Chosen (Gem Creek Bears, Book 1)

By Jennifer Snyder

Sometimes escaping the past leads to finding the future.

On the run from her ex-boyfriend, Tris Abbott finds herself at Gem Creek Campground. A place that unexplainably feels like home, but holds secrets. It’s here Tris’s world flips upside down when she learns shifters are real and she’s chosen to save them.

Before she can come to terms with the supernatural world she’s been introduced to, her past catches up.

Face-to-face with her ex again, Tris must decide between fight and flight. Round two will be different though, because this time she knows what her ex is—a shifter.

This YA Paranormal Romance includes loyal Bear-Shifters who love fiercely, loads of suspense, and a sassy lead.
Get ready to be hooked after page one! This story will keep you eagerly turning the page wanting to find out what happens next.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Snyder
• Release date: Jan 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215991930

Jennifer Snyder

Jennifer Snyder lives in North Carolina where she spends most of her time writing New Adult and Young Adult Fiction, reading, and struggling to stay on top of housework. She is a tea lover with an obsession for Post-it notes and smooth writing pens. Jennifer lives with her husband and two children, who endure listening to songs that spur inspiration on repeat and tolerate her love for all paranormal, teenage-targeted TV shows.To get an email whenever Jennifer releases a new title, sign up for her newsletter a https://jennifersnyderbooks.com/want-the-latest/. It’s full of fun and freebies sent right to your inbox!

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

If I could tell the me from a month ago one thing, it would be to look the other way when Corbin Davis walks into the diner. Don’t jump at the chance to wait on him. Don’t flirt with him while pouring his lemonade or sweet tea. Don’t think it’s cute when he sniffs your hair as you lean in to take his empty plate away.

It’s not cute. It’s psychotic. Know the difference.

I would tell myself to see him for what he is—a criminal, a con artist, someone not worthy of my freaking time. I would tell myself only guys with ego complexes ride motorcycles as sexy as he does.

The problem is: I can’t go back to the me from a month ago and tell her any of these things because life doesn’t work that way. There’s no rewind button. No do-over switch.

Things that happen just are. You can’t undo them, and you can’t ever go back.

If I could, I wouldn’t be trapped in the trunk of Corbin’s friend Ezra’s crappy Mustang with my hands tied behind my back while Corbin and his little brother, Chase, take me to who knows where to do God knows what to me.

How the hell was I going to get out of this?

My chest tightened as another rush of adrenaline surged through me. The car continued down whatever crappy road we drove on, and all I could do was kick myself for ever thinking Corbin Davis wasn’t wicked to the core like the rest of the hooligans he hung with.

A metal bar dug into my hip as whoever drove—Chase, I think—hit another large pothole instead of avoiding it.

Where were they taking me?

Granted, most roads in Opal Pine needed repair, but this road was desolate. We seemed to hit another pothole every few seconds. I thought of all the backroads in town and where they led, but couldn’t think of a single place the Davis brothers might be headed with me in the trunk.

Too much time had passed for them to be headed to Ezra’s shitty family farmhouse. It was a few miles away from the trailer park where I lived, which was in the center of town.

No, they were taking me somewhere else.

I struggled to move into a better position so I could resume picking at the rope that tied my wrists together. The last few potholes had jostled me into a weird position. One in which I was having to fight against gravity.

You shouldn’t have let them take you to a second location, I scolded myself as a statistic I’d read, or heard somewhere, about survival rates dropping drastically after an abducted person was moved to a second location flashed through my mind.

My heart hammered as my gut twisted with undiluted panic. My insides quivered, and I swore for a second my lungs forgot how to do their one and only job—breathe.

Every sign I’d turned a blind eye to involving Corbin and his friends stabbed at me. I should have been more cautious of him and the others. I shouldn’t have given into Corbin’s dangerous vibes and sexy smile. I should have been stronger. I should have listened to my gut when it told me something was off about him. About all of them.

Who was I kidding? Bad boys were my weakness, especially ones with beautiful gray eyes, perfectly tanned skin, and muscles galore accented by black leather jackets.

This is what you get, Tris, when you ignore your gut. You get freaking kidnapped, shoved in somebody’s trunk, and hauled off to be eaten.

My blood ran cold as an even more haunting thought surfaced: What if Corbin and the group he hung with were cannibals? There had been so many stories about them circulating through town over the years that involved weird shit like satanism and cults. The most recent accusations were that they’d been drugging girls at parties and drinking their blood. I’d written it off as crazy talk, but what if it wasn’t? What if there was truth to the rumors?

I’d recently heard a story of a college-age girl who’d suffered an allergic reaction to tenderizer while overseas. The guy she’d been dancing with the night before had sprinkled it on her during the night in preparation to eat her later. She went to the hospital instead of his house, and that had been what saved her life.

Crap. Corbin and the group he hung with could very well be cannibals. It would explain a lot of their creepy factor. My heart pumped faster and harder against my ribs.

