ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (218 page)

His power, maybe. But not his people.

“I can’t leave the village,” he said. “They won’t find out. They haven’t in the last five years. That won’t change.”

Tara shook her head and paced in a figure eight like a leopard. Watching her was unnerving.

“I should have come to see them earlier. I would have forbid you to live among them for so long. It’s a risk. We can’t be found out. You know what will happen if we do. You have to leave the city because of the humans, because of their betrayal. If they find out again, even if they just think it, the Assassins will know. They’re stronger than us. Stronger than Dwayne. We can’t risk it.”

Crossing her now would be a bad idea. Bruce knew her actions, understood her body language. She was close to her change and if she turned into a leopard now, with her temper, she would be at his throat before he had a chance to do anything. His own change was slower than hers. He had to quadruple in size in the process. She only doubled.

It wasn’t fair but that was how it was.

“I won’t let you down, my queen,” he said, and went down on all fours. She stopped in front of him. His submissive stance must have pleased her, but she finally sighed.

“I don’t know why I let you, but I have a weakness for you,” she said. If that was her definition of weakness Bruce didn’t want to see strength.

Bruce heard a twig snap and he was on his feet and whirled around in a second. Tara was next to him and he could feel her power, feel it link up to his like a force of nature. He’d never felt it like this before. If it was the two of them, equal in power, the bond was spectacular. He felt the potential of their combined power and it nearly took his breath away.

“Do you feel what we can be?” Tara asked under her breath. But Bruce knew that she wouldn’t always be able to share like this.

Dwayne stepped out from the trees first. Bruce felt himself relax, and he could physically feel Tara unhook her power from his. They wouldn’t need their combined forces tonight. It was one of their own.

“What is it?” Tara asked. Dwayne had gone down on one knee in front of Tara.

“I feel them, my queen,” he said and Bruce wondered if he’d looked as inferior to Tara as Dwayne looked. Dwayne’s psychic powers and magical abilities were strong, but he didn’t have the kind of power a preternatural creature had. He couldn’t take any of them on, and it was only for his talent that he was allowed to stay.

“Where?” she asked.

“They have come into Rhodestown. But they are searching, it’s a strategy, not a planned attack.”

Tara glared at me, as if to say ‘I told you so’. When she turned her attention back to Dwayne I was relieved.

“How many?” she asked.

“Ten Assassins all in all, but only five stay in the town. The others are just passing through. Three I have felt before, when I was forced to flee.”

Bruce closed his eyes and tried to reach out his own power. He swept the land like his power was a giant hand, and he touched each of the villagers in the valley. But he couldn’t get further than the mountainside, the valley, the graves with their bones on the other side. That was what they had Dwayne for.

It took a lot out of him, but if he wanted to he could sweep the country.

The Assassins had driven each of them from their homes. Bruce had belonged to a group of shifters where most of them were bears when he still lived in the city. Bears were loners, they didn’t move in packs like other animals. But they stood together because they weren’t normal bears.

The Assassins had found them and killed three of the bears he knew before they’d realized what was going on. The Assassins had no mercy. They saw shifters as animals, not as people. They saw their job as pest control, not murder.

Coming to Williamsburg had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. The Assassins had been hot on his trail and he’d only lost them when he’d crossed into the state. The town was so small, so quiet. After being used to noise and people and the hustle and bustle of everyday life in a city, Bruce had nearly died.

Until he’d met the Family – all of them misfits, all of them on the run, all of them the only ones left of their pack. And they’d taken him in, given him a reason to cling onto life.

He thought of Tara’s words. He couldn’t leave the village behind. He couldn’t bare living in one of the caves as an animal. He turned into a bear almost every night. He killed for blood so that he could keep the beat under control. But he needed people, because he was still human.

He refused to give that up.

And Jenna. He couldn’t live without Jenna. He couldn’t go without seeing her ever again. He could never be with her, make her his own. But he would never be without her. He didn’t want to be.

“The others are coming,” Tara said and it snapped Bruce from his spiral of thoughts. He stood closer to her, ready to receive the rest of the pack that were no somehow beneath him instead of equals.

He hadn’t thought it all through properly. By taking Tara as his mate, agreeing to forging the bond with her, he’d put his Family below him. They used to stand side by side. There were no signs that they were upset about it, but who were they to complain? Tara could banish them, or worse, kill them.

