Shifters of grey ridge b.., p.57
Shifters of Grey Ridge Box Set, page 57
part #1 of Box Set: Books 1 - 3 Series
We round the next bend and I squint through the windshield into the darkness. Ahead in the road, I can see a large dark shape moving out from the trees. It’s the size of a pickup truck, but is moving quickly. It’s Bodhi. And he’s standing side-on, blocking most of both lanes with his immense bulk, looking steadily over his shoulder at our fast-approaching car. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t flinch. Determination radiates from him as he stays stock still, merely watching as we barrel toward him. I press back into my seat and shake my head.
“No, no! STOP!” I screech and try to grab the steering wheel, attempting to steer us off the road. Anything to avoid us crashing into Bodhi. Toby meets my eyes for a split second, before slamming on the brakes. He yanks the wheel hard so that we skid, not spinning out of control like before, but sideways, still bearing down quickly on where Bodhi stands motionless in the road. The car bounces and shakes and after what seems like an eternity, we jerk to a stop abruptly.
Toby moans beside me and rubs his shoulder, and I notice a nasty red cut on his forehead. He must have hit his head off the window because the glass on his side is shattered. I swallow down my panic as I look around frantically but can’t see Bodhi’s bear anywhere. The silence is deafening.
Where is he? Did we hit him?
CHAPTER 52
LEILA
“What the hell was that?” Toby whispers incredulously, rubbing his sore head and staring blankly out of the windscreen towards where the giant bear had been standing only seconds ago. I’m still looking around frantically, hoping to see the huge grizzly lumbering into the trees, when the driver's door is pulled clean off its hinges with a loud screech and flung across the road. A large hand reaches in and grabs Toby by the front of his grubby shirt. Toby attempts to hang onto the steering wheel, but it’s already too late. I gasp in shock as Bodhi leans down and with one tug, snaps the seatbelt and hauls him out the door. I blink in disbelief and look at the now empty seat.
Did I really just see that? He was gone so quickly, it was like he was never there.
I shake myself from my dazed stupor and scramble out of the vehicle, moving quickly around to the back of the car where Bodhi has Toby pinned against the side. His muscular chest is heaving as he draws huge shuddering breaths in and out. His eyes flash from amber brown to black as his bear fights for control. Bodhi’s arms tremble from the effort of holding back. Without taking his eyes from Toby, he tips his chin slightly in my direction and speaks quietly.
“Did he hurt you? The baby?”
His voice sounds odd, gravelly and muffled. As if he’s more bear than man at this moment. I take a tentative step toward him so that he can see me easily without weakening his hold on Toby. His eyes dart to my face and he gives me a slow assessing once over. Some of the tension leaves his face when he sees the blood on my shirt, but I lift it to show him the wound already closing. But he still looks terrifying. His immense size makes Toby look like a teenage boy beside him, all long gangly limbs and wide eyes, rather than a dangerous Alpha wolf. Bodhi could snap him like a twig if he wanted to.
I take a second to do a once over on myself and stretch out my aching neck and back. I feel surprisingly ok despite being in two separate car accidents in the space of 15 minutes. My chest is sore from the seatbelts, but nothing too concerning. My wolf tells me the baby is doing well, despite being tossed around a bit.
“I’m fine, Bodhi. We’re both fine. Are you?” I reassure him as I scan his body for signs of injury, but he looks unhurt. “Did we hit you?”
I still can’t work it out. He scoffs and stares down at Toby, who has enough sense to submit to Bodhi, knowing he’s completely outgunned here. Resisting is futile and would only anger his bear more. He’s lucky Bodhi hasn’t shredded him already, and he knows it.
“It’ll take a lot more than a cowardly wolf in a tin can to get past me,” he growls, giving Toby a bone-rattling shake to prove his point. Toby’s head bounces back and forth like a rag doll’s and he groans from the force of it.
“He was trying to take you,” Bodhi grits out simply, as if that’s reason enough to stand in the road and use his body to stop a car. Although I think it’s probably his bear speaking now, so logic isn’t its strong suit. It’s all emotion, trying to convince me it’s a great idea to end Toby now, that he deserves it. And I don’t disagree. After nearly killing my mate and threatening to take away my cub, I’m tempted to do the honours myself.
