Badass Bear

Beth is depressed. Her people are safe in Grizzly Cove, but she feels as if she’s losing all her friends as they pair off two-by-two with their bear shifter mates. She’s only just found freedom by running away from her oppressive home. It’s not fair that she’s losing her new family too.

Trevor rappelled into town from a black helicopter, but he’s found welcome here and a new mission to spark his interest. Almost as much as the pretty mermaid he finds sobbing on a boulder near the water’s edge. He can’t just leave her there, but he soon learns that Beth is as prickly as the trident she carries as a huntress for her people.

She’s a warrior in the ocean, but on land, she’s the hunted, and Trevor finds that totally unacceptable. When bounty hunters come to collect the huge price on her head, it’ll be up to Trevor to stop them…and help Beth find her courage, both to face off with her evil stepfather, and accept Trevor as her true mate.

It’s all out war in Grizzly Cove, but which side will win?

Trevor Williams, former Army Ranger and current high-level intelligence operative for the band of mercenaries that had gathered under Major Jesse Moore on his Wyoming mountaintop, was back in Grizzly Cove, Washington. He’d visited briefly a couple of weeks ago to talk with an Australian koala shifter—of all things—who had been held prisoner in the mountains of Oregon for months.
The hunt was still on for those who had been holding the koala-man and several other shifters in a private menagerie. Trevor’s unit had found evidence of medical experiments having been performed on the captive shifters, among other atrocities. The mercenary unit was still actively searching the mountains in and around Oregon for any sign of the bastards that had kidnapped and imprisoned so many. Trevor’s job was to liaise with the shifters who had settled in Grizzly Cove and, secondarily, try to get more intel on the mer shifters that had recently moved into the waters of the cove, using it as a sanctuary.
Major Moore—as well as their employer on this particular job, the billionaire lion Alpha, Samson Kinkaid—wanted as much information as possible on the threat in the ocean and any possible allies they might be able to claim. Trevor was an expert at gathering intelligence, and the bear shifters who had set up Grizzly Cove knew it. Trev was under no illusion that John Marshall, Alpha of this band of bears, didn’t know exactly why Trevor was there.
But he respected Big John and the men he’d gathered around him. They were all veterans of various branches of the Special Forces, and they had recently retired to civilian life. That they’d set up a town all their own was pretty remarkable. Then again, this unit of shifters had always been kind of remarkable.
Most of them were bears of one kind or other. Many were grizzlies, but there were a few black bears, even a polar bear, along with a few other, rarer bears. All were former soldiers, and they’d worked together for years, forming a tight family of men who trusted each other without question or comment.
Trevor had worked with them a time or two, but he’d been part of a different unit, and he was a bit younger than the core group that had settled Grizzly Cove. He respected them all, but they’d run in slightly different circles while in the military. Still, he liked what he’d seen of what they’d built here, on the rugged coast of Washington State, and he almost wished he’d been closer with them so he could claim one of the plots of land around the cove and build himself a place to settle down.
He liked Wyoming well enough, but something about the ocean had always drawn him. And the salmon in this part of the world were some of the juiciest, which appealed to his wilder half. His inner grizzly loved good sushi.
So, while his comrades were in full search mode in Oregon and beyond, Trevor had been assigned—with Big John’s permission—to liaise with Grizzly Cove and its inhabitants. The koala shifter who had been held prisoner was still here, now mated to a selkie shifter from Kinkaid’s Clan. Apparently, she’d been sent to gather information on the cove’s businesses and social order, and had been lucky enough to find her mate in the process.
For now, she was still part of the Kinkaid mega-corporation and hierarchy, but Trevor had been told she was also a woman on her honeymoon. Samson Kinkaid had given her a month off from work so she could enjoy her honeymoon with her new mate before getting back to business matters.
Which was where Trevor came in. Kinkaid had hired Trevor’s unit to hunt down those who were still missing from the menagerie, especially a lion shifter female who had last been seen injured badly in the woods of Oregon. They’d found her trail, but she was very good at hiding and had not yet been found.
Kinkaid wanted those who had held the shifters captive, and he had deep enough pockets to keep the search going for a very long time, indeed. Samson Kinkaid was a billionaire with business interests all over the world. He could afford to pay Trevor’s expenses, and he had asked that Trevor take over as Kinkaid’s eyes and ears in the cove.
He was happy enough to do it. Being in Grizzly Cove wasn’t a tough assignment—not by a long shot. Not one to sit around doing nothing all day, Trevor had agreed to pitch in and help with some of the construction work that was going on all over town. He worked a few days a week, making friends and renewing old ties, which helped him with his primary task of gathering intel. It was hard to learn things if you didn’t speak to people, and it was hard to make friends with people who were busy trying to keep up with a building boom.
The arrival of the mer in the cove had spurred a construction spike as new accommodations were designed and added to the town’s growing infrastructure. The new boathouse was already up and running, as an example. The complex structure had been built first because it was where water-based shifters could enter and leave the cove without being seen by anyone. There was a water entrance below the building, which was built half on a pier that extended over the cove. There were locker rooms and showers where the water shifters could clean up and dress or undress, as the case may be.
Trev had just finished work for the day and was heading down Main Street on his way to the half-finished hotel where he was currently bunking down. It wasn’t perfect, but his room was fully equipped and the rest of the building was coming along. He got a nice discount on his lodgings because he was bartering carpentry skills in the evenings, helping the proprietor put the finishing touches on all the guest rooms. Trevor was particularly good with plaster and drywall, but he had all-around carpentry training from when he’d been a youngster, working with his father’s small specialty plaster business. His dad had been a true artist, and he’d taught his son everything he knew.
The hotel was on the other end of town from the jobsite Trevor had been working on today, but the weather was cool and pleasant, and the sun was shining. It was a nice walk along the road that hugged the shore of the cove closest at this point.
He was thinking about where he might get dinner tonight when he heard a sound that immediately caught his attention. Looking for the source, he spotted a woman sitting on a rock down by the shore. And she was crying.
It was her muffled sobs he’d heard, carried to him on the fickle breeze.
The way she was sitting reminded him of the statue in Copenhagen he’d seen once. The little mermaid, he thought it was called, and it depicted a mermaid sitting on a rock, just the way this woman was sitting. Though she wore clothing and he could see legs in place of a tail, mer were so prevalent in Grizzly Cove right now that it was a pretty safe bet that she was a mermaid—wearing her human form at the moment.
Her soft crying got to him, though. He couldn’t just walk past and leave her in such a state. He wasn’t sure exactly what he could do to help her, but he would do his best to try. Squaring his shoulders, Trevor stepped off the sidewalk and headed down to the water’s edge.