Authors: Michelle Woodward
“We’ve never needed to. We have always been at peace. Now, just because of a misunderstanding that your brother caused, we are all gonna die.” He barked angrily.
Nico was innocent!” I answered feeling a bit taken aback.
“I didn’t mean Nico!” Garret consoled me. “It’s Henry. We did a little investigation of our own. We found out that the trap that Henry set up was faulty. That’s why an ordinary bear was able to just break it. That’s why your brother died.”
He held me in his arms. “None of our kind was anywhere near that place.”
“Henry?” I asked.
“Yes. It was Henry.” He answered.
“What do we do now?” I looked to his people.
“We’ll do the only thing we can do. We will run away.” His father an old man with a cane answered me. He turned to his people and muttered a few words before everyone went into the house in a flurry.
*****
They packed their three trucks up with supplies that could last months; tents, pots and even a crib for the baby.
Garret and I took his motor bike. We agreed to rendezvous somewhere deep inside the woods. His father said that this path was only known by them so they would be safe. They slowly moved out, one by one, taking different routes. We locked the doors and kept the lights lit to let my brothers think the Fields were still inside.
“Garret, look!” I pointed to south where two headlights had slowly emerged. I think they saw us right away since they revved up the vehicle which was now careening towards us.
“Hold on tight.” He yelled over the sound of the motor bike swerving around away from the truck.
They fired. Its sound of the gunshot echoed through the forest. My heart raced, as I grabbed tighter to his body.
It was so dark, but Garret had been able to manage to drive his way around the thicket. Our luck soon ran out as we hit something sharp that sent our wheels in a flat run. We decided to walk on foot, which was a decision we soon regretted.
“Freaks!” They called out. My brothers must have not known it was me.
We ran faster as we hear d the truck come to a stop. Maybe the same thing that busted our bike busted the truck. Next thing I knew, the sound of heavy footsteps started to gain on us.
Garret was getting really nervous. He was getting indecisive as to which paths to take. I started to worry that it was true; their people weren’t made for these things. They were docile and highly social were creatures. They didn’t know how to fight. This worried me and I didn’t want to lose him. I was determined to do all I could to not lose him.
Our luck then took a turn for the worst. We had reached a dead end as we accidentally ran into the foot of a cliff. There was no way we could just claw ourselves up it. So we decided to just stop.
The stampede of footsteps got closer, as I saw my figures racing toward us. “It’s me!” I yelled to them.
“What the hell Jenna!” Guiles exclaimed!
I turned to the other man in the distance and realized it was my father. “Father! Please stop this; they had nothing to do with what had happened to Nico!”
“Jenna, you’re confused! They’ve tricked you.” My Father called back. “Please leave that man and we can be a family again. Come back to us!”
“No.” I said with a heavy voice. Garret decided not to say anything so as not to aggravate the situation.
“Please put down your guns,” I beckoned to the both of them. “Where are Henry and Vince?”
“Trailing behind.” Guiles replied. “Please stop this Jenna. Just come with us.”
I finally snapped. “I said no!” I ran to Garret and embraced him to prove to my family what I had felt for him was real. I wasn’t deceived; I wasn’t brain-washed. They had to know this. They were my family.
Suddenly, heavy footsteps came rushing towards us.
“What the fuck are you all doing!” Henry. It was Henry. We had no time to react, and Henry quickly raised his gun and fired haphazardly in our direction.
“No!” Father screamed and Guiles tackled him to the ground. Vince was confused. He ran to were the figures he saw were and found me, bloodied in Garrets embrace.
“Jenna!” Vince screamed.
“I didn’t know!” Henry froze. “I swear father! I didn’t know it was her!” But my father had stopped listening to him as he and Guiles ran towards us.
Garret was sobbing. He explained what had really happened to Nico. That it was just an ordinary bear that broke a trap that was set-up wrong by Henry.
“Is this true?” Vince turned to Henry.
“I… I… I didn’t think it mattered.” Henry said as he fell to his knees. “It was a werebear father! We know it was.”
“Stop talking Henry.” My father said in an angry whisper.
