The BBW and the Beast: A Shifter Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 1)

N
o one should have found
him.

Six miles of snow-clogged side road, an abandoned summer camp, and more ‘keep out’ signs than a human could count stood between Samson’s farmhouse and civilization. He had no mailbox. No phone. And when he’d purchased his childhood home from its new owners, he did so under the name of his brother’s company, Rom Investing.

No one should’ve found him.

But someone had.

A silhouette stumbled through the snowstorm toward Samson’s yard, holding something above its head and shouting.

Samson leaned toward his front window, his bare chest brushing against the freezing glass. He rubbed the windowpane with the edge of his half-undone flannel shirt to unfog his view.

The stranger was human, that Samson was sure of; but the cold hid their scent. Samson smiled as the intruder stopped at the front porch. It was frozen over. The human wouldn’t be able to climb Samson’s stairs, let alone ring his doorbell.

But then, instead of turning around, the stranger started toward the footpath leading to Samson’s backyard.

Samson frowned, a memory tugging at him, longing awakening in his chest. Only one other person had broken into his house through the back.

What if…?

No.

It couldn’t be her.

Isabella.

A phantom ache shot through the mate mark on Samson’s back. But it was hard to say if that was from the memory, or because his mate was close.

The figure pushed the fence open, following the cleared path to his backyard. And his greenhouse.

“Damn it, Rex,” he growled.

His brother must have left the gate unlocked when he went hunting. Samson headed outside through the back door, not bothering with shoes or even a coat. His inner wolf relished the biting wind and the grit of white powder between his toes.

When he reached the greenhouse, the door was ajar and a set of footprints made the rest clear. Samson’s heart clenched.

The first and last time he had ever seen Isabella had been in this very greenhouse twelve years ago. The big, beautiful brunette had snuck in on some kind of dare. After a hasty seduction, thirty minutes, and one passionate kiss, Samson had been sure she was his weremate. But then she’d run away. Mates didn’t run away.

But if they do
, a voice crooned in Samson’s mind,
they always return
.

With the silence of an expert hunter, Samson slipped through the door of the greenhouse and shut it behind him. Thankfully, the temperature was still warm, and only a few of the closest orchids were freckled with snow.

Samson sniffed the air. It would be much easier to find the intruder by following their scent then by trying to navigate the labyrinths of bushes and trees. One smell stuck out like a wilted weed -- mothballs and the sour tang of sickness accented with polyester.

It took Samson six seconds to follow the smell to its source, and the moment he arrived, it was clear the intruder wasn’t Isabella. A portly man dressed in a heavy frayed coat was bent over a row of Samson’s pink roses. To him, they probably looked ordinary, though with more petals than average.

“What are you doing?” Samson growled, trying not to let his disappointment stoke his rage.

The man jumped what must’ve been at least a foot in the air; a feat, considering his girth. “Oh, excuse me.”

Samson could taste the fear in the intruder’s dank sweat, even underneath the man’s many layers of clothing. “Turn and face me.”

Trembling more than a rabbit, the man stammered, “I’m so sorry. The door was open, and you didn’t answer, so …”

Samson’s nostrils curled. There was another smell in the air besides the flowers and the old man’s stench. Rusty and hot, he knew it immediately. Blood.

The man had one of Samson’s roses in his right hand, and he’d clutched it so tightly that its thorny stem had pierced his skin and sent blood trickling down his fingers to the clipboard he was holding in his other hand. Samson cocked his head to read the fine print of the paper on the clipboard.

CLEAR WATER CREEK, ORDINANCE 189—FILING FOR A CREATION OF WOLF HUNTING SEASON

Due to the recent attacks on livestock, we are asking you to re-approve the hunting of wolves to help protect our children and livelihoods.

Samson’s inner wolf roared. The man hadn’t just come to steal from him. He had come to kill his kind, albeit unintentionally. He clenched his fists, fighting back the claws threatening to emerge from his skin.

Samson couldn't yell at the man for that. Not without inciting suspicion. Werebeasts might have been gone for two hundred years, according to the public, but there were always those who still believed.

But threatening his kind with hunters wasn’t this man’s only sin.

“You took one of my roses,” Samson growled.

