Smokejumpers Werebear 6: Quint and Lystra Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  SMOKEJUMPERS

  Werebear

  Part 6

  QUINT AND LYSTRA

  By KIM FOX

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  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Contains explicit love scenes and adult language.

  18+

  www.AuthorKimFox.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Kim Fox

  one

  Quint laid on his cot and examined the flurry of new scars on his arms. Fucking wolves. They always loved to use their teeth. There were two new pink lines through the face of the inked bear on his arm. They fucked up my tattoos.

  He dropped his head down on the pillow and stared at the steel ceiling. His cell was made of steel. Steel walls, steel floor, steel door and steel toilet. And it was all reinforced. These cells were made to house shifters.

  I could use a glass of wine. Or a barrel.

  He woke up in this cell a few hours ago. Nobody had answered his yells. There was nothing he could do but wait until someone opened the door.

  He closed his eyes and all he could see was orange. Those eyes. So bright and so haunting. They had mesmerized him and now that was all he could think about.

  Quint couldn’t focus on the fact that his whole Crew had a death sentence on their heads; wanted for the worst possible crime that a shifter could be accused of. He couldn’t focus on the fact that he was locked in an inescapable prison cell by the Shifter Enforcement Agency. And he couldn’t focus on the fact that his home was gone, turned into a crime scene.

  He could only focus on those eyes. She was breathtaking that woman. Black hair falling on her dark brown skin. Her arms were toned and fit, her body slim and sexy.

  Quint had stayed back without hesitation because of her. He could have escaped with his Crew but he couldn’t leave. If he had left he might never see her again.

  And he couldn’t take that chance.

  They were mates. He could tell by the look on her face that she had felt the same thing. Whatever her name was.

  The lock on his door clicked as a key slid into it on the other side. Quint stood up on the floor with his fists by his hips. He pulled his bear to the surface holding him on the verge of phasing. Just in case.

  The door swung open and Logan was standing there. He was huge. Larger than Quint in his human form and larger than him in their bear forms.

  Quint stepped back. “Am I under arrest?” he asked.

  Logan waltzed into the cell and closed the door behind him. It sounded like the blade of a guillotine falling.

  “Where is your Crew?” he asked. His face was serious and tight. His long handlebar mustache lurked down his big chin. He squeezed his hands into lunch box sized fists.

  “Am I under arrest?” Quint asked again.

  “Ask me that one more time,” he said, rolling up his sleeves.

  Quint wasn’t easily intimidated. “Am I under arrest?”

  The fist flew out so fast that Quint never saw it. It slammed into his mouth and nearly knocked his teeth out. He stumbled back on wobbly knees and fell to the ground. He wiped the blood from his lip and shook his head. He was seeing stars.

  Logan grabbed him by his shirt and cocked a fist back. “Where is your Crew?”

  Quint wasn’t a fast learner.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  That punch knocked him out.

  Lystra was in deep shit.

  Her commanding officer had given her a direct order to burn down the plane and she had ignored it. She had ignored it and the criminals got away.

  Criminals. Right. She knew who the real criminals were and they weren’t the werebears that got away in the plane. They were the shifters that she was about to explain herself to.

  The truth was she had been unable to move. She was glued to the ground. She couldn’t take her eyes off that man.

  Quint Fellows.

  She had looked him up the second that she had got back to the office. A black bear shifter. She was surprised that she had bonded to a werebear. Of course they made the best mates with the way that they were obsessed with spoiling women, catering to their every needs. But she always thought that she would bond to a panther for some reason.

  Well it wasn’t going to be another dragon shifter like her. They were so rare. She had never met another one.

  Her inner dragon had found something in this Quint and now they were bonded together. He was being held prisoner in the cells down below. She would’ve visited him already if she wasn’t in so much trouble.

  The door opened and a pretty blond woman with long ears and a long face that somehow worked for her, stood in the doorway holding an iPad. She was Stacey Richards, a cougar shifter, and secretary to the SEA bosses.

  “They’re ready to see you now Miss Evans.” She stepped aside and let Lystra walk into the office.

  The three heads of the Shifter Enforcement Agency were sitting behind a tall, long desk. The three of them were wolf shifters.

  They glared down at her as she walked in. She lowered her head and walked into the middle of the dark room with her hands behind her back and her head to the side, exposing her neck. Wolf shifters, with their constant wrestling for rank, always liked it when you showed them submission.

  And right now she had to do as they wanted if she was going to get out of this mess.

  “We heard that you disobeyed a direct order in the field. What happened?” Rickard asked. He was sitting in the middle of the three. He was the largest and hottest one and also the head of the SEA. His face looked like it was chiseled from granite by Michelangelo himself with the body more perfect than even a master sculptor could create. He had a soothing voice and his smile was easy and came often.

