Sold To The Bears (A BBW Paranormal Romance Book 1) Read online

  "But...are you somewhere private where you can talk for a minute? And is Adrian with you?"

  Grant said yes to both of my questions, and I continued.

  "Okay, good. Then, can you put me on speaker so I can talk to you both at once?"

  Soon I heard Adrian saying that I was on speaker and asking if everything was all right.

  "Yes, I'm fine, but...last thing before I tell you both some news. Wherever you both are, I want you to both sit down.”

  Within moments, Grant said that they both were sitting. "Now, please, Lila. Tell us what's going on. I'm hearing something in your voice that's making me very worried about you."

  I took a deep breath. "I'm really, really okay. But...I'm pregnant. I'm pregnant with twins."

  Suddenly, all I could hear was static for a long moment, and then nothing. I wondered if maybe Grant had dropped the phone.

  "Grant? Adrian? Are you still there?"

  Another moment of static, followed by Grant's voice.

  "I'm sorry, sweetheart. You're cutting out. The last thing we heard was you saying that you're really, really okay. Which we're both very glad to hear. So, just take it from there."

  I took another deep breath. "I'm pregnant. And I'm having twins."

  More brief static again, followed by Grant's voice.

  "Sorry, but we still can't hear you clearly. You're cutting out."

  Sighing with frustration, I got up from the table and began heading down the hallway to go outside through the front door. It was said that cell phone reception post-Freeze was nowhere near as good as it had been before, and reception in Sun Creek was certainly no exception.

  There simply weren't as many towers around as there had been before the Freeze, and on cloudy days, like this one was, calls were frequently dropped or interrupted by static. It usually helped to go outside.

  Once out on the front porch, I tried again. "Grant? Adrian? Is this better? Can you hear me?"

  A guard circling the massive house in human form glanced over at me and slowed in his walking. Knowing it was probably safe for me to step out into the yard as long as he was nearby, I did just that, asking Grant and Adrian again if they could hear me. I heard Grant say a few muffled words as a response, so I knew the signal was getting at least somewhat better.

  Stepping out a little further in the yard, beyond a cluster of tall evergreen trees ringed by misty fog, I waved at the guard, who was maybe twenty feet away. "Just trying to get a better signal. If you could just stay fairly close, but if I could also have a little privacy at the same time, I'd appreciate it so much."

  He nodded and continued strolling around a copse of fir trees bordering the side of the yard.

  I continued on through the yard, my jeans becoming a little dampened by low-lying fog, although it had now stopped raining, which I was thankful for. "Grant? Adrian? if you can hear me better now, please just say something. I'm just going to go a little farther out now. But don't worry. One of the guards is very close by."

  Suddenly, two things happened nearly at once. The alarm sirens blared, making me jump. Not a moment later, I heard Grant's voice on the phone, finally with crystal-clear clarity. He was speaking so loudly I could even hear him reasonably well over the sirens.

  "Get in the house. Get in the house, Lila! Can you hear me? Get inside!"

  "Grant, what-"

  "Steven's just spotted them from the sky. They're coming into the city in droves. Hundreds of them...thousands. They beat us to the attack, and they are going to make their attempt to take the city by force. Some of them are probably going to enter the city from the back, behind the house. You have to get inside, Lila. Can you hear me? Get inside right now! And tell me when you have the door safely locked behind you."

  "Okay, I will."

  I had already turned and started heading back to the house the moment he'd first told me to get inside. Instead of reaching the front porch like I should have done by this point, I almost ran right into a young maple sapling. A maple sapling that I knew wasn't really that close to the house at all, but was instead on one side of the long driveway.

  The fog was rising up increasingly thick, and rising up fast, and it was making it difficult to see where I was going.

  I turned myself around again, looking for the house, but a tall, wide evergreen was in my way. I walked toward it and to the side, until the house came into view again. I saw that somehow, I'd gotten much farther away from it than I'd thought.

  "Grant? Are you still there?"

  Silence.

  "Grant, I got really turned around for a second, because of the fog, and I'm a little further away from the house than I thought. Can you still hear me?"

  Suddenly, he came back on the line, but just for a couple of seconds, and his voice was muffled. He was shouting, and it sounded like he was saying he and Adrian were on their way. Then all I could hear was static. Right before the call dropped and my phone went to the home screen.

  I pocketed my phone with a trembling hand. "Dammit."

  I knew the house guard that had been around the front had to still be near, and I called out his name, which was Paul.

  "Can you hear me? Paul?"

  If he answered, I couldn't hear him over the blaring sirens.

  Still walking through thick clouds of fog toward the house, I tried again. "Paul? Please answer if you can hear me!"

  I wondered if he'd already shifted. Soon, a great roar let me know that he had. The roar had come from somewhere nearby, maybe only thirty or forty feet, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  However, my relief didn't last long. Paul's roar was almost immediately answered by snarling. And it didn't sound like snarling from one wolf alone. It sounded like at least a half-dozen wolves at once. The snarling was followed by howling. Then, more snarling.

