ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (228 page)

The villagers started to relax. Murray was sure the wolf he’d shot had died. Bruce knew that Stephen was fine, without silver shot a shotgun would only wound a wolf, not kill it. But because none of them tried anymore, the villagers felt safe.

And Bruce didn’t trust the peace. It didn’t make sense. Cleveland had come to warn him about Tara’s order to have Jenna killed. Bruce knew that Tara was jealous of his relationship with her, and jealous of the love he had for the people he had around him in town. But she’d stopped her tricks.

She ruled the pack with a firm hand and her rules were strict – no one dared break them – but there hadn’t been an incident where she’d lost her temper in a while.

Days turned into weeks, and before Bruce knew it three months had passed without any incidents.

And he was suspicious.

He was in the woods, hunting, when he came across a bird on the ground. He had bloodlust on his mind and almost went for it, when the bond between him and the Family tugged at him and he got a whiff of a familiar smell. A shifter.

The bird shifted in one swift movement, and it was Cleveland. His skin seemed pale, marble in the moonlight, and his hair caught the light and the shadows so that it looked alive.

Bruce didn’t shift back to human form. He was on a high, the blood of the animal he’d just eaten surging through his veins, and no matter how much he wanted to deny it, he didn’t have control right now. He was going to stay a bear, even if he wanted to change.

Cleveland looked over his shoulder like someone could have followed him, and then moved his head around with quick, birdlike movements, like he was listening. Bruce strained his ears, but he couldn’t hear anything other than the rustle of the wind in the trees, and the far of thud of paws on the mulch – Family members hunting a while away.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” Cleveland said and Bruce wondered where he was supposed to be, and how the bird had rules. But his mind ran slow, the adrenaline of the kill and the animal in him overpowering his human ability to think logically.

“I need to tell you, though. Dwayne asked me to do it.”

Tell him what? Bruce sat himself down on the mulch and let Cleveland say whatever he’d come to say.

“This isn’t over,” he said. He looked over his shoulder again. “I promised you loyalty, and you have it. Tara isn’t done with her plans, but without your power combined with hers its taking her longer. But you have to know, your power in the mated bond with Tara protected her. Since you broke it off, she doesn’t have that protection anymore. If you want to save your human, keep that in mind. Mating is protection that won’t allow anyone to fight her unless they fight you first, and win.”

He nodded at Bruce and jumped into the air, shifting as he did, so that by the time his body was completely airborne he was a bird. He flapped his wings and power beat against Bruce along with the wind of his wings before he slid silently into the night.

Bruce struggled to make sense of what was happening. Of what Cleveland had said. His animal overpowered his human. He hadn’t taken this much time and energy to hunt in a long time. But Cleveland’s words stuck. If he wanted to protect his human…

A small breed of mountain deer jumped past him, startled out of its hiding place by something, and Bruce’s mind let go of the thought he was trying to hold onto, and he shot after it, relying on his preternatural strength and speed to make the kill.

It wasn’t until Bruce was a human again that Cleveland’s words echoed through his mind again. If he wanted to protect his human, he had to keep in mind that mating meant protecting.

But Bruce couldn’t do that. He couldn’t mate Jenna, marry her, just because he had to keep her safe. He wanted to marry her because it was their choice to take the next step, because they loved each other.

He loved her, and every moment with her was bliss, but he wanted to know that she felt the same. He didn’t just want to make her his mate because she was in danger.

Besides, how was he going to marry her if she couldn’t know what he was? A relationship with her was hard enough. He shook his head and dismissed the thought. Cleveland was proving his loyalty, but he couldn’t do it.

By nightfall two nights later, the atmosphere was so thick with foreboding Bruce could almost not breathe. He hadn’t felt power in the air like this in a long time, even with how it had been building. He wasn’t going to hunt that night. He shifted into bear form, and started working his way through the trees from his cabin. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but there was something there that hadn’t been there before.

He wasn’t going to head up into the mountain, either, even if the power was spilling off the plateau. If he left Jenna alone in the village now and something happened to her, he would never forgive himself.

He walked through the trees, careful to stay in the shadows away from the road. The villagers were still out and about, and he didn’t want to be seen.

He could see Jenna’s cabin ahead and to the left. She was home already, and the light was on in her bedroom, casting a dim square of light into the trees. He walked past, tried to see into the window but couldn’t at his distance, and then circled back to follow the route he’d made for himself. He started at the beginning of the cabins, those closest to town, and worked he way past them all. It wasn’t just about Jenna, after all. The other villagers would be safe because of him, too.

By the time he’d circled all the way around, checking them all, he headed back. He was some distance away from Jenna’s cabin when he saw it. A shadow that moved through the trees, fast and completely noiseless. He sniffed the wind but it blew the wrong direction, which meant that the animal would smell him instead.

It put him at a disadvantage.

Bruce picked up his pace, trying to stay quiet, and moved through the trees. The forest was suddenly alive with magic, it felt like the trees made way for him and the ground whispered warnings every time he put a foot down. A breeze picked up and moved the leaves up ahead, the rustling joining in with whispering chatter of their own.

The leaves moved in a way that pushed them all aside at once, like it had been shoved by a giant hand, and a shaft of moonlight fell in between the trees. A flash of yellow and white fur, with small black circles, caught Bruce’s eye and his throat constricted.

It was Tara, the damn leopard herself, and she was headed for Jenna’s cabin.

He picked up speed, keeping silent to hell, and wove his way through the trees. He was close enough to see Tara, her large leopard body gliding effortlessly through the trees. She moved gracefully, fluid like water, and she reached the cabin before he could reach her.

He watched her jump up to the window and climb inside.

Shit! Bruce ran faster, and he reached Jenna’s cabin just in time to hear her scream.

