Free Grizzly Flying Home by Sloane Meyers

his heart pounded violently in his chest.
    He was furious. With Scott, for treating Emily the way he did. With Emily, for staying with a man who treated her that way. But, most of all, with himself, for ever letting Scott get away in the first place. Chance was a Grizzly, after all. Rules and laws be damned. He should have left Scott with a permanent inability to ever raise his hand and hit a woman again.
    Ten minutes later, Chance pulled into an apartment complex and started looking for the building that would house the apartment number listed on the address he’d been given. When he found the building, his heart sank further. Two police cars were parked in front, their lights still flashing. Was he too late? Had Scott already harmed her enough to bring the attention of the cops?
    Chance parked his car haphazardly in a parking spot, not caring that he was hopelessly crooked and over the line. He jumped out without even bothering to kill the engine or grab his keys, and he took the steps up to the third floor apartment two at a time. When he got there, two police officers were standing in the hallway talking to a grim-faced man whom Chance didn’t recognize. Behind them, the door to an apartment was smashed in and splintered. Chance felt his stomach turn.
    “Where is she?” he asked, not bothering to introduce himself to the cops. “Is she okay? Where is she? What happened?”
    The cops, startled, turned to look at Chance.
    “You know Emily?” one of them asked.
    “Yes, she’s a friend of mine. Where is she? Is she okay?”
    “We actually don’t know where she is,” the other cop replied. “We responded to a call from this man, who is Emily’s neighbor, because Emily’s boyfriend was banging on her apartment door and trying to smash it in. Which, as you can see, he succeeded in doing. We actually caught him inside, destroying some of her furniture. He’s in custody now. But we don’t know where Emily is, and we’re worried about whether, uh, there was some foul play on Scott’s part before he came here.”
    “You mean whether he hurt or killed her before he came here to destroy her apartment?” Chance asked, his voice tight. The cops may have danced around what they were trying to say, but Chance had never been the type to mince words. And right now, he didn’t have time to say things delicately. He needed to find out where Emily was and whether she was okay. He felt his bear within him, angry and roaring to be let out. The attraction he’d felt for Emily had morphed into a full-blown protective instinct, and it was taking an immense amount of self-control on Chance’s part for him to appear calm and collected.
    “We, uh, we are quite worried about her,” the first officer said.
    “You should be,” the neighbor said. “Her boyfriend is a violent asshole. I should have called you all about him much sooner. If anything happened to that girl I’m never going to forgive myself.”
    Chance was about to start demanding more information from the cops, when his cell phone rang. He looked down at the caller I.D., surprised to see that it was Ian’s lifemate, Charlotte. He thought about letting the call go to voicemail, but something told him that this was important. Charlotte hated talking on the phone, so she wouldn’t be contacting him unless she had a good reason to.
    “Hey, Charlotte, what’s up? I’m kind of in the middle of something right now,” Chance said, stepping a few feet away from the cops but continuing to eye the remains of Emily’s door.
    “Well, whatever it is, I think you better wrap it up quickly and get back to the hangar,” Charlotte said. “Your friend Emily is here, and she’s pretty shaken up.”
    “Emily’s with you?” Chance asked, his voice flooding with relief and his senses going onto high alert. “Is she okay? Is she hurt badly?”
    The cops immediately turned their attention to Chance, peppering him with questions while he plugged his free ear and tried to