A Bride For The Bear (Bear Brides #1) (4 page)

It'd be real nice to
have a family. A mate, cubs...

Cole wanted that too. His
clan was his family, but it wasn't the same. They worked together,
stood together and fought together, but at the end of the day, they
went back to their families, their homes.

Cole flicked off the lights
and headed upstairs to his empty bedroom. After a quick shower, he
lay in bed with his hands laced behind his head.

He wanted to see that sweet,
luscious female again, even if it was just in his mind. He closed
his eyes, but his brain was too wired to conjure up that beautiful
image that he had glimpsed earlier. Her face flickered at the edge
of his consciousness. He could see her full, pink lips, tendrils of
her brown hair, and her lovely, soulful eyes. Her face slipped in
and out of the shadows, tormenting him and making his body so hard,
hot and aching.

It was a long, long while
before he finally managed to fall asleep.

*

Abby hauled herself out of
bed. It was no use. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn't
get that handsome and mysterious “Cole” out of her mind.

She went to her laptop and
checked her email. Her heart sank. Cole hadn't replied to her
message. Well, it wasn't much of a message, just a timid and totally
inane “hi”. But still, she had been hoping that he would
at least say hi back.

She logged in to check Cole's
profile again, but to her dismay, she couldn't find his profile
anywhere on the dating site. He must have de-activated his profile.
Abby cursed softly. She should have known. He was just a hoax. His
profile picture was probably copied from some fashion magazine and
his particulars made up by a bunch of bored pranksters. She sighed
heavily.

This was so stupid.
She
was so stupid.

But even though she kept
telling herself that this “Cole” was just a made-up
profile, her instincts protested vehemently and her heart pounded
with the conviction that Cole was real.

His photograph had been real
too. It had been a little blurry, but she could see his eyes
clearly. They were intelligent, wary, tinged with hope and pain.

“Ah, what have I got to
lose?” Abby muttered furiously. “I don't have to work
tomorrow. I'll just make the trip and see for myself!”

Moonstone Creek wasn't too
far away. There was a bus that ran twice daily from her city to
Moonstone Creek. It was a two-hour bus ride, and she could catch the
next bus out.

Abby didn't give herself time
to chicken out of her bold, brash plan. She booked her bus ticket
online and hurried to her room to drag her dusty backpack out from
under her bed.

She just wanted to go see the
place, have a feel of that small, bustling shifter town. Heck, maybe
she could even look for a job while she was there. She might even
consider making the move to Moonstone Creek if the town appealed to
her.

There was nothing here for
her anyway. There was only Terri, but two hours wasn't so bad. She
could always hop on the bus and come visit Terri every weekend. They
could still hang out and eat and go shopping together.

She wanted to call Terri
and tell her about her trip, but Terri was still out of town with her
boss. She would only get back from her work trip on Friday evening.

Abby glanced at her wall
calendar. Tomorrow was Thursday. She would spend a day in Moonstone
Creek and have a feel of the town. She could catch the evening bus
home, or if she wanted to spend another day exploring the place, she
would just get a room in one of the small hotels for the night.

As Abby stuffed some clothes
into her backpack, she tried to squash that small, flickering hope
that had flared up in her breast. She couldn't allow herself to
hope. But hope she did. She hoped to meet Cole on this trip.

There was no turning back.
She had to make the trip to Moonstone Creek, or she wouldn't rest.
There was just something pulling her there. Was it a handsome
werebear, her heart or fate? At this point in time, she didn't know
and she didn't care.

She knew she would find her
answer soon enough in Moonstone Creek.

Abby stepped off the bus and
blinked in the late morning sunlight. She checked her watch. Ten
o'clock. The bus was a rattling, rickety tin can but it ran on time.
She had a whole day to explore Moonstone Creek, and catch the last
bus back to the city at six in the evening.

Hoisting her backpack on her
shoulder, she looked around the town center of Moonstone Creek. The
smell of freshly baked bread wafted from the row of bakeries down the
street. Some shops were just opening up for the day and she heard
the tinkle of door chimes as the shopkeepers threw their doors open
and welcomed their first customers. There were long queues in front
of the more popular eateries. As she strolled down the busy street,
Abby noted that the residents of Moonstone Creek seemed to favor
pizzas, burgers, donuts and ice-cream. A smile tugged at the corner
of her lips. Moonstone Creek was her kind of town. It was a food
paradise as far as she was concerned.

For a moment, she observed
the queue in front of a pizza parlor. She saw only three females in
the queue. Her suspicion that the men outnumbered the women in this
small town was confirmed by a quick glance around the town center.
There were many tall, muscular males striding and strolling around,
and only a handful of women around. The women, she noted, weren't at
all like the vast majority of girls in the city. They weren't
stick-thin and wearing a ton of make-up on their stressed, pinched
faces. Instead, they were tall, curvy, well-proportioned and their
faces glowed with health and contentment.

As she passed a group of men
smoking in front of a shop window, Abby noticed the men turning
towards her and sniffing the air. Their action unnerved her and she
quickened her pace. With a start, she realized that Moonstone Creek
was a shifter town so most, if not all, of these people, were
shifters. Since bear shifters dominated the population, she gathered
that most of those beautiful, curvy women she saw were probably
she-bears.

Abby turned the corner and
continued walking, taking in the sights, sounds and smells of this
quaint little town. She could see herself living and working here.
For once, her impulse and instinct paid off. Hopping on the bus and
coming out to Moonstone Creek might be the best decision she'd made
in a long time. She was done with the city, and the city was done
with her. Perhaps she could move to Moonstone Creek and turn her
life around. Get a job, get a house, get a life.

