To Redeem A Bear (Lumberjack Bears Book 5) Read online

  Table of Contents

  TO REDEEM A BEAR

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Thank you!

  TO REDEEM A BEAR

  Emilia Hartley

  © Copyright 2018 by Blues Publishing. - All rights reserved.

  The contents of this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Legal Notice:

  This book is copyright protected. This is only for personal use. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Chapter One

  Anais’s blood hummed. Her heart thumped against her breastbone as she glanced at the rearview mirror. Any moment, her prey would walk into her trap.

  She’d never done anything like this before, but she was desperate. She shut her eyes and thought of the dollar signs Richard had promised. It was enough to make all her worries go away. Then, she could move on with a new life. One where her brother would not be able to drop all his problems on her doorstep.

  Maybe then, she wouldn’t have to resort to things like this.

  A flash of light illuminated her eyelids. She snapped back to the present just as a car pulled up behind hers. She drew in a slow breath to steady herself. While murder wasn’t something she ever wanted to do, she didn’t think it would be all that hard. Just this once.

  Behind her car, a figure stepped into the headlights. It was tall and lean, the scent of a male bear on the wind. It stirred something inside her that made her stomach drop and her mouth go dry. Anais didn’t have time to wonder what that meant. She chalked it up to nerves.

  The bear shifter reached her door. She reached for the handle to roll down the window and smiled up at him as the glass lowered. He was beautiful in ways she never expected. The lights illuminated his cheekbones and the freckles that speckled them. His rusty colored hair stuck out in every direction, as though he’d run his hand through it several times. He smelled of man and fresh-cut wood, a scent that brought her back to her childhood.

  She shook herself and remembered her task.

  Eliminate the mate-less bear and go home to collect her money.

  Her grip on the steering wheel tightened. He smiled down at her, and her stomach clenched. The thought that he was too beautiful to kill tumbled through her mind, but she didn’t bother to hold onto it. It was him or her, and she was going to choose herself.

  “Are you having car troubles, miss?” His voice was a soft tenor, the kind she would have liked to heard husky from sleep first thing in the morning.

  She turned on her bear, the foreign creature lurking inside her, and warned it to chill. The beast was on the hunt for a mate, but Anais knew they wouldn’t find a mate if they were dead. The beast pouted, an expression Anais was sure only existed in her imagination. Bears couldn’t pout.

  She flashed a nervous smile, grateful for her days as a high school beauty queen. It taught her a lot about lies and manipulation, it seemed.

  “This light came on,” she said, tapping the flat tire light on her dashboard. “So, I pulled over. I just didn’t know what to do on my own. I didn’t dare get out of the car. What if a hungry mountain lion wandered by?”

  Even though she’d taken the time to douse herself and her car in enough chemical fragrances to drown a person, there was still a chance that he could scent her. Anais, herself, was having difficulty breathing. Her days of using air fresheners and body sprays were long gone now that she was a shifter. She could only hope that she could make him believe she was still human. It meant being unable to wrinkle her nose at the pool of scent she sat in.

  His expression softened from wariness to pity. It would have stung if she was as dumb as she pretended to be. Anais was more than capable of changing her own tire, thanks to her inhuman strength. She couldn’t change the car’s oil on her own yet, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to crawl under a car anyway.

  “If you open your trunk for me, I can change the tire for you,” he offered. “It won’t take more than five minutes. Promise.”

  “You would do that for me?” she feigned gleeful surprise before furrowing her brows. “What does the trunk have to do with it?”

  “Every car should have a jack, tire iron, and a spare in the trunk. This car looks pretty new, so I would expect it to still have all that.” He slapped the roof of the car before heading toward the trunk.

  In the side mirror, she watched Orion. He seemed like a nice guy. She tried to imagine the story Richard Stone had woven for her. According to the previous Den leader, Orion and his friends had kidnapped and brainwashed Callie. Richard asked her to kill Orion because it would break their group structure and help him rescue Callie. She wasn’t sure she bought the story the first time he told it, but the dollars he tacked onto it had sold her.

  She apologized under her breath and pushed her door open.

  ***

  Orion was hot-headed, but he was no fool. He knew that humans used far too many scented products, but this car was swimming in a perfume factory. The scents had crawled up his nose and made it tingle, setting his teeth on edge. The moment he knelt by the woman’s flat tire, he knew it was a ruse. The tear in the rubber was too neat, perhaps cut by a pocket knife. He glanced back at her open window, but she was no longer there.

  His head snapped up, and he scanned the scene for the small woman. He found a form hunched beneath the trunk hood. This had been a trap, after all.

  A small thrill raced through his heart when he realized she’d set a trap for him. It made him feel special, in a very strange way. He waited for her to reveal herself. Would she attack him? Was she here to knock him out and steal his kidneys?

