BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (118 page)

He was almost at the plateau when a wave of nausea hit him. It was so strong he had to lean against a tree to keep his balance, and he bent over in case he was going to throw up.

He looked up. This was pure magic he was feeling. No one else was at the plateau yet.

The tingling had gotten worse, on his left side especially.

A jolt of panic traveled through him, and a hard tug on the bond and he realized it wasn’t here he was feeling all of this. It wasn’t his magic or his panic. It was Jenna. And she was in trouble.

Bruce turned and ran. He jumped from side to side, dodging the trees. He ignored the path he’d used, taking the straightest way down the mountain. He tripped twice and fell, bruising his shoulder and a branch scraped across his face, but by the time he got to the cabin it would be healed gain.

He crashed through the last shrubs before he reached the cabin, panting, and heaving. The bear inside of him was upset, roaring and clawing to get out. Jenna saw Bruce and came to him. Her eyes were wide and wild and her cheeks were white.

The night had already crept in, the darkness was all around them and it felt like the bright light of the full moon did nothing to illuminate the forest around them.

“I can’t find him anywhere,” she said. “I was packing a bag to leave and he disappeared. You have to find him, Bruce.”

Bruce turned and scanned the trees behind the house.

“He’s not close, I already called and searched the house and everything.” She was getting hysterical. “He’s gone, Bruce.”

“I’ll find him,” Bruce said. “Go wait inside.”

“I want to come with you,” she said, and Bruce knew she wouldn’t be able to just sit and wait. He understood. But she was distracting him.

“You need to calm down, then. I can’t feel him when you’re freaking out.”

She snapped her mouth shut and took one deep breath after the other. Bruce turned his focus inward, finding the bond he had with his son. It was vague, almost like it wasn’t there, but he had it. He started walking, following it like there was a line between him and Saxon.

Another wave of nausea rolled over him, more magic in the air. Something was out there, something not human.

“Do you feel that?” Bruce asked Jenna. She nodded, eyes wide.

“You don’t think someone has him, do you?”

Bruce shook his head to set her at ease, but the magic wasn’t a good sign. Someone with magic was out there, in the same direction as Saxon.

Bruce kept walking with Jenna flanking him. They stepped through the trees. The darkness was so heavy now, so thick Bruce could almost touch it, taste it, breathe it. Saxon was right up ahead now, he could feel it. And whatever else was out there. A lot of magic hung in the air almost like a thin powder. It was unstable magic.

Right there. Saxon had to be right in front of them now. But he wasn’t. Jenna grabbed Bruce’s arm. He could feel her panic riding up his arm and into his chest, making him panicky, too. But he ignored it.

A small bear suddenly appeared from the trees. It was a cub, pitch black, and it rolled over the mulch, then sat up and made small grunting sounds. At first, Bruce thought it was just a cub and the mother bear would appear any moment. But then another wave of magic washed over Bruce and it came from that cub.

Jenna gasped as if the magic was too strong to breathe through. The cub heard it and looked straight at them, and it had the greenest, emerald eyes Bruce had ever seen.

“Saxon?” Bruce asked. And the cub came running to him on all fours.

Chapter 2

Jenna froze, half-hidden behind Bruce and watched the little cub respond to her son’s name. The air all around them felt warm and alive like it was a creature in itself. It rolled over her in waves. When Bruce had asked if she felt it, she’d been relieved she hadn’t been the only one. The night had felt off-balance since two hours before sunset, and she’d thought the full moon had had something to do with it.

Turned out it had everything to do with it. Saxon wasn’t as human as she thought he was. She’d been relieved when she’d had the baby boy and he’d been so normal. He’d always been a little different but considering what their family consisted of it had seemed like it was okay.

Now it all made sense.

“Oh, Bruce,” she said under her breath and a lump rose in her throat. “What are we going to do?”

Bruce turned his head to look at her, and his eyes were dark and haunted, more afraid than she’d ever seen them before, and they’d been through life and death together more than once. It was like he was scared of the cub.

Saxon had reached them and he stood on his back paws, clawing at Bruce’s chest like he wanted to be picked up. Bruce, not Jenna. The little cub wanted a bear to run to, his animal free. His human mother wasn’t important now that he couldn’t relate to who she was.

The pain was worse than anything she’d felt. It shot through her chest, twisted her gut and clawed its way up into her throat, threatening to destroy the control she had on her tears. When she’d found out Bruce, the man she’d married was a bear, it was hard. But she’d dealt with it because she’d loved him. It was easy to accept because she was letting a package deal into her life. It was a choice.

But with Saxon? He’d been a part of her. She’d carried him for nine months, felt him move inside of her. He was literally flesh of her flesh, and for
that
to become an animal ripped her apart. She hadn’t made this choice. And now she’d lost the last thread of normality she had to cling onto.

“I’m going to take him with me to the pack,” Bruce said. He had his hand cupped around Saxon’s nose and his voice was low like he didn’t want to startle the boy, cub, whatever.

