A Bear Victory

  A BEAR VICTORY

  PUCK BEAR BRIDES

  BY

  ANYA NOWLAN

  A LITTLE TASTE…

  “Because you’re a fucking asshole,” she replied, her voice this breathy little whisper, and her gaze flicking between his lips and his eyes.

  Cannon grinned. He knew he had hell to pay for this in a second, but he couldn’t help it. He slid one hand on her hip and brought the other to her cheek, cupping her chin, before he leaned in and kissed her long and hard on the mouth. Her tongue was in his mouth before he could move to do the same to her and her hands fisted in his jersey, tugging him closer as they kissed like two teenagers who hadn’t seen each other in so long.

  Truth be told, that’s sort of how Cannon felt. And it wasn’t too far from the truth, either.

  Another howling round of cheers snapped them out of it, though Kimberley obviously lost the magic before he did, because Cannon was truly only brought to his senses when her hand smacked him in the face. She didn’t put too much weight into it, though. He’d seen her play hockey when she was a teen. There was a hell of a lot more kick in that girl than he’d been graced with.

  Cannon chuckled and Kimberley snarled, wiggling out from between him and the tree, though Cannon didn’t move an inch to make it any easier. He was far too busy watching her and willing his cock to stop straining against the damn cup.

  “You’re a grade-A fucking jerk, Cannon Wright,” she said, stomping through the snow toward the bus, flipping him the bird over her shoulder.

  “I missed you too, baby,” he called after her, smiling like a damn fool.

  Copyright © 2016 Anya Nowlan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A Bear Victory

  Puck Bear Brides

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Anya Nowlan. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover © Jack of Covers

  You can find all of my books here:

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  www.anyanowlan.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  A LITTLE TASTE…

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  BEAR NO LOSS EXCERPT

  WANT MORE?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cannon

  “So this is it?” Heath called, one brow cocked and his jaw squared as Cannon jumped down the last few steps of the bus.

  “Guess so,” he commented, stretching his arms over his head as he surveyed their surroundings.

  One by one, the men piled out of the bus, some still yawning and blinking the sleep from their eyes, but their expressions soon turning somber at the sight before them. They were staring at a lake. Just... a lake.

  “Coach?” Cannon called, his voice slightly tentative as he motioned for Heath to keep his trap shut, sensing from a mile away that his friend—and one of the most aggressive forwards he’d ever had the pleasure of being on the same team with—was going to run his mouth again.

  No one needed that shit right now. Least of all Cannon Wright, the captain of the Chicago B… scratch that, captain of the yet-to-be-named Idaho ice hockey team, stranded seemingly in the middle of fuck-all nowhere. He slicked his hand through his short-cropped dark hair, watching the grizzled old man, who went by the name of Coach to anyone who dared refer to him at all, amble out of the bus at a leisurely pace.

  For a fleeting moment, Cannon hoped that there had been some sort of a mistake. A little mishap, a wrong turn somewhere along the way that was supposed to take them to a city and a decent ice rink, but ended up with a team of brash, powerful shifter hockey players staring at a goddamn lake. No Zamboni in sight, just snow and good ol’ fashioned ice.

  “What a beautiful day,” Coach chuckled, stretching much the same as Cannon had, the crack of his back sounding more like bones snapping in half.

  “Uh-huh. Beautiful. Coach, you wanna explain yourself here or what?” Memphis asked in his trademark drawl, leaning on the side of the big white and blue bus that had brought Cannon and eight other unfortunate young men to wherever they were now.

  Somewhere in Idaho. Where the mountains are high and the cell reception is shit, Cannon thought wryly, shoving his smartphone back in his pocket after confirming that he got exactly zero bars in the middle of the high pine trees and the lush smell of nature.

  And while the man was both pissed off and aggravated at having to be cooped up in a bus for fourteen hours for no apparent reason, the grizzly bear in him was practically standing up on its hind legs, trying to smell everything and anything at the same time. A quick glance around confirmed that he wasn’t the only one. Aside from glaring at Coach, most of the men seemed to be preoccupied with not shifting and tearing it for the hills.

  No wonder. Considering their training and the fact that most of them were city-slickers through and through, the team didn’t see a lot of open spaces anymore. Unless the rink counted. Cannon got the sinking feeling that this little tidbit of insight had a whole lot to do with why exactly they were standing around Coach at the moment, anxiously anticipating an answer.

  “Explain myself?” Coach asked, his voice always more of a roar than anything approaching conversational. “What do I have to explain myself for? Open up the cargo compartment. You’ll find enough shovels and brooms for all of you. There’s a whole goddamn lake to clean up.”

  Oh yeah. There it was. Trouble.

  “Heath,” Cannon growled as he stepped forward, recognizing by the way the man’s nostrils flared that the bear shifter was not satisfied by Coach’s comment. “Coach, man-to-man here. What’s going on? Why are we in Idaho? I know you said we’re relocating, but… Idaho? And as far as I can tell, we’re not exactly anywhere yet. This seems to be…” Cannon trailed off, motioning around with one outstretched arm before returning his steely blue gaze to Coach. “A forest.”

