Chasing His Squirrel (Big Bad Bunnies Book 2) Read online

  Chasing His Squirrel

  Book 2 of the Big Bad Bunnies Series

  By Golden Angel

  Published by G. Angel at Smashwords

  Copyright 2015 G. Angel

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  I have a lot of people to thank for helping me with this book. Marie, for all her help with editing, catching small errors, and the continuity issues that I occasionally struggle with (I swear, she remembers all the things that I can’t). Katherine, for her ever-lasting support, encouragement and suggestions. Michelle for her comments, questions, and suppositions, which always end up changing the way the plot and character development flows. And Sir Nick for providing the much-needed male perspective, requests for clarification when my writing is confusing, and making me aware of continuity issues.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Brady didn’t know what he’d been expecting when they walked into the room to be introduced, but a grey-eyed, auburn haired beauty, smiling despite the pain lines around her eyes wasn’t it.

  “Jesse, Penny, this is Brady, Brock, and Brice Bunson,” Eli said gesturing to the brothers. “Boys, this is Jesse and her aunt Penny O’Neal.”

  The younger one was Jesse, the older one Penny. Introductions hadn't really been needed on his side, since he and his brothers had already read the file on the O'Neals, although pictures hadn't been included for some reason. Jesse's younger brother Daniel was currently in the room next store, sharing it with a badger shifter who had broken his leg during training. Shifters healed faster than humans, Brady had learned, but the worse the injury, the more time needed in both cases. A broken leg in shifter terms took at least a week. Jesse was twenty four years old, an orphan, and had sole custody of her fifteen year old brother, although they were traveling with her forty year old aunt, never married. All squirrel shifters. Like most family members, they'd all lived in the same scurry before one of the many diseases which ravaged the smaller shifters had finally reached them. Keeping themselves apart had only worked for so long unfortunately. They were the last surviving members.

  Both ladies were both reclined in their hospital beds, sitting in almost the exact same position, but Penny seemed more alert, more able to move. Her eyes moved swiftly over them, studying them, with a composed expression on her face. Jesse, the beauty, was careful to keep very, very still. But she did smile. From what Brady understood about the Torch, the disease all three O'Neals were dying from, it was an incredibly painful disease which made a person feel like they were getting hotter and hotter, more and more painfully, until they eventually died. It was not a fast disease, which had been a downside when there was nothing to be done, but might be an upside now since it meant a little extra time to fashion the first possible cure.

  “Nice to meet you,” Jesse said, her voice low and husky as her eyes flitted over the three brothers.

  “Our pleasure,” Brice said cheerfully, before Brady could respond. His youngest brother was always the chattiest out of the three of them. Brock barely talked at all unless he was pushed to. "We've been looking forward to meeting you."

  Jesse's smile flickered. "I'm just sorry about the circumstances. I can't help but feel a little guilty..." Her very slight hand gesture and sympathetic expression took in so much.

  She and her aunt had been given the Bunsons' background as well. The reason there was finally a possible cure for the Torch was thanks to them, in a roundabout way. Brady and his siblings had been kidnapped and experimented on for years by Dr. John Montgomery, an insane genius working for a group known only as The Company. A couple months ago, the Bunsons had been rescued, but it was too late. They'd gone into the lab as humans and come out as weird shifter-hybrids.

  Shifters could mate with shifters outside of their animal group, but their children were always either one animal or the other. Mating with humans meant possibly having human children. It turned out that the Bunsons had three shifters in their ancestry - turtle, rabbit, and bear. Smaller shifters were dying out to diseases which didn't effect larger shifters; some theorized the smaller shifter's insular nature and lack of inter-breeding with other species had caused them to be more vulnerable to disease than the larger shifters, who tended to mix with other species and with humans quite a bit more. Dr. Montgomery had apparently lost his mate, a fox shifter, and their kits to disease and gone mad. Instead of using ethical means for medical research, he'd fallen in with The Company and been willing to experiment on kidnapped human teenagers.

  His experiments had eventually been successful.

  Brady and all but one of his siblings could now shift into bunnies the size of bears, with an armored turtle shell beneath their fluffy fur. Although neither he nor his brothers could actually pull themselves into the shell, both of his sisters could. But they were more advanced experiments. As the oldest, Brady had been the first to undergo the experiments. He'd volunteered, in fact, trying to protect his younger siblings. It hadn't mattered. They'd all undergone the changes as well.

  The youngest, Bailey, had been injected the day they'd been rescued. She was also the most evolved experiment and the only one whose beast wasn't the size of a bear. Her bunny was bunny-sized, but with vicious claws and a carnivore's teeth. She was also the fastest and most agile of the siblings, and was much stronger than her size would suggest.

  It was hoped that the genetic alterations which had turned the Bunsons into shifters, would be able to tap into larger shifters in the smaller shifters' ancestry and turn them into a hybrid species with the same kind of resistance to diseases as the larger shifters. After all, that had been the focus of Dr. Montgomery's work, and he'd been willing to become a monster to do it.