And Bruce didn’t put it beneath her to try.

One by one they Family came out from the trees. Cleveland flew in, swooping low and Bruce felt the power prickle on the back of his neck before Cleveland fluttered down and changed into a human in a flash of light. His shift was the fastest of all of them.

Stephen and Rosa came together. Their eyes were the color of their animals’ eyes. This close to the full moon they were the closest to losing control. Their animals lurched right beneath the skin and it was up to Tara to control them.

At least Bruce wasn’t in that kind of trouble with her yet. He didn’t rely on her for his humanity the way they did.

Lori was last. She moved like she’d just changed to human form and she hadn’t shaken off her bulk yet. She was more butch than ever, walking with wide legs and shaking her head slowly from side to side.

The moment the Family was together, the pack was complete, the power circle flared up and their collective power washed over Bruce. He felt each and every one of them, a separate string. And he also felt them together, braided into a rope of power that was stronger than when they were apart. That was why it was so important to be a part of a unit.

If one of the strings were close to snapping the others held the rope so that it didn’t happen. They split the weight.

Tara called the Family together. Her call was like a tug at each and every one of them. She never used her voice. Instead she tugged at their lives, their essence, until they came to her.

Could she snap it?  There was a time when Bruce didn’t think so, but after what he’d felt her do to him, he wasn’t sure anymore. .

He realized how powerful she was, how dangerous she could be if she lost her grip on reality. If she became power hungry and shifted her focus from the pack to herself.

“The Assassins are close,” she said. Bruce felt the fear ripple through the Family. Some of them had lost more than others.

“But Dwayne has tabs on them, and we will know what will happen. We will know when to run. When to fight. They have not found us yet.”

The Assassins worked with human minds. They found shifters through humans. They searched human minds, and if the humans knew about them, the assassins could pick up on that and track them down. There was a reason Tara insisted they kill whoever found out about them.

To a point, Bruce agreed. It was kill or be killed. The fact that the humans were only a middleman didn’t make a difference.

But when it came to his people, his town, he would never let that happen to them. That was why he could never risk any of them knowing, especially not Jenna.

He couldn’t let her go the way her father had. Because that was what he suspected happened to him. After Jenna had told him the stories about her childhood. The stories her father used to tell, he would have been enough point out a shifter to an assassin. And that wouldn’t do.

“Bruce,” Tara said and he turned to her. “I hope you realize what this means.”

Bruce nodded. He knew exactly.

“If there is one human that knows about us, we will kill them all,” she said. Bruce’s body went cold.

“All of them?”

She nodded. “We’re not taking chances. They are nothing to us.”

“They’re something to me.”

There was a collective groan from the group. Tara rolled her eyes.

“That’s not our fault, is it? You insisted on staying down there instead of keeping to yourself the way we do. We’re not going to let you stand in our way. If I see there’s something that needs to be done, I will let the Family do it. And if you turn and fight, we will fight you too.”

Bruce took a breath to argue, but instead he nodded. He understood. He disagreed, but he understood. And there was no way any of them would find out what he was, or where he went, so that wouldn’t be a problem. He wouldn’t have to choose between his pack and his people.

But if it came down to it, Bruce knew who he would choose.

He banished the thought as soon as it came to mind. Tara could smell emotion, and a thought like that didn’t come without emotion. He didn’t want her to pick up on it.

“You endanger us,” Lori said in her naturally deep voice. “Why do we keep him in the Family?” The last was aimed at Tara. She took a deep breath.

“Because we do not turn those away that run from the Assassins. We have all lost. We understand what it means.”

It was a lie. Bruce knew it was. Tara didn’t keep him around out of the goodness of her heart. She wasn’t a bleeding heart at all. If anything she was a murderer herself, selfish for power. The only reason she’d kept him, let him stay, was because of his power.

He was starting to understand that now. He’d climbed in the pack hierarchy in a very short time. And she’d let him get comfortable doing what he wanted to do, so that when she asked him to be her mate, he would agree.

In a way he felt cheated. In a way he understood. Shifter politics were particular. Annoying but there was always a goal. Power.

“If something happens, I will not wait for you order,” Lori said to Tara. “If he compromises us I’m not risking my life.”

Tara growled at Lori and I felt the power surge. Lori fell to her knees and gasped, making a strangled sound.

