An Alpha's Lightning (Water Bear Shifters 2)

An Alpha’s Lightning

Water Bear Shifters, Book 2

By Sloane Meyers

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

More Books by Sloane Meyers

Thank You For Reading!

Author’s Note

About the Author

Jade Fuller put her small, white car into park and jumped out, already running before her feet hit the ground. Her adrenaline ran high as she headed for the spot on the beach where a small crowd had gathered. She knew that’s where she would find the animal she had come here to rescue: a baby gray whale separated from its mother. The whale was beached on this stretch of sand just north of San Diego.

Jade spent her days rescuing and rehabilitating sea mammals, but most of the time those rescues involved smaller animals, such as sea lions or seals. A whale rescue was something special. Jade had only been involved in one before, five years ago. Back then, she had been a mere apprentice at the San Diego Marine Mammal Rescue Center. She had spent the entire rescue following along wide-eyed behind the director as he confidently barked out instructions.

During today’s rescue, however, she was in charge. She would be the one giving directions, and the lifeguards and other volunteers on the scene would be listening to her. Jade slowed her run as she drew closer to the crowd. Several lifeguards, a few police officers, and a handful of beachgoers had surrounded the whale, trying to keep it stable as the incoming tide crashed against it. Jade, already wearing a wetsuit, ran up to the group and began assessing the situation. One of the lifeguards explained that they had tried to push the whale further out to sea, but after a few minutes it had washed up on the beach again.

Jade took a closer look. The baby whale looked like it was only a few days old. It had somehow been separated from its mother, and was understandably disoriented and upset. The stress of being tossed back and forth on the sand by the surf wasn’t helping things, and Jade feared that sand was getting into the whale’s blowhole.

“We have to get him back out to the ocean and search for his mother. If we can find the pod of whales he was separated from, we can get some boats and guide him back to them,” Jade said. “But we could really use some air surveillance. Finding the whales using just boats will take a lot longer.”

“I could call the Coast Guard,” one of the police officers suggested. “We have a pretty good working relationship with them, and they might have a helicopter pilot free who could help out.”

“That would be awesome,” Jade said. “Can you give them a call and beg them to send someone out?”

“Will do,” the police officer said, and started heading off across the beach. Jade started giving directions to the ragtag group of volunteers, organizing them for the big job of pushing the baby whale back out to sea. Although the whale was only days old, it already weighed fifteen hundred pounds, so getting it back into the ocean again would require some serious strength. Jade looked around gratefully at the volunteers on the scene. Most of them looked strong and capable, and, with a strong joint effort, they could get the whale back into the ocean.

Once the baby whale was returned to the water, the real work would begin. Finding the whale’s mother wasn’t going to be easy. On her drive to the beach, Jade had radioed for one of her colleagues to send a boat. The lifeguards were offering the use of their rescue boats as well. The group would be able to follow the baby whale easily enough, but if they couldn’t find his pod, he would be in serious trouble.

As Jade positioned herself next to the whale to assist in pushing it back out to sea, she sent up a silent prayer that the Coast Guard would be willing to spare a helicopter pilot. Air surveillance would give this little whale his best chance of being reunited with his family.

* * *

Ace Grimes flipped mindlessly through the channels on the large TV in the common room of the Coast Guard’s San Diego air station. He only had two hours left on his on-call shift, and odds were pretty good that nothing exciting was going to happen in those last two hours. This whole three day shift had been pretty boring. He and his search and rescue crew had done a few training sessions, but that was nowhere near as exciting as the real thing. Ace served as the pilot for the helicopter that the crew used to conduct rescue missions for people stranded out in the open ocean. His fellow team members—Ben, Lance, and Brett—were his best friends, and he loved working with them. Which was fortunate, since Ace spent the majority of his time working.

Ace flipped the channel once more, landing on a cooking show just before Lance burst into the room.

“Hey! There you are. Do you want to have some fun?” Lance asked, his blue-gray eyes dancing.

Ace raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “I’m always up for some fun. But I’m also wary of the mischievous look in your eyes right now.”

“I just convinced the Lieutenant Commander to let us go out on a whale rescue mission.”

Ace laughed out loud. “A whale rescue? I know our helicopter is pretty badass, but I don’t think we can airlift a whale in the rescue basket.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “We’re obviously not going to try to lift the whale. The San Diego P.D. just called. They’re working with a marine mammal rescue group to try to get a beached baby whale back to its mother, and they need air surveillance to help find the pod of whales that the baby belongs to. The baby will die if they can’t find his mom, so it’s pretty urgent.”

Ace sat up straighter. “I would love to help out. It sounds like the most excitement I’ve had all week, and I hate to see animals suffer. The Lieutenant Commander actually approved this?”

“Yeah, I guess he’s in a good mood today or something. Let’s get going and get out of here before he changes his mind. Ben’s already prepping the helicopter.”

