Mail-Order Bear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (BRIDES fur BEARS Book 5)

MAIL-ORDER
BEAR

By

Natalie Kristen

For more books set in
Shadow Point

BRIDES fur BEARS

Bad Bear (Book 1)

Brave Bear (Book 2)

Brash Bear (Book 3)

Big Bear (Book 4)

Mail-Order Bear (Book 5)

GRAY
BEARS

Marrying
the Bear (Book 1)

Loving
the Bear (Book 2)

Mating
the Bear (Book 3)

Tempting
the Bear (Book 4)

Taming
the Lion (Book 5)

Embracing
the Lion (Book 6)

Copyright
© 201
6
by
Natalie Kristen

ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

No
part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the author, except for the
use of brief quotations in a book review.

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
used fictitiously or are the products of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to actual locales, events, establishments or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

About
this Book

Lauren
Sanchez is up to her eyeballs in trouble. There is no way she can
pay off her brother's debt, but the wolves aren't going to let her
off.

Unless...her
name isn't Sanchez.

Being
a mail-order bride is the only way she can get married in a hurry and
get out of this dangerous situation. She has to stay alive, not just
for herself, but for her young nephew, Eddie, who has just been
orphaned.

One
disastrous divorce is quite enough for Reid Ken, thank you very much.
Reid swears he will never let a woman into his life again.

Too
bad his interfering cousin, Damien, doesn't get the memo.

Reid
is furious when he learns that his cousin has gotten him a mail-order
bride. He is determined to send the devious, gold-digging woman
away. But when he sees Lauren and Eddie, he just doesn't have the
heart to turn them out of his house.

Lauren
thought she'd signed up for a loveless, passionless marriage. She
never thought she would find true love, and have a beautiful, happy
family.

When
danger comes for them, Lauren will fight tooth and claw to protect
her newfound happiness. And this is a fight she cannot afford to
lose...

*
* * * *

CHAPTER
ONE

Lauren Sanchez tugged gently
at her four-year-old nephew's hand. “Come on, Eddie, let's go
home.”

Eddie nodded and looked up at
her. Lauren saw that the little boy's eyes were dry. “Okay,
Aunt Lauren.”

As they walked through the
cemetery gates, Eddie turned to glance over his shoulder. “Goodbye,
Papa,” the boy whispered before turning around and staring
stoically ahead.

Lauren's heart constricted
painfully in her chest. Her little nephew was only four, but he was
now an orphan. Eddie had lost his mom when he was a baby, and now,
he was burying his father. Lauren glanced worriedly at the boy. He
hadn't shed a single tear.

“Eddie...” she
began softly.

“I want to go home,
Aunt Lauren. With you,” Eddie said in a plaintive voice.

Lauren blinked rapidly, the
meaning and weight of the little boy's words slamming into her gut.
“Oh Eddie,” she cried, bending down to hug him tightly.
“Of course you're coming home with me! You're my nephew, my
family.”

“You...won't leave me,
will you, Aunt Lauren?” he asked, swallowing hard. He was
trying so hard not to cry, but Lauren could see the stark fear in his
dark brown eyes.

“I will never leave
you,” Lauren said fiercely. “We stay together, no matter
what.”

“Promise?” He
held out his little pinky.

“Promise!”
Lauren pinky-promised.

A pinky-promise was the most
sacred, serious vow, and a four-year-old knew that. Satisfied that
his Aunt Lauren would never abandon him now, Eddie nodded and managed
a tiny, wavering smile.

Lauren took Eddie's hand
firmly and started down the street, refusing to look back at her
brother's grave. Alex was her elder brother, and she grieved for
him. But she hadn't been too shocked when the police knocked on her
door to inform her that Alex had been killed in a bar brawl.

After his wife died, Alex
spent his days drinking and gambling instead of caring for his young
son. At first, Lauren had tried to comfort him and talk to him. She
knew how devastating it was to lose someone you loved so unexpectedly
and she gave him the space and time to come to terms with his loss
and pull himself together. But Alex never pulled himself together.
Instead, he pulled them all down with him.

Her brother seemed to have
forgotten that he even had a son. He drank, gambled and womanized.
He didn't come home and he didn't pay the rent. Lauren had to take
her little nephew in and care for him, or the boy would have no roof
over his head and no food in his tummy. She worked as a sales
assistant in a shoe boutique. She loved shoes and was an efficient,
hardworking employee. She could never afford to buy a nice pair for
herself, but she loved her job. Her boss paid her well and she
enjoyed interacting with the customers and seeing their glowing,
satisfied faces as they walked out of the shop with their purchases.

But after work, while the
other young, carefree, single ladies in town enjoyed a nice dinner
with friends or went on a hot date, Lauren rushed home to care for
her nephew. Her landlady was sweet and helped take care of the boy
while she was at work, but she couldn't possibly ask Mrs Gururani to
continue babysitting Eddie in the evenings as well. Mrs Gururani had
her own kids to take care of. Her youngest son was just a year older
than Eddie.

