The psychic connection was almost too much to bear. Nothing had prepared her for this. She’d had a vague idea of what shifters lives were like, but she couldn’t have anticipated the amount of information she could now access with this new sense. It bonded her to Cyrus and opened up the world. The grizzly sat at the back of her eyes asking to come out, and Daisy opened her eyes again and looked up at Cyrus.
“I should take off my clothes,” she said with a small giggle.
Fifi was barking in her carrier and Daisy’s grizzly grunted at the little dog’s energy.
Cyrus watched Daisy intently as she stepped back, nude and shivering in the cold.
“I’m going to let her out,” she said, holding her arms out at her sides.
Daisy focused on her grizzly, and closed her eyes tight. She felt the beast emerging from within, clawing out of the darkness, to be born into the world of light. With a gasping breath, her body broke apart. The pain was white-hot and pounding as her bones were broken and reformed in an instant. Her body stood on four legs, her panting breath hanging in the cold night air. She looked at Cyrus in the moonlight.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
In an instant, he was standing beside her in his massive grizzly form. As soon as Cyrus took shape as a grizzly, Daisy felt the whole new world evolve inside her. She felt sounds and vibrations all around her. She groaned and looked at Cyrus, nuzzling her nose into the crook in his neck. She wanted him to know how moving it was. She wanted to experience more.
Her heart pounding and her spirit high, Daisy turned with a smile and galloped through the trees. Birds sprang up from the bushes in the winter forest. A squirrel scurried up a tree. She felt her and Cyrus’s hearts singing in harmony. The smell of pine needle crunching under her feet mixed with the scent of leaves decaying into the soil. She felt such a thrill at this connection to the vitality of the earth. With Cyrus, she could now feel this all the time.
He barreled through the woods beside her and little Fifi appeared beside her in the forest. She must have gotten loose from her crate. She stopped in a clearing, panting in the cold air, the stars shone above and the deep purple sky. Fifi jumped and wagged her little tail. Cyrus grunted beside her and nuzzled against her affectionately. The moon rose overhead and the trio rested under the cool blue shades of the night. An owl hooted in the woods in the distance, the song of the autumn forest echoing in her ears.
Fifi ran off, barking at something in the distance. Daisy growled and gave chase, her heart pounding with worry. Cyrus followed her, growling with concern. Cyrus veered away, sending Daisy the impression of a shifter. Daisy growled, picking up the pace and pursuit of her little dog. Daisy came up short, stopping dead in her tracks. On the other side of a muddy ravine, stood her stepfather. He held little Fifi in his hands.
“Such a good little dog. Now, Daisy, why don’t you be a good little girl too?”
Chapter 10
Cyrus veered away from Daisy, barreling into the woods toward the gun-toting hyena shifters he could smell in the distance. He could sense their movements and their relative positions: they were crouching behind the thick trunk. He slowly walked around the perimeter, coming up behind the hyena shifter. His gun was pointed in the opposite direction. Cyrus charged at him and bit down on the back of his neck. He threw the man, leaving him unconscious and immobilized.
He focused on the next hyena shifter, about two hundred yards away. Cyrus tore through the forest, watching the men standing in the energetic read. The world around him throbbed with life and information.
He charged the second man. The hyena shifter spun, shooting off his semi-automatic rifle in a blaze of gunfire. Cyrus bashed at the man, five bullets biting hard into his grizzly body. That might have brought down a real grizzly, but for a shifter like Cyrus, it would take more than that. After he disposed of the second man, he grunted in the dark cold, worried about Daisy.
He knew there were still three other men out there in the darkness, but as the bullets worked into his flesh, the extent of his injuries became more evident. Pain sliced through him. He grunted, forcing himself to move on. He had to protect Daisy, up to the very last breath in his body.
His view of the forest became dimmer as he lost his concentration. The pain made it too hard to hold focus. One of them had shifted, and he sensed the acrid scent of hyena. He growled low and sniffed the air, searching for the hyena’s position. He followed the trail of scent through the forest, his sight growing dimmer with each step.
