Maybe she could have her cake and eat it, too. Maybe she could have the baby, and have the job, and have Chance. If he still wanted her, that is. She hadn’t talked to him in weeks. Maybe he had forgotten her, put their fling behind him, and hadn’t thought of her once since.
The trial was tomorrow, and she would see him there. In the meantime, she needed to get her rest. It was a big day, and she needed to be ready to put Randy Wade behind bars.
In the morning, she prepared herself, only slightly nervous that she had to testify. She was more nervous at the prospect of seeing Chance. She knew he would be there. He was on the list of witnesses the DA had shown her. All morning, her heart fluttered wildly in her chest until it was time to go to the courthouse.
She’d dressed in a simple pants suit made of gray tweed. The weather had turned crisp as fall approached, and the warmer fabrics were cozy in the chill air. Inside the courthouse, she found the DA waiting outside the courtroom with several members of the sheriff’s department. She didn’t see Chance, and it made her stomach do flip-flops, waiting to get a glimpse of him.
Finally, the courtroom opened, and everyone filed inside. She took a seat behind the DA and waited. Just before the judge came into the room, the courtroom doors opened and in walked Chance, wearing a black suit that hugged his big body like it was made for him. She took a sharp breath and looked back to the bench as the judge made his way into the courtroom.
“All rise.”
Summer stood with the rest of the courtroom and took a deep breath, trying not to faint. Early pregnancy was full of dizziness and fluttering nerves. But more than that, it was her proximity to Chance. All she wanted was to be with him again. As she sat back down, she glanced over her shoulder and saw his blue eyes boring into her. He smiled slowly with a warmth that beamed across the room.
She smiled back and then looked back to the judge. As the trial progressed, both she and Chance had their time on the witness stand, giving testimony that would hopefully put Randy Wade behind bars for the rest of his life.
At the end of the day of testimony, the jury went to deliberate and everyone was excused. Court would reconvene in the morning with the jury’s verdict. She made her way out of the courthouse, her head feeling light. She had to talk to Chance, but didn’t know how to approach him. She’d messed up so much. She didn’t feel like she deserved to be with him anymore.
Nevertheless, Chance deserved to know about his child. Their child. She had to tell him. She found him at the bottom of the courthouse stairs talking to a few members of the sheriff’s department. They all turned to her at once and complimented her on the testimony she’d given.
“Just doing my duty,” she said, smiling as she shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun from behind a layer of low clouds. It felt like it might rain at any moment.
“Hi, Summer. Good to see you again,” Chance said, looking down at her with hooded eyes.
“I need to talk with you for a moment, Chance.”
“Of course, let’s take a walk in the park,” he said, leading her across the street and away from the other men.
The maple trees were turning shades of yellow, orange, and red in the fall air. The river below the path churned past. She gulped, wanting to grab his hand and pull him to her. They stopped on a foot bridge and looked down at the water below as raindrops started to patter on the ground.
“I have something to tell you, too, Summer,” he said in a low voice.
“What is it?” she asked, curious what he had to tell her.
“Well. As you know, I’m a shifter. And shifters have very specific instincts.”
“Yes.”
“One of them is that we know who our mate is. It’s like when humans say, ‘love at first sight.’ Except this is a little more like ‘love at first sniff.’” He chuckled nervously. “And it lasts forever.”
“I see,” she said, her mind reeling with the implications. Had he found his mate?
“Summer. My one true mate…is you.”
“What?” she gasped with shock and relief.
He turned to her and put his hands on her upper arms, pulling her in to look up at him. “I should have told you before. I’ve known all along. I just didn’t know how to say it. I’ve missed you so much since you’ve been gone. It was like a part of me was missing that I would never get back. I wanted to tell you so many times since, but I didn’t want to interfere with your life.”
“Oh, Chance. I wish I’d known,” she said, stepping into his embrace. He held her in his warm arms as the rain began to fall down on them.
“You aren’t mad?”
“No. I’m relieved. I thought you’d found someone else for a second. I’ve been stupid. I thought maybe you’d forgotten about me. I’ve missed you so much. I wanted to call you every day, but I was too big a coward to do it. “
“Summer,” he said, pressing his lips to hers. They kissed as the sky opened up and rain poured down from the heavens.
“Let’s get out of this,” he yelled over the sound of the falling rain.
She laughed as he led her to the middle of the park, to a gazebo that protected them from the rain. Flowers still grew in heavy bushes around the gazebo, sending up a haze of scent in the damp air.
They held each other close, warming each other’s bodies. “What did you have to tell me?” he asked her, his breath brushing the top of her head.
She leaned up to look him in the eye. “I’m pregnant,” she said, breathlessly.
“Summer!” He picked her up and twirled her around before setting her back down on her feet. “That’s the best news I could imagine. A baby with my mate.”
He pulled a little box from his suit jacket. “Summer. I bought this. I had no idea how I was going to do it. How I would tell you.” He fell down on one knee, and Summer gasped, covering her mouth as he opened the box to reveal a big, diamond ring.
“Summer Madison, will you marry me?” He slipped the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly, and tears slid down her face.