  The fact that some of his research, some of the important keys to creating the genetic alterations, was locked in his head rather than written down somewhere was the only reason Dr. Montgomery was still alive. Brady took some small satisfaction in the man's imprisonment down in the basement below the hospital, in a large plastic box that afforded him no privacy, similar to the rooms Brady and his siblings had been kept in for "observation" during their time in the laboratory. There was a certain poetic justice in it.

  "Don't feel guilty," Brady said, stepping forward and nudging his youngest brother out of the way. Brice made a disgruntled noise, but didn't argue. Not only was Brady the oldest, he was also the biggest and strongest. Moving to the chair next to Jesse's bed, Brady sat down. He wanted to reach out and take her hand, but they'd already been warned that more than the lightest touch was very painful to her and her brother. Penny wasn't as far along, but she couldn't handle much physical contact either. "We hope that something good is going to come out of what happened with us. It's too late to change anything, so we can only go forward from here."

  "Well that's a healthy attitude," Penny said. She'd been silent up to this point, altho
ugh her gaze was laser sharp, studying each one of them intently. "I must say, none of you seem like there's anything unnatural about you."

  "Aunt Penny!" Jesse exclaimed, her head snapping around to face her aunt, and then winced. The low sound of pain she made wouldn't have been audible to a human's ear, but it was to Brady's. Inside him, his beast stirred, like waking up from a slumber because something had drawn its attention. "Don't be rude."

  Her aunt sniffed. "It's not rude, it's the truth. They weren't born shifters, they were made that way. It's unnatural." She frowned, her nose twitching. "And you don't smell right either. But you seem like nice boys. I'm sorry for what happened to you and your sisters. It's not your fault."

  Brice grinned at her, not at all perturbed by her statements. As usual, Brock just stood there, hands shoved in his pockets, his expression not indicating one way or another if her words bothered him. Standing by the doorway, Eli coughed as if to cover a laugh. As for Brady, he was more concerned over Jesse's embarrassment then her aunt's contrariness. Eli had warned them the aunt held a lot of the same insular attitudes that small shifter groups did. They weren't big on outsiders or other species.

  "I'm sorry," Jesse mouthed to Brady.

  He reached out his hand, unable to stop himself, and put it right next to hers, leaving it up to her whether or not she wanted to touch him.

  "It's okay," he mouthed back, giving her a wink and a smile so she'd know they didn't take offense. The slightest glide of soft fingertips over the back of his hand was his reward. His beast made a happy chuffing noise, lazily flopping onto its side. There was just something so sweetly intriguing about Jesse, he couldn't explain it.

  They stayed for another half hour before Jesse and Penny were too tired to continue the visit. Brady left reluctantly. Despite her abrasiveness and narrow-attitude about shifters, Penny seemed to enjoy their company. Jesse definitely did. After visiting with them, Brady and his brothers were introduced to Daniel, who looked a lot like his older sister. His eyes lit up when he saw them and he peppered them with questions about their current training as soldiers, much more interested in that than in the cure, apparently.

  Brady just hoped Dr. Montgomery was able to come up with something that would help the O'Neal family. They'd already been through so much.

  Even though he didn't like being around doctors, thanks to his time in the lab, Brady found himself back in Lakewood's hospital the very next day, hovering outside of Jesse and Penny's room. He finally went in when Jesse called out to him, having heard him pacing outside the door. Penny was fast asleep - and apparently a very heavy sleeper - and Jesse was listening to an audio book.

  She looked the same as she had the day before - pale, tired, and pained.

  "I hope I'm not disturbing you," he said quietly, sitting down in the same chair as before, glancing over at Jesse's aunt.

  "Not at all, it's nice to have visitors while we can," she replied, pausing the audio book. "They have to keep us fairly medicated to deal with the pain so we become tired easily."

  "What are you listening to?" he asked, because he honestly couldn't think of anything else to say. He wasn't even sure why he was here. Yeah, he'd wanted to meet the beneficiaries of Dr. Montgomery's continued work... it helped remind him why they couldn't just slit the doctor's throat for all that he'd done, but he didn't know why he'd come back. He just hadn't been able to get her big, grey eyes out of his head.

  "Harry Potter. My favorite books."

  "I haven't read any of them," he said, and Jesse's eyes lit up.

  "You haven't? Oh, wait, you have to at least try them... hold on, we'll start at the beginning."

  Bemused, Brady just sat and watched as she used a tablet to change over the books, starting it at the beginning of the first book. This hadn't been what he'd meant to do when he came here, but seeing her enthusiasm for sharing something she obviously loved... well, heck, there were worse ways to pass the time. A little voice nudged in the back of his head, wondering what his brothers were doing, since he was used to looking after them but... they'd be fine without him. They were safe here, they didn't need him looking over their shoulders while they were on break. Brice would probably be relieved that Brady wasn't breathing down his neck.

  Leaning back against the pillow, Jesse smiled, watching Brady's face as the book started. Even after she fell asleep, he kept listening.