  Orion had heard of those horror stories, but they always began with men overdrinking. Maybe she was a ghost of a jilted woman. Perhaps this was a ghost car and she would kill him because she thought he was her cheating lover.

  His mind was going wild with improbable explanations while he waited for the woman to step away from the car trunk. It occurred to him that he didn’t have to wait for the woman to turn on him. It would be far more fun if he spoiled her game.

  Orion hopped up and joined her beneath the trunk hood. She shrieked with surprise, clutching a hand over her heart, quickly throwing a blanket over whatever she’d had in her hands. This close to her, the overwhelming mix of scents in the car had lessened. Now, she smelled of bear and lilies. It made him look at her differently. She made no mention of his bear, that they
were both shifters, so he said nothing.

  Truthfully, even though she’d set a trap for him, he was intrigued by her. It could have been the way the lights caught the curve of her cheek or how her scent lingered in his nose. It could have been the clever ruse she’d set up or her bitter laugh as she looked up at him with a heated glare.

  “I thought you didn’t want to get out of the car,” he pressed, unable to hide his smirk.

  “I feel safe with you here. You would protect me from hungry lions. Wouldn’t you?” She pouted, a ploy to appeal to his protective senses.

  Unfortunately, it worked. His bear rose to the surface like a whale breaching water. It made a splash as it tossed Orion toward her. He fought to keep his spine straight, clenching his teeth the whole time.

  Orion was used to his bear being out of control. Unlike his friends, he had not been born with the beast. It was a wild beast that had been given to him through violence and suffering. It was as if the beast had adopted some of that violence. It raged over everything, to the point where Orion could not tell where the beast’s rage ended and his own began. So often, the two bled together until Orion knew he needed to stop himself before something bad happened.

  In those moments, he often turned to his friends. At any given time, at least one of them was looking to throw a punch. For a while, it’d been Reid. His beast had been on the edge until Addison showed up and he found someone to protect while putting him in his place. Then, Dominic’s beast had suffered a blow to its ego, rendering it with a need to prove itself through violence.

  Getting Dom to punch him had been easy. Now, they both had mates that kept them in check. All Orion had left were the snacks Aimee sent him and his projects. Food and distraction only worked for so long. There were days when Orion would drop a screw and become so angry, he destroyed the entire project.

  But, this time, his beast rose with no anger. Instead, it brought with it a new sensation.

  Hunger. Desire. Lust.

  Orion almost laughed at his beast. He reached into the trunk for the tire iron, surreptitiously brushing aside the blanket to glimpse what was beneath. It was then that he knew for sure the woman wanted to kill him. There was a gun, dark metal gleaming in the garish light. The way his fingers tingled told him she’d loaded it with silver, too.

  She was clearly dangerous, here with no good intent, and his beast was begging him to bend her over the back of the car. For a moment, when he looked back to her, his eyes dragged over the curve of her body. Her breast hung heavy over her folded arms. Beneath them, her narrow waist widened into ample, toned hips. He could already tell she spent far too much of her time in the gym.

  He guessed assassins had to be in good shape. It was part of the job.

  Just to be safe, he used one hand to lift the cover from the spare tire while using the other to sneak the gun out of the trunk. He tucked it into his belt, careful to cover it with his shirt. A part of him wondered what else she would pull out of her arsenal.

  It tickled him to think of the ways she might try to hurt him, of the ways he would foil her plans again. Soon enough, he would replace the tire and send her on her way. It wasn’t the worst way to spend his night, though he was sure the others would call him crazy for thinking so.

  “You should watch me change the tire. Next time this happens, you’ll be able to do it on your own.” He didn’t add that she should have the strength to do it.

  He knew she was a bear shifter, just like him, but he let her keep her secret.

  He knelt by the cut tire and began to loosen the lug nuts while the woman stood behind him. His beast kept its attention on her, straining to hear any sudden movements. It was clear she knew what he was, too. That explained the silver in the gun. Unless she had a length of silver wire in her pocket and gloves handy, she wasn’t going to be able to hurt him.

  “What brings you out here in the middle of the night?” Orion asked, even though he already knew the truth.

  “I was going to meet a girlfriend at a resort, but I seem to have lost my way.” She didn’t even trip over her words. They were exact and natural, as though she’d practiced them.

  He nodded, all the lug nuts gathered in one hand. What he really wanted to ask was if she was hunting for any bear shifter or just him. This was the only road between the nearby town and the work site. The chance of catching him here, right after the group had moved, was decently high.

  But she could have just as easily caught any of the other bears. What would Morgan and Callie have thought of this would-be assassin on the side of the road? She would be outnumbered if she planned on hunting them.

