CHAPTER ONE
Nothing could compare to the feel of the open road. His beloved Harley beneath him, the asphalt spinning away under its tires as the miles ticked by. Freedom. That’s what it was. Pure, undiluted, unobstructed freedom.
Traveling when he felt like it, instead of on orders. Going where the wind took him, sleeping under the stars, or in the rain. Hell, he wasn’t picky, and as a grizzly bear shifter, he could sleep just about anywhere, and under almost any conditions, in his fur.
The only limitation was that he had to check in if he planned to stay any length of time in a territory ruled by another Clan, Pack or Tribe. Most were understanding when he explained his business and that he had zero interest in challenging anyone for their territory. Occasionally, he crossed paths with a complete asshole, and then, he had to show them—physically—who was the bigger badass. He did his best to avoid conflict, but if it came to him, he was more than able to deal with it.
Ezra Tate hadn’t been one of Uncle Sam’s best and brightest killers for most of his life to put up with petty crap from lesser bears who just wanted to flex their muscles. He didn’t play power games. Not anymore. His tolerance for bullshit had all but disappeared after the career-ending—nearly life-ending—injury he’d suffered in some foreign hellhole with more sand than common sense.
These days he was his own bear. He’d coasted from place to place, working as a bounty hunter, for the past few years, but just lately, he’d taken up work with a bear he respected named Trevor, and his new mate, a pretty little mermaid named Beth. Ezra had been chasing a bounty up along the coastline of Washington State when he’d run smack into the middle of a situation in which he had to choose sides.
He’d chosen to protect the mermaid with the huge price on her head because she was Trevor’s mate. Trev had always been a straight shooter, and they’d been both comrades and friends in Uncle Sam’s Special Forces. Trev had gone to work for Major Moore, who was running a shifter merc group off his mountaintop in Wyoming, but Ezra had needed space to roam.
Moore was a werewolf, and he needed Pack around him, while Ezra’s bear had craved freedom. He’d figured eventually, after bounty hunting had lost its allure or he ran out of cash—whichever happened first—he’d probably go ask Moore for a job, but he’d never expected to turn in his bounty hunting career to go corporate.
But that’s just what he’d done when it turned out Trevor’s new mate was an heiress in dire need of help cleaning up the mess her stepfather had left behind. Beth’s stepdaddy had been a real shark. Literally. A shark shifter named Jonathan, who had kept Beth’s mother a veritable prisoner on Catalina Island. It had been Jonathan who’d put a really high price on Beth’s head when she was about to come of age and inherit her real father’s holdings.
Holdings that Jonathan had been using for illegal purposes for years. You name the sleazy business, and that shark asshole had been into it. Prostitution, drugs, even human trafficking. In fact, Ezra had helped a werewolf woman who worked for the famous shifter private eye, Collin Hastings, just a few months back.
Margo, the werewolf investigator and her mate, a powerful mage named Gabe, had roared into Lake Tahoe hot on the trail of a real son of a bitch mage who’d caused a whole lot of problems for Margo’s Pack up in Canada. Ezra had been able to help them stop the mage, while at the same time freeing a number of women who’d been kidnapped from all across the United States by some of Jonathan’s former colleagues.
Ezra had taken great satisfaction in helping shut down that particular operation. He’d cleansed the area—and the businesses owned by Beth and Trevor—of Jonathan’s evil taint. He’d also helped take down the mage who had kept five of the women prisoner in a nondescript gray house that had been a hellhole of torture and despair.
The five women were magical in some way. Most had been human with some small gifts of magic that the mage had hoped to siphon away along with their lives. The other woman…
The other woman had been a bear shifter. Theodora. That was her name.
Ezra could still remember the feel of her emaciated body in his arms as he pulled her from the basement prison where she and the other women had been held. She’d been in rough shape. Her bear had been all but dead, drained to the point of possibly no return by the bastard mage called Bolivar. Ezra had witnessed the man being blown to atoms in front of his eyes, but every time he thought about how bad off Theodora was, he wished he could kill the bastard again. Painfully.