“We need to take her to the hospital!” Garrett shouted to them who were all too stunned to do anything. I was in shock and felt very cold, as blood ran from my shoulder.
Garrett lifted me up and swiftly ran towards our truck. Guiles snapped out of his confused state as he ran alongside Garret towards the truck. He proper himself into the driver’s seat and Garret carried me to the back. Father came along with us while Vince helped putting pressure on my wounds. We left Henry there in the woods. He didn’t move. He was just sitting there on his knees crying and muttering to himself.
They raced me to the nearest hospital. When I got there, the doctors did all they could. They were able to patch up all my wounds and take the shrapnel out of my body, but I had lost so much blood that they worried I wouldn’t make it through the night.
Fear gripped my family as they waited beside me trying to search for the slightest signs of life. But I was lying there, lifeless. Garret had stayed there too, mostly not talking to my family, but he stayed there anyway.
Henry had arrived. Vince had brought him. But it was obvious he was not well. If it were anyone else, for sure they wouldn’t be well too. When he found out he had shot me, his mind collapsed into a deep state of confusion, but when Garret told them about what really happened to Nico, Henry snapped. Father decided to admit him in a mental health care facility, two towns over. As for myself, I was still in that bed, deciding whether to finally just wake up or go on sleeping.
It was a week into my coma when my father had decided to go home with my brothers. Garret stayed though. It was the first time he got to be alone with me there lying, maybe even dying, on that bed. He propped himself beside me holding my hand as he started praying. He prayed with so many tears that flooded onto my hands. He wailed in a strained voice asking God to just bring me back to him.
I guess God was listening and responded to his pleas. I finally felt the strength to open my eyes and move my fingers.
He didn’t notice it at first, but when I spoke, he jumped back.
“Water?” I pleaded in a rough and strained voice
“Jenna!” He screamed, alerting all the orderlies and nurses at the station to the miracle that was happening.
“I love you.” He whispered as he kissed my forehead.
The nurses rushed back and forth to get me water and to check my vital signs. Every now and then I heard one of them mention that this was a miracle. I guess it was.
“Hey, big girls don’t die easy.” I told him.
“Big beautiful women really don’t. Thank goodness!” He laughed as we stared lovingly into each other’s eyes.
*****
The doctors finally let me out of the hospital after a few more days of monitoring. I didn’t feel perfect, but I felt fine. When I got to the house, Henry was already gone. Father made sure to ship him off to the facility before I came home. I wasn’t really sure how to feel about that. On one end, I wanted to say I forgave him and that he should get better soon. But then there is other part of me that is afraid of him – of his rage.
Father had let Garret come with us as they brought me home. He had always been there my side through this whole ordeal, and I think my father saw that and finally realized what we had between us was something really precious. It was true love.
My father and brothers all went to Garret’s to apologize to the Fields. They explained the situation and that Henry had been sent away to get professional help. They fortified their pact of peace and started reconciling. We were lucky. The fields were werebears of the mild mannered kind. Garret had told me that werebears in Alaska were fiercer than those in California.
“Do you know what’s the matter with you, my sexy bear man?” I asked him as we lay in my old bed together with the duvet and sheets beneath us.
He turned to look at me with those kind eyes. He reached for my hand and pulled it to his face. I felt the friction of his stumble as he let my hand graze his cheek. He looked back to me and smiled.
“What is ? What is a matter with me, my red headed siren?” He asked me.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing” I stopped to pull his face closer to mine. I kissed him deep. I let his tongue invade my mouth sending my senses into fits of bliss and ecstasy. “Nothing is a matter with you.” I answered. He giggled and he kissed my cheek.
“I love you.” He said.
“I love you too. More than you could ever know.”
“Well then tell me. Let me know exactly how much you love me.”
“Oh Garret, it would take forever.”
“Well, then, Jenna, won’t you please spend forever with me?”
“Yes. I will.”
A few months, later, right by the lake where he first saved me from the darkness that had tried to consume me, we vowed never ever to lose each other. We promised never to let each other’s hand go. He vowed to always love me in the most fantastic ways he could think of. He promised to always tell me I am beautiful because he knows for sure that I’d always be beautiful even when I’m ninety years old. He promised to always protect me. He vowed never to abandon me. He promised me the moon and the stars and sweet little kisses every single time I felt sad. He promised me a future with joy and contentment. He promised to make sure that I was always happy.