  “And right you are, Cannon. Perceptive as always. It’s a forest. And that,” Coach said, pointing at the wide, roughly circular lake covered with snow, “is a lake. A lake that you will clean up. A lake that you will train on. And a lake that you will goddamn learn to treat as your ally and foe until you’re good enough to go against anything other than non-sentient beings.”

  Coach’s jovial expression fell, his gray brows knitting and his lined face, hard and weathered, growing stern. Cannon knew that look far too well. It meant someone was going to get reamed with drills or made to sit out one too many games. He didn’t even need to pause to know that this time, it was going to be him, because he had more questions to ask.

  “Okay. Fine. Doesn’t answer the question though. Why are we here?”

  Cannon was six foot four, a mass of finely-tuned muscle and reflexes, a beast by any standard. Years of hard training, skating, and throwing down whenever he needed to had built him into the kind of player any reasonable adversary would think twice about before pounding into on the ice. But Coach didn’t bat an eye, and Cannon Wright was damn sure that if the man would
have wanted to, he could have whupped Cannon’s ass up and down the ice.

  Never underestimate the raw, brute power of a pissed-off hockey coach. Hell hath no fury like Coach on a rampage.

  Having said that, Cannon was more than a little surprised to see a jaunty grin appear on the lips of the old man, wearing his trademark red windbreaker, his hair pepper and salt but still thick and full. There was a glint in his eye that could only be defined as mischief, and any berating Cannon had ever received at the hands of the man who had trained him for the last five years seemed far less dangerous than the sight of Coach being amused.

  “We’re here because you’re my main guys. My starters, my first in line. We’re here because you’re the sorriest bunch of hockey players I’ve ever seen,” Coach growled, stepping out of the circle of shifters and coming to stare at the lake, his hands thrust into his pockets.

  “Hey, wait now. I object to this characterization,” Logan snorted, backed up by his brother, Leo a moment later.

  “I can name at least fifteen teams who suck far harder than we do.”

  “Fifteen? Shit man, I can name about twenty-nine,” Memphis commented, smirking.

  In a thirty-team league, that was as close to boasting as one could get.

  “Shut up,” Coach said lightly, causing all of them to fall silent. “And listen. You can all skate. Individually, you’re some of the best players out there. Even as a team, you’re worth a hell of a lot. But if you want me to tell you that you’re great, you’re talking to the wrong man.”

  Slowly, Coach turned around, and Cannon could feel his steely gaze falling immediately on Cannon himself. In response, he pushed back his shoulders, standing a little bit straighter under the scrutinizing eyes of the man who’d been like a father over the last few years. A cruel, spiteful father who made him work until he dropped, but a father nonetheless.

  The only kind you should have in this business.

  “You’re not great. You know why?” Coach asked, sure to get a reaction.

  “Why?” Heath shot with a grin.

  “Because you’re grown-ass men and you still don’t know what real teamwork, trust, and cooperation look like. Shifters, all of you, fast, strong, brutal. Yet you play more with your emotions than your instincts, more with your muscles than with your head.

  “Those animals inside of you have been locked away for too long and try as I might, I won’t ever get you to release them until you learn to tap in deep. So that’s why we’re here. In Idaho. With a lake. We’re going back to the roots.”

  The smile Coach gave was almost eerie as he scanned every man, shocked faces staring back at him.

  “So this is where we’re locating to? A fucking forest?” Jax asked, a surly-looking blonde giant with a mop of unruly hair.

  The guy could stop forwards like it was nobody’s business and had received an affectionate nickname as the “Sweeper” for how efficient he was at taking out anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path at the wrong time.

  “Shifter Grove. It’s mostly a forest, yeah. Construction of an ice arena has started, but it won’t be ready for a while yet. So it’s damn fortunate that Wolf’s Eye Lake here is so perfect for our needs,” Coach said with a grin, turning to look at the lake one more time. “The rest of the team will fly out when the arena is ready, but we’re going to be staying right here, working on the ice. I have temporary housing set up for you. If anyone wants to buy a house, be my guest. If you want to play on this team, you better be ready to settle in for the long haul.”

  Cannon’s stomach sank. The fact that the team was going to be moving out of Chicago had been known for a long time now, but the new location had been kept as a safely guarded secret. It didn’t take much to figure out that this was because of the usual nonsense in the National Shifter Hockey League, or NSHL, where promotional deals were huge and the amounts of money that kept flying around for deals like moving a whole top-tier team were astronomical.

  Whoever had wanted them here had to have paid a hell of a price for them.

  Shock settled over the group of nine men, silence ringing clear between them with only the sounds of the forest cutting in. Despite himself, Cannon caught himself whiffing at the air again, thinking how delicious it smelled and how much he just wanted to run in that forest. Something that was as far from his usual behavior as could be.