Ezra had been unable to let go of her. Even as they rode in a van to a safe house—or rather, a safe mansion—that was also owned by his employers, he’d found it nearly impossible to let her go. When they’d arrived at the house, he’d carried her to the waiting medical people and stayed with her as long as he possibly could. He’d watched over her sleep. He’d even been there when she woke a few times, his inner bear calming what was left of hers.
He was a strong Alpha. He wasn’t sure what sort of bear she’d once been, but if she survived with her spirit animal intact after a period of healing, he hoped she would be a force to be reckoned with. He wasn’t sure, though. It could go either way.
Ezra had always been of the frame of mind that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but he was a guy. A soldier. The only easy day was yesterday had been his motto for a very long time. Theodora… By all accounts, she’d been a girly-girl. The apple of her parents’ eyes.
He’d been able to reunite her with her folks, and he’d been moved by the family reunion that had taken place at the mansion in the hills above Lake Tahoe. Her folks had been flown out special delivery, as it were, under the auspices of the shifter P.I., Collin Hastings. Thea’s folks had hired Collin to find their missing daughter, so he’d been able to contact them right away once they realized she had been held in that basement of horrors.
Ezra’s inner bear had whined when Thea’s parents had loaded her into a van and driven her away. He’d only known her for a few hours—a day or two at most between rescuing her, getting her to the mansion and reuniting her with her parents—but he felt more than a little proprietary where she was concerned. That wasn’t usual for him.
He tried to tell himself it was just the circumstances. Her rescue had been dramatic. Her condition had been criminal. That she was a fellow bear shifter spoke to his inner animal on a very basic level. That she was a lovely woman—badly emaciated but still showing signs of an ethereal beauty that had haunted his dreams ever since—was just icing on the cake.
Ezra liked pretty women. What red-blooded man didn’t? But it was more than just her looks. Thea’s vulnerability made him mad. What had been done to her—the systematic siphoning of her natural magical power—enraged him on a whole new level of anger. He knew it wasn’t a good thing to operate from such an emotional place, but he couldn’t help it. He tried really hard to be objective. To be the disinterested soldier sent to do a job. But it didn’t work. Not with Thea. There was just something about her…
Of course, chances were, their paths would never cross again. Ezra was very tempted to look her up, but he hesitated. He didn’t want to drag up memories of an episode in her life that she was probably still trying to put behind her. It had been a few months now, but he knew that recovery from the kind of magical injuries she had sustained could take years.
And Ezra was kept very busy cleaning up the huge mess of corruption and criminal behavior left behind by Beth’s unlamented stepfather, Jonathan. Ezra was based out of Grizzly Cove, up on the Washington coast, these days, but his work took him all over. He and his faithful Harley had been up and down the West Coast, settling affairs and putting Beth and Trevor’s businesses back to rights. Putting them back to more legal endeavors with honest people at the helms of the various companies.
He’d done a lot of house cleaning, business by business. He’d turned more than one miscreant over to the human authorities for nice fat bounties. He’d kept his cover as a bounty hunter. Only Beth, Trevor, Ezra and a few of the leaders back in Grizzly Cove knew that Ezra was really working for the couple. Beth and Trev didn’t mind if Ezra collected the bounties, as long as Beth’s father’s legacy was put to rights in the process, so it was a win-win, as Beth would say.
If anyone had said Ezra was going to be friends with a mermaid, he would’ve told them to have their heads examined, but sure enough, he counted Beth and Trev among his closest friends now. He’d always been close to Trevor, of course, but Ezra hadn’t really been sure about Beth at first. He’d been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt because she was Trev’s mate, but his tolerance had soon turned to admiration. Beth was a perfect match for Ezra’s old buddy, and he was happy for them.
He just didn’t know if he’d ever find a mate of his own. He’d had a good long, hard look around Grizzly Cove. There were a lot of pretty mermaids living in the cove now that the Alpha bear had offered sanctuary to a mer pod that had been under attack out at sea. Somehow, the bear shifters who had founded the small town were getting along like gangbusters with the usually reclusive mer folk.
While Ezra had seen more than one pretty mermaid he might want to date, none roused his inner bear. None of them had been his mate.
