Rivals: Episode Two

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Synopsis

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Thanks For Reading!

  Episode Three - Chapter One

  Episode Three - Chapter Two

  Rivals

  Episode Two

  M.G. Walker

  Copyright © 2015 by M.G. Walker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  More by M.G.

  Seasons One - Rivals

  Episode One

  Episode Two

  Episode Three

  Season Two - Rivals

  T.B.W.

  Season One - Deep

  T.B.W.

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  Rivals

  Kimberly Nolan, a BBW with a spunky attitude and a heart of gold, lives in a world where everyone knows vampires and shifters exist. And she just so happened to pair with both a vampire and a shifter. Now, she not only has to figure out what to do with the both of them, she also needs to figure out if she can even trust them. Everything isn’t exactly what it seems, especially once Xavier tells her what he knows about Gaige.

  Will this set all three on a path towards self-destruction or will the passion, emotions, and danger all come together to form something undeniable?

  **This steamy hot BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance contains explicit sexual scenes along with a cliff-hanger**

  CHAPTER ONE

  KIMBERLY

  All the oxygen in my lungs was pushed out when my back slammed on the floor. Stars infiltrated my vision as I looked up, trying to make sense of what just happened. Someone stood above me—a woman with a set of terrifying canines protruding from under her upper lip—a vicious, crooked smile on her face as she looked down at me. Spotted orange and black fur started to take place of the woman’s pale skin. Fear filled me as I realized that I was looking into the eyes of someone who was about to kill me. For what reason, I had no idea, but I also didn’t question the fact that my life was close to an end.

  She reached down, her hand now turned into terrifying claws, and was inches from my neck when she was suddenly propelled across the room. I shrieked and saw her slam the far end of the bar with devastating force, causing her to crumple to the floor in a heap of limbs. Xavier stood above me now. He reached down and picked me up in his arms—something I never imagined happening to me—and turned towards the exit. In the blink of an eye, we were outside. Either the superspeed or the fear was making me feel really nauseous.

  He placed me down and looked me over. “Are you ok? Did she hurt you?”

  I shook my head and patted my body, dreading to find blood on my hands. Thankfully it looked like nothing was broken or bleeding.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath. “Where’s Gaige? Why are you attacking us?”

  Xavier’s eyes flashed with anger at the mention of Gaige. “Ask him yourself.”

  A roar erupted from the bar’s entrance. “Get away from her.” It was Gaige. He looked larger than I had remembered him, his body rippling with energy. His hands ended in huge paws that looked powerful enough to punch through a brick wall. His lips were twitching up to reveal massive canines starting to form underneath.

  “I just saved her life from one of your filthy beasts,” Xavier spat.

  Gaige launched forward as his body shifted into a massive grizzly bear. My stomach dropped to my feet. My hands instantly became clammy and my throat dried up immediately. I was aware of the beast that Gaige had lurking inside of him, but seeing him in his full form was something I could not have prepared for.

  His gigantic paws connected with Xavier’s shoulders, but the vampire was ready. He grabbed the massive bear by the wrists and threw him over his head, causing Gaige to land with a slam on the ground behind Xavier. The sight snapped me out of my fear paralysis. I ran to my left and crouched behind a car as I heard another crash come from inside the bar. Chaos was everywhere. People who were soaking in the Miami nightlife were now running for their lives and screaming bloody murder. I could hear sirens coming from the distance but I had no idea how they were going to get this under control.

  “Your actions carry consequences, Gaige. Did you genuinely think I wasn’t going to come after you? And now you’re putting Kimberly in danger too? I won’t let that happen.”

  Wait, they know each other?! And… is Xavier protecting me?

  I couldn’t process any of it. The whole night was flipped on its head. I thought the danger was Xavier, but now it looked like things were the opposite.

  Another roar ripped through the humid air, shaking me to my very bones. Even the car I panted against shook with the sound. And now I could see the red and blue lights flash across buildings a few streets down from us.

  “Fucking coward!” Xavier yelled. “I will find revenge for my sister.”

  Sister?

  I looked over the hood and expected to see the werebear and vampire squaring off for a fight bound to end in blood. Instead, I saw Xavier standing there, alone. Gaige was nowhere in sight. Xavier looked back at the police cars closing in and then turned to me, his eyes locking on. In an instant, he stood next to me, a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s going to be ok, but we need to go.” Sirens blared louder. “Now.”

  My brain was mush at this point. Jeffrey Dahmer could have come up next to me and told me to pack my things and I would have done it. So it didn’t cross my mind that I could be escaping from the law with a potential murderer, because I still had no idea what the fuck was going on with these two. But before I knew it, I was standing up and running down the street with Xavier next to me. There was a jet black Porsche parked a few cars down from us, which Xavier sped forward to. My door was opened just as he was sitting down in the driver’s seat. I threw myself in, still confused and shocked from where the night had headed.

