Free A Blaze To Bear (Fire Bear Shifters Book 1) by Sloane Meyers

small fires, but end up with large infernos by the time the plane dropped them off. As long as there was still a chance for them to control the flames, they would jump. Maybe it was crazy, but no one ever said smokejumping was sane. Ian tried to give Charlotte an encouraging smile. They hadn’t had much of a chance to talk over the last day, since everything had been a blur of inspecting and packing gear. Maybe it had been just as well, since the more he talked to her without telling her he was a bear shifter, the guiltier he felt. Once this mission was completed, he had to come clean with her. Zach would just have to deal with it.
    The plane reached the jump spot again. Hunter stood in the door, waiting until Ian checked his gear and gave him an affirmative nod. Hunter flashed Ian a peace sign and a grin, and was gone, whisked away from the plane at ninety miles an hour. Charlotte stepped into the door next. She looked pale.
    “You okay?” Ian yelled out. Charlotte shrugged.
    “I have a bad feeling,” she said.
    Ian checked her chest strap and leg strap, and made sure her parachute and reserve handles were clear. He felt his heart tighten with emotion as he looked in her eyes and saw the fear. She was trying so hard to be brave, but her face was white as a sheet.
    “Everything will be fine,” he yelled back. “Just follow your procedures.”
    She nodded, although her face still looked troubled as he gave her the go-ahead signal. She dove out of the plane, already arching on exit. Ian quickly checked his gear, waited a few seconds to give Charlotte enough air clearance, and then dove out of the plane behind her.
    The change in sound from the roar of the engine’s airplane to the static white noise of rushing wind still startled him, even after all the jumps he had done. He took a moment to center his mind, then arched to stabilize his body. He reached back to pull his parachute, and felt the familiar jerk of the chute stopping his freefall as it opened. He took a deep breath and looked up to reach for his steering toggles. As he reached upward, his parachute banked sharply to the left. At first, Ian thought he must have hit a gust of wind, but his parachute kept diving sharply to the left, and there was no unusual wind here as far as he could tell. His parachute started spinning, first in a slow, jerking movement, and then in a faster, smooth swirl. In just moments, his parachute lines were twisted around each other, like the lines of a swing that a little kid had spun around. Ian reached up to hold the lines and started kicking in the opposite direction of the twist, trying to free his parachute so he could steer. But something was wrong. His parachute kept spinning, and he didn’t seem to be making any progress on freeing the lines. He couldn’t land his parachute like this. The impact of spinning into the ground that quickly would likely kill him.
    Ian felt his heart pounding as he looked at the altimeter he wore on his wrist. It told him that he was just below three thousand feet high, and bleeding away altitude quickly. Taking a deep breath, Ian realized he needed to get rid of his twisted main parachute and go to his reserve parachute. He had practiced these emergency procedures so many times during training, but it felt surreal to be using them now. Ian felt his muscle memory take over as he reached down to his chest and pulled the cutaway handle that would detach his main parachute from his rig. Ian launched into freefall again as his main canopy floated off. The ground seemed to rush at him at an impossibly quick speed as he reached for his reserve handle and yanked it desperately. For the longest second of Ian’s life, he waited. The time between pulling the reserve handle and feeling the reserve parachute opening over his head felt like an eternity. When he finally stopped hurtling toward earth and looked up to see his reserve canopy above his head, fully open with no line twists, Ian let out the breath