Wild: Part 1: Bear Essential Billionaire (werebear romance): Bear Essential Billionaire, #1

By Vivi Anna

Part 1 of 3...

**Includes bonus story The Werewolf Liaison.**

Bear-shifter Alex Torben likes the quiet life.  He and his family run an adventure camp in the Northern British Columbia wilds, with guests four times a year at most. Away from civilization and complications, it's the life Alex has always wanted.  It's a life he'd go to extremes to protect.  All that changes when he finds a tormented young woman with a lot of secrets hiding in his boat…

Running. That's all Sylvie can think about.  She needs to get as far away as possible before he can find her.  Nothing can protect her from his wrath.  There is no safe place.  But when Alex finds her and offers his help, she thinks maybe there could be some salvation after all.

Also available:

Wild: Part 2

Wild: Part 3

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vivi Anna
• Release date: Jul 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516338887

Book preview

Chapter One – ALEX

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The sun starts to rise over the hills when I roll out of bed and stretch the night kinks out.  I pad, still naked, that’s the only way I sleep, out onto the small balcony off my bedroom and take in a deep breath of crisp morning mountain air.  My nostrils flare as I pick up Walker’s scent.  He must’ve been out earlier fishing down at the river.  He seems to be doing that more lately.  It’s a rare thing to see him sitting at the breakfast table like a regular human in the morning anymore.  He’d much rather be outside in his ‘other’ form eating raw fish out of his giant paws.  I’m going to talk to Riley and Lee about it later, to see if my brothers are as worried about our father as I am.

I don’t have much time to linger today, so I head back inside my cabin and get dressed. Riley and I need to get the resort ready for our incoming guests.  A group of five executives from some new social media start-up in California are coming to the resort for some adventure in the Canadian wilds.  As usual the biggest request is to see some wildlife up close and personal.  Especially bears.  I can tell them there will be so many bears around they won’t know what to do.

I find Riley in the kitchen in the big house already finishing what looks to be his second helping of steak and eggs for breakfast.  There are two more steaks and some scramble in a big cast-iron frying pan on the stove.

Made you some, he says between chews.

I pour some coffee into a cup, then slide a piece of meat and some eggs onto a big plate, and carry both to the table.

Where’s Lee?

Riley shrugs. Knocked on his door earlier.  He was already out.

After I finish my breakfast, I take the dishes to the sink.  Dad is out already.  Fishing.

Yeah, I know I scented him.

He’s been doing that a lot lately.

He likes fishing.

I turn and look at my younger brother.  It’s not the fishing, that’s the problem.

He’s fine.

We should talk about—

Riley stands and puts his dishes in the sink.  You talk too much.

Lee’s heading that way just like Dad.

You worry too much too.

Someone has to worry about this place.  Nothing would get done and we’d go out of business.

Riley rolls his eyes. Yeah, yeah, we know.  You keep telling us.

Fine, you ass.  I knock him in the arm.  Let’s go to work. We have to head to the dock later and check on the boat. This group is slotted for a salmon fishing expedition.

Too bad we couldn’t jump in the water, grab all the fish and save them a whole bunch of trouble.

Yeah, but then they wouldn’t be paying us ten grand for the trouble.

He nodded and smirked.  True.

For the next four hours, we tend to the grounds around the main resort—which consists of barking orders at our outdoor staff of two, Justin and Noah, who work for us rather than going out on the oil rigs like most of the young men in the area—checking the zip lines and rigs, cleaning and sorting the spelunking gear, and making sure the resort looks amazing.  We don’t have to worry about the inside of the resort, that is under the purview of our cousins Van and Barry.  Van runs the kitchens and the cleaning staff, which includes handling our master chef, who just happens to be Van’s wife, Marissa.  She’s a gifted gourmet but can sometimes be a little hot-tempered.

Barry runs the ‘fancy’ part of the resort.  After a hard day out doing extreme adventures like some spelunking, a guest can retreat to the resort and have a hot stone massage or seaweed wrap or participate in some hot yoga.  Barry is our Zen master.  He’s the most calm and chilled out person I know.  This is humorous to everyone because he’s the biggest meanest looking dude you’ve ever seen.  At nearly seven feet and two hundred and fifty pounds of hairy muscles, Barry could easily be mistaken for the Sasquatch.  Naturally, we rib him about it constantly.

After tending to everything that needs tending at the resort, we hop into my old beat-up pickup truck and head out to the dock, which is about a thirty minute drive from the camp.  I roll down the window as I drive, breathing in the cool clean air.  I couldn’t imagine living in a city completely separate from nature.  It would literally kill me I’m sure.  I get antsy being in town for a short time.  I know it’s part of my shifter physiology.  But I’m pretty sure even if I was fully human I’d hate being surrounded by concrete and metal and people noise pollution.

I glance at Riley in the passenger seat, his long hair streaming out the window from the wind and wonder how he managed to survive the two years he spent in university in Vancouver.  He’d gone to get a business degree, so he could help with the accounting and spending of the business.  He didn’t talk about it much.  He said he managed to find places to shift.  There were a lot of good wooded areas outside of the city.  But I could tell something had been damaged inside him.  For the first few months after he returned home, he had been listless and uncommunicative.  He’d spent most of his time in bear form sleeping in the caves near the resort.  I’d gone looking for him one day and found him curled up in a ball in a darkened corner fast asleep.  Fish bones had been strewn around him.  It seemed like he’d had an epic feast.

Why are you staring at me?

I shrug.  Just thinking about when you were in Vancouver.

You know what was the best thing about that time?

I can’t imagine anything being good.

The women.  He grins, dimples winking.  Every color and shape and size.  It was like an all you can eat buffet of sex.

I laugh and shake my head.

There was this one girl.  He closes his eyes as if brain deep into a memory.  Mmm, she totally reminded me of Darby.

Darby Wilson?

He nods.  Except this girl had huge tits.  He puts his hands out toward the dashboard in demonstration.

You better not let Lee hear you talking like that.

Riley smirks.  Lee has no claim on Darby, even if she’s been sniffing after him for years.  He’s too stupid to notice.

I nod.  It’s true.  When it comes to women, our eldest brother is an idiot.  Darby Wilson is a fish and wildlife officer in the area whom we’ve known since we were young.  Over the years, she’d been over to the house for supper at least a dozen times.  When our mother was alive she’d often talk about how much she liked Darby, and she’d say it loudly especially when Lee was around, but he never rose to the bait.  He walked around as if he had blinders on and ear plugs in.

Our mother got so mad at him, especially since there weren’t a lot of women around in the area.  Our kind needs to mate to stay sane, so she fretted about it even when we were still kids.  Her death was a blow to us all, in all kinds of ways.  Her death is one of the reasons I worry so much about our father.  Since she died, ten years ago now, he’s been spending more time in his animal form.  It’s like he hates being human without the being able to be with his human wife.  I worry because this is how it starts. The madness that can encompass our kind when we don’t have a mate.

I’m in a somber mood when we arrive at the dock.  Too much thinking about the past and the future.  What I need to focus on is the here and now and getting our boat ready for the upcoming trip.

Our boat sits in the moor, one of about ten vessels made for the open ocean that regularly make dock.  Most of the boats belong to locals.  We know the majority of the owners.  A person doesn’t live in the remote region of northern British Columbia and not get to know the regular residents.  Although the inhabitants don’t really know the Torbens. They know we’ve been in the region for decades, and they know our family runs the outdoor adventures resort, but they don’t know that we are a clan of bear shifters who