“You will honor me as your alpha and do as I say,” Tara said and her voice was everything but human. “You trust that I will keep you alive, and I will honor your loyalty with the gift of life. You know how it works.”

Lori nodded but she couldn’t speak properly. Tara withdrew all that power and Bruce felt empty suddenly. Tara turned her almost-white eyes to him. Her pupils were like pinpricks in the middle of her eye-balls and the fought the fear they tried to instill.

“You choose now. Us or them. If you choose us, you will guard our secret with your life. If anything comes out they all die. If you choose them, you are out of the pack. You are unwelcome in my territory and you don’t live in the village, either. You leave for good. If you go down to the village you and the humans both die. Are we clear?”

Bruce was angry. So very angry. He could feel the animal inside of him, thrashing and growling and clawing to get out.

“Bruce!” Tara growled. “Do you understand!”

Oh, Bruce understood very well. He understood that he could never make his own choices as long as he was under Tara’s rule. She was giving him an ultimatum. She wanted his power without his trust.

Something inside him snapped and he stood, towering over her. He felt his own power spill out of him.

“Don’t think an ultimatum can forge my loyalty to this pack,” he said and his voice was so deep the words were barely discernible. But Tara had heard them. Her teeth elongated and her hands started stretching. Bone tore free from skin into claws before yellow and black fur crawled over them.

Bruce turned his back on his alpha and started walking away. He braced himself, ready for those fangs to sink into his neck.

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BONUS

BEAR SHIFTER'S BEST FRIEND 2

By Alexis Diamond

Chapter 1

Tara didn’t come at him the way Bruce had expected her to. When he’d turned his back on her on the plateau, he’d seen the start of her change. It had been brutal and fast. She’d pushed the monster inside of her out and Bruce knew he was going to pay for what he’d said.

The night felt blacker than black, as if every bit of light, even from the stars, had been sucked out of it. Or the power that crackled in the air made its own artificial sky. Either way he couldn’t escape the blackness.

But he didn’t want her to be in control. He didn’t want Tara to be the one that made him choose. They were dating now because it pushed up her power in the pack. And he was feeling it. He kicked himself for not thinking it through properly and falling into a relationship that was ruining before it really started.

Tara was a manipulator, a trickster. She’d sugar coated the idea of dating the Family’s alpha, and cleverly forgotten to mention that she could suck power out of Bruce whenever she wanted to.

Bruce had expected her to jump him from behind the moment she was a leopard. Tara was a wereleopard. She was powerful and she craved power. She would do anything to get more. Her leopard was big, the size of a small horse rather than just a normal leopard. Even as Bruce walked away from her, his back to her in a way that was never acceptable to an alpha, he expected her to jump on him from behind.

Instead she let out a roar that made the hair on Bruce’s neck crawl down his spine. He heard her, or rather, felt her come closer. Her power beat at him like a violent wind before she reached him. Tara jumped in front of him, stopping him from walking away.

Her eyes were terrifying. They were completely white, and the black pupils had narrowed to thin slits that reminded him of a snake more than a cat. Just one look at her, the size, the muscle, and those horrible eyes, and it wasn’t hard to tell that this wasn’t a creature you wanted to fight.

But Bruce didn’t have a choice. And as a human he stood no chance. So he forced his own change.

Bruce hunted nearly every night as a bear, and the change was second nature to him. But changing when he had the whole night ahead of him, and changing when he might be dead in the next five minutes, were two completely different things.

He forced it, pushed that bear out of him so hard that it tore out of him. And it hurt, it hurt like hell. It felt like his body was ripped apart, skin tearing open to make way for the animal inside, four times the size of the human.

Bruce could feel his bones shift, and where it usually just felt strange, it hurt this time round. He was rebuilding himself at record speed. He had to do it if he wanted to survive at all. If he lived he could heal later. If he died it wouldn’t matter.

During the change Tara didn’t attack. Maybe she thought fighting fair was the right thing to do, but that seemed unlikely. Maybe she believed that it didn’t matter what shape Bruce took, she would beat him anyway. And she would be right. That was more on par with her character.

Bruce knew she was powerful. There was a reason he was second in the pack’s hierarchy despite his own size, and Tara was the alpha. It had nothing to do with the fact that he’d been the last member to join the Family. Still, she waited for him to change before she attacked.

