Bear Protector - Bella Love-Wins Page 0,2

hundreds of years ago, the after-effects were felt around the globe. Regions around the world erected high walls infused with magic and reinforced with powerful spells, to keep the monsters out. Unrelenting, the destroyers would try to breach these mystic outer wall, once sturdy, robust and impenetrable, but made weaker with the cold and ice and the passage of time.

The region’s covens of witches had been able to keep them out for hundreds of years, using several powerful containment spells. But something in these monsters’ persistent nature helped them to discover an emerging weakness in these mystic boundaries nine years ago. Perhaps this was common in other parts of the world. Or maybe the ruthless creatures had adapted over the three hundred years since they had first appeared and decimated more than eighty percent of the globe’s land masses. It didn’t help that vast sections of the infrastructure erected almost three hundred years ago were aging. These outer walls were in serious need of replacement, yet difficult to undertake due to the scarce amount of sturdy building resources on the island.

Some or all of these pre-conditions made the destroyers come to these walls to try again each winter. On the coldest, windiest of days, the region’s citizens would hunker down and cower in terror, hoping and praying that the savage creatures would not make it inside. The Chancellor called the destroyers’ winter arrival the ‘reverse hibernation’. They would emerge and attack the region’s outer walls during the winter months. According to the patrols assigned from the Regional Protection Unit, destroyers would sleep during the summer. This military unit discovered that during the warm months, the creatures around would gather on a tiny, remote island northwest of the city. The area used to be called Charles Mound, the highest elevation in Northern Illinois. Most of the land around it was gone now, submerged under water and completely wiped out when the destroyers first arrived several hundred years ago.

During these warm months, most of the creatures slept in holes they dug for themselves once the ground thawed enough for them to dig. They seemed to soak in the heat of the sun’s rays during those summer months of sleep, and the females that mated during the winter would bear their young early in the season. Their new numbers, the babies, grew to maturity during those sleeping times as well. After this pattern was first discovered, the Regional Protection Unit had directed the entire summer patrols to the slaughter of all the sleeping monsters. Hundreds of destroyers were killed. Too bad these creatures learned quickly. By the end of that season, the creatures had established a rotation for the males. Some would remain awake while others slept, on guard to avert annihilation.

The destroyers’ temporary absence during the heat of summer did not offer the citizens a moment’s rest. That time of year was devoted to fortification and stockpiling. Teams of craftsmen would repair fences and barricades within the villages. The Azzera, a coven of witches specializing in casting barrier spells, would work with the Regional Protection Unit soldiers as well as carpenters and masons, to replace and reinforce aging sections of the outer walls that made up the region’s first line of defense. Farmers and teams of women and older children would grow fruits and vegetables, raise cattle and poultry, and preserve meats for the long, cold months spent behind the high stone and wooden barriers.

Every action was undertaken in preparation for the return of the demonic creatures which existed only to wreak havoc on all of Azmark. It was a necessary set of steps to ensure their winter survival inside the fortified walls. Unlike most of the townspeople, Kiera did not partake in the flurry of work that was done before the first storm of every winter. Her job was to perfect and strengthen her magic so that she could successfully complete this year’s shifter transformation ceremony. Newly transformed Kodiak bear shifters would join the Regional Protection Unit, the army of highly trained soldiers led by their alpha, Xander Oslo. They were the last line of defense when destroyers breached the walls and attacked during the winter months. Which was the reason today’s meeting was of critical importance.

Kiera went to the small bathroom connected to her room. Her personal handmaid, Aleena, slept in the bedroom on the other side, and had already filled the tub with warm water for her. While she bathed, she wondered what Xander Oslo would be like in