by T. S. Joyce
Holman looked like she would retch, but instead she murmured, “I’m really sorry,” right before she and her partner disappeared into the woods.
Hands shaking, Emerson unfolded the paper and squinted at the dark scrawl across the center of the note. It wasn’t Holman’s phone number.
Call Cora Keller of the Breck Crew.
Chapter Seventeen
“Cora is going to call us back from a burner phone,” Harrison muttered as he continued to pace the gravel in front of his trailer.
Bash sat heavily on the porch stairs and pulled Emerson into his lap, apparently as unconcerned with getting dressed as the rest of them. Dicks everywhere, but Emerson didn’t have enough mental energy to be embarrassed. Shifters cared nothing for modesty. Even Audrey was tits out right now as she sank down next to Bash. She was crying, so Emerson held her hand.
When Audrey looked up at her with those big brown eyes, she looked so sad. “You won’t get to be bound to Bash, and I won’t get to be a Boarlander.”
“What do you mean?” Emerson asked, sitting up straighter in Bash’s lap.
“I haven’t registered with them officially yet. We were going to all go to the courthouse and do a big celebration afterward, but now, I’ll remain listed as a lone shifter with my old address. Crewless.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Emerson whispered. She’d only been thinking about how this new rule affected her and Bash, but Audrey and Harrison were being cut deeply, too. She’d waited her whole life to find a crew like this, and now she wouldn’t be an official Boarlander.
Harrison looked gut-punched as he approached Audrey. She didn’t get up from her seat on the stairs, so he pulled his mate against his leg. Audrey rested her cheek on him and let off the most heartbroken sob.
The phone rang, and Harrison’s voice broke as he answered, “Hello?” Clearing his throat, he put it on speaker phone.
“Harrison, I didn’t know you were pairing up or I would’ve talked to you about this as soon as it began happening last night,” Cora said. “The government knows.”
“Knows what?” Mason asked from where he stood leaned against the railing. His eyes were glowing bright blue.
“Look, we could get away with more when they didn’t know Damon and Diem existed. And then there were dragon offspring. Diem and Bruiser had one, Creed and Gia had another, and the government was leaving everyone alone because they knew Damon was very old. Ancient. Immortal. Untouchable. They didn’t want trouble. That’s what kept his mountains safe for you to live however you wanted.”
“They found out he lost his immortality,” Mason said in a soft, horrified voice.
“Yes,” Cora whispered. “They’re trying to change laws without votes, calling it a state of emergency and striking fear into the humans with bullshit ads and information. I’m fighting and rallying as best I can, but it’s me and my pull against the country. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
“We’re losing,” Harrison murmured. “They’re stripping rights.”
“They’re doing it to keep the number of dragons and other shifters to a small population, and Damon’s mountains have become a safe haven for the most dangerous of our kind.”
“We aren’t dangerous to humans,” Kirk gritted out.
“Says us. With enough negative publicity against shifters, people will begin to believe anything. Listen. I need to keep this brief because it is chaos here with organizing protests and rallies. The Breck Crew is in clean-up mode. You have two females now, right?”
“Yes,” Harrison and Bash said at the same time.
“If you want anything done, we have delayed the changes until noon tomorrow. I hope to God we can get everything overturned, but I don’t know how much time it will take or if we’ll ever get these rights back. If you want anyone bound to the Boarlanders, you have until midday tomorrow.”
“Why didn’t those damned officers just say that?” Clinton asked, sounding pissed.
“They weren’t supposed to,” Emerson said, feeling hollow inside as she lifted the crumpled note. “Holman broke some rule by giving me this information. She was trying to tell us we had a little more time, but her partner wouldn’t have been on board with that outright admission.”
“My advice, for what it is worth,” Cora said in a softer tone. “Pledge or do whatever it is you want to legally do by tomorrow, and then go to work. Build your public relations in Saratoga and beyond, as far as you can reach. We’ll be doing the same from Breckenridge. Half-naked lumberjack calendars for woman, interviews, donations, blogs—whatever you can do to show how normal we are to the public, do it. We have a battle ahead to get us back to where we were.”