The hyena attacked out of nowhere, jumping onto Cyrus’s back. It bit down on his neck, its teeth digging deep into Cyrus’s flesh. Cyrus roared and bashed at the animal. It growled and gripped his neck tighter. The grizzly backed under a low hanging branch, scraping the hyena off of him. He spun and bashed with his massive grizzly paw. He sent the hyena flying through the woods. The hyena landed with a screech and went silent.
There were at least two other henchmen to deal with in this area. Once he’d taken them down, he’d find Daisy and get her to safety. He sniffed the air and focused on the forest.
They were both about three hundred yards away and closing in on him quickly. They had to have heard the gunshots. He could smell the gunpowder and sense their guns pointed at him.
He had to make a move. He backed up and started to circle around the location where the last hyena had fallen. The men hurried to the first location, walking carefully and quietly through the forest.
He continued to circle around them, waiting for them to check the fallen shifter. The first one knelt and Cyrus waited, ignoring the searing pain of the bullets in his chest.
The hyena knelt beside the first, inspecting a body. Cyrus barreled through the forest, catching both men off guard. He smashed right into one of them, knocking them both off their feet and into a heap.
He bit and smacked them until they were immobilized. He crushed their guns under his paws, and started walking away.
He had to find Daisy.
Chapter 11
“Put her down right now,” Daisy demanded.
With the growing young bear inside her now, she felt a sense of courage she’d never experienced before. The grizzly growled inside her. Fifi barked and struggled against her stepfather’s grasp.
“Fifi come here,” Daisy demanded.
The little dog wiggled out of her stepfather’s arms and jumped to the forest floor, then, leapt down the ravine and jumped to the other side to Daisy. With her dog in her arms, she glared at her stepfather. He still had the gun in his hand, but she knew he wouldn’t use it on her.
“Now Daisy. It’s time to come home and do your duty as my stepdaughter. I’ve agreed for you to marry the leader of the hyena pack and you’re going to do it.”
“I’m not,” she said, standing up to her full height. “And I’m never going to let you boss me around again.”
She set Fifi on the ground beside her and instantaneously shifted into her new bear form. She roared into the forest, sending a flock of birds into the sky above. With her feral anger fueling her blood, she charged down the ravine and up the other side. Her stepfather squeezed the trigger on his gun and the bullet popped from the barrel, narrowly missing her shoulder. That only made her angrier. She bashed him with her massive paws and he went tumbling in a heap. She stood over him and raked the gun away from his grasp, so that it skidded across the forest and hit the trunk of the tree.
Fifi came up beside her, bouncing and yapping in agreement. Daisy placed her paw on her stepfather’s head, considering whether she should crush it under the weight of her massive body.
She grunted, realizing she couldn’t kill him. She pulled off his jacket and tore it into strips. Then, after shifting back into her human form, she tied him up to the trunk of a tree where he sat unconscious, his head bowing forward.
Daisy just needed to find Cyrus. She shifted back to grizzly form and sniffed the air. She started back in to where she’d seen him last. As she was walking through the
woods with Fifi close behind, she smelled the scent of blood, grizzly blood. She roared and began to charge toward the scent. To her utter dismay, she found Cyrus naked and human, bleeding on the forest floor from what looked like multiple gunshot wounds. She could tell he was weak and had lost a lot of blood. She shifted as quick as she could and knelt beside him.
“Bullets. Must. Come out,” he gurgled.
“How?” she asked, terrified that she could lose him.
“Dig with fingers,” he managed.
She couldn’t do it.
“Can’t heal with bullets,” he said.
“I understand, Cyrus. I’ll do it. I’ll dig them out.”
She gathered his head in her lap and positioned her hand over his chest where the bullet holes had punctured his flesh. The two on through his shoulders had broken out the other side but there were three other holes that didn’t have exit wounds.
