Held hostage for over a year, Eric had been forced to play Tymber and Taryn’s sex slave against his will. When he was finally free, he wasn’t truly free. Pregnant with the terrible twosome’s cub, he couldn’t leave Bear Mountain until the beast inside him arrived.
Landon and Collier know their mate at first glance, and offer to give the human refuge in their cabin. They struggle knowing their male is filled with a babe, a babe that’s not theirs, but as they grow to love Eric, they know they’ll love the little piece of him regardless.
But Eric has other plans. Over the weeks with them, he senses the bond and revels in the safety of their home. He wants the two bears for himself, without the thing his captors forced on him under the same roof.
What will Landon and Collier do when the ultimate ultimatum is laid at their feet?
Trigger Warning: Prior to the start of the story, the rape of one of the main characters occurs. It is not shown, but the character does recall small memories during a brief scene near the beginning of the book.
International bestselling MM romance author Kelex lives in Hampton Roads, Virginia with her twenty-something slacker kidult and two senior grandpups.
When not being a pain in her daughter’s ass or writing under various pen names, she also loves to create stained glass, paint, crochet, bake gorgeous breads, and host game night with all her kiddos, be they born or adopted.
This story belongs in hell and it's taken me over a year to be able to write about it. Everyone keeps rating this high, as if sex/steam and "his mates are forced to chose him or his rape baby" make this story romantic somehow. It's not. Pro tip: YOU ARE NOT SELFISH OR HORRIBLE BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT A CHILD WHO WAS CONCEIVED DURING RAPE.
Eric, our main character, was raped for about a year, by two men at the same time. He became pregnant. He is a human and didn't know he could get pregnant. When he goes to get an abortion, he can't, because the writer has made this a world where abortion kills the "mother" too. So, this man who has been raped for nearly a year, isn't allowed to get an abortion that has a 99% chance to kill him because the doctor won't do it because "life is sacred". (Not the baby's life, Erics).
NO SERIOUSLY, NOT THE BABIES LIFE. This poor man who wanted an abortion was hounded from EVERYONE including his doctor and mates about WHAT A BAD PERSON HE WAS for not wanting the child that was a reminder of his RAPE, and they emotionally BULLIED him because of it. And in the next breath: They revealed that they'd let the child starve on the streets and slowly die (because death by starvation would be slow and how is that fucking humane?) rather than take him in BECAUSE OF WHO THE RAPISTS WERE. So HOW DARE Eric not find the life of his rape baby sacred, all life is sacred, but the only two people who WOULDNT subject the child to a slow death of starvation, abandoned on a street ARE ERICS MATES.
And Erics mates? Only ONE of them doesn't call him selfish and horrible for not wanting his rape baby, and even then he says "a horrible thing happened to you but this baby is innocent". As if innocence leaves just by existing. Eric didn't ask to be raped, or pregnant, or traumatized. But not a single one of these fuckers would help him or listen. So he entered his own hell where we was forced to let the child grow, in a town that judged and BULLIED him for wanting an abortion of a baby they would rather let die than raise themselves. And he was forced to give birth. And then WHEN HIS MATES CHOSE THE "INNOCENT" HELPLESS BABY OVER HIM, and he left? HE WHORED HIMSELF OUT TO COME RIGHT BACK.
THATS CORRECT. The author wrote him, A RAPE VICTIM, to leave Bear Mountain, I think by blowjob or worse, only to decide RIGHT AWAY "I want to kill the fuckers who raped me" and subjected him to WHORE HIMSELF OUT TO GET THE MONEY TO COME BACK. WHY LEAVE IN THE FIRST PLACE, KELEX. And THIS is the author who prefaced this with "you wanted his story, but he needed to get into an emotionally good place" or some shit in the A/N. HE WAS NOT IN A GOOD PLACE. He was raped for a year, pregnant, forced to carry to term, left just to turn right around and whore himself out to return. And when he gets back? The Bear Council can't do ANYTHING about his rape, there's NO PUNISHMENT for that. But when the deaths of TWO BEAR CHILDREN finally were pinned on the rapists? THEN they were fair game.
And Eric can't look at his child until the rapists are murdered. Then all of a sudden he's fixed and his child is the most wonderful in the world WHICH IS JUST NOT HOW IT WORKS. YOU DONT LOVE A CHILD YOU ABHORRED, JUST LIKE THAT. Do don't go through rape, emotional abuse for not wanting the child, and whoring yourself out and just fix yourself, or at least enough to immediately love that same child. A child you avoided looking at at all costs because he was a reminder. And one of the mates is like "we're sorry we didn't understand you need a therapist because we don't understand humans" or some shit, after all this happened. BUT NO ONE, NOT ONCE, REALLY UNDERSTOOD OR GAVE THEIR UNDERSTANDING TO HIM. It was "how dare you want to abort and not want this child or rape we would leave on the street to die of starvation, you're so selfish" and "well what happened to you sucked, but this child didn't ask for this" (I SHIT YOU NOT).