“Yes,” she gasped, pulling him to his feet to give him the biggest hug ever.
“I can move to the city to be with you. I don’t mind.”
“Chance, I was offered a job at the mine,” she said, giggling.
“You were? Are you going to take it?”
“Yes. I am. You don’t have to move, and I don’t have to lose my career!”
He wrapped her in his arms, and they kissed with passionate softness as the rain fell outside. Finally, they made a run for it and got into his truck. She told him how to get to her apartment, and they spent the night together, warm and dry, inside.
In the morning, they went back to the courthouse to hear the verdict in the case. Hand in hand, they walked into the courtroom, only getting a few goofy smiles from the guys from the sheriff’s department. They sat together and waited for the judge and jury to arrive. When everyone was seated, the judge asked the jury if they’d come to a verdict.
“Yes, we have, your honor. We find the defendant guilty on all charges.” The jurors sat back down, and a small cheer erupted from the courtroom. Chance squeezed Summer’s hand and smiled down at her, kissing her forehead.
“Randy Wade, I sentence you to 65 years in prison for the second degree murder of Balor Von and the attempted murder of the Owens family.”
As they left the courthouse, photographers snapped photos of them, and flashes popped all around. Chance went back to Summer’s apartment to help her pack her things while she called the mine and told them she’d take the job.
Together, they left the city, with all her things, and finally went back home.
Chapter 13
Chance watched Summer holding their baby son. He was a strong boy, big like his dad and dark like his mother. Summer smiled at him from the rocking chair. It was times like these that Chance treasured more than anything. After the wedding with all the Montana grizzly game wardens in attendance, a big jug of honey from Brody and several pounds of smo
ked fish from Emerson, they’d settled into a comfortable life together in their home.
Summer loved the garden, and she loved her job. She told him every day how happy she was. When the baby came, she got paid maternity leave from the mine. It made everything easier for all of them. She loved being home with her baby, but she loved her work, too.
Chance wanted his family to be healthy and happy. He knew that a happy momma meant a happy baby. Summer’s work was important to her, so it was important to him as well. When she went back, there were other shifter families who had already offered to care for the baby for them.
Bertha McLaren from the craft store was a grandmother shifter whose daughter cared for a few shifter children during the day, and they’d already decided that she was the perfect fit for their family.
Watching his wife and his son rock in the rocking chair as the spring rains fell outside the window made his heart sing. He wanted to remember this moment for the rest of his life.
Summer had given him the peace he’d always needed to settle his heart and the beast within. She was everything to him, just like he had told her the first time they’d been together. Still as sassy as ever, but calmer and more open-minded, Summer gave him the joy his life had been missing for so long.
She looked up at him and smiled as he threw another log into the fireplace. Their cozy home was made cozier by their love, and he always wanted it to be this way.
“Will you do it tonight?” she asked him, rocking the baby.
“If you want. But they don’t have baby monitors in the woods.”
“We can call the sitter. I’m sure she’ll understand.”
“Are you really ready for this? There’s no going back afterwards.”
“Candice seems to like being a bear,” Summer said, standing.
The baby was three months old now, and Summer had been asking him to turn her since the baby was born. He’d never turned anyone before. His claiming bite would make her like him, and she would never be fully human again. She would always have the beast within her, waiting to come out.
“If this is what you want, then I will turn you.”
“I want to be a bear. And I want you to claim me. I want it all, Chance,” she said, moving across the room to kiss him.
“Tonight then, sweetheart. The moon will be full. It will be time.”
After the sitter arrived and went to sleep in the guest room, Summer and Chance retired to their bedroom. They’d had a fantastic sex life all through the pregnancy and soon after the birth. Things hadn’t slowed down and were as hot as ever. But looking at his wife’s new curves as she lay across their bed, waiting for him to claim her, made him rock hard in an instant.
He fell over her, licking her body up and down, getting her worked up enough to take his thick length. She pulled him to her, taking his mouth in a kiss, wrapping her legs around his waist.
“Come here, baby,” she said. His shaft pressed inside her, and they were one, moving as a single being. Soon she would know the joy and pain of being a shifter. Soon she would share his world completely.
As he felt Summer release and felt himself coming closer to climax, he sank his teeth deep in her neck, tasting her blood spill over his tongue. She shuddered with a stifled scream from the pain of it, but then let out a long sigh as his hips worked her body.
His climax erupted from deep within as he held her neck between his teeth. His seed spilled deep inside her as he claimed his woman. Forever after, every shifter would know that she belonged to him and he belonged to her. Summer’s body clamped on his as she came again. He licked her bleeding wound to close it and balm the pain.
Turning away, he lay panting for a moment, still tasting her blood on his lips. “It’s time, Summer. We go out now,” he said, standing. He took her hand and led her down the stairs into the dark house. Out on the porch, she shivered in the cold.
The moon broke out from between the rain clouds, and Summer threw back her head. A scream broke from between her lips as the shift overtook her.
“Summer,” he called out.
“Oh God! It hurts.”
“Let go. It will only hurt once.”
