Bearing The Long Road Home (Ice Bear Shifters 7)
Read Bearing The Long Road Home (Ice Bear Shifters 7) Online
Authors: Sloane Meyers
Tags: #Contemporary, #Romance, #Fiction, #Paranormal, #Polar Bear, #Werebear, #Adult, #Erotic, #Shifter, #Mate, #Sexy, #Forever Love, #Ice Bear Shifters, #Fantasy, #Supernatural, #Suspense, #Romantic Suspense, #Danger, #Painful Past, #Northern Canada, #Trucking, #Ice Roads, #Bachelor, #Secrets, #Yesterdays Scars, #Series, #Fateful Meeting
Bearing the Long Road Home
Ice Bear Shifters, Book 7
By Sloane Meyers
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.
Chloe Powell felt like her lungs were going to explode, but she forced herself to keep running. She could hear the pounding of giant paws behind her, and the angry roar of the massive polar bear to whom those paws belonged. Chloe’s own paws made a steady, pounding rhythm as she raced across the tundra—trying to escape the odds and trying to escape the enraged bear behind her.
The thought of giving up briefly crossed her mind. She was tired. And not just from this particular run. She was tired of running in general. It would be so easy to give in to the burning in her muscles and slow down just enough to let the bear behind her catch up. There would be pain for a few moments, but then it would all be over. She would fade into oblivion, or be reborn into the spirit world, or whatever the heck actually happened when you die. Chloe didn’t really care anymore. Anything seemed better than this life of constant running.
But something deep inside Chloe wouldn’t let her stop. Some deep, primal instinct to survive kept her going. If she just kept up her pace, she could escape. The bear behind her was fast, but she was faster. Her small size made her a lousy fighter, but an excellent runner. Chloe sprinted as fast as she could toward the nearest town. She would be safe there, hidden among the full humans. She could shift back to human form, and the larger bear behind her would be forced to leave, biding his time until he or some other shifter caught Chloe being careless enough to venture out on the tundra alone again.
Every time she ended up in a situation like this, Chloe told herself that this was the last time. She promised herself to be extra careful in the future, and to stay around people, where she was safe. She tried to hide in the shadows and blend in, bouncing from small Alaskan town to small Alaskan town. But she often felt restless and lonely, and the vast tundra beckoned to her. She would tell herself that one short afternoon outing into the wide open spaces beyond the town’s borders wouldn’t hurt. More often than not, those outings ended up like this, with Chloe running from an angry shifter who wanted revenge.
Chloe felt a surge of adrenaline and ran faster as the town came into view. As she got closer, and widened the gap between her and her pursuer, she heard the sound of his heavy breathing fade and then stop. Chloe risked a quick backward glance over her shoulder, and saw that he had given up the chase. No shifter wanted to risk being seen in bear form in town. Full humans feared rogue polar bears, and would often start bear hunts if they saw a bear too close to town. If a human saw a bear actually shifting, it was even worse. Then all kinds of superstitions and fears of evil supernatural forces entered the equation.
Chloe slowed her pace and slipped as quietly as she could into a back alley of one of the town’s small streets. She took a moment to catch her breath, looking around to make sure she was truly alone. With no one in view, she closed her eyes, and let out a low growl. A surge of energy burst forth from her body, as her thick, white fur morphed into soft, smooth human skin. Her round bear head changed into the face of a beautiful, young human woman. Paws morphed into hands and feet, and a few moments later the transformation was complete.