She sucked a deep breath through her teeth and squeezed her eyes closed. When she opened them again, she lowered her fingers closer to the bullet wound. Blood was seeping from the holes. Her heart fluttered and sank into her stomach. She pressed her finger into the bullet hole and Cyrus groaned in pain.
“I’m sorry, does it hurt?”
“Keep. Going.”
She pushed her finger further into the bullet wound, feeling around for hard metal. She finally felt something metallic under fingernail and tried to scoop it up. Cyrus grunted in pain and she felt terrible hurting him.
“I think I got it,” she said.
She pushed further, trying to get a grip on the bullet, but it slipped away.
“I can’t get it,” she admitted.
“Try. Claw,” Cyrus said, patting her hand weakly.
“Claw? You mean my grizzly claw? You want me to shift?”
“Just claw,” he said, coughing up more blood.
She still had her finger deep in his chest, and she didn’t know what organs she was touching. This couldn’t be healthy. But he was a shifter, and healed quickly. He seemed confident that this was okay, so she would believe him. She concentrated on her grizzly, inviting the animal’s claw to extend from her human fingertip. She had no idea how she made it work, but she could feel her fingernail growing longer and stronger as her finger pressed inside Cyrus’s body. The whole thing was disgusting. She could barely keep down her breakfast, but she had to save Cyrus. She couldn’t afford to be squeamish.
Her long grizzly nail hooked the bullet and she pulled it out. She withdrew her finger with the bullet in the curved crook of her claw. She dropped it on the ground and let out a long sigh. Cyrus’s eyes dropped and his head lolled to the side.
“Cyrus. Stay awake. Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
She couldn’t stand that she was hurting him, but there was no way around it. She had to do this to save his life. She pushed her finger into the other bullet hole and felt around for the metal. This one seemed to be deeper than the last. Cyrus screamed in pain as she touched the bullet. She gritted her teeth and knit her brow, extending her claw to scoop the bullet into her grasp and pull it out of his body. She let the second bullet drop where the first one lay on the wet ground.
Cyrus passed out, and Daisy began to panic.
“Wake up, Cyrus. Wake up.” She put her finger to his jugular to feel his pulse. It was weak but he was still alive. She had to get the other bullet out of his body to allow his shifter healing abilities to repair him.
She took a deep breath and let it out, trying to steady herself. She couldn’t let the terror of the moment interfere with what she had to do. She pressed her finger into the third bullet hole, just above his heart. He was already passed out so she couldn’t tell if it hurt him as much as the last two had.
She pushed her finger deeper into his body until it disappeared at the knuckle. She whimpered at the sight of it, her mind not wanting to comprehend what she was doing. She felt the metallic object and extended her claw down and around it. Blood began to seep out of the wound more quickly and she let out a frustrated groan. Daisy pulled the bullet from Cyrus’s body and let it drop on the ground. Blood poured from his chest and she pushed her hands over the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. She held her hands over the wound and pressed as hard as she could. There weren’t any bullets left in his body so now he could begin healing. She had no idea how long it would take a shifter to heal from wounds like this.
She held Cyrus there for a long time, even as the night turned in day. She would care for Cyrus until he came back to her.
Chapter 12
Cyrus woke the next morning, feeling hung over and fuzzy. Slowly, the day before came back to him, and he looked up to find Daisy above him, her back to a tree and her eyes closed. She held his head in her lap, and her hand gently stroked his brow. His fuzzy memories began to reemerge. He’d been shot five times and Daisy had removed the bullets. He passed out from the pain before she’d finished. He looked down at his chest, the bullet holes were only faint marks. It still hurt, and he wasn’t fully recovered, but at least he could get on his feet and get his lady back to safety. He reached up and cupped her cheek, wanting to wake her softly and gently.
“Daisy?”
Her eyes popped open and she gasped at him.
“Cyrus! You’re awake. I was so worried.”
She flung herself over him and wrapped him in her arms. He felt her love pouring out of her in that moment and there was no greater feeling in the world.