The man looked down with comically wide eyes, as if the rose had just appeared there by magic. “Well, I guess I did.”

“Do you have any idea how much that’s worth?” He could practically feel his canines lengthening into fangs, and he closed his mouth. With his wild black hair, massive frame, and inhumanly bright green eyes, Samson looked beastly enough already.

The man held the rose out to him. “You can have it back.”

“What use would a cut rose be to me?”

The man shrugged, which made his jowls jiggle. “I don’t know. But I’ll pay it. I’m so sorry. My daughter, you see—”

“One point five million. That’s how much that rose is worth.”

The man’s mouth dropped open, and his lips moved mutely before his vocal cords began working again. “One… one point five million? You’re joking. How is that even possible? What are you growing them with? Heroin?”

“Do I look like a man who jokes?” Samson said. The idiot wouldn’t understand how decades of selective breeding had created the most perfect flower, imported specially from England at great expense. Or the more personal significance the roses had.

“N-no, I have to say, you don’t.” The man sidled to the right, foolish enough to think there was some hope of escape. “But I don’t have that kind of money...”

“There are other ways for you to pay.” Samson’s wolf rejoiced at all the fantastic ways he could have his retribution, all carefulness forgotten as his anger grew. He’d start by biting off the fool’s hands. Maybe if the man was lucky, he’d leave it at that. An impending transformation itched at his skin, and the line between man and beast began to fray.

“But we’ll take the money.”

Samson whirled to see his brother, Rex, standing only a few rows over, staring at both of them. With his brother’s lighter frame, boyish good looks and slicked-back sandy hair, the only trace of shifter in him was in his predatorily calm cerulean eyes. In some ways, his humanity made him even more dangerous than Samson. At least with Samson, you’d know when you were about to die.

But now caution gleamed in Rex’s gaze. With his alpha’s intuition Samson got the message. They had enough troubles without adding murder to the list.

Samson straightened his shoulders and pushed down his wolf’s fury.

“But I d-don't have that kind of money. And I couldn’t ask my daughter, even with her book royalties,” the man spluttered, clearly oblivious to how close he had just come to being torn into a thousand pieces.

Rex, knowing that Samson didn’t have the energy to deal with the man, strode over and grabbed the intruder by the elbow. “Our lawyers will deal with that.”

“B-but I don’t have a lawyer.”

Rex rolled his eyes discreetly. “I’d recommend getting one,” Rex said, dragging the intruder through the door. The whistle of the wind drowned out the man’s reply.

Samson closed his eyes as the door clicked shut and silence returned. Time slowed as he lost himself to the calming scents of green growing things and wet, fertile soil. His mother had kept the garden for his father, to help him keep his wolf in check. It was only the scent of life that abated a wolf’s hunger for death, she said.

Samson hadn’t understood how necessary the garden was until both his mother and father had passed and he had been left to care for his two younger brothers, Rex and Luther.

“I’ve packed him away, and I’ll have the papers drawn up by morning,” Rex drawled.

Samson opened his eyes to find his brother leaning against a trellis embroidered with exotic vines. “How many times have I told you to close the gate when you leave?”

Rex smiled gently, not cowed by Samson’s lecture. “Millions now.”

“You never listened when you were a teenager. I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t now.” Samson pressed his thumb against his jaw, dragged down by a riptide of melancholy.

“Don’t feel too bad. By that time, all my habits were set,” Rex lied.

Even without his increased perception as an alpha, Samson knew it was lie from the bitter twist of Rex’s mouth.

Rex had his first shift the first few days after their father died from cancer, and as far as Samson knew he hadn’t transformed more than a handful of times since. Which was better than Luther, the youngest brother and member of their pack.

Luther…

Luther was the reason, Rex had to re-purchase his family’s old home in the first place and return to Crystal Creek after twelve years away.

“Cheer up,” Rex said, grinning grimly. “We’ve got a lawsuit in our future.”

Samson shook his head, confused by his brother, as usual. “You’re the oddest wolf I know, Rex.” 

B
el had thought
it would look different.

But even after twelve years, a publishing contract, and her virginity gone, her home town hadn’t changed. From the single dingy Chinese restaurant to her dad’s almost-condemnable ranch house on the outskirts of town, Crystal Creek, Michigan was like a time capsule.

