Stone Bear: Sentinel (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Stone Bears Book 1) (3 page)

“Marcus already told me to do that,” he said. “I’ve been using all my spare time to do that, without success. I have a meeting with someone tomorrow that might be able to help, but I’m not counting on it.”

“The major difference is that this is now your primary job. The other Stone Bears will continue on in your absence, but you will spend your days working on the Sentinel project now.”

“That’s not a good idea,” he warned.

“Why not?” Caia only had the vaguest notion of exactly what went on in the mountains and what the miners were searching for. She hadn’t needed to know, so the Kedyns hadn’t told her. Perhaps she could pry some information out of Gabriel without him realizing it.

He looked at her. “If you knew what we do, then you would know why.”

It was her turn to frown. “They haven’t told me anything,” she admitted. Whatever it was that the bears mined for was a closely held secret, at least among non-shifters. Every shifter seemed to know it, at least from the few she had talked to, but none of them were going to share.

Caia wasn’t sure where the conversation was going to go, but she steeled herself for a confrontation with Gabriel. Marcus had been very stern with her orders—that she was to ensure that he took this task seriously, and turned over the Stone Bears to Raphael for the time being. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but that didn’t mean the presence of a colossal human who became extremely irate with her sounded appealing either.

“Is this going to be a problem?” she asked, using her best stern voice.

“No.”

Caia fought not to blink in surprise. She failed. His response had caught her utterly off guard.

“I get to work hand-in-hand with you every day now. How could that be a problem?”

She smiled demurely. “Oh, I could think of a few ways, but I’m sure we’ll be able to get over any issues.”

Caia, you have got to rein yourself in! You shouldn’t flirt quite so unashamedly with him. A little bit is fine, but do not give him your sex eyes. Don’t do it. Don’t.

She didn’t, but it was a close thing. He had that sort of effect on her. She would have to be very careful. Like Gabriel had just said, they were going to be working very closely with each other for the foreseeable future. It would be so tempting and easy to allow herself to succumb to his charms.

But she wanted this job, and to keep it, she would have to keep her hands to herself. And also ensure that Gabriel kept
his
hands to himself. One thing that Marcus had been rather stern on during the hiring process was not allowing herself to be seduced by the shifters. At the time, a rather naïve Caia had told her boss that that wouldn’t be an issue. Now that she had spent several days working in close proximity to the tall, ripped, and uniformly gorgeous bears of Genesis Valley, she already felt her willpower slipping. She wasn’t a virgin, but she hadn’t slept around a lot either.

Yet with all the delectable man meat practically being served up on a platter, she was having a hard time ignoring it. She was a woman, and she had needs too. Needs that she had denied for too long.

“So who’s in charge?” he asked.

“We are. Team effort.” She made sure to say it without hesitation and without any sarcasm, so that he understood she was serious.

“Really?”

“Absolutely. You’re too hard-charging, I’m too meticulous. They want us to even each other out.”

“Hard-charging? What?” He looked almost hurt by the accusation.

“Last week you fought half the Amber crew,” she told him, deadpan.

“That wasn’t my fault!” he said, sitting up in his chair abruptly.

“Because one of them made a sarcastic comment,” she finished, ignoring his protest.

“He was undercutting my authority,” Gabriel said, all mock-hurt gone from his voice. “It may have been a bit of an overreaction. I’m not going to argue that. But it
was
the easiest way to ensure that they got the point that I’m not their friend. And although you might not believe it, that is a very important thing for them to remember.”

She looked at him.

“I’m not a miner, Caia. I am a Stone Bear, and have more responsibility than they can begin to understand. I don’t like blowing my own horn and making myself seem like a jackass, but I can’t allow them to get too friendly with me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated,” he replied. “I’m not sure that I can tell you enough information for it to make sense. Let’s just leave it as ‘They don’t know everything that I do.’ It would be a lot easier for me if they did, but someone would say something they shouldn’t, which would make it a lot
harder
for me eventually. It would just be a matter of time.”

He stared at her, stressing the seriousness of his point. She didn’t back down, but neither did she acknowledge it. Gabriel sighed, running his hands through his hair as the silence stretched on.

“So, what are our next steps?” he asked eventually, changing the subject.

Glad for the reprieve, she told him. “Finding the Opals is going to be a bit of a case of tracking them down. It will likely take time.”

