by V. Vaughn
A second later, Chance heard a loud thunk. His eyes grew wide as he stared through the tiny window to see the crow shaking its head, wobbling drunkenly away.
He laughed, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “I swear that damn thing was trying to kill me.”
Phoenix’s look of disgust said it all. Of the three of them, his oldest brother had the hottest temper. He was the real grizzly of the bunch.
August, who was normally the calm in the storm, had been a hot-headed bastard lately. Chance was pretty sure his brother’s mood had everything to do with the pretty siren he’d let slip away, but August was notoriously tight-lipped when it came to his personal life. All Chance knew was that the chilliest brother of the bunch made an enraged dragon look like a happy unicorn by comparison.
On the other hand, Chance was the baby, and as a result, the most reckless of the bunch. Chance did what he wanted, when he wanted, and how he wanted… usually.
He eyed Phoenix with a snarl. His brother was cracking his knuckles and looking as though he wanted to make mincemeat of Chance’s pretty face.
Holding up his hands in an “I surrender” pose, Chance sighed. “Dude, chill, okay. I was just trying to get rid of that—”
“Not important now,” August said, swiping his hand through the air like a blade.
Phoenix was still looking at Chance as if he were a prime slab of raw meat with a whiskey chaser on the side.
Chance rolled his eyes. “Who wants mates anyway? We can drive into town and find some willing—”
“Shut the hell up,” August growled, rubbing his nose furiously. “If I don’t get a say in this, you don’t get a say in this. Now just sit down, shut up, and deal.”
“What the hell’s happened to you, August? You’re acting like a whiny bitch baby.”
Chance was sort of worried about his brother, but he was angry too. None of them really wanted to go through the stupid, archaic ritual anymore than the other.
“What August is trying and badly failing to say,” Phoenix said with a derisive roll of his eyes, “is that instinct is ritual that goes back to the dawn of the Breed era, and it’s an unbreakable tradition.”
Phoenix, who was never known for being a calm bear even at the best of times, must have also noticed August’s foul mood because that had sounded almost intelligent.
“And how we’ll teach our cubs. Yeah, yeah, blah. I got it.” Chance made a talking motion with his hand. “Whatever. Let’s just get on with this already. I’m tired and hungry.”
Standing to his feet and looking like a weary bear, August rolled his shoulders and shook his head. Chance swore he could practically peel the exasperation off his brother. August took life way too seriously sometimes.
“Let’s just get this shit over with,” August snapped. Again. Opening the door with a loud bang, he walked out without even a fare-thee-well.
“Well, then.” Chance pointed at the door through which August had left. “What the eff is going on with him?”
Phoenix rolled his eyes. “Wish I knew. Whatever it is, I just hope finding his mate will set him to rights ‘cause I can’t deal with his crap anymore.”
Getting their mates, while temporarily fun to scratch an itch with, was very low on Chance’s list of priorities. One woman was much like the next. He was happy as long as they were hot, had big jubilees for him to palm, and could drink him under the table. He didn’t exactly figure on ever getting saddled down with anyone, much less one someone.
Phoenix and August, though, were acting as if the mating ritual was life or death.
And Chance loved his brothers, grudgingly at times, but loved them nonetheless. So he would clamp his lips shut so they could just get this nightmare over with already. He had places to be that night… namely getting his drink on while downing some hot wings. That damn bird had made him want chicken.
“All right, fine.” He nodded. “I give. Let’s just do this already.”
“You got the scaffolding set up?” Phoenix asked.
Chance gave a thumbs up then yanked off his shirt. Phoenix proceeded to do the same thing.
All his life, Chance had heard the stories handed down through his clan for generations. The legends spoke of the vision quest each male would be forced to endure just to find his mystical mate with a vajayjay so magical that it would make the male slobber all over himself to get his hands on it.
At least, that’s the way he’d always viewed it. He thought it was just a bunch of hogwash.
Of course, up until the day his ma and pa had been taken out by a hunter’s rifle, he remembered them being mostly happy.
He wasn’t sure though. They’d died when he was just barely out of his cub years. He mostly knew about them based on the memories August and Phoenix shared. So maybe his parents had been the exception and not the rule.
Grizzlies weren’t pack animals, not true grizzlies anyway. Shifters were a little bit like their distant cousins in the sense that no grizzly liked to stray outside of their own little sphere of family.
So he’d never really been around others of his kind to see whether or not the stories of the magical hoo-ha were true, but Chance didn’t figure it mattered much. If it wasn’t true, no harm no foul. He would just go find himself a willing partner to warm his bed for the night. If it were true, he would go and scratch his itch and call it a day.
Clapping his hands, he went to the door. “Last one there’s a rotten egg.” He grinned good-naturedly when his brother groaned.
Phoenix reached for three sets of gleaming steel hooks sitting on the dinner table and carefully tossed them over one shoulder. “Only you could say that, knowing what’s to come.”
“Meh.” Chance swung the door open. “It’ll heal.” Then he turned and trotted out the door, keeping a wary eye out for the crow that he could still smell lingering around. The thing smelled like mussels, acorns, and… flowers?
