Page 1 of Protector Dragon's Shattered Mate

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Sofia

“You look like you could use some money,” a rough male voice said in Russian.

The sight of the man had Sofia reeling. She jumped backwards and slammed into a large rock, hitting it so hard that it knocked the breath from her lungs. She didn’t answer the man. Once she could breathe again, she tried to scramble away.

“We can give you two-hundred dollars,” he said, this time in English.

She nearly gasped, but she didn’t have enough energy to even do that. For someone with no money at all, two hundred dollars was a fortune. She had not eaten in days. She had thought the Siberian wilderness would be a good place to hide; no one would ever look for her there. But while she’d been there, she’d had trouble hunting. She hadn’t even found any berries to forage.

The cold did not bother her at all. She could even withstand the negative twenty-degree weather, and the constant blizzards. She was built for it, but the lack of plants and animals to eat—that was a problem. She had not seen a deer, or a fox, or a boar in days.

She’d left the city of Krasnoyarsk a week earlier and run north. The city had been beautiful, but without money, she hadn’t lasted long. If she shifted there, she’d either be shot, which wouldn’t kill her, but would be painful, or sold to a zoo. Normally, she could easily evade capture, but being so weak had left her unsure of her own abilities.

She had tried to hibernate. Real bears hibernated, but shifters did not. So, she could only sleep for a few days at a time before waking up.

The man was still leering at her.

Sluggishly, she ducked behind a tree and shifted into her bear. The man had followed her and had seen her change. He looked impatient, as if he didn’t have the time to waste dealing with her.

So now she was out in the middle of nowhere with this strange man, who wasn’t scared of her bear and wasn’t fazed at all by her transformation. Which meant he must have known what she was. And if he knew what she was, and he wasn’t scared, it meant he also wasn’t human. Finally, she took in his appearance. He was lean and wore only a sweater and jeans, which was not enough to survive out in this climate.

She inhaled, but all she could smell was the scent of the spruce tree next to her. A wave of dizziness hit her. She put her palm on the bark, trying to hold herself up.

“Who are you?” she managed to ask.

“I go by Koryak. Like the mountain range.” Once again, he spoke in Russian, but said the words slowly. She didn’t need them said slowly. She’d understood him earlier, even if she hadn’t responded. Having grown up in so many places, she understood Russian, English, French, German, and Spanish.

“Whatare you?” she asked.

He chuckled. “Have you been living under a rock?” He peered at her. “How do you not know one of your own kind? Well. Close to your own kind.”

“You are not a bear shifter.”

“No. I am a wolf shifter. And I can help you.” He held out his hand. “Just come with me. We have plenty of food. We have human food, if you like that. We have pasta, soup, and bread. We have shifter food, if you prefer that, with plenty of rabbits and deer.”

She could have swooned at the mere mention of all that food, so when he held out his hand, she accepted it. He took her to a compound nestled in the woods.

At first, living with the wolves in their compound was fine. They gave her food and water, and they were friendly. But as the days wore on, things changed. They had her repeat incantations from musty old books, and they made her recite spells, which made no sense to her. She was a bear shifter, not a witch. But they insisted that she keep going. Sometimes they kept her up all night, working on spells and enchantments. When she started to fall asleep, they dumped water on her. Then, they became harsh with their punishments.

She was nodding off, even as she read the Latin words from an old tome. Her head fell forward and landed on one of the pages of parchment.

“Sofia. Get up,” growled the female wolf who was working with her.

“Can’t,” she muttered. “Sleepy.”

Then an electric shock tore through her entire body, throwing her from the chair. She landed on her side with a thud. They dragged her down a set of stone steps and tossed her to the basement floor. While she was trapped in the basement, she learned what they were doing with the spells.

They weren’t actually spells at all. They were curses, and the wolves were using them to hurt humans and other shifters.

Why me? Why did they want me?

Her bear cried out in distress, hoping for someone to come find her and rescue her. But there was no one. Her clan too, had never lived up to the title. It was the same with her family. The adults in the clan frequently left the cubs alone for long stretches of time. And when they wanted something, they’d force the cubs to shift into the bear forms and raid human campgrounds. It amused them to watch the campers scream.

When they were bored with the campers, they’d send their cubs into town in their human forms and make them steal from the stores. Groceries, clothes, entertainment. If it could be bought, her clan wanted it.

The cubs had been caught more than once. Yes, they could escape easily, but it meant another move. So, Sofia had lived all over the world, as her clan burned one bridge after another. Finally, when they were in Ukraine, she’d had enough, and she’d left them for good.

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