But Marcus is the sheriff. He can’t operate outside the law. He wants a better life for himself and his siblings than the one he had growing up. Losing his job because he gave in and killed a man, or having to arrest his brother for tearing Toby apart wouldn’t be easy to live with. Despite his gruff exterior, Marcus is a good man. And Bodhi has had a hard enough life already. He doesn’t deserve to have this follow him around. What Alpha would let Bodhi stay on their territory knowing he could so easily dispatch them single-handed?
“You stopped him. You kept us safe. Now we’ll just keep him here and let Natalie bring him in.” I try to reason with him, but he bellows out a roar that shakes the leaves on the trees. I feel the vibrations from the sound in my chest and all the way down to my toes. The woods around us stay eerily silent. The scent of Bodhi’s wild anger fills the air along with the sickly smell of Toby’s sweat, as beads of perspiration form on his forehead.
“He has to pay,” Bodhi warns, tightening his grip on Toby and pressing closer to him. Bodhi’s canines have lengthened and I can see the corded muscles in his arms bulging as he holds Toby in place. I reach out slowly and place my hand on his shoulder. He flinches under my touch initially before relaxing slightly and finally looking at me again. This time it’s Bodhi. I have to make him see sense before he does something that will land him in trouble.
“Don’t let your Dad win. He'd love for you or Marcus to have this hanging over you for the rest of your lives. Maybe that was even his plan here all along.” A flicker of something sparks in Bodhi’s eyes and he eases back slightly.
“He could have, couldn’t he?” I continue. “Suggested me as a target, told this piece of shit to go after me, knowing you’d never let that happen. Chances were he’d ruin one of your lives. Even if it’s self-defense, you wouldn’t be welcome back in the packs that allow you to roam there now, and Marcus would probably lose his job.”
A low rumble sounds in his chest, and it seems like I’m getting through to him. Toby nods frantically, looking for any way to worm out of trouble.
“He did. He introduced me to the chick who owns this car and said it would get me close to the pack house without raising suspicion.”
Bodhi grinds his teeth as Toby confirms his father arranged it this way. Maybe he was never trying to help Toby at all. He was just a pawn in his attempts to rid himself of the two biggest threats to his stranglehold on the power amongst his bear clan. His law enforcement son and the biggest bear anyone has ever seen.
I think I see a tiny nod from Bodhi, but then all of our attention turns to the crashing noises coming from the forest as something big and angry barrels through the underbrush in a hurry.
Marcus. I pick up his scent just as he breaches the tree line and my breath catches. This is a version of Marcus I’ve never seen before. He’s barely recognisable as my mate. This ferocious bear looks crazed as he thunders through the undergrowth and charges towards us. Rex’s huge wolf is hot on his heels, nipping at him and trying to get his attention.
Bodhi briefly glances at me and sets his mouth with grim determination. He growls at Toby once more in warning. Toby cowers away from him even further, craning his neck back to put as much distance between them as possible. Bodhi pushes him hard against the car with one giant hand against the middle of his chest, pinning him in place, as he turns his body towards the enraged grizzly heading straight for them.
I can’t take my eyes away as Marcus comes to a halt in front of us and rears up onto his hind legs, releasing an agonized bellow that cuts me straight through to my soul. It’s fear, it’s fury, it’s a desire for retribution. I can see the bloodlust in his coal-black eyes.
“No Marcus,” I shout, stepping between Bodhi and Toby and where Marcus stands, towering over them. Rex has shifted and placed himself at my side, and now the three of us are forming a wall, blocking Marcus’s access to this disgrace of a shifter. It turns my stomach to help Toby, but I care more about Marcus’s future than I do about revenge.
“Steel will see to it he never gets to see the light of day again. Don’t do this,” Rex says, trying to convince him to stand down.
“It’s Dad, Marcus. One of his sick plans. Getting one of us, or both of us, to kill this piece of shit. Maybe to take us out of the picture as competition or maybe just to fuck with us,” Bodhi adds.
