Sassy Shifter Brides: Complete Series - BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Mail-Order Romance (2 page)

I wonder why mama thought we’d be a good fit. Because he’s a doctor?
she mused, pursing her lips and trying to look as interested as she could in the dim lighting of the obnoxiously loud bar. The table was lined with a ring of neon. It was
that
kind of bar. She couldn’t wait to get home, curl up with a big glass of wine and bitch with Liza about another perfectly uneventful date she’d been set up for.

***

“So, tell me all about it!” Liza chirped from the kitchen, appearing around the corner with two jumbo-sized wine glasses. Liza plopped down on the couch next to Kacey, and Kacey gladly and greedily accepted the glass of wine, taking a long swig from it. She’d wiggled out of her pencil skirt, nice white top and Spanx the moment she’d got home. Lounging around in purple sweatpants and an old band tee was times and times better than looking prim, proper and put together. Her long chestnut hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, and she’d scrubbed the sexy cat eye and deep red lip off right after she’d thrown off the pumps. All that effort was wasted on a man who hadn’t taken more than a cursory glance at her before losing interest in anything she had to say.

“Oh, you know, the usual. He is a doctor, a proctologist at Baylor.” Kacey had to pause, throwing a bemused glance at her giggling redheaded roommate, who was trying her best to keep a straight face and failing miserably.

“A proctologist? Really? Missis Green is really bringing out the big guns, huh,” Liza remarked, curling up on the couch and facing Kacey.

“Yup. Apparently he’s the son of one of the ladies at her church and surprise, surprise, he’s still single. He couldn’t stop talking about himself. I think the only thing he asked me tonight was whether I liked the drink he bought me, out of the kindness of his heart. But he did have the whitest teeth and the starchiest shirt I’ve seen in Texas, so I’ll give him that,” she said, not bothering to hide the sigh that finished her sentence. Kacey glanced at her phone, hoping to see a yellow light blinking on it, telling her that she’d got a new notification. No such luck.

“Still nothing?” Liza asked softly, getting a wry smile from Kacey in return.

“Yeah, nothing. He’s never quiet this long. I hope everything’s okay. I mean, something had to have happened, right? Or I scared him off somehow,” she mused, sipping at the sweet white wine that suddenly seemed incredibly bitter. “He did say that he’d be busy for a few weeks, so it might just be that.” The contemplative look on Liza’s face said that she didn’t quite agree, though. Kacey’s world had been turned upside down when Warren, a hot, handsome guy from Idaho had given her a wink on SassyDate. It had taken approximately no time at all for her to send him a wink back, and when they’d started sharing messages over the app, things had got really interesting really fast.

It had started off innocently enough. They exchanged pleasantries, he asked her why she lived somewhere as hot and dry as Texas, and she asked why he lived somewhere as cold as Idaho. But, it quickly evolved into something a lot more interesting. She felt a sudden, surprising connection with the mysterious stranger. They had so many things in common that it was a rare treat to find something they didn’t immediately agree on. He was in his early thirties, and when he had at first told her that he just hadn’t found the right girl yet, she’d scoffed internally and figured he was just having fun at her expense. A man
that
gorgeous – going by his pictures anyway – couldn’t possibly be single. Only when he revealed to her that he was a werebear did the pieces fall into place.

While shifters were kind of a public secret, a group of people ignored but in no way persecuted as long as they weren’t a danger to anyone and sorted out their own grievances in whichever way they thought best, it wasn’t exactly commonplace to stumble across one. Especially on a dating app, of all places! True to form, Kacey had immediately delved into research, finding out everything she possibly could about werebears in an attempt to figure out the charming, funny, kind guy she was talking to. Why had he chosen her out of the countless gorgeous women on the app? Why was he single? And, during moments of weakness and solitude, the most pressing of questions that came to her mind was
why
was he so damn far away!?