I vowed never to forget how I felt that first time I held his face – that sheer joy I felt and the understanding I had that this man was going to be my love forever. I promised him peace of mind that I will always be his and he will always be mine. I promised to cook him eggs and bacon every morning and make him coffee just after lunch. I promised to give him all of me, every single bit of who I was, who I am, and who I will be in the future.
I promised him my devotion – a never ending supply of affection. I promised to wrap him in a warm embrace when it gets too cold in this big scary world.
I promised him everything he could ever ask of me. I promised him my world.
When we said those vows, I turned to the people who had come and make this union possible: the Fields who never questioned my love for their son, and my family, who had changed for the better, even Henry. Every single person who made this dream comes true. I looked to them as tears slowly blotted my mascara. This time they were tears of utter joy.
I do.
THE END
Retiring from his life as a smart thief, Ted Wilkins decided that going back to Texas was the best thing for him. He had landed huge deal yielding a very large amount of money, and he intended to purchase a ranch there and begin his life again. He wondered how his brother, Alex, was doing. He had not seen Alex in almost ten years, although they had communicated quite a lot while he was in the Middle East thinking up ways of making money off the Arab oil lords. He had finally gotten his break when he had managed to convince one of the old oil don's to give him his inheritance before he died and he had finally achieved what he had been looking for his whole life. He was now one of the richest men in the state and he would finally gain the respect of those who had treated him as a loser. There was only one thing left missing in his life: love. Ted had never had time for relationships while in the Middle East, although when he had been back in Texas, he’d had several flings and even married.
He had then gone out to the Middle East with the main aim of making enough money to make him and his wife live a comfortable life, but when he had been there he got wind that she had moved in with another man despite the fact that she had his child. He even began doubting if her son was his, and he decided that he would never give his heart to another woman again. Alex had already gotten married and even had a little daughter named Mia, a cute little girl who had the looks of her mother. They sent Ted photographs often and so he was kept up to date. Ted had lied to them, saying that he was in the military so that they would not have to worry about him. He even wore military tags around his neck to keep up this façade to people he knew. Now he was going back home and he wondered how things were going to be. Would they be the same as they always were?
*****
“I'm sorry I had to leave so suddenly, but I really need to get this inheritance issue sorted out,” Diana Blake said into the mouthpiece as she steered the rental through the Texas heat. “I promise you that I'll be back in Chicago as soon as I am done.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I would have cancelled the trip just to accompany you to Texas.” Her fiancée Mark Lindel complained.
“It was all at such short notice, with my mom’s death and the conditions of her will, but I promise that I'll come back as soon as I am done here,” she replied, imagining that she would be going to the Bahamas with her rich fiancée for the weekend instead of having to go to Texas to fulfill her late mothers wishes, which were to stay at the ranch where she to stay for a whole week if she was to inherit her life insurance money.
“Well then, you have a good time, and don’t forget to call me when you get there,” Mark replied.
“I will, as long as there is damn reception in this God forbidden place,” she said, hanging up and tossing the cell phone onto the passenger seat.
She then recalled the incidents that had led to her trip to Texas. Diana had been brought up in Texas on a ranch, but had been mistreated by her step father, who was an emotionally abusive jerk. As a result, the moment that she had turned 18, she ran away to Chicago with her savings and began a new life there. She had abandoned her mother, who had never seemed to be able to protect her from her step dad, and went ahead and paid for her own college education with the few savings that she had and a couple of jobs that she held to help her get by. After graduation, she launched her own fashion house from scratch with the help of her best friend, Amanda. Slowly her company had begun to gain recognition in the Chicago fashion world, and she started to become successful very.