When he’d shifted completely the world looked different. Everything curved a little and Bruce felt lightheaded. A change that quick had consequences.

There was no time to think. The moment his change was complete, Tara was on him. She lunged at him and her jaws closed around a thick wad of fur in Bruce’s neck. His fur was thick enough that she didn’t break skin and he pushed power outward like a shield, but he felt the pinch of her teeth and the drive of her rage.

He spun around, swinging up his right arm. It was enough to rip Tara off him and he sent her tumbling across the plateau. The other members of the pack, still in human form, gasped and stepped away like they’d been physically shoved. His power or hers Bruce wasn’t sure, but they others were feeling it.

Bruce knew that he was stronger than Tara when it came to pure muscle. But it wouldn’t be about that. Tara wouldn’t play fair after all, waiting for the change to finish – she never did.

Bruce stayed in his bear form, lowered his head and sniffed the air. Tara’s leopard lay on its side, and judging by the rise and fall of her chest she wasn’t doing very well. The smack of a grizzly could kill almost anything.

Bruce was suddenly aware of his power, the fact that it felt like it was leaking. It spilled out of him, onto the floor, and like it was a live thing as it started crawling toward Tara. He could feel it cover ground, feel her pull that was so strong he had to fight not to take a step toward her. His power went alone.

She was drawing his power out of him.

Bruce was suddenly scared. He hadn’t been scared in a very long time – when you were the biggest creature out there, you just didn’t have anything to fear. But this time round he knew he did.

His power meant nothing if she could just drain it, use it for herself and throw herself at him with his own strength. That was the worst version of this nightmare. Bruce closed his eyes and tried to focus on the power. He felt it leave his body in a giant chord. Maybe if he focused on it he could bring it back.

When he opened his eyes he still felt weak, almost like a child. Tara stood in front of him, her leopard looking smug. Bruce could feel his essence pouring into her. He wanted to complain but what could he say? Hey, give that back?  No. There wasn’t anything he could do.

She was on him again, teeth bared, and he wasn’t strong enough to fling her again. It was a pity because that had seemed to work for a short while.

Bruce tried to move forward, attack, but his legs felt shaky and instead he sat down. It was like being high without the trip – Bruce had no control or feeling. Only the sensation of being helpless.

Tara let out a growl that sounded like it was mixed with a scream and it curled through the night. It was the stuff of nightmares.

Bruce try to stop her the way that he thought he had to. When she lunged toward him, he just sank down and she had to readjust or she was going to go over his head. Tara was agile and comfortable in her animal form. She spent way more time as a leopard than she did as a woman, and when she had to adjust she did it effortlessly.

She was on Bruce before he had a chance to fend for himself, and this time, with his lack of power, her teeth sunk into his shoulder. He let out a roar that was loud enough to echo through the Syracuse Mountains above them, and clawed at her. He managed to push her body off him so that she hung at an awkward angle.

Gravity and her weight worked together and dragged her down, and it tore into Bruce’s skin, ripping it away from the flesh underneath.

He roared into the night and he was sure they could hear it all the way down to the village. But they wouldn’t come looking. There were plenty wild animals in the mountains and he was on his own up here. With her. He shuddered.

He turned around and swatted at Tara with his claws, catching her on the cheek. The yellow fur split into four thin lines of crimson and she made a strangled growl sound. Her eyes flashed in a blaze of white and Bruce felt more of his energy drain away. It was like she flipped a switch.

If she did it for long enough he would be done for. He knew it instinctively.

The rest of the Family stood around them in a circle, none of them doing anything. Lori looked at Bruce and he caught her eyes, cold and heartless. She believed he deserved this. She was as loyal to Tara as any shifter could be to their alpha.

Bruce didn’t have time to think about the others that circled them, but he knew enough from what he felt. They weren’t doing anything, weren’t feeling anything. They were carefully uninvolved.

He lay on the floor, panting, feeling like he’d been fighting for days. His body felt heavier than usual and the blood oozed into his fur from the gash in his shoulder. He couldn’t breathe properly, his chest moved up and down but it didn’t feel like oxygen moved in an out.

Tara circled him, taking long lazy steps like a leopard on the prowl, her shoulders rolling. She was graceful. Graceful and deadly, and those white eyes were on him all the time, watching him, waiting for him to try something.