She now knew that werebears mated for life, regardless of whether or not they had a habit of dating around before that. And she knew that bear shifters were among the more physically impressive shifter species – broad and tall as a rule and fearsome in their shifted form. It all filled her with a certain giddiness that she hadn’t felt since she was a teenager. More than his heritage, though, she was drawn to his spirit. He didn’t mince his words, and he didn’t write replies that were too long, but he still somehow managed to say all the right things at the right time. And he didn’t mind her somewhat rambling letters – in fact he claimed he enjoyed them! They’d been chatting for months now and there had never been a day since the first message that she didn’t get at least one or two pings from her favorite werebear. Now, it had been almost a week, and nothing!

Kacey was ashamed to admit it to anyone but Liza, but she’d grown dependent on their little conversations, looking forward to them each day. It was probably why she’d reluctantly agreed to another ploy by her mother, even though she had little to no desire of spending an evening with any man that wasn’t Warren. But Warren was in Idaho. And he hadn’t replied to her in a week. And that sucked.

“Hey, you said it yourself. He’s a great guy. Something must have come up. And if it didn’t, and he’s just ignoring you then you know you can do better. You’re Kacey Green, the most awesome RN in Texas! He doesn’t know what he’s missing if he lets a catch like you slip between his paws.” Liza grinned cheekily, and Kacey giggled in response. She’d shared an apartment with Liza since college, and though both of them could afford a place on their own now, neither of them really wanted to. And on nights like that one, Kacey was glad to have a friend to remind her not to sulk around because of boys and just enjoy herself.

But goddammit, she wished that Warren would send her a text.

CHAPTER TWO

Warren fought the barely contained urged to roar, glaring at another fallen pole, the carefully built wooden post and painstakingly strung wires all a disheveled mess on the ground now. Deacon kicked the dirt with the nose of his cowboy boots, quietly giving a physical output to their shared frustration.

“So, what now?” Deacon asked, crossing his arms on his broad chest.

“We get to rejoice in electrical repairs,” Rake, or Raleigh as only his mother dared call him, grumbled, lighting a cigarette and considering the sour sight that had welcomed them.

“Does anyone still think that this is not someone’s malicious intent to drive us from the valley? I mean, one pole, sure. One tractor, okay, shit happens. But this is the fifth post that has come down in a week, and Trey just called me this morning from Sunlit, saying someone had poured sand into his gas tank,” said Tyler, the blonde-haired werewolf and the youngest of their little group.

The four men were standing in a half-circle around the base of the electric pole like they were paying respect at a funeral. And as far as Warren was concerned, it may just as well have been one. Werebears weren’t in the habit of crying, but he sure as hell felt like getting a stiff drink and cursing for a few solid hours.

“I think the question at this point is, which clan or pack is behind it, really,” Warren said, scratching the back of his neck. It was a topic they’d painstakingly avoided during the repairs of the last few incidents, but it was getting out of hand now. It was going to come up sooner or later, and Warren definitely preferred it to be sooner.

“Could be any of them, really. Tyler’s folks weren’t glad he and Trey left,” Rake commented, looking positively nonchalant as he leant back on the hood of the beaten up Chevy pickup they’d driven there with, a Lucky sending a shallow plume of smoke up from between his fingers. Tyler was about to object, but he wisely chose to remain quiet. It could have had something to do with Warren jabbing him in the ribs the moment he opened his mouth.

“And your clan was of course entirely thrilled that you decided to leave, right, Rake?” Deacon asked, cocking a brow at the surly man. Warren shook his head, trying to wipe the cobwebs away (and most of all, to think of anything other than the fact that he hadn’t been able to write to Kacey in a week and how that was driving him up the wall far faster than someone screwing with Shifter Grove).

“Alright, alright, we get it. None of us came here without ruffling a few feathers or marring a few coats. We don’t have the manpower to patrol anything, so we have to put our heads together and figure out who is the most likely suspect that wants to see us fail with Shifter Grove. So I urge all of you to put your thinking hats on, and we can discuss it later. But for now, someone’s gotta go fetch the crane so we can set up this damn post or Deacon’s cows are going to have to be fed by hand. And I’m going to tell you, you don’t want to deal with 300 heads of angry unfed cattle, okay?” A rumble of mocking ‘yessirs’ and ‘right-on-its’ marked the return of peace and order in the group of shifters, and they set to the far too familiar task of patching a target of wanton destruction.

