BRAWLING BEAR

  BAD BOY SHIFTERS

  BOOK FOUR

  HEATHER HILDENBRAND

  Brawling Bear

  Copyright 2016 by Heather Hildenbrand

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are a product of the authors’ imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors.

  Previously titled The Badge & The Bear

  Cover by RJ Creatives

  www.heatherhildenbrandbooks.com

  CONTENTS

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Mated to the Wilde Bear

  About the Author

  Also by Heather Hildenbrand

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  Sworn to the light, can she resist darkness incarnate when he claims her very soul?

  CHAPTER ONE

  RACHEL

  Your badge and your gun are an extension of your body. Rachel snorted as she re-read the pamphlet they’d handed her in the seminar she’d sat through today. She rolled her eyes at the memory of the snickers and elbow-nudging the men seated around her had shared. Of course they’d made it into something dirty. Rachel had a sneaking suspicion if she worked at some big city police department, she wouldn’t have to put up with humor like that. But here in the tiny town of Timber Falls, the men she worked with were forever thinking first with their dicks.

  She tossed the pamphlet into the trash and made her way back to her corner desk. She didn’t need a reminder of what it meant to be a good cop. Or of why she’d become one in the first place. Men who thought with their second head instead of their first were her motivation. Today’s seminar had only reaffirmed that. Now, if only the cops who attended these things wouldn’t continue to reaffirm her fears and beliefs about their gender as a whole.

  Rachel sank into her desk chair in the far corner of the room and stared out the window at downtown Timber Falls. The building was old brick but it wasn’t awful. A little drafty in the winter so she was thankful summer was well on its way. The lights two stories below twinkled and shone in the moonlight. She loved this view—being able to look down over her tiny town and feel like she had some control over the order of things. The view at night was so peaceful. It was why she never minded working the evening shift.

  A pang of loneliness hit her, an emptiness she’d been battling more and more often lately, and she shoved it away. That was the other reason she’d chosen night shift. Working after dark meant she wouldn’t be caught somewhere she shouldn’t be, seeking male companionship. That mistake had cost her dearly in college and she’d be damned if it ever happened again.

  After six years as a cop, learning all of the signals, clues, and triggers of predators, she still didn’t take any chances on history repeating itself. Being alone was better than being a victim, she reminded herself.

  The landline on her desk rang and she swiveled in her cushioned chair to grab it, thankful for the distraction. “Hawkins,” she said into the receiver.

  “Rachel, it’s Joe,” said the voice on the other end. Deep and aged but still capable of carrying volume even in the casual greeting.

  Rachel twisted to her right and eyed the Timber Falls Chief of Police through the glass that separated his office from the main room her desk sat in only ten feet away. “Sir,” she said. “Why are you calling me? I’m right here.” She gave a little wave.

  The older man behind the massive desk pursed his lips. “I’m too old to be expected to exert myself that way,” he said and Rachel laughed.

  Chief Bennett might have been nearing retirement but he could still chase down a perp just as fast as the rookies fresh out of the academy. “Whatever you say,” she said. “What’s up?”

  He frowned, his features turning hard as he began to tell her about the reason for his call. Rachel knew, friendly as he was, police business took precedence over chit chat any day. “I got a call about that fight ring you keep jabbering to me about.”

  Rachel sat up straighter, her muscles tensing. “The one Clements thought he broke up three months ago?” she asked.

  “Sounds like it,” he grumbled, still watching her through the glass window as he spoke to her through the phone line. His bushy eyebrows scrunched together and Rachel knew he didn’t like the idea that they’d closed a case that wasn’t wrapped. “I know you seem to think Clements didn’t nab the ringleader, and since you haven’t shut up about your suspicions that it never really shut down, I’m offering you lead on this. Take a team over. Check it out. Now.”

  His tone was hard but Rachel straightened at the order, suddenly wide awake. “Yes, sir.” She refused to acknowledge that Joe might only be giving her the chance because Clements was on vacation. She didn’t care how it came down. She wanted to bust these assholes. Violence hit a certain raw nerve with her and she was chomping at the bit to take these guys down.

  She slammed the receiver down, adrenaline already fueling her excitement as she ran through her list of possible choices for her raid team. Trent for sure. He was solid and didn’t question her intuition. One by one, she checked off the ones she’d take and went in search of them.

  No one she asked said no. In fact, most of them lit up when she told them the quick and dirty details. She couldn’t blame them. Things had been too quiet lately. The guys were restless. So was she but not necessarily for a case.