  He threw the car in gear and peeled out of the parking spot. Police were speeding down the street towards us. “Shit. I do not want to deal with these idiots tonight.” Xavier swerved down an alley, throwing me against the side of the door as the tires screeched underneath us. I gasped and grabbed onto the door handle as he took another sharp turn and pulled out into the opposite street. We missed hitting another car by inches as the car’s exhaust roared down the road.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let you get hurt. I’ve been driving since the beginning of the twentieth century.”

  I shook my head, my brain pathetically trying to piece everything together. “Isn’t it a bad idea to run from the cops?” I said, looking back and expecting a trail of police officers chasing after us. It looked like Xavier’s fast and furious driving seemed to take care of the cop problem.

  “Laws haven’t caught up to supernaturals yet. In this world, Kimberly, not even the cops are on your side. Battles will be fought and they will be won, but I’m not going to risk being put under public scrutiny because a police officer decided to meddle.”

  My eyebrows drew together. “Yeah but you can’t just burst into a bar and handle things yourself like that.”

  “It wasn’t planned. I would have confronted Gaige in a much more private locati
on, but we had gotten word that he was planning something else and I wasn’t going to let that happen. I couldn’t wait any longer. And the last person I was expecting to be there was you. Plans changed when I sensed you. I couldn’t chase after Gaige, I needed to protect you.”

  The car sped onto the highway. “Protect me? From what? What the hell did Gaige do?”

  He stayed silent for a moment, as if debating on whether or not to tell me. I realized that I hadn’t known Gaige for longer than a week, but something inexplicable had happened between us. I hadn’t felt such strong feelings for someone so quickly since… Xavier. Shit. What the hell was going on?

  “I don’t know the history between you and the bear but Gaige is not who you think he is.”

  Wow… well that was a lot to digest.

  CHAPTER TWO

  GAIGE

  I crouched in the alley, panting as I tried to find my breath again. I had shifted out of bear form and now tried to control the beast inside of me as it tried to burst forth again. There was no way I could hide as a thousand pound grizzly bear in the middle of Miami, so I needed to stay in human form and fight down the urge to shift. Even though all my bear wanted to do was erupt out of the alley and hunt down the fucking blood-sucking vamps before they did anything to Kimberly. But truth was, I was outnumbered, out-powered, and the police would take me into custody in an instant. I couldn’t risk that.

  I was getting her back. That part I knew. The moment I imprinted on her, I vowed I would do anything to keep her safe. Even though I really only knew her less than a week in human time, in shifter time it felt like we had never been apart. Like she was always on the periphery, ready to enter center stage and demand my attention.

  “Shit man!” someone exclaimed. I turned and saw a homeless man, his light brown jacket covered in dirt and smears, jumping up from his cardboard sanctuary. “Fuck! What the fuck man?!” The homeless man looked at me with wide, blood-shot eyes and a head of tangled, matted hair. “The fuck are you doing here naked, man?!”

  I looked down, not even realizing that my clothes had ripped off. I normally took off my shorts and shirt before a shift just to make sure I had something to change back into after, but this time I was taken so off guard that there was no time to undress and neatly pile my clothes in a corner.

  So here I was, in the middle of an alley with a homeless man staring straight at my dick while police sirens screeched out from the streets surrounding us.

  “Rough night,” I said, not wanting to engage with the man any further. I needed to find some sort of shelter and get the fuck off the streets before I was arrested for public indecency and then linked back to the attack at the bar. I racked my brain, going through my mental rolodex of contacts as I tried to remember who lived close by and wouldn’t ask many questions if I showed up at their door butt naked.

  The sirens were getting closer and the homeless man was looking more and more unstable. He shifted from foot to foot and looked unsure as to what my next move was going to be. I looked to the left and noticed the red and blue lights from the cop cars were getting brighter and brighter. If I didn’t move now, they would be on me in minutes.

  I took off in a run towards the right. The homeless man dived out of my way with a grunt. Small rocks cut at the soles of my feet but I kept running, oblivious to the pain. The street behind the alley was much more quiet and opened up into a sleeping residential neighborhood, with small three story beach houses that served as separate apartments on each floor. A large German Shepherd barked from behind a chain link fence as I ran down the sidewalk.

  Rick!

  I felt like I had just won the lottery. I remembered this street. This was where Rick lived, one of the contractors that worked for me and that also knew my secret. The only reason he knew was because he was a shifter too. I saw him transform one night when he had thought no one was looking. Before I knew it, a leopard was creeping into the alley behind the office and climbing up the fire escapes to travel across the rooftops. It was a risky move, and clearly one that wasn’t too discrete since I had seen him, but sometimes a shifter just needed to shift. It was an unexplainable pressure built up underneath our human forms. A lot of us waited for the privacy of our own homes. Others take monthly camping trips or vacations to locales that are natural habitats for their species. But a few liked taking the risk of doing it in public, creeping through the shadows and hoping they don’t get caught. Some do get caught though. Those are the ones you see on the news with the reporters talking about an eccentric pet owner who lost their cougar or a tiger breaking out of the local zoo and found in the middle of a sleepy Texas town.