It only took a few moments for Chloe’s human body to begin shaking violently. Goosebumps rose on her skin, and her teeth chattered involuntarily. Her human form offered no protection from the bitter Alaskan winter, and her skin would turn blue within minutes if she didn’t find shelter. Chloe crept to the back window of the nearest house, and peeked inside. As she had hoped, the house looked empty. It was the middle of a weekday, and its occupants were likely off working somewhere. Chloe tried the window, and found it unlocked. She pushed the window up, then slipped inside, closing the window quickly behind her. Around here, no one spent much time thinking about locking doors and windows. They were more worried about protecting themselves from the cold and wild animals than they were about the possibility of being robbed. Since Chloe had lost her clothes out on the tundra when she shifted, she was completely naked. She made her way to one of the bedrooms and helped herself to a few layers of warm clothing from the closet. The clothes were men’s clothes, and the pants were several inches too long, but they would have to do. Chloe stuffed socks into the front of a pair of large boots so that her feet would fit in them well enough to walk, and then found some paper. She wrote down the address of the house and shoved the paper into her pocket before slipping out of the house as quietly as she had come. She kept a record of every house she had taken clothes from, and always mailed them an envelope containing cash to cover what she estimated the clothes had been worth.
She hated stealing clothes from people, but when she found herself in this predicament, as she often did lately, she had little choice. What else was she supposed to do? Run into the middle of town stark naked and ask to borrow someone’s jacket? That was bound to attract a little bit too much attention. And attention was the last thing Chloe wanted. She was on the hit list of virtually every shifter clan in Alaska. She tried her best to look like just another normal, reserved Alaskan, bundling up against the cold and doing her best to make it through the winter.
But no matter how hard Chloe tried to blend in, she was a marked woman. She would never again be truly safe roaming alone in Arctic shifter territory. Her eyes—that signature jet black color that every Alaskan shifter recognized—gave away her awful, undeniable truth.
Chloe Powell was a Blizzard.
Later that evening, Chloe stepped back into her small studio apartment. She lived above a local bookstore in what basically amounted to a large closet with a tiny bathroom and kitchen attached. Chloe had hitched a snowmobile ride back from the town where she had ended up after being chased by the large shifter. She had made up some story about how she had been waiting for her sister to pick her up, but her sister had been caught in a snowstorm south of here. Thankfully, the man who gave her a ride hadn’t seemed too interested in the details of why she needed a lift. And he hadn’t seemed to notice that she was wearing baggy, oversized men’s clothes.
Chloe smiled. That was one thing she loved about the remote outskirts of Alaskan civilization. No one judged you for what you wore here. Warmth was the only thing that mattered. Chloe peeled off the strange clothing and added it to a box of similar ill-fitting stolen clothing that she kept in one corner of the room. She slipped into an outfit from her own wardrobe, and took a moment to appreciate the soft, familiar feeling of her own clothes. Then she went to the kitchen to try to find something for dinner. All she had in the cupboard right now were a few assorted boxes of cereal. Chloe would have preferred something a little bit heartier for dinner, but she didn’t feel like leaving her apartment again today.
She poured herself a huge bowl of cereal and sat at her tiny kitchen table, thinking and munching. Today had been the thirty-seventh time she had found herself on the run to escape an angry shifter. She kept a running tally in her head, thinking that at some point the attacks would slow down. But they never did. Chloe shook her head in resigned frustration. Thirty-seven times. It had been over two years now since her clan, the Blizzards, had been defeated by the Northern Lights Clan. But the passage of time had done nothing to diminish the anger of those shifters that had been impacted by the bloodshed the Blizzards had caused. Chloe couldn’t blame them for being angry, really. But she wished she could make them understand that she had not wanted the bloodshed, and had not participated in it at all. In many ways, she was a victim, just like them.
The nightmare had started several years ago, when a new alpha, Dominic, had taken over control of the Blizzards Clan. Dominic had been young, but shrewd. And he had been angry. His father had raised him to believe that the Blizzards were the original, true shifters of the Arctic, and that for centuries the other clans had been encroaching on what rightfully belonged to them. As soon as Dominic became Alpha, he started a clan war. At first, Dominic had only attacked the clans within a hundred mile radius of the Blizzards. Most of the male Blizzards had been willing to fight in this war. Dominic had promised them a share of the land and wealth that would be taken from the defeated clans, and he had kept that promise.
