"Get off my land, or I'll kill you all," Cyrus barked.
“You asked for it, buddy," Pierce said.
The men had been in the same regiment during the Great War. Pierce had been like a brother to him, and he had trusted him like a brother. But that trust had been misplaced. In the chaos of war, there were no consequences.
"Pierce Evert," Cyrus yelled out the crack in the front door. "This one's for you."
Cyrus pointed the muzzle of his shotgun out of the crack in the door, aiming with his shifter senses for absolute precision. He pulled the trigger and the bullets flew. It hit Pierce’s left shoulder, cutting through his body armor with a loud thwack.
"So, you want to play this the hard way," Pierce said.
"The next bullet will land right between your eyes."
"Take cover, men," Pierce ordered.
"That's right," Cyrus yelled. "Run."
"Don't flatter yourself," Pierce growled right back.
Cyrus shut the front door and turned to Daisy. He crossed the space between them and put his hands on her shoulders.
"Who is that?" she asked.
"Someone I used to know," Cyrus said.
"Who is he?"
"We fought in the war together."
"Why is he here?"
"He’s here for you."
Cyrus grimaced, angry to the core. He couldn’t even look into his mate’s eyes. It hurt to have the beautiful moment they had just shared broken like this.
"Can you beat them?" she asked.
"I’m outgunned and outnumbered. Those men are all shifters. Five hyenas and Pierce, who is a wolf.”
"I never meant to bring them to your door, Cyrus. I'm so sorry."
"This is not your fault, Daisy," he said.
"I should give myself up."
"Never. I would die first."
Cyrus tensed up and crossed the room. Anger, fueled by love, flashed inside him. He looked out the window again, motioning to Daisy to duck below the line of fire under the window.
A round of bullets riddled the cabin and Daisy screamed, covering her head with her arms.
Cyrus aimed his gun at the dark shadows at the edge of the forest where he knew Pierce was hidden. He opened fire on the shadow, sending a dozen bullets through the air. There was a scream and a grunt as someone was hit.
A grenade flew and landed right outside of his cabin. The flashbang went off in a blazing cacophony of sounds and light. Cyrus fell back as bullets riddled his cabin again.
"This is your last chance," Pierce yelled. "Give up the girl, and I will let you live."
"There's your mistake," Cyrus yelled. “If you let me live, I'll spend the rest of my life hunting down every last one of you."
"Then we'll just have to kill you," Pierce said.
"You can try," Cyrus said, gritting his teeth.
He shot out the door several more times, aiming for any sign of movement in the yard. He would protect Daisy with his last breath. If that meant giving his life to take down these men that’s what he would do. But that wasn’t his intention. His intention was to live a long happy life with her on the mountain. Far away from men like Pierce.
A second grenade crashed against the wall. Tools and dishes fell on the floor and shattered. Daisy screamed. He had to get her out of here. He couldn’t believe that after all this time that he was being tested by a man like Pierce, but he had something more important to do than to prove himself better than that traitor. Cyrus crawled across the floor to Daisy and sat beside her while she huddled over her barking little dog.
“Daisy, we’re going to make a run for it. I need you to listen closely to me. We’re going to run out the back window, and once we get out of sight of the cabin, I’m going to shift and you are going to ride me down the mountain, back to Timber Bear Ranch. Do you understand?”
She nodded her head vigorously, tears running down her cheeks.
Daisy put Fifi in her carrier and gripped the handle.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
He used the butt of his gun to break the window flinching at the harsh noise and then helped Daisy out to the other side. He jumped out himself a moment later and grabbed her hands, pulling her into the forest behind his cabin.
The bullets continue to fly behind them, but he didn’t look back. He held her hand tight and ran as fast as she could manage. Daisy was surprisingly quick and agile for a human and was able to follow him through the thick forest to a sheltered thicket where he stopped.
“You are going to ride on my back now,” he said.
