Hot Shot Bears: Complete Series Box Set, page 1
© Copyright 2020 by J.L. Wilder- All rights reserved.
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Hot Shot Bears
Complete Series Box Set
By: J.L. Wilder
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Table of Contents
Hot Shot Daddy
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Hot Shot Hero
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
She-Alpha
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
He-Alpha
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
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About The Author
Hot Shot Daddy
Chapter One
OSHA
Captain Osha Walker could see the exhaustion in the eyes of his crew mates. He had lost count of how many hours they had been working now, laying and burning, clearing away brush, creating what was probably the biggest blackline any of them had ever seen.
“Where’s the fire?” his first lieutenant, Alistair Young, called.
“Still a few miles away,” Osha called back, blinking away the exhaustion that threatened. He couldn’t let himself fall victim to his own need for sleep, not with the flames moving toward him and his men. “The wind’s blowing our way, though,” he added.
“Should we light the backfires?” Al asked.
“Not yet. Too soon. They won’t be sucked in by the main blaze,” Osha said. “They’ll probably just spread and make this situation even worse than it already is.”
“This is fucked,” said Scott nervily from Osha’s other side. “I mean, this is so fucked.”
It was Scott’s first real fire, and it was a hell of a pick for a first time out. Given his way, Osha would have preferred to give his youngest lieutenant an easy containment to break him in. “They won’t all be like this,” he called back. “Keep working the line. You’re doing good.”
“We’re just setting things on fire,” Scott said, and his voice was a little moan.
He needs to sleep, Osha realized. He’s been at this far too long, and he’s losing it. “Take a break, Lieutenant,” he said. “Go back to camp.”
Scott shook his head. “Can’t. You need me here.”
“I need you fresh and at your best,” Osha said. “Get going. It’s an order. Get an hour of sleep, and then come back here and be ready to work. Understand?”
Scott nodded, relief showing on his face. “Yes, Captain Walker.”
“Shouldn’t have sent him off,” Al said as Scott jogged back toward the camp they’d set up a few miles away. “We need him here.”
“We need people who aren’t about to drop in their tracks, too,” Osha pointed out. “This isn’t going to get easier. Besides, our squad has stopped fires without the kid before. He’s new.”
“Yeah,” Al said. “But we’ve never had one like this one.”
That was certainly true. It was their first job in the Hawkins Bar area—it was Osha’s first job in the far northern part of California, actually, and he had been with the fire department for five years now. He’d joined up as an eighteen-year-old kid, eager for the opportunity to see the world and do his part to save it. He had known, when he had joined, that the life of a wildland firefighter was rough by nature. It meant never having a real home, never having a regular place to crash. It meant going where the flames were and sleeping when you could.
As a kid, that had appealed to him.
Now he was twenty-three years old and his wanderlust was well slaked. He had seen all he needed to of the western United States. He wasn’t doing this for the joy of being itinerant. Not anymore.
He was doing it because somebody had to put out the damn fires.
Osha had stood in the middle of waist high flames, protected only by the fire-retardant gear he wore. He had felt the heat of a burning wildfire, hot enough that he’d felt as if his bones were going to melt. He had gone to sleep coughing after days working in the wind, smoke blowing into his face so that he couldn’t breathe without inhaling it. And he had seen the devastation that fires like this one could leave in their wake.
The blackline he and his team were building today would do more than just contain the fire and stop it from wiping out the national forest as a whole. There was also a settlement nearby. There was plenty of fuel for the fire to consume between here and the homes and businesses that were just a few short miles away. And the wind was blowing.
All it would take would be a spark. One little spark, caught and carried by the breeze, lifted to where it wasn’t supposed to be.
A twig could catch. Or a leaf.
Fire ate through everything it touched so quickly.
A twig could burn, and the fire could spread from there to a home. And a home had people inside.
Osha had seen death in this job. He wouldn’t wait for it to find him again.
“Are you good?” he asked Al. “You don’t need a break, do you?”
“Fucking kidding me?” Al asked, laughing. “I’m high as a kite, my brother.”
“Energy drink?”
