Lured by the Bear (The Alaska Shifters Book 1) Read online

  Copyright © 2016 Ashlee Sinn

  http://www.ashleesinn.com

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences only. All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author. If you’ve illegally downloaded this book for free, shame on you. Authors work too hard for you to be stealing a $0.99 book.

  Cover Design by Ashlee Sinn

  LURED BY the Bear

  Derrick Ward has always wanted a mate. When all of his friends settle down and start a family, he wonders if it will ever happen for him. Brandt, his clan leader, has some females in mind, but Derrick refuses to accept a forced mating. And now the time has come for the shifters to reveal themselves. Derrick fears that once the world knows he’s a grizzly, he’ll never be able to find that right person to fill his den.

  Julia Housten has been in love with Derrick for years. Still recovering from the negative reputation her father left behind by his failed challenge for clan leader, she worries that Derrick will never accept her as a potential mate. So when she has an opportunity to do something good for the clan, she can hardly contain herself when she learns she’ll be working with Derrick.

  The International Shifter Coalition is moving forward with the big reveal while Julia and Derrick discover just how perfect they are together. But with the reveal comes a danger they hadn’t expected. A new threat that could tear them apart looms nearby, and it will take the whole clan to protect everything, and everyone, they love.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Obeying the Bear

  Releasing the Bear

  Catching the Bear

  The Vampire Huntress Series

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  Other Books by ASHLEE SINN

  About Ashlee Sinn

  I sipped my coffee and waited. Watching Bo Callaghan play house was something I would have bet my life savings I’d never see. But sure enough, just days after meeting McKenzie, he’d set his player ways aside, bought a house, and proposed. And one month later, all of her stuff had arrived from New York. So now I sat on my front porch observing the convenient way Bo was leaving all of the heavy items in the front lawn, knowing he’d be asking for help soon.

  The Callaghan brothers have always been my family. Since we were kids, the four of us were inseparable. I practically lived in their family’s house as a child, and as an adult I helped Brandt run the clan. So the intense feeling of jealousy was accompanied by a little bit of guilt. Sure, I was happy for all three of them for finding their mates. Brandt and Emma were expecting twins, Brennan now lived with Scarlett and her pack, and Bo was in nesting heaven—everyone was so fucking happy.

  Me on the other hand, well I’d always thought I’d be the first to settle down. My bear had wanted a mate and a simple life from the moment I’d reached puberty. I once thought I had that too, but my bear had never accepted her, and when we went our separate ways for college, we never spoke again. There hasn’t been anyone since—at least not in this small town where men outnumbered women, and I never had a chance to meet anyone new.

  So now here I sat, on my lonely porch, drinking my morning coffee, and stewing over the fact that my friend was getting married tomorrow.

  My phone chirped with a message. I knew who it was before even looking. Julia Housten had her own ringtone. We’d been working together the last several weeks in preparation for the International Shifter Coalition’s plan for the big reveal to the humans. She’d been added to the group by Major Patel, the white tiger responsible for the North American shifters, who was still in town and still crashing at Brennan’s cabin to the north. He’d said Julia, a nineteen-year-old marketing major and a member of the Callaghan clan, would be perfect to assist with the social media publicity plan. She was young. She was hip, and yes he’d actually used the word ‘hip,’ and she would get valuable real-life experience being a part of the team.

  I couldn’t totally disagree with him. Julia had been helpful so far, even if our time together had been limited. I’d know Julia from the day she was born. Her father had always resented the clan leadership falling into the hands of the Callaghan’s, and it all came to a head several months ago when he challenged Brandt and lost. Julia was never a part of her father’s manipulation to cause friction in the clan. But she was still a Housten, and the Housten name didn’t have a great reputation in our community.

  I read her text and smiled, not quite sure why. She wanted to see if we could meet tomorrow night to get the website set up. Her idea to prepare a site highlighting all of the different types of shifters in Alaska had been met with some reserve. Not all of us wanted to be outed. In fact, a few shifters would be chosen as the representatives, but the rest of us planned on going undetected for as long as possible. I knew for a fact that the fishing businesses the Callaghan’s owned and operated as a section of the clan’s income were too fragile to be a part of the reveal. If their shareholders found out that a bunch of grizzlies ran the place, they might take their money elsewhere.

  Scarlett, the Tik’a pack enforcer and the one really leading everything, had also expressed concern over her businesses. Not quite sure how the general public would react, she’d been hesitant to agree to anything other than stating that wolf shifters were, in fact, a thing.

  So Julia’s website had been redesigned several times to simply supply information about shifters without identifying any one person in particular. I needed to write the code but had been waiting until there were no more changes. And with the reveal coming up sometime in the near future, it looked like we were ready to move forward.