Gabriel nodded, not disputing that fact.

“I think, in the meantime, we should talk to some of those who might have similar interests.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, I’ve heard that the Sapphires are a lot like the Opals were that night. Rude, egotistical, and generally unpleasant. I thought I would go pay their den in the city a visit.” She was proud of herself, having referred to their home as a den in the proper way.

Caia had expected either nothing or a small smile of praise from Gabriel about remembering the name for a shifter’s place of residence. The look she got, of shock, was not the way she had expected things to go. At all.

“No.” His voice wasn’t loud, but there was more give in steel than in his voice.

“Why not? That
does
make sense, doesn’t it?”

“The Sapphire building is no place for a young, beautiful woman completely new to Genesis Valley.”

Caia’s eyebrows arched at the word “beautiful.” She would never consider herself to be ugly, but she had some curves and a little bit of extra weight around her hips that would never allow her to classify herself as beautiful. Cute and good-looking she could accept, but anytime someone called her beautiful, it always sent a wave of butterflies through her stomach. Just because
she
couldn’t view herself that way, didn’t mean she wasn’t able to accept that others thought of her as such.

Perhaps Gabriel can convince you.
The voice spoke from deep within her, but she ignored it. She wasn’t unhappy about anything, and part of the reason was because she truly didn’t care what others thought about her looks. She was who she was. Take it or leave it.

“Well, it needs to be investigated,” she said, wisely choosing not to draw attention to his words about her appearance. “Besides, I never said I was going alone. You’re coming with me.”

Now Gabriel laughed. “You know, I don’t think they’re going to be willing to share information with me. The Sapphires and I don’t exactly have the greatest of relationships,” he explained, chuckling the entire time about the thought.

“What did you do to them?” she asked, not bothering to contain her eyeroll.

Gabriel just looked at her in response.

She sighed.

“Well, I guess you should practice being on your best behavior then Gabriel,” she said, using his name for effect. “Because tomorrow we’re heading over there. They are off shift, which makes it a perfect time to stop by and to examine things.”

“What are we looking for?” This time he seemed to want to know more about her thought process.

“Anything out of the ordinary. I’ll bet it’s been a while since someone from the Consortium has inspected their houses, hasn’t it?”

Gabriel nodded. “Inspections aren’t really a thing we do. The liaisons are generally in charge of those sorts of things, since they tend to live amongst the crews. We generally trust the liaisons to do their jobs properly. But maybe we should be paying a little more attention to them,” he mused. “With the way things are going, we might have to start doing that. I’d really rather avoid the whole thing, but people are being killed, and that’s not acceptable.”

His eyes reflected the cold in his voice. Caia suppressed a shudder. She wouldn’t want to cross Gabriel.

“So, tomorrow we go to the Sapphires,” she pronounced.

“Perfect. I’ll drive, and afterward you can go talk to the humans, see if you can dig up anything. I’m meeting a contact in Origin anyways, so I’ll use that to kill some time while you snoop. Then I’ll pick you up and we can come back here.”

“That sounds like a logical plan,” she said. “I approve of that.”

“I’m not always reckless,” he said, winking at her openly as he stood up, slipping the papers back into the envelope. “I need to go tell Raphael about the changes and get these read.”

“In the morning then,” she told him. Then she firmly pulled her tongue from her cheek and resolutely did
not
bite down on her lip as he purposefully flexed his arms more than necessary as he rose from the chair across from her.

“Don’t stay up too late.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but he was gone.

Grrr.

***

“Why is it that all of you drive trucks?” she asked as they drove into town the next morning. “I don’t think I’ve seen a single shifter drive anything but a truck.”

Gabriel laughed. “Look around you.”

She did. “Okay?”

“Where are we?”

“Genesis Valley?” She wasn’t following along.

“Yes, but where is Genesis Valley?”

“In the mountains? Is that the answer you’re looking for?”

He nodded, his eyes mostly focused on the road, but occasionally glancing over at her. “Yes. Now, what time of year is it?”

Caia thought for a moment, trying to follow his train of thought before she spoke next. She didn’t like where it was going. “There’s a lot of snow here in the winter, isn’t there?”

“Yup. And the first of it is only a few weeks away I’d say. Plus, if you haven’t noticed, we tend to be rather larger than most human men.”