As is often the case, however, the plunder from one victory only whetted the Blizzards’ appetite for more. Dominic wasn’t satisfied with his small conquests, and many of the Blizzards, enticed by the possibility of even more land and wealth, followed Dominic willingly into battle against another clan. And then another, and another. Soon, the Blizzards were crusading across the Arctic, destroying every clan in their path. They weren’t the strongest of fighters, but they were smart. They often used the element of surprise to take down entire clans before the stunned shifters even knew what hit them.
Chloe had watched in horror as these events unfolded. She had thought the clan wars were appalling from the beginning. With the vast, open spaces of Alaska, why did they need to kill off other clans to take their particular tracts of land? Chloe hadn’t wanted to rock the boat, however. She was young, and a woman, so she wasn’t involved in the fighting at all. Defying an alpha was severely frowned upon, especially by someone who wasn’t an elder in the clan. But as the bloodshed continued, Chloe realized she wasn’t the only one who felt the way she did. A few of the other bears in her clan started questioning Dominic, telling him that enough was enough and they needed to let their fellow shifter clans live in peace.
Dominic didn’t take kindly to his crusade being called into question. He warned all of the Blizzards that any rebellious talk would be dealt with quickly and mercilessly. This quieted the murmurings within the Blizzards’ ranks briefly, but after Dominic used a poisoned seal to take down one of the strongest clans in the region, the Northern Lights Clan, many of the Blizzards once again started protesting the clan wars. They thought a poisoning sneak attack went too far.
That’s when Dominic did the unthinkable. He called an assembly of the whole clan, and, in front of everyone, he tortured one of the protestors to death. Chloe had watched in horror, shaking in fear and disbelief. An Alpha’s primary job was to ensure the safety and security of his clan members, but Dominic had just killed one of his own. From that day forward, most of the Blizzards obediently fell into line behind Dominic. Many of the male Blizzards seemed to even be actively supporting the crusade, although no one could ever tell whether a shifter was falling in line because he actually enjoyed the warfare, or whether he was just trying to protect himself from Dominic. Most of the women in the clan watched in silent disgust. Chloe had a feeling that the other women in the clan hated the bloodshed, too, but everyone was afraid to say anything. If you confided in the wrong person, you might end up on the wrong side of Dominic’s wrath.
Things might have continued this way for quite some time, if it hadn’t been for Dominic’s sudden obsession with the Northern Lights Clan. Five Northern Lights bears had survived the poisoning attack, and Dominic was determined not to rest until he killed the last five. This blind fixation would become Dominic’s downfall. Those five bears proved nearly impossible to eliminate. Although few in number, the Northern Lights Bears were among the strongest polar bear shifters in the Arctic. Sneak attacks provided the only realistic way to get rid of the last Northern Lights bears, but Dominic had already lost the element of surprise. The Northern Lights Clan was on high alert. Still, Dominic tried. He even moved the entire Blizzards Clan to underground caverns near Glacier Point, Alaska, where the Northern Lights Clan had taken up residence after losing most of their shifters to the poisoned seal.
Dominic’s crazed obsession grew worse and worse. Chloe hated living in the caverns, feeling cooped up and never knowing when she was going to witness a dying shifter, either from her own clan or from one of the other clans that Dominic occasionally took down in between his attempts to kill the Northern Lights bears.
The last clan massacre that Chloe remembered was the extermination of the Frozen Claws Clan. A group of Blizzards had been chasing the Frozen Claws for several weeks, and finally cornered them just outside the underground caverns where the rest of the Blizzards were waiting. Chloe would never forget the sights or sounds of that awful day. She had never been such a close witness to any of the clan battles until then, and just the memory of it was enough to make her stomach turn. Roars of pain had echoed out across the tundra, and white snow had turned bright red from the blood of dozens of shifters. It had been Dominic’s last victory.