“Okay,” she said weakly, clutching Fifi’s bag in both of her hands. Cyrus quickly removed his leathers and handed them to Daisy. She folded them up and put them in a compartment under Fifi’s case. Cyrus stretched out his body and shifted, falling on his big grizzly paws with a light grunt. He motioned for Daisy to climb on his back. She stepped on his knee and grabbed his fur to lift herself. When she was securely on top of him with her fingers threaded through his fur, and Fifi’s case slung over her shoulder, he started through the forest.
Chapter 9
Daisy clung to Cyrus’s back as he galloped through the forest. The wind blew against her face and through her hair as they galloped. Cyrus charged through the forest, narrowly missing tree limbs and branches that slapped her face and legs as she clung to him. Fifi barked in her carrier. Bullets followed behind them as Cyrus ran. Howling followed close behind.
Cyrus growled in response, picking up his already fast pace. She didn’t know how long he would be able to keep it up. He had left his shotgun behind in the cabin and they were defenseless except for his grizzly.
Cyrus climbed upwards, she saw the peak of Fate Mountain in the distance as he barreled toward the place where her stepfather had landed his helicopter.
“Why are you going this way?” she pleaded.
He growled and continued. Gunshots fired in the distance, growing fainter. She tried to comfort Fifi and herself.
“I think we lost them,” she said.
Cyrus continued to barrel through the forest at top speed. She could feel heat and his fatigue under her legs and knew that he must be exhausted from running so hard for so long. As the night fell he came to a stop and she slid from his back, taking her crate with her. The forest was dark and the wind howled through the trees. It was so cold and the snow was gathering around them. Cyrus shifted beside her and put on his clothes.
“What are we going to do?” she asked, through chattering teeth.
“I have to keep you warm. I will shift and lie beside you through the night.”
“How much further is it back to town?”
“At least another day.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said.
“I’m going to take care of you,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I have an idea,” she said cautiously. “It might help.”
“What is it?”
“What if you…” She hesitated.
“It’s okay, Daisy. You can trust me.”
“What if you turned me? Then I could help you fight.”
“I’m not going to do that. I won’t put you in danger.”
“I’m already in danger.”
“I can’t…”
“I’m not as weak as you think I am.”
“I know you aren’t weak, Daisy,” he said, leveling his gaze at her.
“Then you’ll do it?”
He let out a long sigh and looked at the ground. He rubbed his bearded chin and looked back at her.
“I’ll change you. If that’s what you really want. I’m not going to ask you to fight these men. Your first shift will be hard and you will still be a fledgling shifter after the change. You won’t have full control of your abilities. You won’t be a match for these men.”
“You’ll shift me then?”
“I will.”
>
“Okay then. We should do it now, before night holds.”
She opened the neck of her shirt and exposed her jugular to him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. Her eyes were tightly closed, and she didn’t see him move in on her. His sharp teeth bit through her skin, right where he had bitten her to claim her. Pain sliced through her body as the changing venom seeped into her blood. She couldn’t feel or think, all she could do was stare up through the canopy of the forest into the clear, cold blue sky. He pumped her full of the venom, and then he let her go. Her eyes widened, bulging. She clenched her neck with her hand.
She hadn’t expected the feeling to be so immediate. There was something new, growing inside her. Clawing forward from deep within the belly of her mind. Somewhere in the fragments of her were the tiny seeds of a grizzly bear. On shaky legs, it pawed forward, coming clearer behind the screen of her eyes. Cyrus gathered her into his arms and licked the wound on her neck until it closed.
“Are you all right?” he asked, tenderly. “How do I make it work?” she asked.
“You focus on your inner bear and you invite her to come out. Then you will see the world as I do. As I am growing to see. Now that I’ve given you the changing bite, I know how much I want to share this world with you, Daisy.”
His words grew fuzzy and distant. She could feel the young grizzly growing stronger and stronger, its face emerging in her view. She felt as if she could almost reach out and touch it. Cyrus was there as well, linked inside her mind through their pair bond. He encouraged her grizzly with the voice of his own, growling inside her mind.
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 my bear 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. Daisy 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 grunted 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 picked 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.