  Hey, it was a good book. And it would give them something to talk about other than their tragic pasts. Brady would definitely like something to talk to her about other than their tragic pasts.

  One day slipped into the next... and then the next... and Brady kept coming back to the hospital room. Sometimes Brice came with him. Every day Jesse became a little paler, a little more pained. Sometimes she was already asleep when he got there. Sometimes Penny was. Sometimes Daniel was in there to visit, his bed taking up most of the free space. Brady took to reading the Harry Potter books in his off time, giving him something to talk to Jesse about, although they talked about other things too. A little bit of their tragic pasts. A little bit about their childhoods before they turned tragic. Jesse never let the tragedy get her down though or turn her mean, something which her aunt couldn't say. Penny could definitely be snappish when she chose to - especially when the topic of the cure came up.

  Penny didn't like the idea of them becoming something else, something different from a squirrel shifter. Jesse and Daniel didn't seem to mind, but they were also in more pain than their aunt. Younger than her too. More determined to live. Dr. Montgomery warned that anything he came up with would waken the DNA of a large shifter in their ancestry, making them a hybrid, something which Penny claimed she would refuse. Jesse just bit her lip when her aunt said that, but when Penny was asleep she told Brady that she didn't care about being a hybrid. She just wanted to be better.

  It killed Brady to see how much Jesse was hurting, more and more every day. She was sleeping more too, because more medication was needed to manage the pain. Dying, a little more, every day.

  He bugged Eli every day, and Eli always told him the same thing - Dr. Montgomery said he'd have something for them soon.

  It just needed to be soon enough.

  ******

  Even in her dreams, she couldn't escape the fire.

  It crackled along her nerves, twisting her features in her sleep, burning her alive. Any minute now, she'd smell the sickly sweet, roasted pork smell of her own flesh as it blackened and charred.

  Truthfully, it was amazing she managed to get any sleep at all. But at a certain point, the body's need for rest outweighed the pain's ability to keep her awake. That or she was just becoming so used to living with a certain level of pain that it had become the new normal.

  Horrifying thought.

  The fact that her pain and her depressing thoughts followed her into sleep was sucked the big one. Sleep should be an escape. A reprieve. Not a continuation of her waking life.

  "Jesse... Jesse O'Neal, wake up." The deep voice filtered into her consciousness. "Jesse, wake up, little bit, it's time." A hand, touching her gently, but it didn't matter... pain flared and she moaned. "Shit... come on, Jesse, wake up. You have to sign the consent form for you and Daniel."

  The pain was the worst part of the Torch, the illness which had robbed her of most of her family and was now trying to completely eradicate them, but the exhaustion and weakness weren't exactly a joyride either. She whimpered as she forced herself more fully awake. Inside her head, her squirrel limply stirred. The poor thing barely made its presence known anymore. Sometimes Jesse wondered if her squirrel was dying even faster than she was, if it was possible. Aunt Penny had brought them to Lakewood, which was both a military base and a hospital, because of whispers of a cure.

  Normally a doctor would do whatever he or she had to in order to save their patient, but in this case, special dispensation was going to be required. This wasn’t a vaccine or a pill or a therapy. Her literal DNA was going to be altered, dormant genes woken u
p to help fight off the Torch.

  Smaller shifter breeds had been dying out to diseases which ravaged them and barely effected the larger shifters. As squirrels, Jesse's family had made it through each wave of disease by insulating themselves further... the healthy members quarantining the sick ones out of fear. Only a small group had been left after the first wave of the Torch spread through them, and they’d begun looking for another scurry to join. The first wave had taken half of what was left of their own scurry, the second wave had also taken her parents and almost everyone else. Now, this third wave looked to take her, her brother, and her aunt, the only survivors of the first two waves.

  As she understood it, Dr. Montgomery's research had focused on 'waking up' dormant genomes from larger shifters back in their past. Her, Daniel, and Aunt Penny's only hope was a distant ancestor; a tiger shifter who had somehow managed to mate a squirrel shifter, despite the insular nature of the scurries. Jesse kind of wished she knew the story, but either way, she blessed that long ago ancestor for his or her open mindedness, as it was going to save them now. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t a guarantee. They didn’t even know how they might be changed. But it was hope.

  Aunt Penny was against doing the procedure. She called it unnatural and wanted the doctors to find another way to save them. They'd been arguing about it for days, as Jesse had grown weaker and weaker, the pain taking over until they’d had a big blow up last night. Finally she'd taken some morphine to go to sleep, telling her aunt she'd make a decision in the morning.

  Well decision freaking made.

  She couldn't keep waking up like this; she'd go mad before she managed to die.

  Forcing her eyes open, she met the concerned hazel eyes of Brady, her favorite of the men guarding the compound they were at. He was still in training, he'd told her, but he looked, moved, and acted like all the other soldiers. The compound was heavily guarded after Dr. Montgomery had been brought in because the people he used to work for, do research for, were definitely going to be looking for him. Brady Bunson had been one of the unethical doctor's experiments, along with his brothers and sisters.