He shook his head. Why was he smelling flowers? Maybe that rock the bird had thrown at his head had done a little damage after all.
He sniffed again and blinked rapidly as an overwhelming scent of flowers filled his lungs. “Huh,” he grunted.
Phoenix, who was just to the side of him, lifted a brow in question.
“Nothing,” Chance answered with a hard shake of his head, taking breaths only when he absolutely needed to. That smell was far too distracting.
A few seconds later, they arrived at the clearing Chance had worked on all day the day before. The scaffold was little more than several solid pieces of wood, hammered together to create a supported platform ten feet off the ground. A two-by-four sheet of wood was set up beneath it as a step for them to stand on.
Three thick sets of rope dangled over the platform. All three were set up with rigs so that all the brothers would need to do was lock the steel hooks in place, which Phoenix was already doing. Chance smelled August around, but his cranky brother was hiding somewhere at the moment.
Whatever. Not his business.
Chance stared up at the sky, watching as the dark clouds that’d been rolling in from a distance drew closer and closer. He could smell the rain in the wind.
Based on the thick black color of the clouds, he was sure they were about to experience a downpour to beat all.
“I guess suggesting we build a fire is out of the question?” Chance asked with a grin.
Snapping the final hook in place, Phoenix nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so, little brother. What’s the matter, little bit of rain make you scared?” he taunted with a wicked smile. “Want a hug to make it better?” He opened his arms, stepping toward Chance as though he meant to do it.
“Ha!” Chance snorted. “You wish. Look, little bit of rain, I still look sexy as hell. You, on the other hand, I’d hate to see the look in your female’s eyes when she gets a load of you and—”
“Stop, both of you.” August held up his hand, appearing as if by magick. Serious as ever. “There is no time to waste. The energy has begun to roll in.”
When he said it, Chance finally felt it. The raw prickling power of that ancient earth magick crawled up from the soil beneath his boots. His skin tingled as the energy rolled over his flesh like an electrical wave.
Even his heart rate, which had been nice and calm a moment before, now began to thump harder in his chest. Frowning, Chance rubbed at himself. This was magick, the likes of which he’d never experienced before.
Wetting his lips, he nodded to his brothers, serious for the first time in a long time.
As one, they stepped onto the two-by-four and grabbed their hooks. Chance knew this was going to hurt like a son of a gun, but he could no more control the sudden desire to do this anymore than he could the weather.
He’d been gripped by a power far more ancient than most anything out there: instinct.
Without waiting for instructions from his brothers, he took the hooks, and in one swift movement, sank the needle-sharp tips deep beneath the muscle of his chest. Instantly, he felt the wet heat of his blood wind in crimson rivulets down his chest.
Phoenix was the first to step off their small ledge, a move that forced him to stand on the tips of his toes so as not to dangle haphazardly off the ground.
August went next, then Chance took the plunge.
The pain of that hook stretching deep beneath his flesh was excruciating bliss. Fire ripped through his bones, but that earth magick filled the pain with its primal dominance. Not a sound escaped his lips as he closed his eyes and lost himself to the voices of his ancestors.
Chanting, colors, and smells flooded his head and his senses, so that he was lost to the chaos of music that surrounded him. Images scrolled by his mind’s eye in a wave, discordant strands of color forming into shapes he did not know. With each second that passed, his heart beat harder and faster.
He didn’t know if minutes had passed or hours. Time had ceased to mean anything. Chance no longer felt the tear of the hooks in his flesh or the ground beneath his feet. He was deaf to the clang of lightning crashing all around, and numb to the burning scent of ozone and sap.
Then as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. His eyes snapped open. He knew what he had to do.
With a growl, he slid the hooks out of his chest, barely phased by the additional stretch and tear. Cold rain washed away the blood. With another growl that sounded more like a shout, he dropped to all fours, transforming in an instant from man to bear.
As a mighty grizzly, he had claws as long as a man’s fingers and thighs as powerful and strong as an ironwood tree. This time when he roared, the ground trembled, and the scent of wildflowers filled his head.
Casting a quick glance up at the platform, he noticed both his brothers had already left, gone to find the thing they needed most.
And now he knew… he needed it too.
With a violent snort, he moved, tracking the scent to wherever it led. If it took him off a ledge, he would follow even there. It didn’t matter. The urge to find her rode him hard.
The scent of deer, rabbits, snakes, and berries all vied for his attention, but he was a missile, locked in on his target. Nothing and no one could lure him away from her siren’s call.
Bushes quaked in his wake, destroyed from his obdurate march. Chance didn’t walk around anything. He plowed straight through whatever came through his path.
He needed to find her. He needed to find her now.
Now.
Now!
He stopped. The breeze gusted strongly from the east, and her scent washed over him like a lover’s caress. Sun-kissed petals dripped with morning dew.
Shaking his massive head, he ran for her.
Each step brought her closer and closer to him until… he crashed through a thicket of brambles and weeds and spied the stupid little crow, hidden beneath a fallen log. That dangling string of red yarn was still trapped in its mouth.
2
Bronwyn
Bronwyn could hardly move when the blueberry bush in front of her rustled, and the sound that no forest animal ever wanted to hear, the growl of a grizzly, erupted.