He panicked. If he broke into the house to fight Tara now he would risk losing Jenna and he would endanger himself. No one would ever believe that it was a natural fight if he climbed in and fought Tara, besides that. The fact that they were shifters would be the next logical guess, and none of them could afford that, not even him.

Jenna screamed again and he heard something break. He stopped thinking and let his logic take over. He forced a change and within seconds he was back in human form. He ran around to the front of the cabin and shouldered the front door, using his preternatural strength. The lock splintered. He ran straight to the closet and dove into it. He knew Jenna had her father’s gun somewhere back there.

He ripped clothes off their hangers and threw it in piles on the ground, rummaging until he found it. He found a box of bullets as well, but he dropped it and the bullets scattered and fell into the clothes. He clicked the gun open and slid one bullet into the chamber that he’d managed to grab hold of.

One was going to have to be enough. He clicked the gun shut and ran into the bedroom.

Tara had Jenna on the bed, her teeth wrapped around Jenna’s neck. Jenna wasn’t moving and white light flashed in front of Bruce’s eyes, rage flooding through him, threatening to make him lose control of human. But he couldn’t afford to lose it now. Jenna needed him.

He aimed and pulled the trigger in one swift motion. The gun went off and a loud scream filled the cabin, one that didn’t sound like a human at all.

Tara glared at him, her eyes flashing a white light, and then she jumped through the window. She had blood all over her one shoulder and it left a trail over the windowsill.

Bruce set the gun down and rushed over to the bed. Jenna lay on it, whimpering. She was alive.

He breathe out a sigh of relief.

“Jenna,” he breathed. Her pajamas were covered in blood and she was bleeding from her neck, but when Bruce inspected her, she was alright. The blood on her belonged to Tara. When she sat up, she started trembling, and a butcher’s knife fell to the ground. Where Jenna had found it, Bruce didn’t know but she’d defended herself with it.

And by some miracle Tara hadn’t broken skin at all, which meant Jenna was safe from changing into a shifter.

If Tara had broken skin while in animal form it would have been enough for Jenna to catch a strand of lycanthrope – or whatever it was called when it was a leopard.

“Bruce!” Jenna said as if suddenly realizing he was there, and then she started hyperventilating. Bruce wrapped his arms around her. Murray stormed into the house with Phil and Chaz on his heels, all of them carrying rifles.

“A doctor, get the doctor!” Bruce shouted. “She’s going into shock.”

Chaz was the first to move and he turned and ran. Phil checked the house and Murray knelt by the bed. Bruce gave him the shortest version of the story before Murray jumped up and got Jenna water.

The doctor arrived not much later. Chaz must have run like the wind to get him. He came into the house with his black bag. He panicked when he saw all the blood, but as soon as he realized it wasn’t Jenna’s he calmed down and worked at getting her calm, too.

Finally she was asleep and Bruce walked to the front room where the men were standing in a group. There was a chatter outside and Bruce glanced through the door to see a group of villager assembled. He sighed. That was too close for comfort.

“What happened?” Murray asked, and finally Bruce had time to explain in detail. They all listened until he finished, and then Murray spoke.

“We’re going to have to set up a rotating watch until we can fix this mess,” he said.

“Don’t you think it’s weird that none of the wild animals are going for the cattle?” Chaz asked. “It’s only been aimed at the humans.”

Murray nodded and glanced at Bruce, and the look in his eyes made Bruce feel uncomfortable. He knew something.

It was almost dawn when the last people dispersed and Bruce finally left the cabin. Instead of going home he walked back into the woods and climbed to the plateau. Tara wasn’t there, but she wasn’t dead. He knew that. It would take a lot more to kill her, and she was going to be pissed off at him after this. It might even be ground for a duel. The others were out hunting, Bruce could feel them close by. Only Dwayne sat on a rock.

“What are you doing here?” Bruce asked. Usually Dwayne went home when the shifters started hunting.

“There’s something riding on the darkness tonight,” he said. “Danger is heading this way.”

Bruce nodded, thinking he knew what Dwayne meant, but Dwayne shook his head.

“Not that,” he said like he knew what Bruce was thinking. “It’s the Assassins. They’re not leaving. Something’s up, they know something. Someone around here knows something they shouldn’t and the psychics the Assassins use have picked it up.”

“Are we in danger?” Bruce asked.

Dwayne hesitated as if he was sending feelers out and then he shook his head. “Not yet, but soon.”

Bruce nodded. He knew what was going on. If there was someone that knew, it was Murray. They were in trouble. Not yet, as Dwayne had said, but it was coming. And with Tara trying to kill Jenna, he already had his hands full.

They sat side by side until the sun came up. Dwayne finally got up.

“Well, that’s me,” he said and headed off into the trees, going to god-knew-where. Bruce got up too, and started his route back down the mountain. The night had been a rough one, and his muscles ached. The change had hurt him, doing it that fast, and the amount of blood he’d had a few nights in the row couldn’t give him enough energy now. He’d almost depleted his levels.

He walked down past his own cabin, and knocked on Jenna’s door. She was up, and she opened.

“How are you doing?” he asked. She looked haunted, with dark circles around her eyes, and her cheeks were sunken into her face, lifting out the contours of her skull so that she looked dead on her feet.

“Come in,” she said and her voice was empty. She stepped to the side and Bruce walked in. When Jenna closed the door she held onto her one arm with the other hand. She looked lost, even in her own home.

“How are you feeling?” Bruce asked again.

“Alive,” Jenna answered, her face still an expressionless mask. “Thanks to you.”

“I’m so glad I didn’t lose you,” Bruce said, and Jenna’s face crumpled. She started crying and he pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her body. He felt her sobbing against him, and he held onto her. He wanted her to know that he would keep her safe, that he was a fortress she could run to.