“Okay. Thanks Cora, we’ll keep in touch.”
“Yep. Good luck tomorrow, and Harrison?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you do, don’t let Damon eat anyone until this all blows over.”
The line went dead, and Harrison looked like he wanted to chuck his phone into the woods. “Like any of us can control that,” he gritted out. “Damon only goes all hungry dragon when we’re being attacked, shot at, hurt, annihilated. If we don’t have his fire, these mountains fall. The Ashe Crew, the Gray Backs, the Boarlanders—we’re all sitting ducks.”
“No, we’re sitting grizzlies, dragons, silverbacks, boars, birds of prey, tigers,” Mason ground out. “If they come at us, the shifters here aren’t defenseless. I’ll talk to Damon about keeping a low profile. In the meantime, we need to worry about tomorrow.” He arced his blazing blue gaze to Emerson and Audrey. “If you want legal ties to this crew, now might be your only chance.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bash had disappeared shortly after the call with Cora Keller. He’d seen Emerson to 1010 and then left without another word. The snarl in his throat was constant, and his eyes glowed like a beast, but the look on his face right before he left said he was just as shattered on the inside as she was.
How was she supposed to sleep after what had happened tonight? She’d tried, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw those guns pointed at Bash’s bear, and the flashbacks felt like getting hit by a car.
At five in the morning, she gave up on sleep and made breakfast, sure that he would come in from his Change, or whatever he was doing, but instead, she sat at the table with two plates of food that eventually went cold. She couldn’t even stomach a single bite. Everything had gotten so messed up in such a short time that her head was spinning.
Giving up on him coming back, she dressed and readied for the day, then struck out on her own to find him. She’d never seen Bash down, and she had no idea how he handled heartache, but she knew one thing. Neither one of them should go through this alone.
Emerson didn’t know how she knew where he was, but some long buried instinct must’ve kicked up in light of almost losing her mate last night. Maybe she was still losing him, she didn’t know. Bash had wanted a mate, claimed or married he hadn’t minded either way, but he wanted to be bound to a woman, and now that wouldn’t be possible for them.
She stumbled through the woods in the early morning light, her hiking boots squishing against the soft ground. Dew clung to everything and quieted her normally clumsy footsteps. Bash wasn’t right under Bear Trap Falls, but she hadn’t expected him to be. She was looking for a special place. The orange place.
Emerson made her way up the beach, her shoes sinking deep into the sand with every step, but when she did see him, she stuttered to a stop. He sat on a bench in front of the two intertwined trees, elbows resting on his knees, shoulders hunched as he looked at something in his hand. He closed his eyes, clenched his fist, and let off a long exhale, then he slid his troubled gaze to her. His eyes were still the unnatural green that said his bear hadn’t settled.
After a slow approach, she sank down onto the bench beside him. It smelled like sawdust and new stain, and on a plaque nailed to the backrest, it read, Emerson’s Favorite Place.
Her lip trembled, and she slid her hand in
to the crook of his elbow. She stared over the river at the mountains. “Did you build this for me?”
Bash swallowed hard and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I got you two presents for yesterday. The flowers and the period stuff if you weren’t pregnant, and this if you were.”
She stared at the woodgrain and the rich, dark color of the finely made wooden bench and shook her head, baffled. “I don’t understand.”
“Not the bench.” Bash unclenched his hand, and on his calloused palm sat a sparkling antique diamond ring. The main jewel was round and brilliant, but the setting had smaller, intricate diamonds all around that tapered into a thin band.
“Bash,” she said on a breath.
“Don’t. Not yet. I know your answer. I just wanted to tell you what I had planned before everything got so fucked up. I bought a ring before I met you. I was on the hunt for a mate, and I was ready for commitment. Platinum. Two carats. Gaudy as hell, but I thought I would have to put a fancy ring on a woman’s finger if she was gonna marry a man like me. But then I met you, and that ring didn’t feel right. It wasn’t you. It was big and flashy, but you’re a classy, quiet, understated lady. You want simple things, like me. So I got this one. I showed it to Audrey, but she told me the same thing she always does.”