  Yet, fate had dropped him into her hands. Either it was his time to go, or she was meant for some larger part of his life. He’d given up on the thought of getting a mate. His beast was too far gone to be saved by the love of a woman. It was a ticking time bomb. While the beast behaved itself for now, he didn’t know what would set him off.

  If he dropped the lug nuts, if the tire wouldn’t come off the axle, if anything went wrong it could anger his beast and send him into a fit of rage. He’d done well to keep most of the incidents to himself. The others hadn’t yet seen him at his worst. He didn’t want the would-be assassin to see it, either.

  “What should I call you?” he asked as he yanked the tire free. It bounced before falling to the ground, useless.

  “Ah, well,” she stumbled over her words. He’d finally caught her at something she wasn’t prepared for. “Call me Anais.”

  “That’s a fancy name. My parents thought I deserved a fancy name, too. They named me after a constellation. Maybe they thought I’d be a star. Turns out they got a messed-up lumberjack instead.” Orion finished his job, stood, and brushed off his hands. “We can’t all get what we want.” He flashed her a wink.

  Even in the lights of his car, he could see the pink that bloomed over her cheeks. On the outside, it might seem like he was openly flirting. Which, in a way, he was. Never before had a woman try to kill him, and he was looking forward to her next clever stunt.

  “Looks like your tire is finished. You can go on and meet with your friend. I’m sure she’s worried sick about you.”

  If there even was a friend, he thought.

  Anais bit her lip. She looked up and down the road nervously before checking her phone. It was an act, but a good one. Orion waited for her next excuse and what she wanted along with it, curious.

  They say curiosity killed the cat, but did that sentiment extend to bears? Perhaps he should go by the hands of a beautiful woman. He knew his time was slipping away. The clock was ticking down. There would come a day when he would become beyond saving. His beast’s fits of anger would make him a danger to everyone around him.

  “I’m not sure how to get there,” Anais explained. “I had GPS on my phone, but I’ve lost signal.” The tears started to flow. She kept looking up and down the road, wringing her hands and moving from foot to foot.

  Orion waited for the full-blown breakdown, to see if she would go that far, but her tears struck a chord in him. The longer they went on, the more he couldn’t stand them. His heart clenched. He stepped forward and grasped her hands in his.

  “If you need, you can stay with me for the night.” He could barely believe the words that came out of his mouth.

  She was trying to kill him and still, he invited her into his home. How was he supposed to sleep with her in the house? She would find the power tools and drill a hole through his skull. Well, he didn’t think she would go for something so messy and violent, but the sentiment was the same. Anais meant him no good will, but he would do anything to stop her crying.

  He couldn’t stand it.

  She sniffled and looked up at him with wide eyes. The invisible hand clenched around his heart again. His bear said one thing.

  Mine.

  It was then that Orion knew he’d lost his mind. There was no way his beast would claim such a dangerous woman unless it wanted to die. They were asking for trouble,
both he and his beast.

  Chapter Two

  The cabin was full of boxes. Richard had told her the group recently moved. They were loggers, roving from site to site to clear the land for construction projects. She guessed that was why Orion’s biceps were as big as they were. Unlike the lazy bears at the Den, Orion used his superhuman strength every day.

  He tossed his keys onto the counter and glanced at her. There was a question in that look, but also a strange glint. She didn’t know how to read it. She didn’t even want to read into it. This man was supposed to die by her hands. To get too close to him would be to feel something after he died.

  Anais didn’t want that kind of trouble.

  But she also couldn’t ignore how good-looking Orion was. There was an awkward grace about him. It was in the way he watched her from beneath his eyelashes with that smirk still curling over his lips. His shirt hugged his shoulders, showcasing the sharp lines of his muscles.

  He reminded her of the football quarterbacks in high school. The only difference was the spark of intelligence in his eyes. She wondered if he’d been an athlete before the change gave him an uncontrollable beast.

  Not that she’d seen evidence of this beast yet. Orion seemed even-headed to her. It was possible that Richard had lied to her, but it didn’t change the fact that she needed the money. The zeroes on the end of the number Richard offered would clear the debt her human brother had accrued on his own.

  The idiot had approached loan sharks to pay his gambling debts, and now they were searching for that plus interest. Unfortunately for Anais, her brother had used her as a contact. He hadn’t understood what that meant when he offered her information. She wasn’t so much a contact as she was collateral.

  The loan sharks reached out to her. Their threats had promised pain and a very slow death if she couldn’t help her brother get the money he needed. She might have the beast living beneath her skin now, but even normal bullets could kill a bear shifter if aimed correctly. Plus, she couldn’t give away the existence of shifters to save her own life.