Bear Mated: A BBW Bear Shifter Paranomal Romance (Pine Ridge BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance Series Book 2) (7 page)

Off Rick’s nonplussed expression,
she said, “A gal can’t go into combat naked.” She tapped the star on her chest.
“Especially not when you’re a cop. Must have something that identifies you.
It’s a law.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to disobey a
law.”

She smirked. “That reminds me, I
owe you a jaywalking charge.”

“You wouldn’t!”

She held back her laughter. “We’ll
see. Okay.” She put her game face back on. “Let’s do this.”

As per the plan, Rick hung back as
she moved forward, cutting through the trees. She made straight for the clip of
ammunition. Of course, she didn’t expect to actually need it. The clip just
gave her a target, an excuse to have returned here. If she had just marched
beneath the aeries and shouted,
Hey,
beak-faces, come and get me
, that probably would have been too obvious. But
they might buy a cop returning for her bullets.

She made sure to step on some twigs
and leaves as she went, making as much noise as she could without being over
the top. Sure enough, the eagle cries above abruptly silenced, and she could
almost feel the weight of the predator birds’ scrutiny from on high. Who was
this trespasser and what was she about? Is that the same woman from yesterday?
Yes, and look, she’s going for her ammo! Hopefully something like that was
running through their feathery heads.

Barbara reached the clip, ducked
down and picked it up. Ejecting the all-but-useless clip from her pistol, she
shoved the new clip in. Before she could even take the safety off, she heard
wings cutting the air overhead. She threw herself to the side, hit the ground,
rolled, and came up with a spring.

The eagle swept harmlessly by, its
terrible talons rending the air where she had just been.

“Behind you!” Rick called out,
apparently unable to help himself from alerting her to danger. Hopefully the
eagle shifters would be too preoccupied with chasing her to notice his
presence.

She jumped aside and whirled to see
another great brown-feathered bird sweeping past, its cruel beak snapping.

“Bastard!” she said, and had to
fight the urge to squeeze off a shot.

Run
,
she told herself. The time to spring the trap had come.

Getting herself in gear, she ran
toward the appointed spot. When she heard wings slicing the air behind her, she
put her back against a tree until the eagle had gone by, then resumed her run.
Another eagle came, then another. That one almost cut open her scalp again, but
at the last moment she flung herself prostrate on the ground and it flew
overhead, unleashing a furious cry as it winged back up.

She climbed back to her feet and
sprinted forward. Almost there! The net she and Rick had rigged between two
trees spanned the gap just up ahead. It was the same one he’d used to catch
their breakfast and the very item that had sparked this plan. Hopefully it
would work. If it didn’t, then she really might have to use the gun. And
killing shifters, who would only revert back to their human forms upon death,
and would thus appear to be naked and unarmed, probably wouldn’t help get Barbara
her job back. In fact, it might land her in prison.

She dove below the net, then spun
to see the first of the eagles slam into it. Screeching, it pumped its wings,
but to no avail. It was caught securely. Another eagle flew into it and became
enmeshed, then a third. The fourth saw the trap and tried to veer away, but before
it could Rick rose up, huge in his bear form, and batted the eagle into the net
just like a baseball player practicing his swing. There were only two eagles
left, and when they saw Rick they circled a few times, then flew away,
screeching angrily.

Barbara whooped.

“We did it!” she said. “Ha! Take
that, eagles!”

She cut the cord and the net
plummeted to the ground, squirming with feathery brown shapes. They snapped and
clawed at the net, but when they couldn’t break free they seemed to give up.
The air shimmered around them, and they changed forms, becoming human once
more. Angry, frustrated faces, both male and female, glared at Barbara from
behind the net.

Rick Shifted, becoming human again,
too, and he joined Barbara in staring down at their prisoners.

“A fine haul,” he said. “A couple
are a mite skinny. Might toss that one back,” he said, indicating one rail-thin
man with a bald spot. “But on the whole, pretty good.”

“Bitch!” said one eagle shifter
woman, a brunette with cold dark eyes and enormous breasts. Barbara hoped Rick
wasn’t enjoying the show
too
much.
“You won’t get away with this! When the others find out what you’ve done,
you’ll
wish
we’d killed you!”