Not that it would have worked if he did. But he had to do something. He wasn’t just going to roll over and submit.

Bruce collected every last bit of energy in him, scraped it together like it had been scattered all around him, and pulled himself up until he stood on only his hind legs. He roared long and loud, turning so he faced Tara as she circled him.

There wasn’t a lot of time to think after that. She turned, growled and launched at him. The force with which she hit him was enough to spin him around and he wrapped his arms around her. The warm body pressed against his fur and he could feel her writhing against his grip.

If he could press hard enough he could do some serious damage. And if he won, if he managed to kill her, he would be alpha and he would be free.

The moment he thought it, he felt the power build. Not his power, but hers. It was like she knew what he’d been thinking, knew that her place at alpha was now and stake and that if they took it any further it would become a fight to the death.

Her power grew until it was so strong, a white light that blinded Bruce and pushed down on him until he couldn’t breathe at all. He gasped for air, tightened his arms around her, but it didn’t stop the power from growing.

It was hot on his skin, searing hot like it would leave blisters when she was done with him.

Somehow she managed to squirm upwards in his arms, ignoring his grip. Maybe it wasn’t as tight as he thought it was. Maybe she’d drained a lot more of him than he’d thought. She crawled over his body, and latched onto his throat, sinking her teeth into his neck.

He felt her surround his jugular vein with her jaw, the tips of her teeth scraping against the walls of it. One bite and it would be over. He would bleed out and die. He didn’t have enough of his own power left to heal fast. If he fought her now, she was going to kill him.

As horrible as she was, as much as he hated that his relationship with Jenna and his life in Williamsburg was at stake, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t give up, not yet.

So he gave in, instead.

He released Tara. He closed his eyes and turned his head to the side even though it hurt. Hey lay down and tried to make his body submissive, tried to show her that she’d won without her having to kill him for it.

She hesitated for a moment before she opened her jaws and finally let go. She backed away, keeping her eyes on him, but he had no fight left. Maybe if Bruce was strong enough he would have gone for her when she turned her back, finished this once and for all. But there was no power, no energy. She’d sucked it all out of him, and what he had left he needed to heal himself.

When she was far enough she turned her back on him and changed. She didn’t look at him again. Instead she turned to the others, and looked each of them in the eye. They responded by maintaining contact only for two seconds before lowering their gaze. It was a sign of submission. They weren’t going to walk the same path Bruce had walked.

He didn’t blame them. It hurt like a bitch and losing to Tara didn’t only hurt physically, it was a massive knock to his ego.

Tara didn’t look at him again. Instead she disappeared into the trees. The others filtered away one by one, until it was just Bruce, lying on the plateau.

He didn’t know how long it took before he had enough strength to bring on the change again. It could have been hours. He watched the night sky, counted the stars, and waited until his body belonged to him again.

When he brought on the change his shoulder hurt more. The change was supposed to help with the healing process, it often made it faster, but he’d never been sucked dry like that.

It felt like it hadn’t healed at all. Still, once he was a human he noticed that he hadn’t lost as much blood as he’d thought. He inspected his shoulder. It was slowly healing, the skin knitting itself together again. He would be okay. Physically rather than emotionally, but it was a start.

He wanted to see Jenna. He wanted to go to her and just let her take care of him. Her hands were quick, he’d watched her cut hair, and he knew that the compassion and purity inside of her would make her a good healer and caretaker. But he couldn’t go there now, not like this. He yearned for her, an ache so deep inside it chewed at his very essence. But he was going to have to distance himself from her, not just today, but in general. He had to keep her safe. He could stalk her and make sure she was alright, but she could never see him like this.

He stayed in the woods. He didn’t shift again, didn’t try to hunt. He would need the blood and he was going to pay for the lack of it for the next couple of nights, but he needed to save his energy to heal.

His neck had four punctures in it where Tara’s teeth had broken the skin. They healed last. Even though they wounds were small they were like little reminders that he’d lost. Reminders of who was boss. There were more scratches and gashes on his body that he hadn’t felt during the fight. It was almost like she’d made little holes where she’d stolen his power from.

By the time he was finally healed up it was sunrise. He’d been out in the forest all night, as a human. He was chilled to the bone, teeth chattering and clothes ripped.