by Holley Trent
“Or a safe one.” She freed her hair from her shirt collar and waited by the door.
He finished dressing in silence, put on his shoes, and tossed the key card onto the dresser. “All right. Let’s go. I guess you’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
“I think I will, so thank you.”
The nightmares always went away for a while after she was with Eric. If she were less adamant about him keeping his distance, that medicine would probably work even longer.
She didn’t see where she had a choice, though. If she gave him what he wanted, he wouldn’t be any better than she was. He’d be a dried husk where a vivacious person once was—angry all the time but putting on a show of false contentedness so he didn’t make the people in his life worry about him.
She’d use him up and there would be no springing back.
She couldn’t do that to him, even if it’d been done to her once.
CHAPTER TWO
Eric slipped the tip of his knife into the orange pepper and neatly removed the green top. One down, twenty-four to go. He didn’t generally cook such labor-intensive dishes for the guests at his lodge, but thinking was easier when he kept his hands busy and the wild bear inside him seemed soothed by the repetitive motion. His subconscious bear was always disgruntled after he’d been around Maria. His agitation made Eric jittery, and that was something Eric had never been.
So, he was going to stuff twenty-five peppers, probably make some insanely decadent dessert, and maybe even mix up a couple of buckets of sangria.
He dragged his sleeve across his damp forehead and looked at the clock mounted near the door to outside. Four hours until dinner. He probably had time to make some bread, too. Kneading ten pounds of dough by hand seemed exactly like the kind of exertion he needed.
The door between the kitchen and the lodge’s gathering space swung open, and Eric glanced over his shoulder to find his sister Astrid entering the room.
She stilled the squeaking door and stared at its rusted hinges. Knowing Astrid, she was making a shopping list in her mind and already committing herself to picking up oil and possibly replacement door hangers.
The door probably needed them. The hinges were as old as the lodge itself, which their grandparents had erected shortly following World War II after emigrating from Germany.
“How’s the meeting?” he asked and picked up another pepper.
“Querulous as always. I’m surprised you didn’t want to sit in. You usually do when the Shrews having meetings here.”
That was especially true since he’d been mauled and made a Bear. Obviously, he had a certain investment in the wellbeing of the Ridge Bear group, being in it himself. And Ridge Bear interests tended to overlap with Shrew interests. Normally he’d be trying to enmesh himself in the thick of things, but he just wasn’t in the volunteering mood. If the Shrews or Bryan needed him for anything, they’d ask him. Peppers were more important at the moment.
He glanced at the clock again.
Fixing the hallway window was important, too. There was heavy rain in the forecast and the damned thing had been leaking. He needed to replace all the windows, but there probably wouldn’t be wiggle room in the budget anytime soon. He’d had to cancel the lodge’s biggest moneymaker event after he’d been mauled.
“Anything important I should know?” he asked.
Astrid moved to the stove, stared into the large pot at the front, and grabbed a tasting spoon from the cup on the counter. She dipped out a bit of seasoned beef, slipped it between her lips, and chewed thoughtfully. “You added something new.”
He grunted. “No. Removed something. Took out the cilantro. I hate it.”
“Me, too.”
“Ha. It was always in the recipe from Mom-Mom. I think she got caught up in that gourmet Tex-Mex fad in the seventies and grew a bunch of the shit. She put it in damned near everything that was remotely Southwestern.”
“She’s probably rolling in her grave because you left it out.”
“And probably for other reasons, too.”
Astrid took another clean spoon, and another big bite, then heaved herself up onto the empty counter behind him.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t just come in here to chat.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “If Fabian thought you had so much free time, he’d pull you off to somewhere.”
Astrid snorted and gave her engagement ring a few twists around her finger. “He’s occupied at the moment. He’s had to take over a bunch of Felipe’s jobs since the baby was born.”