Marcus’s bear falters for a split second and he blinks, his unwavering stare broken for just long enough for a sliver of human Marcus to break through his bear’s control.
“Marcus, I need you. I… don’t feel well…” I lie and I know it’s a dirty tactic, but it proves to be enough. Marcus’s bear cedes power and lets Marcus shift back to help his mate. I sigh with relief as my Marcus rushes to me and hauls me tight to his chest. He hugs me before holding me out at arm’s length and runs his hands up and down my arms, over my face and stomach, trying to work out where I’m hurt.
“Leila, are you ok? Where are you hurt?” He dips his head and kisses me firmly but tenderly, before going back to his examination of me.
“I’m fine, we’re fine,” I reassure him, gripping him by both arms and trying to shake some sense into him. “But we won’t be fine if you do this. Please, Marcus, we need you.” I press my face to his chest and pull one of his hands up to rest over the slight swell of my belly.
“Please,” I whisper again, the idea of any more stress is just too much. We’ve been through enough.
The sight of my tear-filled eyes seems to break something in him and he lets out an exasperated growl, before surrounding me with his big, strong arms. He presses his nose to my hair and takes a deep breath.
“It’s ok sweetheart, it’s ok. Let’s just go home,” he mumbles, stroking my back and kissing my temple. “Make sure you throw him into the darkest, deepest, fucking pit you can find until Steel gets here to take him away,” Marcus warns Rex, who nods slowly, a dark look on his face. I am his baby sister, and he has always been overly protective of me. I’m sure he won’t make the trip home a pleasant one for Toby.
“Let’s go,” I whisper and Marcus nods, picking me up and allowing me to cling to him, legs wrapped around his waist and arms crushing his neck as the tears come. As I look back over his shoulder at the man who tried to take me from my mate, I glare at him with such hatred. I wish I could somehow poison him with it. And then he smirks. The bastard smirks and I have to swallow my outrage or Marcus will turn around and kill him on the spot. What the hell does he have to smile about?
CHAPTER 53
MARCUS
If Leila hadn’t stopped me, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have torn Toby limb from limb, and my bear would have relished every bloody, horrifying second of it. The red mist had descended. He wanted pain, to hear Toby beg for his life and then end it anyway. Slowly. I had just about been able to contain my rage when he had come after Hayley and her family, and nearly killed me in the process. Even though the time in recovery in the hospital was torture, and my injuries were extremely painful, it had given me a chance to calm down, to gain some perspective.
Toby is a wolf problem. Or was a wolf problem. Right up until he decided to take my mate, and my unborn child, and use them in his sick plot for revenge against the Jones’s. For something that was all his fault to begin with. Given he was hiding out with my father, I wrongly thought that I would be the last person he would mess with. But that was giving far too much credit to good old dad. The news that he was involved somehow shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. Will I ever learn?
He sank to a new low tonight, using a shifter’s instinct to protect their family to goad me into destroying my new life. He’s still bitter that I shunned his destructive legacy, running what he calls a clan, but what I’d call a bunch of misfits and degenerates. They’re strung together with misguided loyalty and a need to belong to something. A desire he takes advantage of despicably. He knows that striving to live a decent, respectable life and having a family of my own would be everything to me. We never had any stability. He would flit in and out of our lives. When he was out, he acted like he had no mate at all, not giving a second thought to how his actions affected us or our mother. He thought it showed weakness to care for someone else or remain loyal to them.
We had no good example to look up to, and I was trying to be that person for my younger brothers and sister, if I could. To show them another way was possible if they wanted it badly enough. And he had nearly managed to ruin all of that. If I had killed Toby, it would have shown them he was right all along. That no matter what I say, when the chips are down, I would resort to violence just like him. A chip off the old block.
Leila didn’t let me destroy our lives though. And neither did Bodhi. Or Rex. That’s real family, and I owe them for that. They were prepared to face my bear’s wrath rather than let me do something I’d regret later when the mist cleared. Believe me, I still want him to pay, but life in a cage is a punishment worse than death for a shifter. It’ll be far more cruel for Toby to be trapped in a small, dark cell for endless days and nights with no access to light or fresh air.