“You know it. Want one?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“They’re in my bag.” Al jerked his head toward the fireproof duffel bag he carried, a few yards behind the blackline.
Osha nodded and jogged over. He unzipped the bag, fished out a drink, and popped it open. New members of the team were always surprised about what constituted essential firefighting tools. Most of them, Osha had found, had a vision in their head of giant hoses squirting water at the wildfires.
But that wasn’t how things worked out here.
These weren’t like the little residential house fires that you could surround and drown. They were bigger than that. More powerful than that. And so the strategy had to be different.
“I’m going to run the line again,” Osha said as he finished the energy drink. He crunched the can in his hand, compressing it to as small a size as he could, and tucked it into his own bag. No littering on the job was one of the wildland firefighter’s commandments. A scrap of debris could make everything a hell of a lot worse in a hurry.
Al glanced at him. “Not sure that’s a good idea, man. The fire’s on the move.”
“I’ll be back fast,” Osha said. “Keep working. If you see the blaze, get into the black, and be ready to start burning it back if the time is right.”
“All right,” Al said, his anxiety showing on his face. “But hurry back, will you?”
“Yeah, I will.”
Osha ran into the trees, back behind the blackline where he was protected from the fire. He could make his transition in front of Al and the rest of his team if he had to—they had all done it from time to time, when circumstances were dire—but he preferred to have a little privacy.
He stripped off his clothes and hung them from a low tree branch. Immediately, without th
Well, so much the better. It would be easier to reach inward, to find his most primal self, if he was uncomfortable. That had always been true for Osha.
He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly, taking in the familiar scent of the forest and the fire off in the distance. It was a smell that would stay with him for the rest of his life, he was sure, now that he had worked so closely around it for so many years. He would always know the smell of a wildfire.
Closer, there was the smell of freshly turned earth. The blackline. That smell meant safety. His men had worked quickly and efficiently to clear away brush and to dig down into the dirt, establishing an area where the fire wouldn’t be able to cross because there was simply nothing to burn. The blackline was their fallback position, their safety measure. If the backburning they had planned failed, if the fire couldn’t be contained, they could retreat to the blackline and know that they were safe.
But that was only if the blackline encircled the blaze.
And Osha thought it probably didn’t.
The fire was too big. It had been too big when they’d gotten here. It had started before they’d even set foot in California—they’d been in Idaho when they’d gotten the call. They had come as fast as they could, of course, but fires were always faster than men.
It was always a game. Always a gamble. And Osha was very, very good at it. He always won.
Even if the blackline isn’t complete, he thought, the backburning will work. Fire can’t consume other fire. It had been a pleasure, the first time he’d burned back a blaze, to see where the old expression fight fire with fire had actually come from.
He breathed in once more and looked inward, to the core of himself, the deepest and most fundamental part of his identity. As he did so, he felt his body begin to shift.
His muscles strained, growing bigger, flexing outward.
His fingers curled inward as if his enhanced strength was forcing his hands to grip.
His back bowed as his weight shifted into his shoulders.
And the scents grew sharper, more pungent, fuller around him.
He opened his eyes.
Looking down, he saw bear paws below him. He lifted a paw and examined his sharp claws. He was faster in this form, and more powerful. He was also better able to assess the situation around him.
He set off running.
His enhanced senses—the senses of the bear—told him exactly how close the fire was. How big it was. How quickly it was moving. The bear had instincts too, and it wanted to turn and run from the danger. But he was still Captain Osha Walker underneath the fur and muscle, and he had never run from danger in his life. He wasn’t about to start now.
He ran along the outer edge of the blackline, assessing as he went how close the fire was coming to the safety zone. In some places, it was still miles away. In some places the blackline was finished and they still had plenty of time. And then, in some places, the fire was actually moving away from the safety zone because of the direction in which the wind was blowing.
I shouldn’t have bothered with the line back here, he thought as he circled the far side of the fire, feet pounding against the earth. The wind isn’t going to turn. I should have kept all my men on the other side, widening the safe zone and moving it inward. If they had moved the blackline in closer, they could have limited the damage the fire caused even more than they were already going to.
