. There seemed to be a large amount of smoke - but no heat, there was the sound of fighting happening but it was silent except for the sounds of bodies hitting other bodies. Strange, because even in bear form, there should be roars and sounds of pain. Pausing in human form to try to make sense of it all, Ronan, seeming to read their minds, explained it.

“It’s all part of the ritual. There’s a bonfire happening on the bottom level of the building. The basement is carved out of dirt and stone and there are special vents that allow in oxygen and are also letting the smoke and scent drift up. And the silence is because all but Sitting Bear and his son will have taken a vow of silence. It’s not like how the monks do it either - it’s old magic and renders the vow-taker without a voice from sunrise to sunrise. Patrick here couldn’t talk if he wanted to - it’s why we texted.”

The warrior leading them down a set of metal stairs nodded his agreement. When they’d reached yet another set of doors, this time of solid wood and inlaid with carvings too intricate for Vincent to make out in the dim light, their presence sent a chill down his spine. Patrick pushed the doors open and simultaneously shifted into his bear form, the leather pants and chest piece he was wearing ripped off from his body during the process. Vincent watched as his mouth opened in a silent roar and he bounded into the room to help one of his brothers who was in trouble.

All around Vincent, the other Werebears shifted, the Mezzanotte Clan announcing their entrance to the fight with mighty roars from their very active vocal cords. Several of the Longclaw Werebears broke off their fights to attack the new participants. The large bear form of Xavier stepped in front of Vincent’s still very human form to protect his First Son, though the bear looked back and made the very human expression of a raised eyebrow which seemed to ask, “What the fuck?”

Vincent was thankful for the protection because he needed to find where Jane was in the melee. Scanning the room was difficult due to the fire, smoke, and large bodies of the Werebears. Both Clans shifted to larger breeds of bears standing at six to ten feet tall and at over 250 lbs it was not easy to see around them.

Finally, Vincent spotted Jane. She was strapped to a large wooden chair and she was struggling in vain to free herself from her bonds. In front of her, Sitting Bear remained in his human form and was chanting and dancing around her chair. The First Son of the Clan seemed to be guarding the ritual in bear form. Vincent briefly considered staying in human form as he rushed into the battle toward Jane. She’d never seen him in his bear form yet and Vincent didn’t want to scare her, but as he approached and the firelight glinted off the blade of a bone hunting knife, Vincent lost it.

He felt his bones give way to their bear form. The breaking and reforming of mass felt like coming home - its discomfort barely registering anymore. Vincent’s bear was dark as night, his fur devoid of any marking or patch of color variation. At almost ten feet tall, he was close to 400 lbs and was not an easy bear to mess with. Charging across the room, he threw other bears out of his way with a head butt or swipe of his giant paw.