I stroke Leila’s long silky hair and thank my lucky stars that no serious harm came to her. I’m not sure what Toby’s plan really was, but the fact that he didn’t kill her when he had the chance suggests he had something up his sleeve. He told Leila that my father wanted the baby, but raising a child in his image sounds far too much like hard work. I’m not buying it. Get rich quick schemes are normally his forte. It seems more likely he just wanted to make sure we killed Toby and landed ourselves in hot water. But what was Toby’s long game?
“Marcus, you’re grinding your teeth,” Leila sits up from where she was curled up against my side. Her head rests on my chest and she places her palm on my cheek, where I immediately unclench my jaw and try to relax the muscles there.
“Sorry, I just… I just keep thinking about what could have happened today,” I admit, my chest constricting as primal fear floods my system again.
‘Shh, we’re here. Nobody got hurt. Dad has Toby locked up in the holding cells, and Steel will make sure he never comes near us again.”
I nod and try to relax for Leila’s sake, but I don’t think I’ll ever truly be at ease again. Now that I have a mate and a cub on the way, I know what it means to worry. It would destroy me to lose the best thing that’s ever happened to me before we’ve really had the chance to enjoy our life together. I’m almost relieved when I hear a soft rap on the front door, and Leila chuckles when I launch myself out of the bed.
“If you can’t sleep, you can just say so, you know?” she chides gently before rolling back over and tugs my pillow down to hug in my absence. I watch in amusement as she buries her face in it and takes a deep breath before sighing happily. She melts back into the bed, relaxed and content.
“Shut up,” she grumbles when she catches me grinning at her. “Don’t think I didn’t see you sleeping with my blankie in the hospital. I could just steal this and get your face printed on it, then I wouldn’t need you at all. You wouldn’t be so smug then.”
“I love you too,” I reply to her little grumpy rant and press a kiss to her forehead before heading out front. My family wouldn’t knock, mannerless brutes that they are, so even before I take a sniff, I know exactly who it is.
“Ethan,” I say in mock surprise before ushering him out to the porch, where we won’t disturb Leila. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”
He ignores my sarcasm and makes himself at home, as usual, hopping up to sit on the railing, swinging his long legs back and forth underneath him.
“Leila and the baby doing ok?” he asks, tipping his head towards the house where Leila’s breathing has evened out as she slips back into a restful slumber.
“She’s resting, but they’re good,” I answer, because they are. I made Leila get checked out properly earlier on, much to her annoyance. They did an ultrasound, and we got to see our little cub for the first time together. Maybe that was actually the scariest part of the day. Because the little blob has me wrapped around his or her finger already, just like their mother.
“Thank you for not killing him. You should have, I probably would have, but I think Lucia needs to see whatever punishment gets doled out to him to get some closure,” he says solemnly. This isn’t light-hearted Ethan. This Ethan looks like he’s struggling.
“I never thought about Lucia, to be honest, but if it’ll help her, I’m glad it worked out that way.” I take in his hunched shoulders and his lowered head. He’s saying thank you, but he doesn’t mean it.
“You wanted me to kill him, to break the bond,” I state. It’s not a question. I can see it in the way his eyes are ice cold when he looks up to meet my eye, before nodding slowly.
“I did. He won’t accept her rejection, she’s still bonded with him,” he replies and then shakes his head, as if regretting even saying that much. I know they’ve spent a bit of time together over the past couple of weeks as part of the investigation. It seems Ethan has developed a soft spot for the Luna.
“You like her,” I state and he shrugs despondently, pushing himself to his feet.
“It’s not about me. She deserves to have her life back,” he says, not answering the question but saying enough at the same time.
“She will.” I reach over and squeeze him on the shoulder before he gives me a sad little salute and traipses back down the steps to his car. Leila has always said he’s like her fourth brother. It must be tough. Jonathan and Maria are making plans to travel and enjoy their retirement. Cooper and Leila have both found their mates now. Rex is just Rex to me, but Leila insists he’s still not the same as he was. And Nathan, well, I can’t see Ethan whoring around with Nathan, it’s just not his style. No wonder he seems a bit lost.