  And Lystra hated him.

  He was the one who gave the order. The order that brought her in here kicking and screaming. The order that forced her to do the dirty work of these monsters. The order that made her spend every single day with that horrible monster, Logan. The order that ruined her life.

  He was waiting for an answer. Lystra had prepared a speech but now she was forgetting all the words under the watch of these three ruthless shifters.

  “Well?”

  Lystra shifted her weight onto her other foot. “I tried to bring her out but she refused.”

  “A shifter that can’t shift?” Winston asked. “What good is that?”

  Winston had wanted to kill Lystra when they brought her in three years ago. He was terrified of her, saying that dragons were wild. Not to mention way too dangerous and powerful. He said that she would be uncontrollable.

  Well they definitely found a way to control
her.

  “Logan claims that you ignored the direct order,” Winston said.

  She shook her head, nausea creeping up her throat. “It wasn’t like that,” she begged. She bit her lip to stop the tears. She knew what they were going to punish her with. They wouldn’t hurt her. A dragon shifter was too valuable for that. But they would get their punishment. They always got their punishment.

  “I was summoning her,” she said, trying to hold herself together. “But my dragon just wouldn’t come.”

  Rickard looked at her skeptically. “And why not?”

  “Dragons are unruly beasts,” she said. “They don’t always do as they’re told.”

  Rickard stared her down. “We all know how frustrating that can be.”

  Winston crossed his arms. “We can’t have agents in the field who don’t follow orders,” he said.

  The third wolf shifter, Marcus, listened in silence. He rarely spoke.

  “Please give me another chance,” Lystra begged. She knew what was going to happen if they terminated her contract.

  Winston and Rickard looked at each other. Rickard leaned over towards Marcus. Marcus whispered something in his ear.

  “This incident cannot go without punishment,” Rickard said, shuffling through some papers on his desk.

  Lystra’s shoulders slumped. She knew what that cruel punishment would be.

  “You will skip two visitation sessions,” Rickard said. Winston shook his head and frowned. She knew that he would’ve liked to see her dead. But this felt worse at the moment.

  “Two months,” she whispered under her breath. How could she not see him for two months? Her knees buckled and she almost fell to the floor.

  “And the next time that Logan tells you to burn down a plane you get a jet pack and a flamethrower if your dragon is too lazy and you can’t wake her the fuck up,” Rickard warned.

  She was getting dizzy. Two months? They couldn’t do this to her. She was supposed to see him on Saturday.

  “Can I ask how Micha is?” Lystra had to know. She had to have some news of her son.

  Rickard didn’t even look up. “No.”

  Her dragon surged forward. She wanted to watch these dogs burn. Her arms shook and her back seared as wings began to rip through her skin. She gasped and struggled to pull her dragon back in. These three would be as good as dead if she phased now. But so would Micha.

  Her dragon settled back inside her and she breathed deep, labored breaths. Her heart was pounding. Her back was sticky with sweat.

  The three wolves were standing up, watching her, ready to bolt or ready to phase. She couldn’t tell.

  Winston slammed the desk with his fist. “You dare phase in front of the Leaders?”

  Rickard straightened his red suit jacket. “It seems that your dragon is not as lazy as you would suggest.”

  Lystra kept her head down. She knew from experience that her eyes would be shining a bright orange right now. They might take it as a threat.

  “You can add another visitation to your penalty for that outburst,” Rickard said.

  Lystra’s chest ached. Her body felt cold. Three months without seeing Micha. That was her longest yet.

  She thanked them and left before tears escaped from her eyes.

  two

  The door to Logan’s office was open. Lystra stood in the doorway and knocked on the wooden frame. He sniffed the air. “If it isn’t my least favorite employee: Agent dragon-her-ass-around.” He never looked up from his computer.

  “You wanted to see me?” she asked. The cougar shifter and secretary, Stacey, had told her to go straight to Logan’s office after she left the Leader’s hall. She took five minutes in the bathroom to get herself together first.

  “You made me look bad,” he said. “You ignored an order and they got away. And my perps never get away.”

  Lystra held her elbow. Her shoulders slumped forward. “It won’t happen again Logan.”

  He exploded up from his desk. His chair slammed into the wall behind him. “It better not happen again,” he threatened. “Or I’ll take that little brat of yours and snap his neck myself.”

  Lystra’s pulse sped up. Heat flushed through her body. Her dragon tried to wrestle its way out. She wanted to see this shifter that was threatening her son fried into a charcoal briquette.

  Lystra closed her eyes and forced her dragon back down. She had no doubt that the Leaders would execute Micha if she stepped out of line.