Lauren often showed Eddie
photos of his mom. She wanted Eddie to know that his mom loved him.
It was bad enough that the boy could see that his father didn't want
him, didn't care for him. “You should have seen her face when
she first held you in her arms,” Lauren would tell Eddie.
“Your mother was so proud, so happy! She loved you very, very
much.”

And now Eddie had lost the
one remaining parent he had. Granted Alex hadn't been much of a
father, but still, he was Eddie's dad. Now Eddie only had her.

Lauren tightened her grip on
Eddie's small, quivering hand as they crossed the street. His hand
was cold and clammy.

“Aunt Lauren,”
Eddie began in a frightened voice.

“What's wrong, Eddie?”

Lauren looked up and
instinctively tugged Eddie back. She spun on her heel but before she
could urge Eddie to run, two men stepped in front of her. She heard
a step behind her and didn't bother turning around.

There was no way to escape.

CHAPTER
TWO

Lauren found herself
surrounded by three large men with hard faces and cold, predatory
eyes. She pushed Eddie behind her and gulped too loudly. Squaring
her shoulders, she met their stares head on and hoped they wouldn't
see the terror in her eyes.

She recognized the tattoos on
their arms. They were members of the Dire Wolves, a powerful gang
who owned a large number of underground gambling dens.

“You are Lauren
Sanchez,” one of the Wolves said. It wasn't a question. And
it was pointless to deny it. They knew who she was.

Lauren swallowed. Her
heartbeat sounded way too loud.

What did the Dire Wolves want
with her?

“Your brother, Alex
Sanchez, owes us money,” another Dire Wolf said in a
deceptively polite, reasonable tone. “You are his family. You
will pay your brother's debt.”

“D-debt?” She
closed her eyes and inwardly screamed a curse at her dead brother.
Hadn't she paid his debts so many times before? She had zero savings
because she'd had to bail him out time and again. “H-how
much?”

Lauren almost fainted on the
spot when she heard the amount that Alex owed. There was no way in
hell she could come up with that kind of money. She could sell her
body, her soul, everything she had which wasn't much, and still fall
short.

“Please...Alex is
dead,” she tried in desperation. “His debt dies with
him. I can't pay what he owes you.”

The three burly men regarded
her without emotion, without compassion. After a while, the man
standing behind her spoke up. She jumped at his voice and whirled
round. The man was a little shorter than the other two Wolves, but
older. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to the scalp and his
arms were scarred and sinewy. But his eyes weren't cruel. “If
your name is Sanchez, you pay,” he said slowly. “But if
you are no longer his family, we don't go after someone else's
woman.”

She shook her head in
confusion. “I c-can't...” she stammered.

“One month. Then we
will find you again.”

Lauren opened her mouth to
plead and reason with them but the older Wolf held up his hand and
jerked his head at his comrades.

The other two men obeyed the
silent command and stepped back.

Lauren and Eddie were free to
go. For now.

Lauren grabbed Eddie's hand
and fled. They ran like the devil himself was at their heels.
Perhaps it would be better for them if it was the devil and not the
Dire Wolves who was after them.

They didn't stop running
until they reached their block. Scrambling up the stairs to their
second-story apartment, Lauren jabbed her key madly at the keyhole.
It took her a few tries before she could unlock the door and fling it
open.

Once they were in their
small, bare apartment, Lauren slammed the door shut behind them and
locked it. She pushed a chair against the door and closed all the
windows.

This wasn't going to keep the
Wolves out, but she didn't know what else to do. She wanted to crawl
under the bed and just stay there even though she knew it was no use
hiding. Even if she packed up and ran away with Eddie, the Wolves
would find them.

She turned around and saw
Eddie standing in the middle of the room, staring at her with wide,
frightened eyes. He didn't say a word and he looked very pale.

“Don't worry, we'll be
fine,” Lauren said in a shaky voice. She closed her eyes and
turned away. She hated lying to her nephew.

CHAPTER
THREE

Eddie didn't answer but his
stomach rumbled loudly.

“Oh!” Lauren
winced and hurried to the kitchen. “I'll make us some
sandwiches for dinner. Can you get the plates, Eddie?”

Preparing dinner took her
mind momentarily off the Wolves' threat. They sat down at the wobbly
kitchen table and ate in silence.

“Those men. They're
wolves,” Eddie said, staring at the crumbs on his plate.

“Yeah,” Lauren
said absently as she drank her milk.

“No, Aunt Lauren, they
are
wolves,” Eddie repeated.

Lauren started and stared at
her nephew.

“How do you know?”
she asked carefully.

“I can smell them,”
the boy said.

Lauren nodded slowly. Her
elder brother, Alex inherited the shifter gene from their father,
while she took after their human mother. Alex could shift into a
bear, and evidently, he had passed the shifter gene on to his son.
Eddie had never shifted, but he was still very young. Alex only
started shifting when he hit puberty.