“Slow, Bash,” Emerson whispered, blinking hard.
“Yeah. I’m ready. I was ready that night at Sammy’s Bar. You’re mine, and it don’t make no matter to me whether we get married today or ten years from now—I’m in this. But you’re human, and time moves different for your kind.”
“Bash, you are my kind.” She swallowed hard and blew out a steadying breath. “Ask me if you want.”
He jerked his wild gaze to her and froze. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing as the seconds and silence stretched between them. Then slowly, Bash dropped to his knee in the sand. He took her hand in his and offered up the ring between his finger and thumb. “This isn’t how I wanted it. I wanted you to be able to plan a big fancy wedding and invite all of Saratoga and have a chocolate fountain and piles of pizza rolls. I wanted to throw a big party and shout to the world that you picked me, but all I can give you is a rushed wedding up at city hall.”
“That’s not all you have to offer.”
He cocked his head and smiled. “Okay, also a shitty trailer in a shithole trailer park and a crazy crew of—”
“Stop it. I’m being serious. What else do you think you have to offer me?”
“My body. I’ll always protect you, no matter what. I’ll always have your back. I won’t make you raise our cubs alone. I’ll hold you when you cry and feel damned proud to have you on my arm. I’ll never stop trying to make you happy because that smile on your face, the one you’re wearin’ right now, is the best part of my day. You’ll have to deal with all my gritty parts, but you can have all my good parts, too.”
She smiled and spread out the fingers of her left hand as her vision blurred with her tears. “That sounds like a damn fine offer to me, Bash Bear.”
A slow grin curved his lips. “You mean you’ll marry me? Even though you aren’t carryin’ my cub?”
She swallowed hard over and over so her answer would come out strong. “Of course I will.”
Bash squeezed his fingers too tight and the ring popped out of his grip like a firecracker. They both gasped as it hit the sand and disappeared. Frantically, Bash scooped a handful of the dirt and sifted through it. “Too rough,” he growled out as he pulled the ring from the pile in his hand.
“Oh, dear goodness, Bash. You nearly gave me a heart attack!” Emerson’s heart was lodged somewhere between her collar bones and her throat.
But when Bash looked back up at her, he was grinning so big she laughed. He pulled her hand away from her chest where she’d clutched her shirt when he’d dropped the ring, and he slid it onto her finger.
Bash hugged her up so tight she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t care. Yesterday had been the worst day, but today was going to be amazing. Bash was making sure of that.
Face buried against her neck, Bash murmured, “I thought you would say no. I sat here thinking our timing was bad. Bad timing, bad luck, but you said yes. To me.” He shook his head against her and hugged her closer. “To me,” he repeated softer. He loosened his hold on her, and thank goodness because she was beginning to feel dizzy at the lack of air.
“Let’s go tell everyone,” he said, his eyes round. His excited smile was breathtaking in the gray morning light.
“I love the bench you made for us to watch the sunsets on. And I love the ring you picked for me. It’s perfect—exactly what I would’ve picked.”
“I measured your finger with a string the first night we slept in ten-ten so the store could make the size right. Let’s go tell everyone,” he said again, more urgently.
Emerson laughed as he dragged her off the bench and pulled her along the beach behind him. “Too slow, human,” he finally said when she’d slowed to stare in awe at the ring on her finger. She was really engaged to Bash. She was engaged to the man she’d met years ago who’d paid her a sweet compliment at the library.
Bash turned and folded her into his arms, then strode toward the trail that led to the trailer park. When he started running, she held onto his neck for dear life because her stomach was doing flip flops with how fast he was going.
“Harrison! Kirk! Audrey!” Bash called as they came out of the woods behind his trailer. “Mason!”
“Don’t forget Clinton,” she reminded him.