  I was typing back my response and giving her a time when a football hit me in the side of the head. Too busy thinking about Julia and the website, I hadn’t even heard Bo walk across the street and enter my territory. The pigskin slammed into me, then bounced off the ground in the exact spot my coffee splashed out when I twitched. I glared up at my friend and tucked the phone into my pocket. “Seriously?” I asked.

  Bo took the porch stairs two at a time and landed on the wood deck beside me. “You didn’t hear me?” he asked, picking up the football and flipping it around in his hands. He always wore jeans and a baseball cap. A shirt was optional, and today was no different.

  “Do you ever cover yourself?” I asked.

  “Why would I cover this body?” he replied as though I should know the answer.

  Shaking my head, I set my coffee mug down and crossed my arms. “Can I help you?”

  Bo tucked the football under his elbow and raised his brow. “Well, yes you can.”

  When he didn’t say anything for a while, I finally gave in. “With what?”

  “Geez, I thought you would never ask,” he said. “Feel like helping me move some furniture?”

  I was already making my way inside to grab my shoes. Bo followed me in but stopped in the doorway and sucked in a deep breath. “Is that cinnamon?” he asked.

  “Yes.”<
br />
  “Why does your house smell like cinnamon?”

  I didn’t answer, knowing what kind of shit he would give me if he figured it out. But when Bo lifted a bowl off the fireplace mantle and stuck his nose against it, I knew I was busted.

  “Is this potpourri?”

  I shrugged and finished tying my shoe.

  “Oh, my god. You are Martha Stewart,” Bo teased, looking for more things to make fun of me for. “I mean, Jesus, you have perfectly matched log furniture with accent pillows, artwork that looks like it came out of a magazine, and curtains. What single man has curtains in his house?”

  “I like a nice home.”

  Bo nearly fell on the ground from laughing so hard. This was a thing of ours—he’d make fun of me for putting effort into my home, and I’d pick on him for sleeping with anything with a hole. It had worked for us, although now things were changing.

  “Has Julia seen it yet?” Bo asked with a wink.

  “No,” I said. “And stop bringing her up. We’ve already had this conversation a thousand times.”

  “You mean the one where you claim that she’s too young for you but I know you secretly want her?”

  “No,” I growled. “The one where I remind you that she’s off limits.”

  “Why would she be off limits?” he asked, picking up a poker next to the fireplace and swinging it through the air like a sword. Bo was only two years younger than me, but sometimes I felt like the ancient one.

  “You know why.”

  Bo sighed. “Because of her stupid dad? He’s dead. End of story.”

  I grabbed the iron out of his hand and hung it back up. “Because it would be weird. For both of us,” I added.

  “You know, Brandt’s looking to mate Elizabeth and Tammy. Should I tell him you’re interested?”

  The idea that our alpha would force either of those women into a mating sounded absurd, let alone the thought that I would want them. Hell, they’d been in our clan a while…if it were going to happen, it already would have. “You’re an asshole.”

  “So they say,” Bo said with a chuckle. “You should still let Julia see what you have here. I bet she’d fall into your bed so fast—”

  He shut up the second I threw the football he’d set down back at his head. “Enough of this.”

  Bo held up his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine. No more talk about you mating with Julia. Got it.”

  I grumbled as we walked out of my house. Bo just loved to egg everyone on. No matter what the topic, he was always that person who would push every last button until he got the response he was looking for. Even as a mated and soon-to-be-married man, Bo acted like the youngest child.

  “Are you ready for tomorrow?” I asked Bo as we crossed the quiet road that looped around this little development. There were only ten houses in here, giving each of us three acres surrounded by dense forest. It kept the road traffic very light and allowed some semblance of privacy.

  “All I have to do is show up,” Bo said with a shrug. “Kenzie’s made all of the arrangements.”

  He looked around his front yard, now littered with oak furniture that could probably fill two houses. “Let’s start with the bedroom,” he said.

  We grabbed an oversized dresser and carried it toward the front door. Even with our shifter strength, that damn thing was heavy. It took several tries to maneuver it through the entrance and around the corner into the open living room. Kenzie was in there, unpacking boxes and chatting away on her phone. She gave me a small wave as we passed and mouthed the words “Thank you”. With a nod, I acknowledged her and continued helping Bo get the dresser into the bedroom at the end of the short hallway.

  “Where do you want it?” I grunted.

  “Let’s put it against this wall,” he said, starting to lower it.

  “No, under the windows would be better.”

  He laughed and lifted his side again. “Fine, Mr. Stewart. Wherever you say.”

  As I pushed my corner in so that it was even, I stepped back and looked out their window. “Nice view.”

  “Isn’t it the same as yours?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” I peeked into their master bathroom, similar in style to mine, and then took in the rest of the room. “So how’s Kenzie like living in the woods?”