Felipe was Fabian’s identical twin. He was married to Sarah. The baby was Felipe and Sarah’s daughter Gabrielle—the first born to the Shrews, but likely not the last, in spite of what their doctors had told them after the Shrew study. They were told the chances of them being able to bring children to term were slim to none because their aggressive immune systems would consider the fetus a threat, but Sarah had managed it…and, hopefully, Astrid would, too. She was trying not to panic, but Eric knew his sister, and he knew she worried her baby wouldn’t stick.
The Shrews’ doctor was keeping a close eye on her, and she’d theorized that if Sarah was fine, then Astrid might be, too, since the men providing the sperm were genetically identical. Doc suspected it was their DNA that tricked the Shrew bodies into backing down. She was trying to prove it, but the woman only had so much free time. She and her research aide were committed to figuring it out, though, because maternity was important to the other Shrews—especially Dana who’d been trying for the better part of a year to no avail.
“Anything I should know?” he repeated.
Astrid shrugged and rubbed her bloodshot eyes. The dark hollows of insomnia hung beneath them. She said the hormones Doc had her on “just in case” kept her awake at night, and by two or three o’clock each afternoon, Astrid was ready to crash. “We’re in a bit of a holding pattern.”
“With Gene being out of the area at the moment.”
“Right. We’re getting some information from the inside of the group about his whereabouts, and we already rounded up most of his trusted lieutenants. It’s the folks he thinks are disposable we need to watch out for now. They’ll do things for him because he’s their alpha, and they think they’ll gain favor for it, but he’ll kill them if they annoy him. We all know that.”
Gene had killed one of his lieutenants’ secretaries and left her propped up in Gene’s brand new SUV for the Shrews to find. She’d been just barely turned, and he’d thrown her away as if her life was worthless.
Dana and Bryan had tracked down the little bit of family she had left and paid for her burial. Explaining how she’d died without enlightening the family about the existence of shapeshifters had been something of a trial.
“Do you need some help?” Astrid asked. “That’s a lot of peppers.”
“Nah. I’ve got this down to a science. If you’re bored, though, you can plug in the commercial mixer and get a few pounds of Mom-Mom’s rolls started.”
“God, I haven’t made those in forever.” She slid off the counter edge and fetched the massive sack of bread flour from the pantry.
He chuckled, remembering how the last time she’d tried to lift that bag, she nearly pulled a hernia. She and the other Shrews had superhuman strength now, though…which Maria regularly reminded him of.
“Come on, Falk. You’re not gonna hurt me. Give it to me.”
He growled softly and tossed a pepper stem into the trash.
He didn’t know why he felt so responsible for that woman. It was true that when he’d seen her at that club, he’d thought she needed rescuing—especially from the guy she was about to go home with. He had a reputation for roughing up his partners, even the ones who didn’t consent to it. Maybe that was what Maria wanted, but Eric refused to believe she needed it. So, he’d coaxed her away. She’d been angry with him, but he’d convinced her that he could satisfy her.
One night led to many more. He became her go-to guy for angry fucks, and though he was so
weary of it, he didn’t trust anyone else to take care of her.
She was on her own now, though. He just couldn’t do it anymore.
The kitchen door swung inward yet again, and when Eric looked up from the prep table, he found his alpha sauntering in with his mate Tamara on his heels.
“Gonna go relieve Dustin from dungeon duty for a little while,” Bryan said.
“You? Where are the Tolvaj brothers?” Eric asked.
On a piece of Bryan’s family property was an underground bunker with reinforced cells, fit for wild shifters. Once locked in, they couldn’t get out, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Bryan had a few wayward Bears locked up in there. The Tolvaj brothers were a couple of weirdoes adopted into the Shrews’ ragtag contingency. They were freeform shapeshifters who, like the Castillo brothers Felipe and Fabian, had run away from a traveling freak show of a circus.
“Tolvajes one and two,” Bryan said, “flew to Kyrgyzstan to try to find their grandparents. They’re probably dead, but they wanted to look anyway. They’d be the only family the brothers have left.”
