Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,107

and somehow that made it worse. They were much more fragile that way, especially in the wild. All but the two oldest, Molly and Chris, were crying and whimpering. They were all dinner and far too thin. She’d found them with no food and only a bucket with a bit of water in it.

Jessie had managed to talk to the oldest girl. It took Molly a few minutes to talk. Every second had been a little terrifying. To Jessie’s mind, whoever had trapped them here must be very dangerous. Molly told her that all the children were from the same sleuth who left them in the cave to go into town as humans whenever they liked. What was worse was, most of the children preferred when they were left alone rather than be knocked around and mistreated by their parents.

Or anyway, Molly assumed the bears were her parents. There were no clear mothers and fathers, she said.

It was more than enough information for Jessie to take action, but she knew she had to be smart about it. She left the children and pushed everything back into place, latching the door. She’d run out to find Lucinda and Rebecca, knowing they’d eventually come to look for her.

That had been the trickiest part; lying to the two would-be lawyers. They were a little suspicious when Jessie insisted that she felt like staying in the woods overnight and they should go home without her.

Jessie had left them as quickly as possible and rejoined the children.

She’d stood there in the cave, in her human form, and looked every hungry and abused child in the eye. “If you want to, all of you can come with me. It won’t be easy, but I won’t hurt you. I’ll hide you from your sleuth and I’ll take care of you the very best I can-”

She hadn’t finished her speech before Jason, the eight-year-old, had run forward and thrown his arms around her waist, crying into her hip. That had clinched it.

Molly had been helpful during the escape. She knew which trails the sleuth took to get back the cave when they returned from town, so Jessie led them in the opposite direction. She’d led them for miles, far from the sleuth’s territory... which had brought them to that mountain of Black Bear Lake.

On the way, Jessie fished in the parts of the river that were thawed enough that it wasn’t hard to catch trout. Molly and Chris already knew how to fish fairly well. They caught food for the little ones and Jessie let them rest for a bit while standing guard.

Sometimes the cubs couldn’t stay in their bear form long enough and had to be human and that made it harder going. Their clothes were rags and the spring was still chilly. At least it wasn’t winter.

They’d walked for hours on that first day, and even run for a long time. Jessie hadn’t formed much of a plan; just to find a place to hide the children before she could find somewhere better.

She’d stumbled on the cabin by accident.

The place was abandoned and it sat in a deserted area of the woods that looked out on the ski lodge below. It didn’t have electricity, but there was an old generator that actually worked. There was so much dust around, she could tell no one had lived there in years.

It had been a big risk, but Jessie had set up a home for the children that day. She’d returned to her apartment and in the next few days, moved out. She made all kinds of excuses for her roommates who had apparently wanted a friend of theirs to move into her room anyway.

So it all worked out... if suddenly finding yourself a single mom to six children on the run could be considered working out. It was scary sometimes. She was constantly afraid that the sleuth would track down their children. The cabin was far from where she’d originally found the children but it was still in Colorado. She was half-hoping, based on how the children had been treated, that the sleuth wouldn’t bother looking for their cubs.

“One more hour to go,” Jessie thought. She pushed her cart down the hall and for about the fiftieth time that day, wished she could have said yes to Cody Strauss. But that was just too dangerous. Cody couldn’t know about the children. No one could. It was better to keep him at arm’s length. She just hoped they could