  Bo leaned against the wall, took off his hat, and rubbed his hands through his hair. “I think she’s getting used to it. I leave the radio on at night so she can sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “She says it’s too quiet here. She can’t rest.”

  “Seriously?”

  His jaw twitched. “She is from New York City and it is very noisy there.” Standing, he stretched and then started for the door. “She’s doing good, though. She loves the view of the trees.”

  I followed him outside for round two, and by the time we had the couches and china cabinet inside, we’d finished with all of the big stuff. Bo moved several boxes off the kitchen table so we could sit. Kenzie, with her phone still glued to her ear, set out a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses.

  “No,” she said to the person on the other end. “I said star gazers and that’s what I paid for…well I don’t care…you promised that it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Flower issues?” I asked Bo.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Of course you would know those are flowers.” Taking a sip of tea, he sat back in his chair and watched his mate flutter around the kitchen. His eyes were filled with love, and another round of jealousy shot through me. “They better give her what she wants,” he joked, “or she’ll put a hex on them.”

  “Can she do that?” I asked. Kenzie was a witch, but so far I hadn’t seen her do anything more than fix a broken glass and heal a spider bite. Not that I doubted her capabilities.

  “I don’t know, probably.” Bo continued to follow her around with his eyes, a smile growing wider on his lips.

  Another text from Julia came through and Bo heard it. He wiggled his eyebrows as I checked the message. She wanted to come over after the wedding tomorrow. Perfect. I’d have to tidy up my office, and I should probably get something for us to grill…

  “Hey, Derrick. Whatcha thinking about?” Bo teased.

  I stood, slamming back the rest of the tea and giving Kenzie, who was still arguing with someone on the phone, a quick wave. “I’m leaving.”

  “Wait, I still need your help.”

  “No, you don’t. It’s just boxes and you’re a grizzly,” I said. “Besides, I have things to do too, you know.”

  “Like what? Start a roast? Dye some shirts? Make potpourri bags?”

  I reached across the table and slapped Bo on the side of the head. He laughed but didn’t try to fight back. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Don’t forget your suit,” he reminded me. He was making all of his groomsmen wear full suits. Actually, it was probably Kenzie’s request which was why I didn’t argue. If Bo had his way, we’d all be shirtless and in flip flops. And I think I’d rather be in a suit.

  As I walked out of their house on the short journey to mine, I wondered what it would be like to get married. Or even live with a woman. Bo was right, I had a very nice home, and I’d thought on numerous occasions about how great it would be to share it with someone. Someone special who would get me and enjoy all of the same things I do.

  Elizabeth and Tammy were the oldest two females in our clan who hadn’t found a mate yet. But they weren’t my type, and they never would be. Their idea of a good time was hanging out at the bar and enticing men into buying them drinks until they couldn’t stand anymore. It wasn’t my scene—never had been.

  So I trudged toward my front porch with a heavy heart wondering if I would ever find what Bo and Kenzie have without sacrificing all of the things I wanted for myself.

  My alarm went off early, even for me. It was Saturday—Bo and Kenzie’s wedding day, my birthday, and the day Derrick had finally invited me to his house. My dreams had consisted of strange travels
and an appearance on a television show. I’d tossed and turned all night with the images dancing in my head, but yet I was too excited to be tired.

  Plus, I needed to finish my paper before the end of the summer session next week. Just three more credits and I would have my degree. It was something I was very proud of, despite everyone in my family telling me that I would never amount to much. I guess that’s what was to be expected from a drunken father and a step-mother who never wanted me around. And even though my dad was dead, his constant insults ringing in my head were what kept driving me forward.

  I never knew my real mom…I was the product of a one-night stand with a grizzly from another clan. She didn’t want me, as I was evidence of her unfaithfulness, so she dropped me off on my dad’s doorstep and walked away. I’m pretty sure he would have left me out in the woods to die alone had Blaze Callaghan not stepped in. He forced my dad to keep me and raise me as part of the clan. Actually, Blaze and his sons had been more of a family to me than my dad and step-mom had ever been.

  So when my dad was killed in his challenge for alpha, I had actually been a little bit relieved. No more drunken nights where he’d be with his mate, Eliza, and kick me out of the house. No more excuses for why I wasn’t good enough to make something out of myself. And no more pressure to live two lives—the one where he thought I worked at a local restaurant every night and the one where I secretly went to the library to use the internet and work on my online classes.

  I walked down the long hallway of the single-wide toward the kitchen. One positive outcome of my father’s death had been the fact that I’d inherited our home and Eliza left Alaska. For good. She’d told me that it was just too hard for her to be here anymore, but I was pretty sure she’d already been sleeping with another guy on the side, and now he was stuck with her. Besides, once my dad lost to Brandt, Eliza never stopped berated our alpha any chance she had. It had gotten old, and now that my dad wasn’t around anymore to encourage that kind of talk, she hadn’t felt welcomed.