He would remember that for next time. But still, it would stay with him. Every mistake he ever made on a fire stayed with him.
You played it safe, he told himself. You couldn’t have known for sure that the wind wouldn’t turn.
But Captain Osha Walker hated playing it safe.
Playing it safe was how you compromised with fires, letting them eat their fill as long as they didn’t overdo it.
Osha hadn’t become a firefighter to compromise with fire. He had become a firefighter to fight. And to win.
He cleared the far side and rounded the slow curve that would lead him back to where Al was waiting for him.
And skidded to a halt.
There was a house off in the distance.
It was far enough away that he could barely make it out. If he had been in his human form, he didn’t think he would have been able to see it in the dark. And he didn’t think anyone at that house would be able to smell the flames nearby.
Would they know about the fire? Would they know how close it was?
He had turned the corner from the far side of the fire, where the wind was blowing the flames away. The wind could be carrying danger toward that little house.
I’m sure everything’s fine, he told himself. Whoever lives there will know about the fire. It must be on the news. They’ll have left. I’m sure they went to safety.
But Osha resolved to keep an eye on the little house over the next several hours just in case.
You couldn’t be sure.
Chapter Two
ADDY
Addy Cyr knew she should have left her little homestead hours ago.
It was what they were saying on TV. Everyone needs to evacuate as soon as possible. Get to safe ground. Take what you can and get out. They had showed a map with a projection of bright red color sweeping across the land where Addy lived.
That was where you weren’t supposed to be right now. That was the place you were supposed to clear out of.
But Addy was still here.
Her phone had been ringing off the hook, because everyone knew she was still here, and they apparently weren’t going to leave her alone about it.
She wanted to ignore the calls, but she knew her mother would panic if she couldn’t be reached, and the last thing Addy wanted was to have to deal with that. So she grabbed the phone. “Hey, Lyd.”
“You’re still there?” her older sister, Lydia, barked. Lydia lived in New York City, and everything she did was fast and hard and aggressive. She could give the impression that she was yelling at you when she was really just asking you to pass the salt at Thanksgiving dinner.
This time, though, Addy thought Lydia might actually be yelling at her.
“I’m not going to leave,” she said. “I told you that. I told Mom that. I told Hal that.”
“Hal called?” Lydia’s tone was one of surprise. Their brother was two years older than Addy, two years younger than Lydia, and five thousand miles away, in Rome. He very rarely called home, and when he did, it was usually to ask their mother to send more money.
“I’m guessing Mom called Hal and told him to call me,” Addy said, crossing to her kitchen window and staring out at the red sunrise. No sign of flames yet. “I’m guessing she did the same thing with you, by the way.”
“Not the point,” Lydia said. “California is on fire. You’d have to be crazy to stay.”
“Then I guess I’m crazy.”
“Can’t you go stay with your boyfriend?” Lydia asked. “He lives in the city, doesn’t he? That’s bound to be a lot safer. And then you wouldn’t have to go too far. I know it would make Mom feel better.”
Addy hesitated. She didn’t really like to tell her family about her love life. They had a tendency to be too critical of her choices. “Judd and I broke up,” she said, after weighing the pros and cons of full disclosure.”
“You did?” Lydia asked. “When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“And you didn’t tell anyone? Why not?”
“I guess I just felt like dealing with it on my own.”
Lydia heaved a sigh. “Mom and I really thought he’d be the one to stick,” she said. “What happened between the two of you?”
What could Addy say to that? She didn’t want to tell her sister about the terrible shouting matches she and Judd had had. She didn’t want to tell her sister that Judd had been cold and standoffish to her every time he didn’t get his way about something. And she definitely didn’t want to reveal the ultimatum he’d given her—move in with him or their relationship would end.
She knew what Lydia would say if she knew about that. You should have done it. A man wanted you, Addy. You can’t keep pushing them away, or you’re going to end up all alone.
Lydia had never been able to understand that, to Addy, there were worse things than being alone. And Judd had turned out to be one of those worse things. When he had issued his ultimatum, she had ended things with him immediately.