THIS BOOK WAS DISGUSTING.
And to make matters WORSE, there's a story somewhere in here, of a man WHO WAS MATED TO TWO BEARS HE LOVED. THEY WERE HIS LIFE. AND THEY COULDN'T GET HIM PREGNANT. AND THEN THEY DIED. And do you know WHY HE COULDN'T GET PREGNANT? Because FATE, which is an actual force in this series, FUCKED UP and said "THOSE AREN'T YOUR MATES SO YOU CANT GET PREGNANT". I SHIT YOU NOT AGAIN. A man in another book in this series couldn't get pregnant because fate screwed up and instead of the two mates he found in the book that gave him these two super important twins, he mated with two mates that should have been his but fate changed course (but he ended up with them anyway). FATE SAID "THEY WEREN'T YOUR MATES SO YOU COULDN'T HAVE THEIR KIDS. FATE WAS CORRECTING ITSELF." SO WHY THEN, would ERIC and COUNTLESS OTHER MEN get pregnant by the rapists in this book? If fate prevented it with a man who LOVED HIS MATES? He could have had his cubs with them, they still could have died, and he still could have had the Special Twins with the new mates. There's no way The Rapists had THAT MANY MATES. The rapists (and the fucking summary won't come out and say rape, it says "forced sex slave" FUCK YOU KELEX) were able to impregnate many men, just to kill them AND some of the children they sired, so what was the purpose of THEIR LIVES? Just to DIE?
You can't say this man with his loving mates can't have kids because fate fucked up and those aren't supposed to be his real mates, and then have these rapists impregnate several men. That's bullshit.
It's just as bullshit as taking a rape victim, forcing him to be pregnant, denying him abortion (even if it kills him, he didn't care), have everyone judge and bully him for not loving or wanting a child they'd leave to starve on the streets, having everyone ignore his feelings, have his mates chose the baby over him, write him to leave just to COME RIGHT BACK which takes MONTHS because he has to WHORE HIMSELF OUT TO RAISE THE MONEY, and finally kill the bastards not because they raped him (not even a slap on the wrist for that) but because it was finally proven they killed two of the babies they sired through rape. Pregnancies that, according to a previous book, shouldn't be possible because those aren't his mates. So: pregnancies resulting from repeated rape, a couple ending in death of the children are okay, BUT pregnancies with LOVING mates are not possible or okay because the human belonged with two other guys instead. So Fate (and I do mean an actual force) personally intervenes. BULL. SHIT.
No, this isn't a good book at all. It's not romantic. It's not hot. It's frustrating and DISGUSTING.
And SPOILER ALERT: Eric never gets help. Because after ALL THE TRAUMA HE WENT THROUGH, apparently the death of his rapists magically fixes him to love his child. Let alone all the other shit. He gets ONE MATE who acknowledges the rape sucks, and that "you needed a therapist and we didn't know" which is AS CLOSE TO ACKNOWLEDGING ERICS MENTAL HEALTH AS IT GETS.
This story is a should not exist. It's an excuse to torture a rape victim as much as possible. I know the summary sounds great, the men "grow to love" the child too even though it hurts that their mates child is not their own. But that's not what happens. What happens is an entire town, including two mates who are supposed to love Eric, ignoring his mental health, ignoring him, not getting him the help he needs, judging him, treating him like shit because he doesn't want a child who was forced him on by rape. A child 99% of the population would have let STARVE TO DEATH if ERICS MATES hadn't stepped up to the plate. Eric's mates who take the child PRIMARILY because he's "an innocent no one else would care for" (whereas Eric can care for himself) and think Eric is SELFISH. And that's DISGUSTING.
I wondered about Eric e we since Asher's book. He had such a hard road to travel. His mates are perfect for him. They helped him to get where he needed to be so he would accept the help he needed. Yes there were times I was angry at him but pain and fear can lead us to doing the wrong thing.Man what else does Kelex have in store for us? Think I need a break before I start the next one. I have to find out what happens next though.
This series is seriously, my obsession. I love the characters, how all the stories weave around each other and build up the world, and I just enjoy getting to see what'll happen next for this group of men.