After an amazingly successful fashion event, she ended up hooking up with Mark, the spoiled son of one of the richest families in the state, and they started to see each other regularly and eventually got engaged. Although, for Diana, their whole relationship was more for convenience, since she wanted him to finance the expansion of her company. By marrying Diana, it was a way for Mark to show his parents that he had matured and was ready to run their businesses. Amanda had sworn never to go back to Texas, but after the death of her mother, she realized that one of the clauses of the will stated that she had to go back to the ranch house and stay there for a week before she got the ten million dollars life insurance money. She needed the money if she was to expand her business, and since she had been told that her step dad had died years ago, she decided that it would not really harm anyone to go back there, especially if it was only for a week. Her phone went off again interrupting her thoughts, and she reached over to it and picked the call.
“Diana, are you out of your mind, how could you just take off for Texas without even letting me know?” Amanda's voice crackled into the phone.
“I'm so sorry, I had meant to call you but it all happened so suddenly,” Diana apologized to her best friend.
“Well, you take good care of yourself, girl. I have to go, I have a date with this guy I met and I need to get ready; I'm so excited!” Her friend chattered excitedly. “I'll give you a call to let you know how everything goes. Love you!”
“I love you too,” Diana said, hanging up the phone and tossing it back onto the passenger seat as she thought how lucky her best friend was.
Unlike Diana, Amanda had one of those model-like hourglass shaped bodies that made men drool over her, and she was never at a shortage of dates. Men were always chasing after her, unlike Diana who’d had a hard time getting Mark to accept her. Diana was one of those larger, yet very shapely women, with voluptuous firm breasts and wide shapely hips, but the problem was that most of men, or ‘most eligible men’ as she would put it, referring to men with money, preferred skinny women, and that had left her in quite a dilemma. She therefore jumped at Mark when he had shown an interest in her, although she did not really have any feelings for him. Her phone went off, and she wondered what Amanda wanted this time. She reached over to get the phone but it slipped and fell onto the ground. Amanda looked at the main road, and seeing that it was clear, she bent under the dashboard and tried to reach for her cell phone, which slid under her seat.
Suddenly, she heard the blaring of a horn and when she sat up and looked ahead of her, there was a truck coming for a head on collision with its lights on and its horn blaring. She jerked the steering wheel, and the car careened onto the other side of the road. Unable to control the car, it dived off the road and across a ditch, landing on a patch of grassland. Dana moved forward, her head hitting the windshield as her foot hit the brake sharply. She could feel blood trickling from her forehead, and the last thing that she saw before she blacked out was a man pounding on her window.
*****
Ted wondered what was wrong with the driver of the oncoming vehicle, since the car had gotten off its track and onto his, and was coming directly for his truck. He put his hand down on the horn, but the other driver did not seem hear it, and Ted couldn’t even see the face of the driver. A head suddenly appeared, and the sedan swerved to the other side, lost control and plunged into the ditch. Ted watched as the car came to a stop, bringing his car to a stop and waiting for the other driver to give him a piece of his mind. He wondered who the hell wanted to kill him. Nobody seemed to come from the car, and his instincts took over. What if the driver was injured? He jumped out of the truck and made his way to the other vehicle. He peered into the driver’s window and there was a woman inside lying over the steering wheel. She seemed to have smashed her head on the windshield as she was bleeding, and he noted with disgust that she was not wearing her seat belt.
Ted knocked on the window, calling out frantically, but there was no response. He tried the door of the car but it was locked from the inside. Glad that he had worn a designer jacket with leather padding on his elbows, he hooked his elbow and sent it smashing through the window, smashing it open. He then reached into the car and unlocked it, pulling the door open. Inside the car was an elegantly dressed woman, and he couldn’t help but notice how sexy her fleshy thighs looked under the short skirt she wore. She was a larger woman, but being a strong guy, he reached into the car and pulled her out. She had passed out and he studied her wound to see if she was badly injured. He dashed to his truck and came back with a first aid kit. He then swabbed the blood away and disinfected the wound. It did not look too serious, and so he decided that he would take her back to his brother’s house so that Imelda could take care of her. His brother’s house was only ten minutes away while the hospital was two hours away, although he could always call in for his chopper to come down and take her there if it became serious.
“What happened?” she said, opening her eyes briefly to reveal the sexiest emerald green eyes that Ted had ever seen before she blacked out again.