Chase went over another mondo pothole, jostling the car yet again. Instead of the metal piece digging deeper into my hip, this time I busted my face against the door of the trunk when I was slung forward unexpectedly. White hot pain radiated from my cheek to my forehead.

What the hell, Chase! Take it easy. Ezra will have my ass if we screw something up on his car, Corbin insisted. This thing is a classic.

A classic turd, Chase countered. It’s older than dirt and barely runs. It’s like a rust bucket on wheels.

If I hadn’t been stuffed into a trunk on my way to be eaten or chopped into tiny pieces by my boyfriend and his groupies, I would have laughed at that. Chase wasn’t wrong—Ezra’s 1986 Mustang was a giant rusty turd. It was faded blue with trim missing, bald tires, and more than a few patches of rust eating away at its body.

Still, the trunk was solid.

I’d tried kicking it when I was first tossed inside, but the entire thing was metal. The only parts that weren’t were the sticky carpet beneath me and the wooden boards secured in place behind me where the backseat met the trunk.

Whatever they were about to do to me, it had been planned. Those boards were proof.

I wished I hadn’t called Corbin to go out tonight. I wished I’d told him I was staying in when I saw him pull up in Ezra’s beater with Chase instead of alone on his bike. If I hadn’t been so pissed at my mom I probably would have.

Hindsight was a real bitch.

You should’ve let me drive, like I said, Corbin insisted. Frustration rolled through his voice. His deep, sexy voice.

God, I was a lost cause.

This guy had freaking hit me, kidnapped me, and was probably about to eat me or drink every drop of blood in my body, and yet I still had the hots for him. Something was seriously wrong with me.

I blamed it on my mother.

Stella Abbott was the type of woman who could be beaten to a pulp by whatever man she was currently seeing and still be hopelessly in love with him after. Sometimes I prayed that she would see the light and realize she deserved so much more than the losers she picked to date and the crappy way they treated her. My prayers were never answered, though. Mom always stayed and the guys she dated always left.

It was a vicious cycle. One I’d been hellbent on not repeating.

I’d sworn to myself that I wouldn’t stay with someone who hit me. I thought I’d learned all the signs. I thought I’d be able to spot a guy with anger issues and fists that liked to fly, but apparently, that wasn’t the kind of guy I needed to look out for.

Apparently, I needed to watch for the guys who tied my wrists behind my back and shoved me into trunks too.

If you’d drove, we probably wouldn’t have been able to get her in the back, Chase said.

Corbin chuckled. It was low, deep, and rich. I ignored the butterflies bursting into flight through my lower stomach and focused on Chase’s words. They made me smirk.

He’d confirmed that I’d put up one hell of a struggle against them. I knew I had—my knuckles were still tender from sucker punching them both—but it was nice to hear someone say it.

Is she too strong for you, little brother? Corbin teased.

Damn right. She might be small, but that chick is feisty. Scrappy too. My eye still hurts from where she slugged me when I tried to grab her.

More satisfaction slivered through me. Both of the Davis brothers would have shiners come tomorrow.

Too bad I hadn’t been able to knock them out with my blows. Making contact was awesome, but being able to get away would have been even better. Corbin had come up behind me and wrapped his arms around my middle during the struggle, gripping me in a vice-like hold that had squeezed the breath out of me and made it hard to move even a tiny amount. That was when Chase tied my wrists behind my back. Before I knew what was happening, I’d been shoved into Ezra’s trunk.

She was a feisty one, for sure. That was what I liked about her. She had fire inside her, Corbin said, surprising me. I really thought we could have been something. She was different. In a good way.

My heart skipped a beat. Corbin had thought we could be something? Then why the hell was I in a damn trunk?

Yeah, too bad she fit the bill, Chase insisted. She would have been cool to turn and initiate into the pack.

Fit the bill? What did that mean? And, turn? Oh, crap. Were they vampires?

They couldn’t be. I’d seen each of them out during the day. Unless that was a myth.

Sweet Jesus, I needed to get out of here.

I know, Corbin said, his voice heavy.

Silence built inside the car. I pulled at the rope around my wrists, trying my best to get some slack into the tight knot.

I felt the same about Leanne, Chase said. After Ezra bled her, I was depressed for days. It sucked that she wasn’t the one, because it meant we could have continued dating. Maybe it would’ve gone somewhere.

His words twisted my stomach, and I paused in what I was doing. I knew that name. Leanne. She’d gone missing a few weeks ago. I didn’t know her well, but I’d seen her around. She was a year younger than me. We went to a few of the same parties, and once she’d complimented me on my outfit. She lived on the same side of town as I did—as we all did—the side where if you went missing, it would be a good while before anyone tried to find you.

Everyone thought Leanne had ran away. Her dad was an alcoholic who barely was sober long enough each day to run his mechanic shop. I never knew what the story was with her mom and why she’d left town, but I knew she had when Leanne was around eleven. Leanne running away made sense. No one had questioned the rumor because her life wasn’t the best.

Now, I knew the truth and I couldn’t help thinking how many others had been kidnapped by these freaks before Leanne—before me—to