I thought that this was beautifully written...the situation with Eric having a baby from the men who had raped him was handled very well and very realistically too, with his feelings of not wanting the baby and refusing to acknowledge him. My heart broke for Eric with everything that he had to go through. He had wonderful mates, however, I really loved Landon and Collier. I wish we had gotten more with the three of them!
Can't wait for the next book in this series, and I do hope it's not the last!
Le tome tant attendu ! Qu'est-ce que je voulais la lire cette histoire ! Depuis l'apparition d'Éric, je ne souhaitais qu'une chose : le voir enfin heureux. Ça a été un chemin long et compliqué, mais son évolution est remarquable.
(Originally reviewed for Love Bytes Reviews with a copy provided by the author / publisher for an honest review.)
Surrendering to Two Bears finally brings us the story of Eric. We met Eric earlier in the series as the young man that Tymber and Taryn had kept as a sex slave. Eric had stayed at the resort at Bear Mountain, but knew nothing of the shifters. When he was leaving, he was kidnapped by Tymber and Taryn and spirited away to their cabin in the woods where they kept him chained and raped him repeatedly until he became pregnant. Now I’ll admit, there could be some triggers there for some folks, but I think the author handled it well, and other than the mention of what happened in the past, there aren’t a lot of details.
This story, like others in this series, bounces back a little in time. This time only a year or so to when Eric was rescued. It starts in the here and now, when Collier shoots and kills Tymber and Taryn…which already happened in one of the other books I believe? Then it moves back to tell us what happened to Eric after his release.
What will happen when Eric finally gives birth to the rape baby he is carrying? When it comes down to a decision for Collier and Landon between Eric and the baby, which way will they go?
I liked the story. I’m not as enamored with the overall series story as I have been because honestly, the stories in the installments are so intermixed that I’m starting to get confused on what, when and how. People are dead in one book, but alive in the next. The bad guy it appears is still out there somewhere, and we just aren’t getting closure on that. I’m recommending this book and the entire series, because I’ve really enjoyed it so far. I believe there is only one more book in the series. Hopefully by the end of it they get the bad guy! As always, I would not recommend this book as a standalone. The story builds in each installment and references are made back to previous events and characters.
I stumbled across this on goodreads while doing something else and was interested enough to give it a try.
Let me just say I did NOT know that the bears were brothers AND lovers. Mostly the brothers I didn't know.
I've read Kelex books before and he tends to really go out there. So this was surprising. There's not a lot of sex.. matter of fact there's only two scenes of just the brothers together. This is more about forming their relationship and earning trust (and running away) after dealing with his rape and abuse. So, once reaching the threshold of learning brother lovers and deciding to plod through, I can say this went MUCH better than I thought. I may even check the rest of the series to see what's up.
I was so looking forward to reading Eric's story, and I was not disappointed. Landon and Collier's patience and love for both Eric and his cub were wonderful to watch. All the heartache, terror, triumph and love were well worth the wait. All the emotions that I felt during this book, just proved to me just how well written this was. I am hoping for more...like maybe Tyler's story ? I highly recommend this story. Reading in sequence with previous books in this series is recommended but not 100% needed....as the back story is given as it goes along.
Eric., god he broke my heart. The pain he was going through was heartbreaking. He did what most victims do. He needed to find he way back. Thankfully Landon and Collier, loved him enough to let him make his own choices, and allow Eric to follow his heart home. So happy Eric found his center, forgiveness, safety, unconditional love, freedom, and the life and family he was meant to live. Beautiful heartwarming emotional story this was fantastic!!!!!!! LOVE THESE BEARS
There are some very powerful emotions and situations swirling through this story. The author has a warning at the start of each installment that the books should be read in order. It's true as each story line builds on the others past, and the past is what is what Eric has to deal with, hopefully before more mistakes are made.
It is the first Kelex's story I've read. The blurb sounded so, well, insane that I just couldn't resist it. And I kinda enjoyed it, it was fast-paced and there was a lot happening. But the writing is so simplistic, it was like a retelling of a book, not a book itself.
This was a nice addition to the series...the most emotional story as well...I felt very connected with Eric and understood his emotional Turmoil...his bears stood by him and I loved how they immediately accepted Sully...off to book 9
Hard to believe that we're at book 8 already! This 'verse definitely grew on me and it keeps surprising me how gracefully and respectfully it handles traumatic events and difficult interpersonal conflicts in spite of somewhat choppy worldbuilding.
I'm glad that this book didn't focus on Eric's despair - as that tends to be a trigger for me. It was enough to know that he was feeling so much despair that he considered ending his life.
Luckily, Collier, Landon and Sully refused to give up on Eric and worked ceaselessly to show Eric that he had value, and was loved. This made the book so much more about hope and redemption than it was about despair.