  I froze dead in my tracks. Somewhere very near me, hidden by the dense fog, at least six or seven wolves were stalking the yard, probably preparing to attack Paul.

  Within a second, I heard him roar again, and his roar was answered by another one, just a bit farther in the distance. The other house guard was coming to help him. Thank God.

  Soon I stood stock-still, hardly daring to breathe, while sounds of a shifter fight rose above the sirens. Growls, snarls, and howls seemed to get a little closer to me, even as I remained standing still. I could see the house in view, maybe only a hundred feet away, though the fog was obscuring my vision to the point that I wasn't sure if I was accurately judging the distance right.

  I didn't want to start toward the house only to run smack into the middle of the fight. With the fog and so many similar-looking trees around, I was more than a little disoriented, and I was having a hard time pinpointing exactly how far away, and in which direction, the shifter fight was happening.

  While the sirens continued wailing, I moved my mouth in a near-silent plea. "Please hurry, Grant and Adrian. Please hurry."

  Just as soon as I'd spoken those words, the sirens stopped. However, I knew this didn't mean that the danger was over, and I could hear that the danger wasn't over. Now the snarling and roaring of the shifter fight sounded closer than ever. More than likely, I knew Grant had simply ordered the sirens off in order to hear me better if I called out to him and Adrian for help while hidden by fog.

  Still not wanting to head toward the house, and the shifter fight that was possibly between it and me, I began creeping over to a tall evergreen just to my left, suddenly feeling a bit exposed, even with the fog, and wanting some sort of additional cover. Once behind the tree while the shifter fight still raged on, I took a deep, shaky breath and let it out slowly, silently praying that Grant and Adrian would soon arrive. They had to. Because I knew the two bear guards couldn't hold off a half-dozen wolves forever. Particularly if any of those wolves were enormous northern wolves.

  For a few minutes, I just focused on taking deep, slow breaths, battling alternating waves of nausea and dizziness. It was late October, Halloween day, actually, and the damp
air was chilly, eventually adding sudden fits of shivering to my bouts of dizziness and nausea. I wrapped my thick, cable-knit sweater around me tightly, shaking from both cold and fear.

  I knew Grant and Adrian would be arriving any second; I had to believe they would be, because while I listened to the shifter fight, I began to realize that it sounded like I was hearing the roars of only one shifter bear.

  For a while, I'd definitely been able to tell that both guards were still in the fight. Paul and the other guard, Matt, both had wives and children, and I prayed that whichever guard had been taken down wasn't dead, but just injured.

  I couldn't stand the thought of any bear shifter being killed in a fight, but I especially couldn't stand the thought of children being told that one of their parents was gone. I knew from personal experience how devastating losing a parent, in my case four of them, could be.

  Seconds ticked by like hours. The wolf shifters howled and snarled from somewhere nearby, hidden by the trees and fog. The single remaining bear shifter roared, but it seemed to me that his roars were becoming quieter, less ferocious and intense. With my stomach churning, I shivered some more, silently praying that Grant and Adrian would arrive soon.

  When I heard dry leaves crunching behind me, I whirled around, breathing a sigh of relief, expecting to see one of them. But my sigh immediately got stuck in my throat. Because the man standing behind me wasn't Grant, and he wasn't Adrian. This man was much older, with dark hair streaked with gray.

  He leered at me, revealing cracked, yellow teeth. "This simply could not have been easier. The fog...you being outside of the house for some reason...everything. We actually brought grenades, thinking we were going to have to try to bomb you out.

  “See, just in case our attempt to take over the city for ourselves proves unsuccessful, I decided that killing you would make a great consolation prize. Just a little screw you to these high and mighty rich prince bears. And considering that things are already not going incredibly well for us wolves back in town..."

  The man standing not three feet away from me was Malachi, the alpha of Stony Rapids. The man who'd sold me after having killed both my birth parents and my adoptive parents.

  He moved his wide shoulders in a shrug, taking a step closer to me. "Well, let's just say I think we still have a chance of taking over the city, but...you're here right now. And I'm here right now. And I guess I've just decided to take my consolation prize right now, even though I may ultimately end up needing no consolation."

  Trembling, I tried to take a step backward but ran into the tree.

  Malachi took another step forward, making him less than a foot away from me now, then pulled a knife from his pocket and flicked the blade open. "I can slit your throat with this knife while in human form, or I can shift and claw your throat out as a wolf. Your choice. But you've only got three seconds to make it before I decide for you."

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  I'd always been a fighter. Growing up in Stony Rapids after my birth parents had been murdered, I'd had to be. And now, with the man who'd killed them, and then later my adoptive parents, now standing right in front of my face, brandishing a knife, I wasn't about to stop fighting. Even if I died while I did so, which I knew was likely to happen anyway even if I didn't fight. So, if I was going to go down, better to go down swinging, I figured. Better to go down the same way I'd lived my life, fighting, as a tribute to my murdered parents, all four of them.