Too stunned to think or hide, she simply blinked at the bear stupidly, the precious treasure she’d collected earlier still dangling from her beak.
A second later, the beast transformed along with her stupefaction. Heat bubbled through her blood the moment her eyes landed on the face of the man who’d caused her to bruise her wing when she’d violently smashed into the suddenly slammed door rather than the fleshy backside she’d been aiming for.
In her rage, she hopped out from under the pathetic cover of the log and shifted, not caring one bit that she was as naked as the day was long.
“You!” she shrieked, pointing a finger at him with a long black-tipped nail. “I’ll kill you! You bruised my wing, you bastard!”
The brute’s eyes widened, and his breathing grew deep. That hot, sharp gaze of his studied her so closely that she felt as though she might combust from the heat of it alone. He took a step toward.
“I said stop!” She shoved as much power as she could into her voice.
Her wing/arm might be bruised, but she wasn’t helpless. No Breed was ever really helpless. They just liked to make you think they were.
Then again, he was a bear. A big bear. A big, freaking sexy bear.
But the man, who she’d secretly been stalking for the past month—because, holy crap, was he nice to look at—didn’t even flinch. Instead, with a growl that rumbled straight through his chest, he rushed her. His arms came up, ready to snatch her and probably make mincemeat of her. Breed didn’t typically eat each other. But if they were hungry enough… well, anything was fair game.
Bronwyn shrieked, keeping a firm grip on her red yarn—she’d die if she lost it, which might be an exaggeration, but whatever—and turned on her heel. She had no idea why the bear shifter was after her, but she wasn’t about to stop and find out.
The first time she’d seen the man chopping wood behind the cabin, she’d assumed he was human. Not once had she caught him in shifted form. And considering they lived on Kodiak Island, which a crap-ton of brown bears already called home, the smell of bear hadn’t exactly raised any red flags for her.
It was the reason she’d maintained her shifter façade whenever she’d neared him. Exposing oneself to humans was mostly frowned upon amongst the Breed—what all shifters or magical entities, no matter what species, were known as.
Bronwyn had thought she was half in love with him just based on looks alone—because she was totally superficial that way—until he’d thrown a stick at her head, barely missing her by a scant few inches.
Now she just hated his guts and was ready to rip him a new one. Except of course, she was a crow to his bear. And he was one angry, angry bear, judging from the grunting, growling, and swearing he was doing.
“Stop!” he roared.
Yes, roared. It was all shivery and deep and made her insides feel as though they’d suddenly been punched with fire and electricity all at once.
“You wish!” she shot back, slamming her hands down on the upended stump of an oak. She lithely hopped over it, wincing only because her wrist hurt like a son of a bitch.
Crows were faster, smarter, and generally prettier than bears. But bears were stronger, so much stronger.
Glancing over her shoulder, she shuddered when the big guy didn’t even bother to jump. He was in an in between stage of transformation between man and beast. Instead, he slammed his furry palms into the tree stump and sent it flying like a mini missile into a larger tree. Said tree groaned and shook from the blast.
“Holy eff,” she whimpered. But not because she was terrified. Oh no, if only that was the case. The truth was, that little show of power had totally turned her on.
For the past few days, she’d been lusting after Hunky, her nickname for him. Seeing him all hulked up and ragey made her lick her lips with the delicious anticipation of flirting with danger.
Crows enjoyed the game—the hunt, the chase, the unknown
. And she was no exception.
She’d found him attractive and somewhat interesting, though he hadn’t done much other than build a platform out of wood the day before. The past few weeks, he mostly just slept and ate and generally did what bears did in their sleep, which wasn’t always pleasant-smelling, but whatevs. He was sleeping, and it had been halfway adorable. Now, though… oh yeah, now he was making her think crazy, stupid thoughts.
She was thinking things like stop running, turn around, thrust out her hips, and demand he do something to quench the fire burning through her loins.
Normally, she doubted she’d have that type of reaction to just any male, but Bronwyn wasn’t just a simple crow.
No, she was a crow who’d just entered her first heat cycle and was ready to rumble.
Power pulsed through her, making her laugh with giddy excitement as she increased her speed.
She knew those woods like she knew the back of her bruised hand. She swerved, hopped, and wiggled in between spaces that no bear, even in human form, could fit through.
Leading him on a merry chase turned her crappy morning into something wonderfully exciting and unsure.
Would she be caught? Wouldn’t she? Who knew, and who cared? That was not the purpose of this chase.
This chase was all about one thing—seeing if he was worthy to mate her, to mark her with his scent.
It wasn’t uncommon for Breed to mate outside of their kind. Some even formed lifelong attachments.
Bronwyn had had sex before, but she’d never had sex while in heat. The entire experience of this encounter was different for her. The foreplay was almost more exciting than the sexual act itself.
Her blood pounded through her veins, and the earth magick pulsed in waves up her naked heels, filling her body so that even her soul tingled pleasurably inside of her.
She heard the heavy breaths of a powerful male, tearing the woods up behind her as he tried desperately to get to her. Oh yeah, she was totally turned on right now.