“Oh, right. Asshole! I have to tell you something!”
Most of them were already gathered around Harrison’s trailer at the front of the park, and Mason stuck his head out of the trailer next to the alpha’s as they passed. Emerson flashed her ring at him, and he grinned.
Breathlessly, Bash set her down and told the others, “I did it. I asked her and she said yes and look.” He shoved his finger at her ring. “Emerson’s gonna be my wife.” Quieter, he repeated, “My wife.”
Audrey got to him first and hugged him up tight. Emerson couldn’t stop laughing and crying and shaking as they embraced her one by one. Clinton kept his distance, but he did pet the top of her head awkwardly like she was a cocker spaniel, and the affection counted. He almost cracked a smile, and she was convinced, deep down, Clinton liked her.
“Okay, if we’re gonna do this, we have to go now,” Harrison said. “It’s a long drive to Saratoga, and we still have to beg, bribe, and bully for a last minute marriage license.”
“I have to put on something nice,” Audrey said, her voice pitched high with excitement.
“Okay, go get ready, but we’re out of here in half an hour,” Harrison said. “If you ladies aren’t polished by then, you’ll have to put your war paint on in the truck.”
“Break!” Bash said, clapping loud. “Wait,” he called after Emerson as she bolted for 1010.
“Yeah, fiancé?”
“Oh, damn I like the sound of that,” he said through a startled grin.
“What were you going to ask me?”
“Oh! What should I wear?”
“You should wear your favorite outfit.”
“So…naked,” he said with a decisive nod.
“Nope,” she said. “You have to wear clothes.”
“That was a joke probably,” he murmured as he walked toward his trailer.
Audrey caught her hand and tugged her toward 1010. “I have to borrow a dress because I don’t have any that will work, and you always wear cute shit.”
“Okay, but I only have half my sundress stash here—”
“Good enough.”
As it turned out, Audrey had much smaller boobs than Emerson, but she happily stuffed her bra and looked like a goddess in her red eyelet sundress. And Emerson felt like a million bucks in her white, strappy beach dress with the gold embroidery along the hem. She wore her favorite pair of strappy, gold sandals with it. And after she stripped the thorns from an Emerson rose from Bash’s landsca
ping, Audrey pinned it into the cascade of curls fastened at the back of her head. She made a matching bouquet, smoked up her eyes, slathered on pink lip glitter and called her look done. Sure, it wasn’t the traditional wedding gown she’d dreamed of as a little girl, but the look in Bash’s eyes when he laid eyes on her right outside of 1010 made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.
Bash opened his mouth to say something as she approached, holding her bouquet of pink roses tied with twine, but he clacked his teeth closed and just shook his head with an awed look instead. He was dashing in his black sweater and dark-wash jeans with his hair all gelled and designer-messy. He’d even shaved so she could see every sharp angle of his chiseled jaw.
He ran his knuckles over her cheek, but it was dry, and when he traced her smiling lips, she understood. She was happiest when he was happy, too. When he cupped her neck and pressed his lips to hers, she relaxed against him. After he eased away, she could see it there in the forest green hue of his eyes. Even without words, she could see his love for her. Somehow, despite everything, the fates had known exactly what they were doing. After today, there would be no uncertainty about her future with Bash. No one would be able to keep them apart.
“Come on, love birds,” Kirk called from where he was climbing into his green muscle car with Mason and Clinton. “We have to go now.”
“Yep,” Bash called behind him, seemingly unable to take his eyes off Emerson. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“Let’s go get hitched.” Emerson stifled the excited squeal that was bubbling up her throat and pulled Bash’s hand toward his carport. Someone had tied blue beer cans to the bumper. They would probably be destroyed by the time they got to City Hall but at least they were getting that part of the wedding day. She bet it was Kirk.
Bash pulled out onto the gravel road but skidded to a stop when Harrison waved them down. He and Audrey climbed into the back seat, and Bash hit the gas, following the trail of dust Kirk had left behind.