  Her thoughts were nothing but distracted lately, centering around one person: Grayden Larchmont. He was a member of the Bad News Bears, a local crew of grizzly shifters that had been causing enough trouble over the past several months to earn their rep and the nickname. Grayden was quite possibly the worst of them. A brawler, they called him. Quick temper, huge biceps, a stare that could melt panties and hearts.

  She’d only seen him a couple of times and at each meeting, his dark gray eyes had left her restless and unsettled. They’d also shown up in her dreams at night. She needed something to get her mind off him because if there was one thing about Grayden Larchmont she knew to be true, it was that he really was bad news. Rachel had no room or desire for guys like that.

  Work, she reminded herself as she went to the locker room and strapped on her vest. She had something else to focus on now.

  Mentally, she ran through everything she knew about the case. The fight ring had started a year ago. They had learned of it slowly, mostly through victims showing up in the hospital, battered and bloody and scant on the details. No one liked a narc, she knew. But what did they have to lose? They’d already gotten their asses kicked. Might as well come clean about the who and where.

  It’d taken her six months to convince one of them of that logic. Even after he’d spilled the beans about it, they hadn’t been able to shut it down. Not when the fights were held at a different location each time. It didn’t even run on a regular schedule. Some sort of underground word of mouth phone chain alerted the players with less than a day’s notice. By the time the Timber Falls PD knew where a fight had been held, it was already done. The warehouse or factory or abandoned property already deserted.

  Three months ago, the case had ended abruptly when Clements, an ex-military transfer from narcotics and a guy who always got on Rachel’s nerves, had gotten an anonymous tip and singlehandedly broken the ring up on Rachel’s night off. Apparently, it hadn’t really ended with those arrests because here it was falling into her lap again. Clements would be furious. Rachel didn’t give a shit. This case was hers now.

  Locked and loaded, Rachel met with her team and briefed them on the details, scant as they were from Joe’s source—some preteen riding his bike too far from home. She showed everyone the location of the address on the city map before loading everyone up into two vans.

  “Damn, Clements is going to be pissed when he finds out his case isn’t closed,” said Trent, another beat cop and part of her takedown team. He drove and she rode shotgun, radio handy as she coordinated the other men in the van behind them.

  She laughed but it was full of tension, not amusement. Rachel had learned early on that cop business went more smoothly when your emotions were turned down low. In moments like these, she didn’t have friends or enemies. She saw only the case. The perp. The arrest.

  “That’ll teach him to go on vacation,” she shot back and Trent chuckled.

 
The rest of the drive was spent getting orders out over the radio and stashing the van far enough away that they wouldn’t be spotted. The address Joe had given her was for an old water treatment plant—now abandoned after the water company had relocated up the mountain to be closer to the fresh streams that supplied Timber Falls. Rachel knew the layout from past patrols and took the alleyway that shortcutted between this one and the building next to it, careful to keep her steps silent as she neared.

  Her heart pounded as it always did when she did a raid like this one. Anything could happen. She had no control over what waited for them inside. She had only training and if her suspicions were correct—that this ring was run by shifters, not humans—she’d need every bit of training in order to take them down once and for all. The Shifter Police were probably better suited for this case, but Timber Falls was a small town. No Shifter Police station for at least 50 miles. And they didn’t have that kind of time tonight. Not if they wanted to get in while the fight was still happening.

  Trent stayed close while the rest of the men spread out to flank the building in question. Rachel shot a look overhead and scowled. Although she’d appreciated the moonlight earlier, it didn’t cover them nearly as much as a cloudy night would have. Not that it would matter if there really were shifters brawling inside. With their heightened sense of sight and smell, they probably already knew the police were coming.

  Rachel reached the corner of the cement building and spotted the back entrance to the warehouse. She pulled up short, her muscles pulling taut as she studied what blocked their entrance inside.

  A man, nothing more than a bulky shadow from this far away, stood beside the heavy metal door. He brought something to his lips and the lit end of a cigarette illuminated his face in a red glow. She didn’t recognize him but that didn’t mean anything. He could be a shifter. He could be the ringleader for all she knew, although probably not if he was on door duty.

  She nodded at Trent and he gave a hand signal to their man on the roof. They waited. A second later, there was a small pop followed by a rush of air and the man at the door crumpled. Rachel grinned. Tranq darts were her favorite weapon. Not deadly enough to ruin her chances at the arrest or getting the info she needed from a perp but incapacitating all the same. Besides, shifters wouldn’t respond to their bullets like ordinary humans anyway. And shifter or no, Rachel detested the idea of killing. It wasn’t for her to decide, taking a life. Years of experience and training had helped her cope with that fear but she still felt it rise up anytime she was faced with the possibility of having to use lethal force. She’d never killed anyone before and she hoped she wouldn’t have to start tonight.