“Pretty fucked up how Jacques pulled entire families into captivity for his circus.” Eric slipped his knife into yet another pepper.
Bryan growled low.
Eric cringed. He’d forgotten that Gene had let Bryan and his sister Drea get abducted by the circus master’s flunkies. The Shrews had rescued them as a sort of side mission while providing backup to Felipe.
Tamara leaned onto the table in front of Eric, stared at the peppers for a moment, then grabbed a sharp knife from the pouch. With quick, efficient dexterity, she cut off the tops of two peppers in the time it took Eric to do one.
Eric couldn’t be too wounded over it. Tamara was not only Shrew, but also Bear. She had supernatural whatchamacallit oozing out of every pore.
Bryan walked to the television mounted in the corner and tapped the power button. Eric usually had it turned on so he could catch local news, but for once, had just wanted quiet.
“There’s supposed to be a big thunderstorm moving through,” Bryan said. “The electrical activity tends to agitate born shifters.”
“A big thunderstorm this early in the year?” Astrid asked.
Bryan grunted. “We had to know all that nice humidity from last week was going to bite us in the ass somehow.”
“I hope it comes soon. I’ve got a low pressure headache that probably won’t go away until it rains.” She added in a mumble, “As if I need any new reasons to have headaches.”
“Hey,” Tamara said, “when the baby is born, you’ll have headaches of different sorts.”
“I can always count on you to cheer me up, Tam. Never stop being you.”
The busty Romanian twirled some of her hair around her fingers and grinned before resuming her pepper decapitation.
“They’re saying four o’clock.” Bryan turned the television off and sidled around the table to Eric.
For a moment he just stood there.
Eric sighed. “What, man?”
“I need you to do me a favor, and I’m trying to decide how best to ask.”
“You’ve never had a problem asking for favors before.”
“This one’s different.”
“Ugh.” Tamara rolled her eyes. “Come out with it, baby. Don’t belabor things.”
“Maybe I’m worried if I’m too upfront I won’t get dinner.”
That was a fair consideration. Eric had been known to withhold sustenance to Shrews and assorted company who were insistent on driving Eric up the fucking wall. They treaded lightly around him. Not because he was such a terrifying Bear, unfortunately, but because he was a damned good cook.
He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about that.
Tamara tucked the last of the peppers into the pan and made a gimmie motion. “Come on, innkeeper. Stuff ’em. He’s cranky when he’s hungry, and when he gets cranky I get cranky, and when we’re cranky, we shouldn’t be near each other.”
“Yeah, you shouldn’t. The next time you two decide to get cranky together, maybe you should do it in the woods where there are no bed frames to break.”
Bryan groaned. “It’ll get worse during mating season. Born-Bears are going to be a fucking nightmare to be around.”
Astrid spun around wearing one of those expressions of, whaaaat? she had about fifty different nuances of. “You’re joking, right? Shapeshifters don’t have mating seasons. You mate like humans.”
“For the most part, yeah, but our women are more fertile in May and June, and once the hormones start amping up, Bears are gonna get wild, especially the ones who don’t have mates to slake their urges with.”
“May starts tomorrow,” Astrid said flatly.
Bryan grunted. “Yep.”
“So, we not only have the usual Bear bullshit to deal with, but potentially additional hostility from any of Gene’s loyal bears who happen to be born-Bears and not made ones.”
“Yep.”
Astrid let out a frustrated groan. “Do you have any idea how many in his little cadre are born and not made?”
“Approximately, but he’s infecting Bears all the time so the counts are going to be way off. Besides, the Bears who claim to be loyal to him aren’t necessarily as loyal as they make out. They’re just biding their time to defect when they can get away without fear of retribution.”
“You know who those Bears are?” Eric asked.
Tamara nodded. “We get good intel. My brothers are amazing at acquiring information. They’re discreet and people like talking to them. Why? I don’t know. If I saw them on the street, I’d run the other way.”
“But, we don’t need to worry about the made-Bears because they don’t have mating season issues, right?” Astrid asked.
