Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,87

mind and making themselves at home when they were unwanted. He groaned again, his brow furrowed as he inwardly tried to fight the invasion. It made his head hurt and he was already feeling sluggish and dizzy besides that. His thoughts were slowing and becoming unclear.

I have to find Lydia, he thought. I have to…

But where was Lydia? He could smell her. She was somewhere close. He knew her scent better than anyone’s except his own brothers’. He had caught the scent of Lydia, even in dreams when he missed her so intensely it made his heart ache. There was no mistaking it.

She’s here…

He had to rise and fight and save Lydia. Except he couldn’t move and he could hardly think. That stranger was rooting around in his mind. The man was shutting the door, having dragged him into the living room of Michelle’s suite. They were looming over him, talking about him as he lay there, paralyzed. He realized it was Michelle rooting around in his head.

It also felt a lot like she was trying to take control of his mind and he couldn’t stop her.

“I told you,” she was saying to the man as they loomed over him. “Mind control spells are tricky!”

“If you don’t want to do the mind control-”

“I’m doing the mind control, dum-dum! I’ll knock him out and take him over. We’ll put him somewhere and he’ll wake up under my control. I just have to concentrate. And then we’ll come up with the plan. We just have to be careful!”

Eric wanted to scream at that. He felt his voice was stuck in his throat and even when he tried his hardest, his every muscle straining, all he managed was a soft, “Umph…”

“Hold on,” Michelle muttered. She glared down at him and he couldn’t so much as blink.

They had hurt Lydia. He knew that, he just didn’t know how. Though he suspected she was still alive. He could feel it. Everything in him wanted to jump up and rip Michelle’s throat out just for threatening his mate.

But all he could do was lie there as Michelle pointed down at him and whispered, “Sleep.”

And everything went dark.

30

Lydia

Lydia wondered if her mind might explode.

She had not been tied up - wherever this was - for long. But every second might as well have been an eternity. Because every passing second was another moment when Eric might be in danger.

She kept starting to freak out and having to calm herself down again.

She’d tried to telepathically connect to Eric a few times without success. It was tricky, since she really didn’t know what she was doing. They had only stumbled on this telepathic link by accident. It was something that had cropped up when they were younger, passing it off as a fluke. Now when they did it, it was in times of deep emotional connection.

She had never tried to force it before.

It was like wandering around, looking for a door on a long stone wall. She couldn’t find the entrance anywhere but she knew it was there. She felt as if she’d once known the way but had become lost.

C’mon, Eric. Let me find you…

If she couldn’t find Eric Strauss when she was lost, she had to think she would never be found by anyone again.

Lydia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She would reach Eric’s mind simply because she had to. Not just for her own sake, but for his. For them...

But when she shut her eyes, she saw herself in a blue dress. It was an old memory. She was fifteen and as much in love with Eric Strauss as a fifteen-year-old could be, which meant endlessly and madly. Eric had promised they would go to the movies together. It was just another day to hang out as buddies. That’s all it would ever be, she’d told herself. Because Eric had a different life and she didn’t belong in it. It would only make Eric’s life harder and even at fifteen, she felt she was a little wiser about the world than he was. She had to be.

Eric had built up their night out. He wanted to take her to dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant because she’d told him she’d never eaten lobster. It had sounded suspiciously like a date and even though Lydia had promised herself she would not pursue Eric like that, she allowed herself to build it up in her mind. A date with Eric Strauss. She could pretend. She