  The moment the man hit the ground, Rachel and the others took off at a run.

  With several extra pounds packed along her ample curves, she wasn’t the fastest. But then she didn’t have to be there first. She was lead. The others would clear the way for her. Trent and a couple others reached the door first and threw it open, guns aimed. Rachel raised her own weapon just as she reached the doorway being held open for her by one of her team.

  She heard the roar and cheer of dozens of raised voices. The hum drowned out her team’s attempt to yell for everyone to stop moving. Rachel hurried forward, crouched, bent at the knees, gun aimed straight ahead. The roar of voices grew louder. This had to be it. The yells were deafening.

  She rounded the bend and took in the scene.

  Around her in every direction, men began to catch sight of the police spilling into the large room. Al at once, they began to stampede for the hallway at the far end of the space.

  It was mayhem. Rachel’s team did their best to corral the spectators toward the far exit, leaving her path cleared and preventing her from getting trampled as they all panicked and raced to get out of the building. She didn’t care about the audience. She wanted the fighters. They would lead her toward the organizer.

  Rachel waited for the crowd to thin and give her a clear line of sight. Grim satisfaction washed over her at what she saw.

  In the center of the room was a makeshift boxing ring. A rectangular space created by dark cords stretched around barrels at each corner. In the center of the grimy ring were two men facing off. Their fight had clearly been going on for some time judging from the streaks of sweat and blood across the chest of the man facing Rachel. Despite the chaos of the spectators, the men glared only at each other.

  Tension crackled in the air between them. The tension of their fury coated every square inch of space between her and them and Rachel knew without a doubt these men were both shifters. They clung to their human forms but barely. The very air stunk of animal. A shudder swept over her at the raw power clinging to them both.

  “Stop right there,” Rachel yelled, her voice ringing out over the din of the men fleeing. She pointed her weapon, knowing full well the two brawlers weren’t going to just give in and obey her command. Not if they were shifters. Caught in the throes of a battle, she’d read enough to know they wouldn’t break away from the fight easily.

  But at the sound of her voice, the man facing her faltered. He looked over and met her eyes. His cold stare made Rachel flinch. His sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes were set into a lean body with scars and blood covering his torso. He looked like death and the way he stared back at her for that split second send a shiver of dread up her spine. Like he intended to live up to every inch of her initial impression of him.

  The second man stood with his back to her and never bothered turning. Not even when the first guy stopped mid-swing to stare at her, eyes narrowing at her raised weapon. Instead, his broad back, thick with muscles, rippled as his shoulder shifted and he raised a fist. He swung out, his brown hair shaking with the effort and sending a spray of sweat as his mop of waves swung with the effort behind his movement. With a roar, his closed fist made contact with the other man’s jaw.

  Rachel heard a resounding crack.

  The smaller man went down into a crumpled heap, his eyes rolling backward as he fell. Unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Rachel gasped, the small noise now echoing off the empty walls. She realized most of the spectators had disappeared into the bowels of the warehouse. Far off, she could hear the raised voices of men from her team as they cuffed and interrogated those in the crowd that hadn’t gotten away. Behind her, Trent and three others had lined up to create a wall, blocking the exit in case either of the two fighters tried to escape. Their weapons were pointed at the fighter still on his feet.

  Rachel stared at him and found herself look directly into the same gray eyes from her dreams. Rachel’s jaw fell open.

  She had suspected shifters all along but this… this she hadn’t expected. Or maybe she had and that’s what kept her obsessed with getting to the bottom of the fight club.

  Grayden Larchmont himself stood staring at her from the center of the dirty makeshift ring.

  Sexy, brawling Grayden Larchmont of the Bad News Bears. Shirtless, bloodied, and panting in the center of the ring, his eyes narrowed as he finally focused on her and recognition dawned. Rachel took a steadying breath, shaking off the heady rush of attraction as she took in his broad shoulders and bare chest that tapered into a trim V-shaped waist.

  “Hands where I can see them,” Rachel said, her voice wobbling only slightly. Why, out of all the possible shifters in Timber Falls—no, in the world—did it have to be the grizzly shifter that kept showing up in her dreams?

  “Rachel?” Grayden asked in a booming voice. His brows wrinkled in obvious surprise and confusion. He took a step toward her, his thick biceps contracting with the tension they still carried from his fisted hands, and Rachel felt her pulse hammering double time—a pace that had nothing to do with the rush of an arrest.