“Let’s get you back to Timber Bear Ranch,” he said.
“What about the others? I tied my stepdad up to a tree with his own suit.”
“Left all mine unconscious. I’ll report them to the Bear Patrol as soon as we get back to town.”
They both quickly shifted, with Fifi at their feet, and began to barrel through the forest toward home. Cyrus wanted to get Daisy to safety as quickly as possible. They made it back to Timber Bear Ranch as the afternoon sun was fading into evening. The two grizzlies and the little Yorkshire Terrier walked down the gravel road and stopped in the wide gravel yard in front of the farmhouses. Leland was the first to emerge from the main house with his mate Sylvia behind him with their cub in her arms.
“Cyrus?” Leland asked, stepping quickly down the porch steps to join him in the yard.
Buck came out of the front door of his house, squinting in the evening sunlight at the grizzlies before them.
“Did you find your mate?” Buck asked Cyrus.
“Maybe we should get her something to wear,” Sylvia said.
She hurried back into the house and came back a moment later with several large blankets. She draped one over Daisy’s back and the other over Cyrus. With a grunt, he shifted, gathering the blanket up around him before he stood to his full human height. Daisy did the same thing by his side. Fifi ran to Sylvia and started bouncing and barking at her. Sylvia knelt down and pet the little dog with a giggle.
“Who’s this?” she asked with a smile.
“That’s Fifi,” Daisy said,
“And I’m going to need to make a phone call,” Cyrus said.
Everyone moved into Leland’s house, and Daisy and Cyrus sat down on the couch to rest.
“Cyrus,” Buck said as he stood near the fireplace. “You were shot.”
“I was shot five times. Three bullets lodged in my chest. But Daisy was able to remove them.”
Everyone looked at Daisy and Cyrus saw the blood rise in her cheeks.
“I did. I even used my grizzly claw.”
“I’ll get the phone,” Leland said moving to the kitchen.
Leland came back a moment later with a cordless phone that he handed it to Cyrus.
“I’m guessing there’s quite a story here.” Buck said.
Sylvia passed through the room with her little one in her arms: a cub of about two years old. It made Cyrus long for child of his own. After what he and Daisy had been through today, the idea of keeping his family secluded in the woods was no longer as att
ractive to him. He wanted to give his mate a comfortable life where she could be happy, and be close to the people who made life worth living.
“What’s the number for the Fate Mountain Police?” he asked, the phone in his hands.
Leland gave him the number and Cyrus quickly dialed it.
“Can I speak with the chief of police? This is Cyrus Kincaid. I have a crime to report.”
“One moment please,” said the operator.
A moment later a gruff male voice answered the phone. “This is Cmdr. Rollo Morris. What can I do for you, Cyrus?”
“My mate and I were attacked on the mountain by her stepfather and his hired goons. We took them down but were unable to restrain them. My guess is that they are still roaming the mountain. We need some of your men to go out and take them down.”
“We’re on our way.”
Cyrus hung up the phone and looked up at his brothers.
“Now you want to tell us what’s going on?” Buck asked.
The sound of a baby crying echoed through the baby monitor in Buck’s back pocket.
“I need to get Joy. Maria is still giving a lecture at the Institute. I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t start your story until I get back.”
Buck hurried out of the farmhouse and Sylvia handed their cub to Leland.
“I’m sure to you two are starving,” she said. “I’ll get you something to eat.”
Sylvia disappeared in the kitchen and Leland sat on the armchair across from the ancient red velvet sofa where Daisy and Cyrus sat.
Buck walked through the front door of the farmhouse with a baby strapped to his chest, and paced back and forth in front of the fireplace that was crackling with a warm fire, bouncing his baby up and down his arms. A moment later there was a knock at the door. Leland went to answer it. A man in a police uniform walked through the front door.
“I’m Commander Rollo Morris. I’m here to take your statement.”
“Why don’t you start, Daisy?” Cyrus prompted, holding her hand.