men.
“I have been waiting for my chance to get you,” Slade whispered in her ear. “I have been waiting and following you for days, but that pesky Rio had you surrounded by guards at all times. Well, no worries, I eventually managed to slip past them and get to you.”
Pearl tried to struggle and break away, but her vision was slowly getting dimmer and dimmer. The last thing she heard was Slade laughing and then she blacked out.
Chapter 19
Rio woke up suddenly, the bear in him howling and withering. He sat up in his bed, looking around him widely.
“Pearl?” he shouted. “Where are you?”
He got out of bed, running to the living room, and found out that she had cleaned up the place and there was no sign of her everywhere. He looked away everywhere before he finally remembered that she had told him she was going home.
“Larry!” he ordered, opening the door. His guard was instantly there, alert and ready to accept all orders.
“Pearl!” Rio said. “Where is she?”
“I saw her leaving the building, sir,” Larry said. “It was roughly around dawn when I saw her. I think she was heading home.”
“The driver? Did he drop her home?”
“I think the driver was already off the clock by then, sir.”
“The guards! The men following her? Where are they all!”
“I will find out right this minute, sir.”
With that, Larry ran off and left Rio pacing as he panicked about Pearl. He knew that she was in trouble and that he had to save her at all costs.
“The guards say that they lost track of her while tailing her,” Larry said, coming back. “They can’t find her anywhere and the guard watching her house said that she hadn’t come yet.”
“Get a hunter on the job,” Rio said. “Have them use their super sense of smell to find Pearl. We have enough source of her scent that it should not be a problem.”
“Right away, sir.”
*
“Are you sure she is here?” Rio said, running as fast as his bear form allowed.
“Yes, sir,” Larry said. “The hunter managed to track him down to this region of the city. It’s the abandoned house on the corner of the street. We think he is planning on getting her out of the city as soon as possible.
Rio increased his speed as panic and worry continued to gnaw at his chest. He hoped that Laura would not panic when she woke up. He had left Larry’s wife to watch over her and handle her when she woke up.
“Surround the place,” he ordered. “I want a small team to go with me inside. Be careful because he might hurt her if he feels too threatened. Until we are sure that Pearl isn’t safe, we are not making a move.”
Larry barked the orders to the generals of the different squads, and the group separated as ordered. Rio watched as his men surrounded the place, and once he was sure that Slade wouldn’t be able to escape, he made his way inside.
The moment he entered the building, his super-human senses allowed him to smell Pearl’s scent and be bounded up the stairs to the roof. He crashed through the door with Larry and Bane closely following him to the roof. He looked around and saw Pearl tied to a chair, her mouth gagged and her eyes wide in fear. Slade stood behind her, an evil smile spreading on his scarred face.
“Let her go, Slade,” Rio said, glaring at him. “You are surrounded from all sides. You have no escape and you have no hope of defeating three bear shifters.”
“Oh, I believe you are mistaken,” Slade sneered. “I have a secret of my own, you see.”
And with that, he started to contort and shift, his body morphing into that of a humungous bear. Rio watched in horror as he realized that Slade was a very special species of bear shifters. He was a Teil bear, a very special kind of shorter who had an abnormally large form and extremely strong powers. No wonder he hadn’t been able to sense that Slade was a shifter. Tile bears can disguise their powers and scent and remain hidden.
“This won’t stop me, Slade,” Rio snarled. “Just remember, you sealed your own fate.”
With that, he leaped, and the two mighty bears clashed in mid-air. They clawed at each other, trying to get the upper hand but they were too evenly matched. They broke apart before once again lunging at each other as they continued to fight viciously. Rio