Eric scoffed when every other gaze in the room turned to him. “I’m fine.”
Bryan leaned against the dishwashing station and crossed his arms over his chest. “You might be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means there’s anecdotal evidence that made-Bears may be impacted by mating season duress if the Bears who turned them were born-Bears.”
Eric had no way of knowing who turned him. He’d recognize the scents of the two men who attacked him if he were to ever encounter them again, but because he’d been attacked from the back, he wouldn’t know their faces, and he certainly didn’t know what they looked like as Bears. The only Bears he recognized in their animal forms were the ones allied to the Shrews.
Astrid clapped Eric on the shoulder. “You’ll probably be fine. Most of Gene’s bears are made.”
“Yeah. I bet you’re right.”
No one said anything as Eric finished stuffing the peppers and got the pans into the ovens.
“So, about that favor,” Bryan said as soon as Eric had closed the oven doors.
“Oh, here we go.”
“I need to send a Bear to fetch a couple of kids.”
“Sounds simple. Why would I deny you food for that?”
Tamara held up two fingers. “Number one, the kids are born-Bears being held as bargaining chips by their stepfather who is one of Gene’s made-Bears.”
“Shit.”
“Oh, hold the expletives, innkeeper, I’ve got one more thing.” She wriggled the second finger, which just so happened to be her middle one. “Bryan wants to send you because you’re a made-Bear, and you’d have a scent discernible by other made-Bears.”
“So, what you’re saying is, don’t bother being discreet.”
“Well, that’s part of what we’re saying,” Bryan said. “I want there to be some doubt about who snatched them. You don’t have to show yourself, but make sure you leave a scent behind. Because there are kids involved, and because they’re my cousin’s kids, I need to be extra cautious with this. Normally, I wouldn’t try to incite Gene and do a rescue at the same time, but we’ve got to grab every opportunity we can.”
“Okay? I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Don’t disappoint me.”
“Ugh, fine,” Tamara said. “You need a partner.”
“Why do you say that in such a grave tone?”
“Oh, hell,” Astrid muttered behind him. She turned on the mixer, and leaned over it, shaking her head.
“What?”
“We know you and Maria don’t get along,” Tamara said.
Fuck.
“But, there’s no one else. We’re low on personnel, and besides, she’s good with kids. She’ll keep them calm until we can arrange a rendezvous with their mother. Keely wants to snatch them and leave the area for a while to make sure nothing else happens to them.”
Eric stared at the Shrew. He’d heard everything she said and understood it, on a certain level, but it was if his brain was unwilling to give him that a-ha for fear that he’d go into meltdown mode.
“We figured Astrid could watch the inn while you’re away,” Bryan said.
“Yeah.” Eric nodded slowly. “She could.”
She was on light duty, anyway, due to insistence of her spouse, her boss, and her doctor. It’d be a while before she got out into the field again with her guns and attitude.
“So…do you mind?” Bryan asked. “I wouldn’t ask if there were anyone else.”
Eric shrugged. “Hey, I’ve been asking for more important stuff to do to help you out, and I guess this counts.”
“So, you’re okay with traveling with Maria?” Tamara asked. “I know her…um…”
“Oh, just say it,” Astrid said. “She was my roommate for years, and I doubt she’d care if you were candid about it. She’s a hippie, so the term you were feeling around for was hippie prattling.”
“Yes,” Tamara said. “I know her one-love, hippie prattling makes you seethe.”
Eric bobbed his eyebrows. They have no idea.
“But it’s only for a few days,” Bryan said. “Felipe Senior is going to let you take his RV.”
“Ugh, that garish thing?” It was shiny black and had a reproduction of The Birth of Venus painted on one side. He’d apparently bought the vehicle at an auction for a steal.
“Garish or not, it’s big enough to sleep four people, and I need you to avoid places like motels that require registration. Plus, if you get surrounded in an RV, you can hit the gas and drive right at them.”