Bel blamed her dreams. Every night the same garden, the same orchid, and the same man’s blurry face filled her sleep. How could she move on, when she still had a sliver of the past splintering her mind?

There was one new addition to her dad’s house: a mason jar on the dining room table holding the fullest pink rose Bel had ever seen. That, at least, made her smile. Her dad wasn’t very good at saying “I love you,” but he sure did know how to show it.

So Bel wasn’t surprised that when she mentioned the rose, he stammered about some local wolf hunting ordinance before asking her how long she was planning to stay.

Then it was Bel’s turn to stammer. She didn’t want to tell her dad that her big advance had run out. Or that her publisher had decided against picking up her new series on shifters because, ‘Werebeasts just aren’t in, Bel. It’s faeries or zombies if you’re going to write young adult.’

But it wasn’t until Bel checked the mail that she’d realized that maybe the most dangerous secrets in the Booksmore family weren’t hers. Buried under the electric bill and false sweepstakes mailers was a legal notice. Her father was being charged with grand theft. For 1.5 million dollars. For a flower.

This was how Bel ended up wading through half-melted snowdrifts alongside the empty stretch of highway. She had stuffed the rose and the jar underneath her jacket to keep the flower warm, but the glass was just making her skin colder.

Bel stopped, hands on her knees. She was so winded her breath came from her mouth in bouts of steam. Curvy, hefty, chubby, pleasantly plump; whichever adjective you wanted to use to describe Bel, fit wasn’t one of them. The only reason she was walking now was because her horrible vision meant she couldn’t drive.

When Bel looked up she was confronted with a familiar sign engraved in a wooden log.

‘Camp Kikanoo.’

Bel smiled sadly. The camp had been shut down only a year after she and her two other friends, Red and Cynthia, had left.

Bel fished her phone out of her pocket, her numb fingers fumbling with the touch-screen before getting to her GPS. Patchworks of green and beige proved what she had suspected. The legal notice’s address was from one of the houses bordering the camp. In fact, there was a good chance that it was the same farmhouse whose greenhouse she had snuck into all those years ago. The one where she had lost her glasses and had her first kiss.

Unconsciously, Bel’s hand moved to the small of her back, feeling for the patch of fur there. It warmed her fingertips.

The patch was the only tangible reminder of her encounter with the man in the farmhouse. It had grown a few days after the incident. At first, in a flight of teenage fancy, Bel had thought it might be a mate mark, a sign of her bonding to a werewolf, like in the old myths.

Then her dermatologist had told her she had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which explained her inability to lose weight. It was when the hair grew in that Bel had checked the address of the farmhouse and found out two important facts. First, the old owners weren’t listed by name, but by their company’s name, Rom Investing. And second, the new owners were a lovely older couple who had won the state fair’s award for largest zucchini two years straight.

So even if the person suing them lived in the farmhouse, Bel could handle a couple of retired zucchini growers, right?

Bel bore a sharp left, cutting through the woods and into Camp Kikanoo. But as she walked, she realized that the fire pit, the flagpole, and even the cabins had been torn out. It was only her GPS that kept her on track, and so Bel made sure to keep her nose buried in her phone. Which was why she was startled when she looked up and realized where it had led her.

There it was, the same old farmhouse. It guarded the edge of the dark woods like some ancient grey ghost. An overgrown field was its front yard, and from its back peeked a familiar transparent building. The greenhouse.

Bel shivered and told herself it was just the cold.

The last time she had been here, it had been high summer, and her best friends and fellow counselors Cynthia and Red had accompanied her reluctantly. Now, Camp Kikanoo would never have a summer again. Cold bit at Bel’s lips, and she gripped the mason jar with the rose closer to her breast.

She would return the rose and explain everything.

With the coming snows, this walk would only be harder tomorrow, so Bel screwed her courage to the sticking place and stalked over to the house. This time she didn’t skulk in the woods, she didn’t drop her glasses, she didn’t lose her friends, and she certainly didn’t run into a creepy, sexy-voiced man.

Instead, she braved the still-icy front porch and rang the doorbell.