  Slowly, a few glances were thrown around amongst the men, until finally Cannon sighed, shaking his head as most of them centered on him. What was he going to say? “Hell no, I won’t stay in the middle of nowhere, Idaho, with the best coach in the damn league, even if he thinks this is the best thing for me?” That wasn’t going to happen.

  Weather though, he thought grimly, bending down to yank at the handle to the cargo areas below the bus, opening the first one up.

  He grabbed two shovels and tossed one at the man closest to him, who happened to be Memphis, before slinging the other one over his shoulder and giving a winning grin to his team.

  “Well then. Guess we’re the Shifter Grove Shovelers until someone comes up with something better,” he said, earning some low-murmured expletives and chuckles in response.

  Cannon kept himself from glancing back at the hockey gear and his bags stored behind the brooms and shovels, willing himself not to feel the twinge of regret at getting uprooted to begin with. There was a new normal to deal with. One that apparently required a bunch of manual labor.

  But if there was one thing Cannon Wright could be sure of, then it was the fact that his team would be right there with him. Feeling the pain and reaping the rewards. Nothing could keep a hockey bear down. At least not this one.

  Though it would have been a hell of a lot sweeter if he just had some cell reception. How else could a bear be sure that the absolutely mesmerizing little creature he’d been talking to over SassyDate hadn’t sent him a message?

  Goddamn Idaho.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kimberley

  PuckBear: Don’t lie, you know you want to

  MontrealSabres4Life: I want to come down to Idaho to see some 2-bit team dawdle around on ice? You got some nerve, Pucky.

  “Kimberley, are we boring you?” Stella Dremmel queried, one finely shaped brow arching quizzically as Kimberley scrambled to shove her phone under the table.

  “No, Stella,” she answered, feeling just the lightest touch of a blush rising to her cheeks as the phone vibrated with a low buzzing noise in her hands.

  “Wonderful. So you’ll be handling the Chicago game cancellation PR then. I don’t want to hear any complaining about it,” Stella said with a flourish as she waved her hand for the small public relations and media team of the Montreal Sabres to get out of her office, where they’d been gathering at a long table like beggars at an alms table.

  “Tough luck,” Serena’s soft voice called behind Kimberley as she stalked out of the office, her expression twisted in discomfort despite the fact that her stomach was doing somersaults as it always did when she was talking to “Pucky.” “That thing’s going to be killer. Chicago dropping out mid-season like that? They could have made the playoffs. Shouldn’t have been making goo-goo eyes at your phone during the meeting or she wouldn’t have stuck you with that crap assignment!”

  “They’re not dropping out. Just skipping a few games until they get resettled wherever the hell they’re going. Not that they’re ever going to make up the difference because of those two sure losses, but whatever. And I wasn’t doing anything like that!” Kimberley said, glancing over at her friend as they made a beeline for the rec corner down the hall.

  Even a half an hour with Viper, as Stella Dremmel’s employees “affectionately” referred to her, was cause for intravenous shots of caffeine. It was that or succumbing to madness, and Kimberley had far too much to do to allow for that.

  “Oh, but I thought someone wasn’t supposed to be keeping up with Chicago anymore! Not after Can—”

  “We don’t mention that name!” Kimberley said wi
th a gasp, twisting her body around in front of Serena and walking into the little kitchenette back-first, her hand shoved in front of Serena’s face as if to ward off any words that might come from her.

  “Riiiight, He Who Shall Not Be Named,” Serena scoffed, rolling her eyes with a grin as she skipped past Serena, plucking two clean cups from the rack and waving her card in front of the coffee machine’s chip reader almost at the same time.

  “Anyway, it has nothing to do with him. Of course I keep up. I have to. It’s my job. How else am I supposed to know how to completely humiliate them on Twitter otherwise, huh?” Kimberley quipped back, hopping up to sit on the counter as Serena fussed around with the coffee.

  That gave her a moment to pull out her phone again, only to see another message blinking on the notification bar.

  PuckBear: Come on. I swear the weather’s really nice and you’ll see better hockey than those nits in Montreal can ever show you

  MontrealSabres4Life: Cocky, aren’t we?

  PuckBear: Me? Never. I don’t puck around with stuff like that

  Kimberley was grinning like a fool when Serena plucked the phone out of her hands, dancing out of her reach as she read the exchange, laughing out loud when she reached the end.

  “I knew it! It’s Pucky! Aww, you two are adorable together!” Serena laughed, handing the phone back just as Kimberley was about to throw herself off the edge of the countertop and tackle her like they worked in football and not the NSHL. “So that’s who you were giggling about all meeting.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of private property, Serena?” Kimberley asked with an exasperated sigh, tucking the phone into her back pocket as she accepted the steaming hot cup of cappuccino Serena handed her.

  The little quirk of a smile still stayed on her pink lips though as they took seat on the flaming red couches nearby. She blew on the steaming liquid, cradling it with both hands, her green eyes doing their best to avoid Serena’s amused gaze. Okay, yes, so maybe she was feeling a little bit girlish about it all, and maybe, just maybe, every text from Pucky sent her quickly opening SassyDate and hungrily reading and re-reading every line he sent.