Barbara marched up and down the
line of them like a drill sergeant. With a detachment that seemed to infuriate
the brunette (which pleased Barbara just fine), Barbara said, “Let’s see, what
have we here? Four shifters who have attempted on multiple occasions to murder
an officer of the law, not to mention a civilian deputized into the service.”

“We were only defending our
territory,” said a man with regal poise but rope burns on his face from the net.
“You deserved what you got.”

“Shut it!” said Rick, evidently not
appreciating his mate being spoken to in that way.

“It’s okay,” Barbara told him. “I
want to know what these people have to say for themselves.” Peering at the
fourth member of the net, a quiet-looking woman with intelligent blue eyes and
graying hair, she said, “Who is your alpha? Or do eagle shifters have an
alpha?”

After a moment, the graying woman
said, “We do. He’s one of those who got away.” Her eyes flicked east,
indicating the two birds that had flown off rather than face Rick’s wrath and
Barbara’s bullets.

“He was the smart one,” said the
skinny man. He grabbed a fist-full of net and shook it. “Can’t believe we fell
for this.”

The woman with the huge
ta-tas
started to find the edge of the net and throw it
off. Barbara drew out her sidearm and clicked the safety off with more drama
than strictly necessary.

“You will stay where you are until
I say otherwise,” Barbara said, and the woman glared at her but desisted in her
efforts. “Now. I want to know why you stole the jewels.” Part of her thought,
No! Read them their rights first.
But
she wasn’t sure if she was reading the situation correctly and wanted someone
to confess first. She wouldn’t try to use it as evidence against them, but at
least she’d know who to charge.

“We won’t tell you,” said the man
with the rope burns on his face. “We’re not going to betray our own.”

“Screw that,” said the skinny man.
“It was them that got us into this in the first place.” He shook the net again.
“They brought the law on us, and for what? Nothing we did. They can go hang for
all I care.”

“
Gahan
would flay you for that,” said Big Boobs. The way she said it made Barbara
think
Gahan
was the alpha, and that furthermore Big
Boobs was his woman. Of course.
That’s
where she got her arrogance from.

“He won’t be able to flay me behind
bars,” said the skinny guy with the bald spot, and crossed his arms sulkily
over his chest.

“You said ‘them’,” Barbara said.
“‘They’ stole the jewels. Who’s ‘them’?”

“None of your business, you slut!”
said Big Boobs.

Look
who’s talking
, Barbara wanted to snap. She held herself back.

The skinny guy started to say
something, but the other man elbowed him and he closed his mouth, though he
retained his sulky demeanor.

“Don’t tell them anything,” Rope
Burn said.

“I’ll tell them what I want,” Bald
Spot said, but he didn’t go on.

The graying woman said nothing.

Frowning, Barbara turned to Rick.
Her interrogation was going nowhere. Nodding, he cleared his throat and
attention shifted to him.

“Shifter law says we don’t attack
humans who aren’t attacking us,” he said. “You did. I could bring this before
the Great Council if I wanted.”

“You wouldn’t!” said Big Boobs.

“
I
wouldn’t,” Rick agreed, nodding mildly. “My alpha would. And he
will if you give me and Officer Thompson any more shit.”

“We were only defending our territory,”
said Rope Burn.

Rick narrowed his eyes dangerously,
and strange lights flickered in them. “You went beyond that,” he said, and Rope
Burn swallowed and shut up. “Now here’s the deal. You tell us what we want to
know and the Great Council doesn’t have to know. Also, I won’t kill you. You
did try to kill my mate and I. Technically I’m within my rights to kill you in
return. That’s shifter law,” he told Barbara.

She nodded. It had been her plan
that had enabled them to catch the eagle shifters, but she knew she needed Rick
to make good on it. He knew shifters and shifter law like she never would.

At last the graying woman spoke up:
“It was Tom and
Brytha
.”

“Can it,
oldtimer
!”
said Big Boobs.

The older woman, who was quite
pretty, actually, did not bat an eye. “It was Tom and
Brytha
,”
she said again.

“They stole the jewels,” Barbara
said, just to be clear.

“No. It was Tom. He was the thief.”

