AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
“Are we sure this is the best place to start searching?” Milo asked for at least the hundredth time.
“It’s the closest area with natural sites capable of hiding captives right under our noses,” Brock replied. “We work our way out from here.”
Fletch closed his eyes, leaning his head against the headrest behind him while he let the thrum of the tires on the road and the light chatter of the others wash over him. He was pure tension. Muscles flexed beneath his skin as his bear fought for release.Not yetwas a mantra in his head as he fought to hold back the beast ready to attack and slay. He felt the hum of anticipation in the air as if a scent on the Wyoming wind were calling to them or at least to him. It was time to launch an attack on their enemy. An enemy who had attacked, killed, and taken hostages. Female bear hostages. For close to six fucking years. Hiding them right in the Holloways’ backyard. What hell had the women lived through? How many had survived?
“I saw another group come in last night,” Milo moved to a different topic.
A lot of the members of the Holloway den had traveled in the wake of the attacks. They’d all been devastated. He and his brother, Milo, had briefly gone back to Alaska after the death of their previous alpha, Mathew Holloway. After the vicious attacks by their greatest enemy, a purist society known simply as hunters. The group made it their life’s work to hunt down and murder every shifter they could. Men, woman, young, old. It didn’t matter. For them, the only good shifter was a dead one.
The attacks had come on the heels of the alpha’s death. Laramie Holloway had sent out all of the enforcers, as well as every Holloway brother, to check on survivors. Laramie, the new alpha, had also gone. So much loss and devastation, almost all of the females of their den believed slain, but they hadn’t learned the true extent of the horror of those days until five years later when a lone female bear shifter from the Holloway pack had arrived on Holloway land, asking for protection and revealing there had been female survivors. Females who’d been hidden, their lives kept secret from their new alpha.
“It’s nice to see everyone returning,” Milo interjected into the silence.
Fletch’s brother couldn’t seem to handle the lack of conversation. Or maybe, it was the tension that filled the vehicle. Milo was the type of person who did his best to put people at ease, to make them laugh, to offer them comfort even if it was only with a few kind words. It still amazed Fletch that his brother maintained his optimism after all they’d been through.
What a fucking mess. Fletch had hung around for a bit to try to help the men he and Milo had come to see as brothers, but in the end, he and Milo had left, seeking to fill the restlessness inside them. Alaska had been a trip down memory lane since there was no longer anything there for them. Their mother was long gone, killed off in a brutal attack no one had anticipated. They’d avenged her death years ago, sneaking off from the Holloway’s to torture and kill the man responsible. Vengeance had brought no peace, though. There was no justification for Vivian Calderson’s death. It had been a desperate act that had destroyed the last Alaskan den. He and Milo were the only remaining Polar bear shifters as far as he knew. All because a male shifter couldn’t handle the den being led by a woman.
Death, death, and more death. A shifter’s life was full of it. The threat, the fear, the horror of seeing those you knew and loved killed or worse, disappearing with no idea what had happened to them. Even now two men he’d called friends were unaccounted for. Rocco, whose brother had let them know he’d disappeared after the attacks, and Jasper who none of them could reach. Both had been enforcers under the old alpha. Both should have arrived when Laramie sent out the calls for them all to return.
“You okay?” Milo whispered, pulling Fletch out of his macabre thoughts of the past.
“I’m good. You?” he whispered back, though he knew their conversation was far from private.
Shifters. They had excellent hearing, and the SUV was filled with them as they made their way to one of the spots identified as a possible hunter torture camp. So much had happened in the last few weeks. Discovering Lawrence Walker, one of the elders in the Holloway den had been responsible for the attacks. Walker had worked with their biggest enemy to plan attacks that left the den thinking all their females had been killed, a fate that would have seen the pack die out. The only way for a male bear shifter to pass on his DNA was with a female bear shifter.
How a shifter could work with a man like Dr. Victor Talbot made no sense to Fletch. The doctor literally did horrific experiments on shifters. Cutting off limbs and other body parts to see what a shifter might be able to regrow. Vivisecting them so he could poke and prod at their insides to see how they handled pain and under what conditions their organs would continue functioning. Talbot was dead now. Killed by one of the shifters he’d played God with. Before he died, he’d managed to admit how close to Holloway land the bear shifters he’d taken were , but they were still trying to narrow down possible locations. Time wasn’t on their side.
“Yeah,” Milo muttered, but he moved restlessly in his seat as if he were feeling confined inside the moving vehicle.
“We’re almost there,” Caleb, Rocco’s younger brother, called out from the front passenger seat.
“We wait until all vehicles arrive before we set out,” Brock Holloway ordered. “We do this right. One group to take care of the hunters. One group to focus on quickly getting out anyone being held. Final group outside to assess and field triage until we can get them home.”
“How many are with us?” Fletch asked.
“As many as we could spare with three pregnant mates at home. Laramie will guard them and Baby Bear with his life,” Brock swore, which was true.
One of the pregnant mates was Laramie’s, Emersyn Langston, the only female Kodiak alive as far as they knew. The other two were two of the surviving Blackstone sisters. One was mated to Koby Holloway. The other to the only human enforcer among them, Holt Reynolds, a battle-trained solider who’d been a part of the pride of cat shifters in Oklahoma before meeting his mate and joining the Holloway den. Baby Bear was the daughter of Malachi Blackstone, a precocious little girl who’d had Emersyn as her surrogate mother since hers had died during her birth. Another long story of betrayal and attacks by hunters who had left Em’s father, alpha of another bear den in Washington state, dead, along with a good number of the strongest males in the pack. None of the attacks made sense. Taking out the females in one den then the males in the other? What the hell had Walker been thinking?
“How close are we?” Milo asked, and Fletch knew his brother was dealing with the same rage he was. The same rage they all were. Women were to be protected, cherished. Fletch and the others had no idea what they might be walking into, but they knew how hunters operated. The thought of any of the missing women from their den living under the heavy hand of hunters had every member of the Holloway den fighting to maintain control.
“There’s an entrance to the national forest about twenty miles ahead. We’ll pull in there,” Brock answered.
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll shift as soon as we get there and scout the area to see what my senses can pick up. There are too many possible sites. We need paws on the ground immediately to give us a better sense of what direction to take.” Fletch cracked his neck from side to side, trying to ease some of the tension. “We can’t spread ourselves any thinner than we’ll already be.”
“I’ll go with you,” Milo stated firmly, and Fletch nodded. “We work well together. A short reconnaissance then we’ll be back with better intel.”
“Sounds good,” Brock agreed. “We set a time limit. If you’re not back, you’ll have the whole damn team on your asses.”
“Give us twenty minutes,” Fletch offered. “We’ll be quick but thorough. Caleb, hand me that map with the different locations on it.”
“We’ll find them,” Caleb swore as he handed it back.
Sometimes, Caleb reminded Fletch of Rocco, Caleb’s older brother. It made Fletch’s chest ache with worry. Where was Rocco? He refused to believe hunters had been able to take out his friend. Not Rocco. The man was one of the fiercest fighters Fletch had ever seen, whether in human or bear form. Hell, Rocco was one of the rare big browns that rivaled even a Kodiak in size and ferocity.
They drove in silence the rest of the way. Even with his eyes closed, Fletch felt his brother’s gaze on him. He knew Milo was waiting on a decision, but he’d ignored Milo’s subtle and less than subtle hints to talk about what Fletch was planning. He’d mentioned returning to Alaska permanently when they’d been there, before Laramie’s call to return to the Holloway den. His brother had been dead set against it, but Fletch knew if he decided to go, Milo would be at his side.