“You can’t,” Jenna said, fear lodging itself in her gut, but at the same time she knew that Bruce was right. He had to treat Saxon like the shifter he was now, and the only way he was going to be protected was if Bruce took him to the pack and he became one of them. If he was a part of the Family, they would watch out for him too.

And he needed it. He was only five.

Bruce knew that Jenna agreed, even if she hadn’t said it. He nodded at her as if he was accepting her thoughts, not her words, and then he stepped away from Saxon and brought on the change.

Jenna had thought Saxon would run away, seeing his father change like that. It was gruesome. Seeing a man change to a bear was not just ugly, it was scary. He more than doubled in size, but the fur and the claws and the teeth happened first, and it was paired with sounds that came straight from a horror movie.

But Saxon didn’t run. In fact, he seemed comfortable with it. It looked like he was bathing in the magic that washed around Jenna like water now. Bruce hovered in a monstrous shape that wasn’t human or bear, just before he pushed through and took his true form and an animal.

Saxon made a small grunting noise and then ran to his father. He hadn’t looked at Jenna once, not even a glance. Bruce picked up his head, sniffed the wind, and then turned. Saxon followed like he’d been summoned, and the two bears disappeared between the trees, leaving Jenna alone in the darkness.

She felt the magic drain away with them until the air was empty, almost a vacuum. She started shivering and turned back to the cabin.

She walked through the darkness, stepping around the tree trunks that suddenly felt like they were deliberately getting in her way. The ground underfoot felt unsteady, almost like it was moving, but Jenna kept her arms wrapped around herself, scared that if she let go she wouldn’t have anything to hold onto anymore.

Up in the mountains, on the plateau, her son was going to be inaugurated as part of the Family. He was going to draw power from Tara, who was going to be his alpha now too.

The idea of that woman kindled anger inside of Jenna, anger like she hadn’t felt in a while. She’d been after Bruce first before Jenna had told him how she felt about him. It had been bad enough then, even after Jenna and Bruce had gotten together. It had hurt to find out that Tara was a shifter too, and that technically she had more in common with Bruce than Jenna did.

Now that same woman was going to be Saxon’s alpha. She was going to not just rule over her husband, but her son too. And there wasn’t anything Jenna could do about it, no way she could protect her men from a woman like Tara because she wasn’t a shifter.

She couldn’t do anything now, and her family belonged more to the pack than to her, because she wasn’t a shifter.

If only, she was.

The idea dawned on her slowly. Shifters were created, weren’t they? Obviously, they were born, too. Saxon was proof of that, but Bruce had said that they were made as well. If someone made Jenna a shifter, she could fit in again.

She had no idea how that worked, how shifters were made. Bruce hadn’t gone into detail. It was like he didn’t want to talk about it, and Jenna had assumed it was because his past had been difficult for him. Surely he must have wanted to be normal more than once.

Jenna had a family of shifters, a threats out there. It suddenly struck her that now that Saxon was a bear too, a shifter, the Assassins were a threat to him as well. She thought back to the war where the Assassins had used her, her bond with Bruce, to get to the Family with the intent to kill them all.

They would have succeeded, too, if she hadn’t stepped in. As it was they’d already lost Stephen, and Rosa was just barely hanging on after losing her mate.

Jenna felt that handle of the blade between her hands again, the balanced white of the silver metal that gleamed in the light of the full moon. The sound the blade made slicing through the air, honing in on its target. The blade had slid through the Assassins skin and crunched through the bone, and there had been so much blood.

Jenna felt sick to her stomach. Nausea always accompanied the memories of that night. Six years and she still hadn’t come to the terms with the fact that she’d killed a man.

Killed one to save many, as Tara had told her time and again. But it was still murder. And it had been very precise and very intentional.

Jenna thought of Saxon, with his dark hair and his striking green eyes, his skin like marble. She pictured his hands that left imprints in her skin every time he touched her, the curve of his neck, the dimple in his cheek when he smiled.

And she knew that she would kill like that again, for Saxon. And she would do it without even thinking about it. No matter what it cost her, she would do that for her son, and her husband, again and again.

And that made her part animal already, didn’t it? Yes, she wanted to be a shifter now, too. She wanted to be one of them. She wanted to truly belong.

She wanted the power to be able to take care of her Family, the same way they all took care of her.

The night was going to be long. The cabin felt dark and the moon in the sky, bright as ever, didn’t help. But Jenna was at ease. She knew what she wanted now, and she was going to get it. She just had to talk to Bruce. If she could convince him, everything was going to be perfect.

Jenna crawled into bed, and with that knowledge, she fell asleep.

They came back after sunrise. The sky was painted in shades of pink and orange and the sun peeked over the ridge of mountains, bringing color to the evergreen trees and the purple of the mountainside. Jenna had been up for an hour, watching the world around her change from shades of gray to a spectrum of life.

