Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,148

what might or might not come after but because of what he’d be leaving behind. He fought alongside his brothers to protect Eric just months ago when his ex-girlfriend, who had turned out to be a sort of con-artist murderer had attacked them all with powerful magic. It was come and go for a while there for Cody. He could still remember the feeling of drifting away from life, and even in those moments when he was sure his jig was up, he had thought: This is not so bad. His brothers would be devastated and he’d know that. But he’d felt a sort of peace about it.

He felt completely different about it now.

Life was far too precious now. He had a new family and they needed him and perhaps less importantly, though it didn’t feel like, he had an entirely new world to discover in Jessie and these six cubs. He wasn’t about to go drifting off into the great beyond any time soon, even if he was more than willing to lay down his life if he had to in order to protect them.

He was in daze as Jessie leaned against him, holding his hand, and he was a little startled when she quietly said, “You know what I’ve been thinking about?”

“What’s that, love?” Cody said.

“Sometimes in the evening or on my days off, I’d be with the kids just coloring or playing games or reading,” Jessie said softly. “Or making dinner. Jason was so scared and shy in the beginning. It was two weeks before he said a word to me. Chris was just as scared but he’d try to be so tough and Molly... I’ve never met anybody as strong as Molly. And Sophie and the twins were sort of freaked out without realizing why they were freaked out and then they were okay. And then they were all so... delightful. Not always perfectly behaved, of course. And some of that is because of how they were treated before. It was really hard. But they’re so sweet and so... they’re so fascinating to watch as they learn things or make up silly stories and games. And I couldn’t figure out... if their sleuth was going to treat them so horribly, beating them and making them scrounge for their own food and live in that cave and acting like they had no real parents, what was the point?”

Cody’s heart cracked in his chest as she spoke. Sometimes his mind did wander to the cubs’ life before Jessie had found them and he hated imagining it. Anything he thought of was likely to be even worse than the reality. “Did you figure out the point?”

“Well, they just wanted numbers,” Jessie said. “They don’t care about the cubs as individuals, they just want to add more bears to their sleuth. They think by treating them that way, they’ll grow up mean and tough. This means the adults running the sleuth now probably grew up that way too. They think that’s the only way it can be. Brutal, cold, unloving. It made me want to protect them even more, not just for how they’d be treated now but to protect them from becoming like that someday, that kind of brutal person.”

Cody thought about that and was sort of happy to find he somewhat disagreed, although he couldn’t blame Jessie for thinking that way after what she’d seen. “That doesn’t always happen though,” Cody said. “People can break out of those cycles. I’ll bet some bears have left that sleuth or run away as kids. Maybe that’s why they’re so intent on getting the kids back. They probably lose the ones who manage to break free and know that it doesn’t have to be this way. I mean look at Molly and Chris, they’re already twelve and ten. Those two don’t have a violent bone in their little bodies.”

“That’s true!” Jessie leaned against his shoulder and turned her head to kiss his cheek. “You’re right. Thanks for saying it. They’re special, our cubs.”

Our cubs.

“Yeah,” he said. “They are.”

The house the cubs were being held in now was a huge old shambling place in the middle of nowhere. Connor spotted it from half a mile out and there was an incline in the road up to the place where a couple other houses sat nearby but very little tree cover for them to hide out in if they were going to sneak an attack. He parked as far away as they could