  Rick lived in a well-taken care of beach-house. It’s light blue paint wasn’t chipped, unlike the two buildings bordering it. The front yard was maintained with a small patch of thriving green grass bordering a cracked cement pathway up to the front door. I threw the squeaky gate open and hurried up the pathway.

  That was when I heard tires screeching as a cop made a tight turn onto the same street I was standing on. The huge bright white spotlight was scanning the streets, jumping methodically from one house to the next as the cop drove closer and closer to where I stood.

  “Fuck,” I said. I knocked, fast and hard.

  He was getting closer. My fists banged on the door now. My heart was pumping at a hundred miles per hour. My bear roared inside me as the cop drove closer and closer. The door strained against my knocks now.

  And then I heard a lock click open.

  “Gaige?” answered a confused and half-asleep Rick. His thick brown hair in a mess as he stood in just his plaid boxers, his furry eyebrows scrunched in confusion, his eyes clouded with sleep.

  I didn’t have time to explain. I pushed him aside and closed the door behind me, locking it immediately. Almost seconds later, the bright light broke through his closed curtains, shining underneath the door and through the windows.

  Rick looked at me and back at the door, putting two and two together.

  “Let me get you some clothes.” He turned and walked through the dark living room towards his bedroom. I fell back against the door, taking deep breaths and calming down the bear just underneath my skin. Adrenaline made the urges to shift stronger, but the danger was getting further and further away. I was safe, for now at least.

  CHAPTER THREE

  XAVIER

  The Porsche raced down the Miami highways as I swerved through traffic, passing by other cars with only inches of space between us. Being a vampire came with extremely quick reflexes so there was no chance of slamming into someone else. I could tell Kimberly was scared as she gripped onto the door handle with pale-white knuckles, but I needed to get back to my house as quickly as possible. We needed to regroup and refocus our efforts so that Gaige had no chance of escaping next time.

  “So what is he then?” she said, biting her lower lip and drawing some blood.

  “He’s a killer, Kimberly. He attacked and murdered my sister.”

  The air felt extremely heavy just then. Kimberly made an odd, animal like sound as she tried to come up with words but her vocabulary seemed to fail her. There was nothing she could say anyway.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Kimberly finally said after digesting the bomb I had just dropped on her lap.

  “You couldn’t have. Gaige is a charmer, I could even sense that. But he’s also a wild animal and my sister discovered that the hard way.”

  “But why?” she asked.

  “Gaige and I have a history. When vampires came out of the shadows, I used the time to cultivate a massive business in the tech industry. In the beginning, I remember hiring Gaige as a developer on one of my projects. But I kept growing and growing. When I discovered the success that I did, Gaige took notice and stopped working for me. Almost a month afterwards, he founded his own company and went on to rise as one of my top competitors. The rivalry got dirty between us as he started trying harder and harder to bring me down from the top. He asked Ara, my sister who
had forged a career for herself as a lawyer, to meet with him and try to remedy the situation through litigation before it escalated past that. She was always so insistent on doing things the way humans would. She wanted to assimilate as best she could. So Ara went to go meet with him and that was the last I ever saw of her.”

  The off-ramp came up quick as I pulled off the highway and made a quick right into the streets. The lights were a blur as the car launched down the road. There were only a few people out on the streets now and they moved out of my way with ease.

  “And you’re sure it was Gaige?”

  I nodded. “As sure as I can be.”

  “Oh my god. I can’t believe I went on a date with a killer. Jesus. And the other shifters in the bar, were they with him?”

  “I’m not sure. We weren’t expecting to deal with them so I don’t think so.”

  “What was he planning next?” she asked, fear coloring her voice.

  “One of my scouts had gotten word that he was going to strike again. I wanted to stop him before any other innocents were taken by the beast. Needless to say, I was shocked when I had sensed you in that bar with him. All my focus shifted in that moment. I needed to keep you safe.”

  I could feel her look at me as I pulled into my driveway. “I didn’t know you were so protective,” she said.

  “I didn’t either.”

  Even though it was still dark out, the air was warm and humid and sticky as I stepped outside of my car. I sped over to the other side of the car and opened Kimberly’s door before she even had a chance to blink. She smiled as she got up and stepped out, holding onto the door handle for balance. I caught a whiff of her perfume in the thick air. It was mixed with adrenaline and sweat and was purely intoxicating. So much so that my boxer-briefs began to feel tighter as my cock began to grow harder. Now that the immediate danger was over, my attention was beginning to shift back to the goddess that stood next to me. The one that my body wanted to hold claim over.