Bruce came out of the trees first, and next to him was Saxon. Both human. They walked side by side, Bruce’s hand at the back of Saxon’s neck, and the boy was smiling. Jenna searched Bruce’s face, hoping to find a clue about how the night was. Bruce’s eyes were soft and warm and when he made eye contact with Jenna, a smile spread across his face and she felt that same warmth inside of her.

It had gone well. Everything had been fine.

When they reached Jenna Bruce pulled her against his body and kissed her. After breaking the kiss, Jenna kneeled in front of Saxon and wrapped her arms around him. He smelled of forest and sunlight and animal. Still Saxon, and at the same time, he wasn’t anymore.

“I’m just like daddy,” Saxon said and beamed. Jenna glanced up at Bruce, who’d looked so terrified the night before. He didn’t look terrified now. He shrugged like it was something he had accepted because he couldn’t change it, and then smiled.

“Oh baby, I’m so proud of you. You’re such a big boy,” Jenna said to Saxon. He knotted his hands in her hair and kissed her on the cheek.

“I’m special too, now.”

Jenna laughed because if she didn’t she was going to cry.

“You’ve always been special, darling,” she said. “But I want you and daddy to get cleaned up and then have a nap. Okay?”

Saxon nodded and ran into the house. Jenna stood up again.

“What did they say?” she asked.

“Dwayne wasn’t surprised. Apparently he knew.”

“Would have been nice if he gave us a heads up,” Jenna said. “Tara’s okay with him?”

“She is. She didn’t like the idea that he join the pack, but what’s the alternative? He’s too young to find a new pack and she can’t leave him unprotected. The rest were happy about it.”

Jenna nodded. It was pretty much what she’d expected. She turned and Bruce followed her into the house.

“Maybe you can start coming with us again,” Bruce said. Maybe, Jenna thought. Maybe not just as a human.

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Jenna said. She looked over her shoulder to the bathroom where Saxon was brushing his teeth. For a moment, she wondered what he’d eaten, and who’d caught it for him – when he was going to start hunting himself.

Bruce sat down on the couch and leaned back. He looked tired. The full moon always took a lot out of him, but the night had been different than usual.

“He should keep coming with me,” he said. “I know you think he’s young, but he’s a bear now. It will be better for him to learn from someone else.”  The words he didn’t say hung between them. Bruce hadn’t had someone to show him how to take care of himself and his animal, how to stop himself from being a monster.

“That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” Jenna said. “I agree that he needs to go with you now.” 

Bruce opened his mouth to argue and then only registered Jenna’s approval after he took a breath.

“What is it, then?”  he asked.

Jenna took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She was suddenly scared to say it, scared to think about it. Scared to do what she’d been thinking all night. But her reasons were still the same. Saxon was in that bathroom, cleaning up after a night of being a bear. Bruce was one too. Life would be like this from now on.

“I want you to change me,” she said, getting it out in one go.

Bruce frowned at her, searching her face for some kind of explanation. She looked at him, and after a moment, the meaning dawned on him.

“Jenna…” he started and she knew he was going to fight her about it.

“I want to be a shifter, Bruce,” she said again. “I’m the only human. I won’t fit in no matter how hard I try, not with the pack, and now not even with my own Family.”

“You’ve always fit in with us, Jen. You always will.”

Jenna wasn’t sure who Bruce meant when he’d said ‘us’, but the fact was that he was wrong. On both counts. She wouldn’t fit in.

“Everyone’s a shifter now, Bruce,” she said. “Everyone’s fighting a war, living a life, surviving with magic. Everyone except me. And I can’t keep being the odd one out. I don’t want to go to bed for the rest of my life after you and Saxon and the rest of the Family set out to live the other half of your lives. I wanted to be one of you guys. I want to be a part of you.”

“And be a part of a war where you can be killed?” Bruce asked.

“I already am. You said yourself Darren was going to kill me as soon as he’d gotten to you. I’d already killed for the pack, for god’s sake. This is as much my war as it is yours. The least you can do is give me the resources to fight it.”

Bruce leaned forward in his seat. His face was serious, eyes bottomless pits of black and he looked rougher like his bear was rising to the surface. Well, let the damn animal come. Maybe if he changed and he fought her, he could pass on that infectious strand of lycanthropy, or whatever it was as a bear, and she could be one of them, too.

“The answer is no, Jenna,” Bruce said and got up. The conversation was over. He was dismissing her. He walked into the bathroom where Saxon was, ready to help him out.

Jenna felt anger rise up in her throat like a bubble. She swallowed hard, swallowed again, and couldn’t get it down.

Who was Bruce to tell her what she was and wasn’t allowed to do with her life? She could be a shifter if she wanted to, it was her choice, wasn’t it?

She’d left Bruce when she’d had to hide from all people when it had come out that she – a human – knew about the shifters. She’d gone to a city after they’d already been married and lived her own life. What stopped her from doing something like that again, getting what she wanted?