Ted carried her to his truck and belted her up on the passenger seat, before making his way back to her car. He looked around in the car, carrying her belongings to his truck and tossing them onto the back seat. Ensuring that there was nothing of hers left in the car, he headed off to his truck and drove off in a hurry. Imelda came running out of the house when she saw his truck driving in at a crazy speed. Ted did not wait to kill the engines, jumping out of the car and running up to the porch.
“Imelda, I need some help, I ran into some kind of trouble,” he breathed quickly.
“Oh no, Ted, I thought that you had changed. Alex and I don’t want Mia growing up around trouble, and if that is the case, you might have to move into a motel as you wait for your ranch house to be complete,” she creased her brow jokingly.
“Imelda, I'm serious, I met a woman who wanted to run me off the road, and she ended up in a small accident. I could not leave her there, and besides, judging from the way that she is dressed, I don’t think that she is from these parts,” Ted said, putting on a serious face.
“Oh no, that is serious, why didn’t you take her to the hospital?” Imelda said, her face suddenly flooding with worry.
“Nah, I don’t think it is anything serious, just a bump on the head, nothing that you can't fix,” Ted said, leading her to the truck.
“That doesn’t look too bad, why don’t you carry her to the guest bedroom while I go and get the first aid kit,” she said bustling back into the house as Ted opened the truck door and carried the hot beauty out of the car, thankful for his own size and strength as he carried her into the house.
Imelda was like a mother hen, and he trusted that she would take good care of the woman. For some reason that he could not understand, he really wanted her to get well. Maybe it was because he thought that something just might occur between them. He did not know her, but he was already smitten over her. As he laid her onto the bed, her blouse parted a little giving him a view of her cleavage. Her skin was creamy, unlike his tanned skin, and he could only imagine how the rest of her breasts would look without her blouse or bra. He studied her thighs as her skirt hiked up a little more than it was supposed to, and Ted felt his cock beginning to stiffen in his pants.
Meeting this stranger was probably no coincidence at all
, he thought,
it was fate
. This was definitely his type of woman; he just had an inexplicable feeling. Although, he still had no idea who she was. Imelda came bustling into the room carrying a first aid kit.
“Ted, that is bad manners, look at how you are practically undressing that young woman,” she scolded as Ted jumped away from the woman.
“Have you forgotten that I was away for a long time and practically forgot how a hot woman looks?” He joked with his sister in law.
“I think you should go and get yourself a woman to take care of your needs, Ted. That long dry spell is doing you no good,” she scurried over to the side of the bed and went about checking out the wound. “Now, get out of here. She needs some space in here. I'll call you when I need you. Go and check if Mia is awake yet.”
Reluctantly, Ted left the room and closed the door behind him, making his way downstairs to check on his sweet niece. He could not get the mysterious woman out of his head no matter how much he tried to concentrate on anything else. The child was still asleep and so he made his way to his truck and drove over to his new ranch to see how the construction of the mansion was going. The house was in the finishing stages, and if he could hit it off with this woman, maybe she would be keeping his new bed warm very soon.
*****
Diana woke up to a blazing headache. Her head felt heavy and drowsy, and she tried to remember what had happened. She remembered almost colliding with a truck before getting in an accident, and judging from the bedding that she was laying on, she was probably in a hospital bed. She forced her eyes open and scanned around the room. This was definitely no hospital because it looked like a very tastefully furnished room. Panic snaked its way through her. Could she have been abducted and taken hostage by some perverts or something? Lifting herself up, she got off the bed and made her way to the window, peering out. She could see a swimming pool out the back, and further on she could see barns, cattle and horses. There were also toys strewn out on the backyard, which made her feel a little safer. Whoever lived here had kids, which meant that the chances that they were abductors were very slim. She could hear the low voices of a man and a woman talking somewhere in the house, friendly tones. Sensing someone behind her, Diana turned around slowly and looked into the sexiest blue eyes that she had ever seen, eyes that she could look into forever without ever tiring. They also belonged to one of the most handsome men that she had ever laid her eyes on, and he stood there his huge frame draped in blue jeans, a brown shirt and matching Stetson and cowboy boots. She found herself blushing despite herself, her jaw dropping.