  I knew I had precious seconds to think about how exactly I was going to fight. I didn't have any weapons, and I didn't really have much time to think. Not to mention that I was suddenly so dizzy I was having trouble just remaining upright. Instinctively, I slid a hand in my jeans pocket, maybe having a vague thought about striking Malachi over the head with my phone. But I'd reached in the wrong pocket.

  However, what I felt in that wrong pocket was even better than a phone. Much better.

  After closing my hand around the thin plastic handle, I whipped out a metal nail file. The point of it was sharp enough that I knew it could do some real damage as a stabbing instrument.

  Taking a sudden wide step around the side of the evergreen, just to put a little distance between Malachi and me, I brandished the metal file at him. "Now you have three seconds. Three seconds to run."

  Lowering his knife, he laughed. Actually laughed at me. The sound was sharp, bitter, and grating.

  I supposed my threat had been funny. I knew it was ridiculous to think he might really become frightened of my nail file and me. I didn't care. I knew making him afraid might be a stretch, but maybe after I got a few good stabs in, he'd at least feel a pang of regret for taking me on, and that would be good enough for me.

  So long as killing me wouldn't be an easy task for him, and as long as I could prevent him from killing other people in the city, at least for a few minutes, I'd consider that a victory. It struck me that in this way, I could help protect the city like I'd wanted to, though of course, not from the safety of a steel-and-titanium cage.

  Malachi laughed again, even louder this time, the harsh sound drowning out the roaring and snarling still going on somewhere nearby.

  "Oh, Lila. Well...you're quite a joke. Think you might have a little revenge on me with that itty-bitty nail file of yours?"

  I shook my head, still brandishing the file at him, tightening my grip on the handle. "No. I don't care about taking revenge on you. See, I've learned a few things since I left Stony Rapids. Revenge means nothing to me now. All I care about now is protecting the people and the city I love. All I care about now is protecting my new home."

  Malachi snorted, raising his knife again. "Well...say bye-bye to your sweet new home."

  The next second of my life seemed to happen in painfully slow motion. He lunged forward and began sweeping the knife in a downward arc above me. At the same time, I ducked and thrust the nail file forward, aiming it at his stomach. But I must have blinked. Because one fraction of a second, he was there. Then, the next, he just wasn't. My file stabbed forward into thin air.

  It took me another quick second to figure out what had happened, but near-deafening roaring was a pretty good tip-off. I turned my head and saw two massive black bears rolling on the ground with Malachi very close nearby. Even through the fog, I could see the bears were Grant and Adrian. They must have crept up and tackled Malachi. And not a moment too soon.

  Weak with relief, I exhaled, suddenly shaking like a leaf from head to toe. Malachi shifted into wolf form and became a blur of silvery gray against Grant and Adrian's dark fur. Though within seconds, Malachi's silvery gray fur became covered in large bright red blotches as Grant and Adrian slashed at him with their razor-sharp claws. Malachi howled in pain, the piercing sound echoing in the yard.

  My legs began shaking so badly I didn't think they could hold me up much longer. When Malachi howled the loudest he had yet, and then something that appeared to be a wolf limb flew past me not a foot in front of my face, my legs began shaking even worse still. Grant and Adrian were literally ripping him apart, limb from limb.

  Everything began spinning, the trees, the cloudy sky, everything. My vision began swimming with hazy gray dots, but only for a moment or two before I fainted, my legs finally giving out beneath me.

  When I opened my eyes again some time later, I felt like I'd been sleeping. I felt like I'd been deep in a dream. Or a nightmare. I couldn't quite recall which, but a feeling of unease made me think it had been the latter. All around me, machines beeped and chirped. I wasn't in my bed at home; judging from the noises around me, I seemed to be in some sort of medical center.

  My vision seemed blurry somehow, and it took me a moment to realize it was because my eyes were only open a sliver. Using more strength than it seemed like I should have had to use for such a simple task, I opened them all the way, and immediately my vision became clearer.

  Grant and Adrian were both sitting in chairs by my bedside, and they now both sprang up at the same time, their handsom
e, strong-jawed faces identical masks of anxiety and concern.

  Grant very gently picked up one of my hands. "How do you feel?"

  I thought for a moment, the events of the day suddenly flooding back. "The guards...Paul and Matt. Are they...?”

  "Both in the room next door." With his expression now one of relief and tenderness, Grant picked up my hand and pressed his full mouth to the back of it. "And both of them are all right. They're both going to make it. They were brave...though not nearly as brave as you." After pressing another kiss on the back of my hand, Grant continued, his voice thick with emotion. "Not nearly as brave as you."

  With his green eyes kind of shiny and pink, Adrian leaned over the bed railing and pressed a tender kiss to my forehead. "Not even a fraction as brave. Or as strong."