Whoever you are, when I get my hands on you, I’m going to wring you so hard you’ll forget what your damn name is. No one messes with my town,
Warren thought glumly, shrugging off his shirt and tossing it in the back of Rake’s truck. It was going to be another long, grueling day, and to top it all off, he knew damn well that when he got back to the ranch, he’d still have no reception on his phone, and it’d be another day before the hope of shooting off a message to Kacey could seem like a possibility rather than an unreachable dream.

***

“You did
what
?!” Warren asked, barely suppressing the growl that wanted to bubble up in his throat. He couldn’t keep his green eyes from flashing dark brown, though, and his hands from balling into fists big enough to plow straight through a concrete wall. His cousin, Wade wore a shit-eating grin that screamed to be wiped off of his face.

“I marked you. Didn’t you hear me the first time?” Wade asked, sipping beer from a plastic cup at the little diner that doubled as the only bar within a 50 mile radius. If they weren’t in public, at least what counted for public in the dirt road central that was Shifter Grove, Warren would be halfway through pummeling some sense back into the huffy werebear in front of him.

“You marked me,” he echoed, his words flat and seething with irritation.

“Yup,” Wade confirmed, nodding with equal measures mirth and cockiness.

“Why would you do something so… so…” Warren struggled to find the words he needed. If anything, he wanted to drag his cocky cousin of an Alpha back to the man’s truck, shove him in there and tell him to never show his face in Shifter Grove again. But he couldn’t do that. He’d never hear the end of it from his mother if he disrespected the clan Alpha like that, even if the Alpha was a sniveling piece of backstabbing trash.
An Alpha’s an Alpha,
Warren’s mother’s sage words echoed in his ears. His eyes narrowed.

“Brilliant? Hell, Warren, you’re 32 and you need a mate. Obviously you weren’t working very hard on it yourself, so I figured you needed a friendly push in the right direction.”

Warren gritted his teeth, trying hard to keep his composure. Kacey’s gorgeous face popped up in his thoughts, and his stomach twisted at the implications of what his cousin had done. He was on a tight schedule now. And all he could think about was what in the hell he could do to not lose Kacey before they’d even had their chance.

“And the best way to do that was to mark me, effectively telling me to find a mate before the equinox or you’ll chose one for me? I don’t know what to say, Wade.”

“You don’t need to say anything, Warren. Or, well, a thank you would be nice, I guess, but I won’t hold you to it.” The big, slightly chubby shifter gave him a grin and finished his beer with one swift swig. “So I guess I’ll see you in what, two months? It’ll be good to have you back with the clan. I’ll tell your mother you said hello,” Wade said, a clear tint of mockery in his tone. He patted Warren heavily on the shoulder as he got up and strode out of the diner with far too much swagger in his step. Warren followed his departure with a grim look on his face, his own drink completely untouched on the counter.

“That son of a bitch,” Warren murmured under his breath.

“What’s that, Warren?” asked Cerise, the owner and only waitress of Sunrise Diner, cocking a brow at him from behind the counter.

“Sorry, just clan stuff. You know how it is.” Warren smiled mirthlessly, wrestling some cash out of his back pocket and setting it on the counter. He shared a look with Cerise, and he was sure that she knew
exactly
how it was. That was why all of them were here in Shifter Grove – to get away from all the madness and the old rules and constraints of their clans and packs. It had been Rake’s idea originally, but Warren, Deacon and Tyler had signed on immediately. None of them were from the same communities – Rake being a werelion, Warren and Deacon werebears and Tyler and his brother werewolves – but the dream resonated in all of them. They wanted, no, needed a community where all shifters and humans would be equally welcome without fear of being persecuted or harassed because of their backgrounds. Shifter Grove was their pipe dream, but there were plenty of shifters more than glad to subscribe to their vision, and they’d kept coming and coming. All of them were running from something, and Warren hoped that Shifter Grove could make them run towards something instead. There wasn’t a single finished building in town, and the farms and businesses were in a similar state of disarray, but even now Warren knew they had something special on their hands.