With a shriek, she burst into her bear form. Big and dark and glorious, her grizzly panted before him on the lawn below. He joined her and shifted into his own grizzly form. Together they sniffed the air and sniffed each other.
Through their animal link, he could feel her emotions bubbling, overflowing with the new sensations. He sent her a feeling through their link. “Let’s run.”
She roared and burst through the yard and into the forest. Chance followed behind her, marveling at her strength and her beauty. He loved her with every fiber of his being. Both as a man and as an animal. The wind blew over their fur as he followed his mate through the dark forest. Scents and sounds filled his senses, and he knew that she felt it, too.
Nothing made him happier than to feel her joy rising through their link. He knew that he would do everything in his power to feel that for the rest of his life.
His To Bear
Bear Wardens
A grieving grizzly ...
Bear shifter Brody Oberon is stunned to find his best friend near death, the victim of foul play. Filled with rage, the last thing Brody expects is to meet his fated mate at the hospital. The curvy doctor is everything he's ever wanted ... at the worst possible time.
A wounded surgeon ...
Millie Tanner's stellar medical career was ruined by a vengeful administrator. Now, starting over in the backwoods of Montana, she's completely unprepared for the depth of her attraction to Brody. The mysterious, sexy game warden is dangerously intriguing--and sets her senses alight with a single touch.
The heat is on ...
Caught up together in a murder investigation, Brody and Millie must balance their professional duties with a desire that threatens to run wild. With Brody's bear roaring that the sweet, sassy surgeon is theirs to claim, can he woo his mate while finding justice for his friend? And can Millie accept the realities of belonging to a bear shifter?
Chapter 1
Grizzly shifter Brody Oberon hiked through the national park land, gripping his rifle as he climbed over the rugged trail. This part of the park was often frequented by people who hunted game illegally.
He’d become a game warden to protect the land and the animals from humans who would over hunt and throw the off the balance of nature. He took his job seriously.
Today, though, he hadn’t come across anyone up in this part of the forest. Perhaps the poachers had gone to another part of the park. No matter; he’d find them.
Sniffing the air, he smelled the scent of blood. Bear blood. Hurrying up the rocky path, he came to a stand of old-growth lodgepole pines. Their numerous, slender trunks blocked his view of whatever was giving off the scent.
He ducked through the underbrush, rifle in hand, ready to make an arrest. It was not bear season. When he broke through the bushes, he sucked in a sharp breath and growled.
A huge brown grizzly lay sprawled across the ground, broken and bloody. Brody immediately recognized the bear as his best friend Chris Whitney. They’d known each other their entire lives.
Brody dropped the rifle on the ground and knelt beside his friend.
“Chris,” he said, touching his friend’s dark matted fur. “What happened?”
The bear’s eyes fluttered opened and he looked up at Brody as the light began to fade from his eyes. Chris panted and slowly changed. His body contorted and shrunk, shifting into a broken, naked man, covered in blood and dirt.
“Pushed,” Chris whispered as his eyes fluttered closed.
“No, Chris. Stay with me buddy.” Brody put his hand on his friend’s arm, trying to shake him awake.
Brody gripped the walkie-talkie at his shoulder and called into the dispatcher.
“Janet, Brody Oberon, how long for an air lift out in the national park?”
“Let me check.” A moment later, her voice came over th
e walkie-talkie. “At least two hours, Brody. What’s wrong out there? You got an injured hiker?”
“Chris Whitney was pushed off a cliff. He’s fading fast. We need paramedics out here now.”
“I can get an ambulance to meet you up there, but it will still be about twenty minutes.”
“He isn’t going to make it that long, Janet.”
“Just stay with him. They’re on the way to your location now. Don’t move him Brody.”
Brody sat next to his friend holding his hand as his chest moved up and down in terrifyingly slow movements.
“Do you remember the last touchdown at the homecoming game senior year?” Brody said, smiling through his panic. “You almost popped the ball when you threw it down. I thought you’d out us all that day.”
He checked his friend’s pulse at his neck and listened to his breathing, feeling like his world was about to blink out.
“Hang on, buddy. The paramedics are on their way.”
He sat there, holding Chris’s hand wishing that shifters hadn’t decided to come out. Ever since the Shifter Council had decided to come out several months before, human hate groups had popped up all over the country and around the world.
In Montana alone, dozens of shifters had been murdered by their own neighbors and friends. Humans were in a panic after finding out that supernatural creatures walked among them.
Shifters were bigger, stronger, healed faster, and were more capable than humans in many ways. That was exactly the kind of thing that incited fear and loathing in humans. They had hatred against their own kind. Since shifters had come out, every hate group in the world had turned their attention to them.
Luckily, since so many prominent people in human society were actually shifters, the Shifter Protection Act had passed in Congress just a few weeks ago.
That hadn’t stopped the murders, but it did mean that convictions were harsh and swift. Chris had been pushed from the cliff above. Who would want to murder a hometown hero like Chris Whitney? He’d been loved by everyone since his football days in high school, even after he’d taken over his family’s ranch as an adult.