Ace jumped up and tossed the remote aside. “Alright, then. Let’s go save a baby whale.”

Thirty minutes later, the four men were lifting off from the air station in the helicopter they usually used to save humans. Ace sat in the pilot’s seat, and Ben sat next to him in the copilot’s seat. Brett and Lance, who normally handled the work of pulling survivors from the water, sat in the back to help watch for any signs that might indicate the baby whale’s missing pod was nearby. The February morning was slightly foggy, with gray skies and feisty winds. For Ace, however, who was one of the most experienced pilots around, the conditions were still easy flying. He expertly guided his bird over the ocean waves, and soon spotted the small group of boats that were herding the baby whale out toward sea and away from the shore. He made radio contact with the lead boat, and a woman with a strong, authoritative voice answered, directing him to search the surrounding area for signs of whales. She said to keep an eye out for the waterspouts that resulted when the whales came up to breathe, and told him to search an area further out to sea than where the boats were. She said it was easier to see whales from the boats, but that the boats were more limited than the helicopter in the amount of space they could cover.

“I’m Jade, by the way. Sorry for the lack of introduction. I’m a little preoccupied with everything going on right now.”

“No worries. I’m happy to help. And I’m Ace.”

“Ace? Like Ace Ventura?” Jade asked over the radio, then chuckled.

Ace rolled his eyes. “Never heard that one before,” he said sarcastically.

“Sorry, it’s the first thing that popped into my head,” Jade said. “Let me know if you see anything that might be a whale, and I’ll try to stay away from the bad jokes. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem, we’re on it,” Ace said.

For the next two hours, Ace and his crew flew a pattern back and forth across the ocean waves, straining to see any signs of whales. The work was tedious, and the crew was now past the time when their three day work shift should have ended, but no one complained. They all hated to see an animal suffering. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that each of the men was a panda shifter, hiding an animal within himself. Or perhaps their protective alpha instincts spurred them on, giving them energy to help a fellow creature in pain. Whatever the reason, the men were committed to the search.

Several hours later, though, the crew still hadn’t found the whales. Daylight would be fading soon, and Ace had started to worry that the search would have to be called off for the night. But just before he broached the subject with the crew, Lance shouted out in excitement.

“I see a waterspout, thirty degrees west. And there’s another! We might have found them!”

Ace swung the helicopter around and flew over for a closer look. The crew could count three whales, and they looked like gray whales, from the description Jade had given them.

Ace excitedly got back on the radio. “Jade? I think we found that baby’s mama.”

* * *

Jade couldn’t keep the tears of happiness stinging at her eyelids from spilling over as the crew of volunteers on her boat erupted into cheers. After an hour of using boats to carefully herd the baby whale, the little guy was finally back with his mother. Jade had nicknamed him Ventura in honor of the Coast Guard pilot assisting with the rescue effort, and the volunteers had adopted the nickname.

“Swim free, Ventura,” one of the lifeguards called out as they watched the whales begin to swim north. The sun was shining its last rays across the water in a brilliant show of orange and pink, and Jade watched for several minutes as the group of three adult whales and one baby continued to swim away. Finally, Jade nodded to her crew.

“Alright, everyone. Our work here is done. Let’s head back to shore.”

Jade could feel the exhaustion in her bones by this point, so she handed the steering wheel of the boat over to one of the volunteers. She went to sit near the rear of the boat, where she could watch the waves that the motor stirred up behind it as they headed back toward the beach. Days like these felt so rewarding. The happy endings reminded her of why she did what she did. Sometimes, in the midst of all the sad stories of the animals that didn’t make it, or the warnings of how pollution and human apathy was ruining the oceans, it was easy to feel discouraged. But when something did go well, Jade felt renewed strength to continue on with her work. She had loved seeing so many people coming together today, with the common goal of saving that beautiful, baby whale. The energy behind the joint effort had been contagious, and heartwarming to see.

Jade closed her eyes for a moment and relished the feeling of the cool water droplets hitting her face as the boat picked up speed and continued to stir up the water. She was especially impressed that the Coast Guard had agreed to send out a helicopter. Living so close to the ocean in San Diego, she often heard stories about how the Coast Guard had rescued a wayward boater, or stopped an attempted drug smuggling operation. Now, the Coasties here could add rescuing a whale to that list of heroic feats.

Jade opened her eyes and watched the waves as they grew darker in the fading light of dusk. She should send the Coast Guard crew some sort of thank you note. The whale rescue team probably wouldn’t have found the whale pod without air surveillance, so the helicopter crew had literally saved the day. Jade smiled as she remembered the pilot’s name. Ace. Then she giggled. A pilot named Ace was a bit of a cliché, but the unusual name would hopefully make him easy to find. She wanted to make sure she gave him and his men the recognition they deserved.

After all, they had helped with something great. It’s not every day you can go home and say you saved a whale, all in a day’s work.