“I had, ah, noticed that,” she said, failing to conceal the blush that admitted to just what she had noticed about the shifters.

“Well, they make the perfect vehicles for us.”

“But there are still large SUVs out there too,” she said. “Shouldn’t at least one of you own one of those, just to break up the pattern? I mean, statistically speaking, lots of you should.”

“It’s a shifter thing,” he told her with a smile.

Caia rolled her eyes and made an exasperated noise. “Lovely. ‘It’s a shifter thing.’ You’re no worse than normal men!”

Then a thought occurred to her.

“Why are there no shifter women?” she asked suddenly.

“There are,” he replied. “Their animals tend not to be as wild and feral as ours, so they typically have less issues working with the rest of society. You don’t see them here in the Valley.”

“Your…animal?” she asked, unsure of what he meant.

Gabriel gripped the wheel tighter for a moment before he spoke. “The bear part of us exists as an entity, Caia. A very basic entity, but one capable of emotions and primal thoughts, but an entity nonetheless. We can assume human form by taking control over that entity, and keeping it controlled. The larger the person, the harder that entity, that animal, is to control.”

Despite herself, Caia found herself looking Gabriel up and down. He was by far the biggest shifter she had ever met. Part of her wanted to inch her way closer to the door, putting some more space between them. If his animal was that wild, she didn’t want to be in its way if something happened.

“You have nothing to be worried about,” he said.

Something must have given her away, she realized.

“My bear and I came to an agreement a long time ago.”

“It did? I mean, you did?” The terms of who was what were confusing. She wasn’t sure if the bear should be referred to as an “it” a “he” or just as “his bear.”

“Yep. I told it to behave, and in return, I said I’d feed it a constant diet of steak and other delicious meat.” He leaned over and whispered conspiratorially. “Secretly I’m a glutton. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Caia’s hands flew to her face to try and stop herself, but she couldn’t help it. She giggled.

“Aren’t you supposed to be Mr. Uber-professional?” she asked rather bluntly.

“I am when I have to be. Which,” his tone changed instantly as he glanced around the area they were driving through, “is going to have to start now. We’re near their territory.”

Caia didn’t say anything as a stab of nervous anxiety shot through her. This was it, this would be her first real test. Could she handle the job of riding herd on a bunch of shifters? Part of her wasn’t sure. The other was determined she would succeed, both for herself and so she didn’t let Gabriel down.

“Now listen, when we get in there, I’m in charge. There will be no arguing, no overruling, nothing. You do as I say, when I say. Understood?”

“We’re supposed to be partners,” she told him.

“We are. You plan out everything you want to happen before we go in, and I will do my best, as the situation allows, to execute it. But once we’re actually inside, I make the calls. They likely won’t hurt you if something goes wrong, because you’re a human, and they know what that would entail. They likely won’t try anything with me, because they know how badly I’d hurt them.” He fixed her with a firm, serious stare as the truck rolled to a halt in front of an apartment building. “But that doesn’t mean things couldn’t go horribly wrong. So just come along, and let me do most of the talking. Don’t be a mute, but only chat with them. Don’t say anything about why we’re there. Got it?”

His professional side was just as scary as she had heard. If Caia was in trouble, she knew Gabriel would be the one to have at her side. But walking into trouble while she knew he would protect her? His attitude and instinct for it overwhelmed her. She felt very vulnerable just then.

Gabriel’s hand reached out from the wheel and grasped hers, giving it a squeeze. “You can do this,” he told her.

She looked up at him, meeting those eyes with blue steel of her own.

“Yes. I can.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to face him. “Okay, so the plan is to explore and inspect. Let them lead us around. You then me. You come to a door, if they’re going to go by it, you accidentally turn into it. They go left, you try to go right. Make it look like you’re guessing wrong, but don’t overdo it so that they catch on to you.”

He nodded. “What are you going to be doing?”

“Analyzing. I went to school for psychology and got an advanced degree in human reaction and body language. I’ll be looking for any signs that they become scared or overly agitated when you make your moves.”

She took a brief second to bathe in the look of newfound respect that Gabriel gave her, then she pushed the door open. “Got it?” she said, mocking him lightly.

He touched his fingers to his brow in a lazy salute.

“Let’s go then.”

Together they exited the truck.