  It was their only way of controlling her. She could single handedly burn down the whole agency complete with every agent if she wanted to. But that wouldn’t bring Micha back. She had no idea where they were keeping him.

  “That’s what I was looking for,” he said, walking around his desk. He placed his fingers under her chin and lifted her face up. An orange glow lit up his face; a reflection from her eyes.

  “If it was up to me,” he said, “I would have you executed for disobedience.”

  She jerked her head to the side, taking his vile hand off of her chin. “But it’s not.”

  He lowered his hand and glared at her. “No it’s not. Not yet anyways.” A nasty scar slithered down the side of his forehead. Lystra wished that the thing that gave him that scar had finished off the job.

  Well I’ll just have to finish the job myself.

  One day.

  But not today. Not until Micha was safe.

  He walked back around his desk. “The Hudson Crew escaped, thanks to you, and now we have to find them.”

  The Hudson Crew had been called traitors by the SEA. They had been charged with revealing the truth about shifters to a reporter. Lystra’s mate Quint had been a part of that Crew. She couldn’t imagine bonding with someone who would be an actual criminal.

  “They are to be killed on sight,” he said, sitting down in his chair. “Do you think that your dragon will be up for a barbecue this time?”

  Lystra cleared her throat. “Yes,” she muttered. She had nothing against this Hudson Crew and she didn’t want to see them harmed. But as long as the SEA had Micha she would do whatever they ordered.

  “What about the one that we captured?” she asked, trying to dig for information. “Has he been executed?” She couldn’t stomach the thought of that. Her dragon hissed inside her at the mere mention of it.

  Logan turned back to his computer. “He’s in a cell. We’re going to beat him until he talks. I’m sure he knows where his friends are hiding.”

  Lystra’s heart panged at the thought of her mate stuck in a cell. She knew that the guards often ‘forgot’ to bring them meals. She had to go see him.

  “I can try to get the information out of him,” she said. “I want to repay the Agency for my mistake in the field.”

  “Mistake?” he asked. “You mean your monumental fuck up?”

  He hit a key on his keyboard, hard, as the computer apparently wasn’t following orders. “Fine,” he said. “If he doesn’t talk you burn an arm off.”

  He grunted in frustration and slammed his fist down onto the keyboard. It snapped in two as letter keys flew onto the floor.

  He pulled a fresh keyboard out of the bottom drawer of his desk as Lystra slipped out of his office.

  Quint’s arms were burning. He hadn’t done push ups since he was a teenager. Werebears were just naturally strong and muscular.

  He collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily. This was embarrassing. He didn’t even get to six thousand. He was happy that Keene wasn’t here to see. He would never let him live it down.

  He lay on his back, his chest heaving, as he stared at the ceiling. I hope they’re okay.

  He went over his friends’ possible locations. They could’ve flown to New Hampshire and stayed with Beckett’s cousin Connor but that was unlikely. The SEA would definitely send some agents to snoop around there.

  There was British Colombia in Canada. Finch had a sister living somewhere in the mountains. She was a werebear as well.

  They could be anywhere:
Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Alberta. Hell, they could even be on their way here to break him out. Quint doubted that though.

  Beckett tried to save him back at the camp and Quint pushed him away. He wouldn’t come back for someone who didn’t want to be saved.

  They are probably with Dexter’s Crew in Washington. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that they must be there. It was the only other Crew that Beckett would fully trust.

  Quint sat up and looked around. There was a cot with no sheets, a toilet and four walls. That was it. There was nothing to do here but think of her. And that was too hard. His bear would whine and stir around inside him, driving him crazy.

  He turned back on his stomach and tried to break his new, pathetic, push up record. “One…two…three…”

  The locked clicked and the door slid open. Quint sprung to his feet, ready for anything.

  Well almost anything.

  Those orange eyes sliced into him and seized his core. She was back. He dropped his hands and stared with wide eyes and an open mouth.

  She smiled shyly, tucking a strand of her black hair behind her ear. She closed the door softly behind her.

  “Hi Quint,” she said.

  He was dumbstruck. She knew his name. How did she know his name?

  She was an SEA agent. Of course she knew his name.

  “Hi,” he said, not finding any better words.

  “Do you have everything you need?” she asked.

  He glanced around his empty cell. "Pretty much yeah.”

  She laughed nervously. “Sorry. Stupid question.”

  But she was here and that was all he needed.

  “What’s your name?” he asked. He couldn’t take his eyes off of hers. They were hypnotizing.

  “Lystra,” she said.

  He had a million questions for her. He wanted to know everything about her.

  “What kind of shifter are you?” he asked. He could smell an animal inside her but it was nothing that he ever smelled before. It was like a charcoal scent.