Not long after the Frozen Claws were wiped out, the Northern Lights Clan had gone on the offensive. Somehow, they had discovered where the Blizzards were hiding, and had used fire to flush them out of the underground caverns. Chloe had run away from the smoke and the heat of the flames in the cavern, leaving one form of certain death for another as she found herself face to face with the Northern Lights bears. By the time she had reached the surface, a massive battle had already ensued. The chaos of the fight surrounded her, and she lost track of where she was in the middle of what felt like hundreds of bear claws slicing through the air. Roars of pain and anger again rang out, although Chloe could hardly tell who was a Blizzard and who was a Northern Lights bear in the middle of the pandemonium. Tufts of torn white fur and splatters of red blood covered her, and her only instinct had been to try to run. She didn’t think she would make it out of the brawl alive, but she had been determined to try.
She ran as fast as she could, dodging the raised claws and bared teeth of dozens of angry polar bears. Then, suddenly, she realized that there were several other bears running alongside her, but no one was chasing them. Confused, she looked back and it dawned on her that the Northern Lights bears were letting all of the women and children escape. Chloe’s heart ached with shame and gratitude at the same time. Dominic had never allowed a single shifter to survive from the clans he attacked. Not even a days old cub. But the Northern Lights bears did not kill a single women or child.
The women and children of the Blizzards’ clan had fled as far north as they could. They had tried to settle down just outside a small town that served as an outpost for research scientists, but they had to flee the area when another shifter clan discovered that Blizzards were nearby. The same scenario repeated itself over and over. No sooner had the Blizzards settled into a town, than another clan of shifters would discover their presence and drive them away. Dominic had left behind a trail of enemies, and soon the stress of life on the run had broken down the loyalty of the Blizzards to each other. Factions developed within the clan, bickering was constant, and many of the Blizzards, Chloe included, decided they couldn’t take it anymore.
Chloe had left quietly, hoping to cause as little trouble as possible. She had just wanted to escape to somewhere on the outskirts of Alaskan shifter territory, where she could lay low and live in peace. It didn’t take long for her to realize, though, that there was nowhere in Alaska where she would be safe. Dominic’s reign of terror had touched every corner of the state.
Now, as Chloe finished off the last few bites of her cereal, she tried to figure out her options. The way she saw it, the only thing left to do was move far away from Alaska, and start a new life somewhere else. Her best bet was probably to move to a completely new state and start over in a place where no one had ever even heard of the Blizzards. She’d heard the state of Maine got a lot of snow, and had plenty of forestland. That sounded like the perfect place for a polar bear shifter to start over.
Chloe had one issue with moving three thousand miles away, though: moving was expensive. The destruction of her clan and two years of living life in the shadows had left her with little money to spare. She took on odd jobs here and there, but thanks to her constant moving from town to town, her work history was spotty. Chloe had one idea up her sleeve, though. She’d heard some guys in a bar a few nights ago discussing the lucrative possibilities of ice-road trucking. Every January, trucking companies hired seasonal workers to get take loads of supplies across frozen ice to mining outposts in the far north of Canada. The work was dangerous and difficult, but the pay was high. According to the guys in the bar, an ice road trucker could earn up to $80,000 for just three months of work.
Chloe just so happened to have experience with driving a truck. Her father, who mercifully had passed away long before Dominic had taken over as alpha to the Blizzards, had been a truck driver. He had taught Chloe how to drive an eighteen-wheeler, and Chloe had actually spent one summer working as a truck driver before the clan wars had started. She wasn’t sure how hard it would be to get a job as an ice road trucker as a woman, but she was going to try. She’d heard turnover in the industry was off the charts, so hopefully she could find someone willing to hire a woman. Of course, the bosses weren’t supposed to discriminate based on gender, but Chloe had been around long enough to know that anti-discrimination laws didn’t do much in actual practice.
Chloe took her empty bowl to the sink to rinse it out. She suddenly felt excited and energized for the first time in several years. If she could really make $80,000 for a few months of work, she could move somewhere far away and start over. She couldn’t help but smile at the prospect of being able to live her life without constantly looking over her shoulder.
She wanted nothing more than to shed the label of “Blizzard” and just be “Chloe.” She wanted people to judge her for her, not for the awful things her former clan members had done. Getting the hell out of Alaska would allow her to do just that.
Operation “get an ice-road trucking job” started now.