“Stop talking!” said Rope Burn.

“Let her say what she wants,” said
Bald Spot.

Rope Burn glared at him, but Rick
cracked his knuckles, drawing attention to himself again—and his huge fists—and
Rope Burn subsided, although he didn’t look happy about it. Bald Spot, however,
almost smiled.

“Keep going,” Barbara told the
silver fox.

“Tom’s not like us,” the older
woman said. “He’s been corrupted by human ways. Sorry,” she added as an aside
to Barbara. “But it’s true. We live in the forest, clean and pure. Some eagle
shifters, it’s true, can find a balance with the human world, and some can live
in their towns and cities, at least part of the time, but not us. We’re from an
old clan, and we cleave to the ancient ways.”

“But not Tom.”

“Not Tom,” agreed the woman. “He
was Turned when he was in his thirties, very unusual, and he couldn’t let the
human world go. He’s full of greed, of wants and desires the human world has
put into him. He infected
Brytha
with it, too, and
spun her tales of palaces and treasures. Some bird shifters of old, especially
ravens, liked to line their nests with gaudy trinkets.
Brytha
got it into her head to line her nest with diamonds and pearls, and Tom, more
fool he, set about doing it.”

“That’s why he stole those gems and
things?” Rick said, and snorted. “He didn’t even want the money he could have
made from them? He just wanted his mate to be able to sleep on them?”

The graying woman met his gaze.
“Yes. Our alpha tried to dissuade him, but Tom was adamant, and
Gahan
went along with it under the condition that it not
come back to us. That it not harm the convocation. But yesterday you came, and
we knew our time was up in this area. We kicked Tom and
Brytha
out of the clan and half of our convocation is out even now scouring the
mountains for a place to build a new home.”

Barbara blinked. “So that’s why the
eagles were at the falls,” she said to Rick. “They weren’t hunting us at all!
They were searching for an area to build new aeries in.”

Rick rubbed his chin, then nodded.
“But that means …” To the graying woman, he said, “Tom and
Brytha
are homeless now, and on the loose?”

“That’s right.”

“And the jewels?” said Barbara.

The older woman’s gaze moved up to
the tops of the trees. “In
Brytha’s
nest where she
left them. We kicked them out, like I said, and
Gahan
was in no mood to reward them bringing the outside world to us by allowing them
to take off with their stolen goods.”

Rick grinned at Barbara. “A cache
of treasure no one knows about. Could be mighty tempting …”

She cleared her throat. “
Could
be,” she said, making it clear
that it couldn’t be.

He laughed. “Just a thought.” He
frowned, analyzing the aeries. “So how are we gonna get the jewels down? And
I’m guessing we are, right?”

Barbara thought about it. They
hadn’t apprehended the culprits—at least, if one were to believe the silver
fox. Barbara did, though, which meant she still hadn’t saved her job. If she
could bring back the stolen diamonds, gems, rubies and pearls, though …

“Do you think you could climb that
high?” she asked Rick. “I mean, don’t do it if it’s dangerous, but if you can
…”

“Hell yeah I can! Watch this,
Officer
Hotpants
.” Then, to the graying woman: “Which
nest?”

The woman pointed. “That one.”

“Kiss for luck?” Rick asked
Barbara. Then, before she could stop him, he swept in for a nice, lingering
kiss, ignoring the swears of Big Boobs and the eye rolling of Rope Burn. “Be
right back,” he said, and Shifted.

As an enormous grizzly bear, he
ascended the tall conifer, and Barbara cringed as the tree swayed back and
forth under his enormous weight. It was a big tree, though, ancient and sturdy,
and proved able to bear his weight quite well. When he reached the nest at the
top, Rick paused, as if unsure how best to bring the jewels down. Then he
reached out a big paw and, with some effort, folded one end of the nest over
the other like Barbara’s mom had folded omelets. He mashed the ends tight, then,
being surprisingly careful for such a huge creature, swept the eagle nest out
of the treetops. It spun end over end toward the ground, and Barbara was sure
that it would erupt in diamonds and pearls when it reached earth. If that
happened, many of the stolen goods would be lost for all time and suspicion
would doubtlessly fall on Barbara. That wouldn’t help her career any.