The street had become
narrower and less crowded. There weren't as many shops and offices
in this part of the town center. Abby frowned and started to turn
back.

Three tall men blocked her
way, and Abby had to stifle her scream. “Hello beautiful,”
one of them drawled. “What's a girl like you doing in a place
like this?”

Abby glanced over her
shoulder, not sure if he was talking to her. There wasn't anyone
else about, and the few people along the street seemed to avert their
eyes in a hurry when they met her panicked gaze.

Abby backed away slowly as
the three towering men advanced towards her. Two of them circled
behind her to block her escape, while their leader, the one who had
spoken to her, leaned forward and took a deep whiff of her.

“Mmm, a human woman.
We don't see many of these around.” He smiled, but there was
nothing friendly in his smile.

“Are you going to mark
her, Graig? These things are rare, so the other bears are going to
want a piece of her,” one of the men behind her spoke up. Abby
spun round and saw an eager, sadistic smile on the man's face.

“Mark her?”
Graig peered at her, looking her up and down as if she were a piece
of prime meat. “There's no need to mark her. No one would
dare touch something I want. I'm the Beta of the Blood Shadow
bears.” Abby shrank back at the sound of his cruel, mocking
laugh.

“Blood Shadows?”
she squeaked in spite of herself.

Graig looked down his long
nose at her. “The Blood Shadow clan is the largest clan of
werebears in Moonstone Creek. I'm the Beta, the second most powerful
bear in the clan.” His smirk told her that she was meant to be
impressed or intimidated by his revelation, but all she felt was
revulsion.

“What do you want?”
Abby steeled her voice and looked him straight in the eye.

The men laughed in unison.
“You know what I want,” Graig taunted. “And you'll
want to give it to me. Don't be coy now. Doing a bear is something
to brag about. Come on, just ten minutes and you'll be a star.”

Abby would have gagged if she
wasn't so scared. “I'm not that kind of girl,” she said,
her eyes darting frantically about. Why wasn't there anyone around?
Everyone seemed to have disappeared the moment these men started
harassing her. Were they afraid of these Blood Shadow bears? Just
how dangerous and brutal were they?

Very
.
She heard the whisper in her
mind. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but she knew that
running would fuel the blood lust of these predators.

“Please let me go,”
she said, her voice trembling. “I...won't bother you.”

“Oh, you're not a
bother, sweetheart. Not a bother at all,” Graig's smile
widened. “In fact, you are a treat, a very delectable, human
treat.”

She saw Graig's hand move to
his belt. As he advanced towards her with a malicious glint in his
eye, he began unbuckling his belt with one hand. When he yanked down
his zipper, Abby whirled round but the two men behind her caught her
and held her fast.

She screamed, loud and long
and pleading.

She
hoped someone would hear her, and she hoped that someone wouldn't
just turn away and run off like everyone else.
She
knew what fear did to people.
In
the dark alleys of the city, sometimes there were muffled screams and
the flash of a blade, but only very few brave souls dared stop to
help. Most people simply hurried on, afraid to look, afraid to be
seen. Evil was all around, and bad people got away scot-free because
of the fear they instilled in other ordinary folk. Those ordinary
folk weren't bad people. They were just afraid, and they weren't
wrong to be afraid. They had families, burdens, worries. Fear was a
powerful weapon.

So was rage.

Abby
screamed with all her might,
twisting,
spitting, kicking at her attackers. She hadn't come all this way to
be waylaid, pounced on and made a victim of. Human! Damn right she
was human. She was human, but she wasn't weak. These bears picked
on her simply because she was human and female.
She
had just been minding her own business, exploring the town on her
own. She had lost her job, but she hadn't lost her fight. They had
no right to do this to her, to make her shitty life even shittier
than it already was!

Abby heard a tearing sound
and shrieked as a cold claw raked down between her breasts, snapping
her bra. The two halves of her t-shirt flapped open, exposing her
pale, shaking torso.

“Don't touch me! Let
me go, leave me alone!” she screamed. “Get away from me.
Help! Please, someone, help me!”

“No one's coming to
help you,” Graig snarled, gripping her face. “So just be
a good girl and shut the fuck up. I don't want to have to mess up
your pretty little face.”

A sob gurgled in her throat.
This was not happening. It couldn't be. There had to be some way,
someone...

“Please...” She
could barely hear her own whisper.

She had come to Moonstone
Creek searching for someone. Someone named Cole.

Was he even here?

Was he real?

She had been convinced that
he was real, and that he was...special.

She closed her eyes to block
out the horror of what was to come. “Cole...” she
whispered, clinging desperately to a dying, fading hope as the
growling werebears closed in on her.

“Cole...I wish...”

She didn't complete her wish.

Only a strangled sob escaped
as Graig's fist closed around her throat.

Cole parked his pick-up truck
in front of a hardware store and stepped onto the curb. He was here
to grab some tools to build a timber deck for one of their clients.

His entire body stiffened at
that sharp scent in the air. Another whiff and his bear roared to
the surface.

There was the stinging smell
of fear, tears and blood.

Cole turned towards the
scent, charging across a busy junction and ignoring the blaring of
horns and curses from angry drivers. He headed straight for a
narrow, side street, towards the sound of small, stifled sobs and
whimpers.

The instant he turned into
the quiet street, his bear tore out of his skin and charged. His
bear had scented blood.
Her
blood.