No one had brought his bear to hyper awareness except Theodora. But whether it was a sign that she could be his mate or merely his bear’s outrage at what had been done to her, he wasn’t quite sure. He’d definitely felt something for her, but whether it was the draw of a mate, he didn’t know. Maybe someday… When she was healed from her ordeal… Maybe he’d look her up and see if there was anything that might blossom between them.
Then again, maybe he’d just leave the poor girl alone and not show up as a big, fat reminder of what had to be one of the worst experiences of her life. Yeah, that would probably be kinder.
*
Thea loved the feeling of the wind on her body, against the leather clothing that she wore for protection…and because she liked the way it looked. The way it made her feel. Like nothing could touch her. Nothing could harm her.
She thought she probably looked like a total badass in her leathers, on her new bike. Just like the woman who’d helped free her and so many other women who had been caught up in a human trafficking trap.
Margo. That was the name of the woman who’d made such a big impression on Thea in those few days she’d stayed in the mansion above Lake Tahoe, healing. Margo might be a werewolf, but she was a force to be reckoned with, in her own right. Thea had talked with Margo a few times before she left in the care of her parents, and she’d grown to respect the woman who had found her mate in a very powerful mage who had gone toe to toe with the bastard that had almost killed Thea.
She would be forever in the couple’s debt. They’d put themselves at risk to help her and all those other women who’d been held prisoner. They, along with their team of colleagues, had executed a coordinated strike, Thea had come to learn, on three different hotels that were holding human women captured by the slavery ring and the house of horrors in which Thea and four other women had been held.
All the women in that basement prison had been magical, though Thea had been the only shifter. Maybe that’s why the mage had tortured her first. She wasn’t sure, and she’d probably never know why Bolivar had taken such delight in torturing her inner bear almost to death.
But she was free now. Free and on the mend. Her parents had worried about Thea taking off on her own, but she couldn’t take any more of their coddling. She’d changed on a fundamental level in that hellish basement. She’d been nearly destroyed and had reformed over the past few months. She’d come back stronger, and she wanted to be stronger still. Part of that ongoing recovery process was learning all over again how to trust herself, and this solo journey across several states was a big step forward on that trail.
There had been another who had been part of her rescue and had left a lasting impression. A big man. A bear shifter named Ezra.
He’d been her anchor in those dark hours just after she’d been freed. He’d held her from the moment he’d lifted her out of the cage she’d been kept in for so long she’d lost count of the days, until she passed out. And he’d been there every time she’d awoken. His strong Alpha presence had soothed her inner bear, which had been drained so badly it had almost left her completely. But Ezra had given her inner bear hope to go on, to recover, to get stronger, and more powerful than it had been before her ordeal.
She had so much to thank him for. Only… She wasn’t sure he’d even remember her. Or, if he did, she worried that he’d think of her as that pitiful creature he’d rescued from hell.
She didn’t want to see pity in his eyes if they ever met again. She knew she should just forget him. The likelihood that they would cross paths was low. Chances were, she’d never see him again. And yet… She couldn’t really stop thinking about him.
She wasn’t sure why that was. He was a compelling being, and he’d done her a very great favor in rescuing her. He’d grounded her—and especially her inner bear—at the most critical moment in her life so far. She would be forever grateful to him for that, and for the fierce way he’d overseen her medical treatment while she’d been at that mansion.
Oh, he hadn’t been all that obvious about it, but she’d known he was always there in the background whenever she was left with the medical personnel and healers. He’d be just outside in the hallway, waiting for the all-clear to come back in. He’d probably been neglecting everyone else, just to make sure her bear was all right. He must have sensed how much on the brink she’d been of losing her bear half forever.
She credited Ezra with saving that side of her being. If not for his strong Alpha presence to cling to, her inner bear might just have given up the fight right then and there. She wasn’t sure what that would have meant for her human half. Death, probably. She wasn’t sure a shifter could exist without her beast or vice versa.
So, Ezra had really saved her life twice over. First, by rescuing her from that prison and then by not allowing her to slip into oblivion. His bear had coaxed hers to stay. To heal and to give the medical people a chance to help her. Ezra was the reason she was still alive. And she didn’t even know his last name.