The Bear Shifter's Second Chance (Fated Bears Book 2)

by Jasmine Wylder

  “I saved your life? You’re grateful? You want to thank me?” Ambrose said without turning around.

  “You were stronger than…than any human I’ve ever seen. Why?” Eva stopped short of running into him when Ambrose began pouring coffee into a mug.

  “Why am I strong?” Ambrose turned to her, his smile not as casual as before.

  “Why are you always so cold to the touch?”

  “Perhaps it is a circulation issue.” He leaned back against the counter, mug in hand.

  “Why do you have a statue of man biting a woman, and a book that says Ambrose Leroy is the Vampire King of the underground?” Eva’s words hung on her mouth and as she looked at Ambrose a horrifying understanding washed over her. She’d known all along hadn’t she?

  “Let me tell you a story,” Ambrose shifted. He turned and poured a second cup of coffee then handed it to Eva, “Sit down.”

  “I don’t want it.” Eva felt her chest heaving and she realized that she was scared. Scared of the story he might tell, scared of what she might already know.

  “Yes you do.” He placed the mug on the counter in front of a seat and Eva found herself sitting down in front of it.

  Eva picked up the mug and took a sip of the coffee. It was hot and brought her mind into sharper focus.

  “You haven’t heard the story line for Luciano’s new opera yet,” Ambrose said.

  “We can talk about that later.” Eva put the mug down again, ready to stand up, ready to run out of the apartment and never return.

  “In the new opera I will be playing the Vampire King. King of the underground—King of the darkness.” Ambrose let his words fall and Eva stayed put. “He has found the perfect woman, a perfect mate. The woman, Lucretia, has an amazing gift, her voice, but she finds she has problems with her voice. She is an innocent, not of the darkness and not of the light, but she is being pursued by dark forces that steal her voice from her, leaving her without her most precious instrument…song.”

  Eva felt her stomach squeeze. Goose bumps rose over her arms and a shiver ran from the base of her spine over her entire body.

  “The creatures that take her voice will also take her life,” Ambrose looked directly into Eva’s eyes. “But she finds that she is safe in the presence of the king. When she is with the King of the darkness her voice is restored and the creatures of death cannot get at her.”

  Eva’s head began to spin, she needed air, she shouldn’t be in Ambrose’s apartment, what was she doing here?

  “How does the story end?” Eva heard her voice, shaky and scared.

  “There are two possible endings, she may give over to the creatures who bring her death, or she may be inducted into the world of darkness to sit with her king. She will choose a world of eternal song with the King of the darkness or she will choose to drift into a different darkness, the darkness of death, without song or voice…”

  Eva stood up, the stool she’d been sitting on clattered to the floor but Eva did not turn to pick it up. Her head was full and spinning.

  “I have to go,” Eva walked from the room. In the back of her head she heard Ambrose following her to the door.

  “Let me walk you home,” Ambrose’s hands held Eva’s shoulders.

  Eva pulled away, “No.” She walked out of his front door and stood in the hallway. She could feel Ambrose’s eyes on her back.

  “I’m not sure I want the role of Lucretia anymore,” Eva heard her voice fill the hallway. She did not turn to look at Ambrose. “I’m not sure…” Her thought faded and she walked down the steps, not bothering to wait for the elevator.

  Chapter Six

  Eva left the building, her body weak, her mind trying desperately to make sense of what she’d just heard.

  It’s an opera, a story, it isn’t real, she told herself. But the sinking feeling, the tightening of her muscles didn’t go away.

  What would the world be like if she weren’t able to sing anymore? People started over every day. Professional athletes lost their ability to perform, artists lost their muse… they survived, didn’t they? Wasn’t that the foundation of the human condition, survival? To take what they were given and make the best of it?

  Every day people were faced with stark realities, every day people had to learn how to live without the possibility of their dreams, why should she be the exception? Eva exhaled a tenuous breath. Who was she kidding? There was nothing else for her.

  Eva stopped walking and sat down on a bench in the park. Without even testing out her voice she knew it was already gone. She could feel the constriction in her throat, the clawing, scratching sensation that climbed nimbly through her vocal chords. If she tried to speak or sing now it would only come out as a frog’s rasp.

  What was on the other side for her? If she left this opera, turned away from Ambrose then what would she have?

  Nothing.

  The answer came upon her like a cold rush of water washing over her. Despair found her. The same feelings she’d had when she left the doctor’s office arose. Her life was over. She had come to the end of a craggy cliff and now she was looking over.

  Inhaling very slowly, she opened her mouth and exhaled. She had to think, had to clear her mind.

  A gray mist had begun to settle over Central Park as Eva sat. She tiredly looked both ways down the path. The memory of the two men from the other night brushed against the back of her mind, the fear and panic they’d first inspired when she’d seen the knife the one man had brought with him. Despite the memory of her fear for bodily harm, Eva felt too tired to get up.

  She felt another fear overwhelming her every heartbeat. The fear of losing her voice. A fear that numbed her and made her want to sink into the bench she sat upon, never to get up again.

  With a force of will that the action hardly warranted, Eva pushed her body to the edge of the bench, then pushed herself to stand.

  A bridge stood off in the distance, she couldn’t see it through the fog but she knew it was there all the same.

  A world without a voice, a world without a song, her mind rolled the words around, trying to imagine such a world. But all she could see when she looked into the silent world of her future was a dark gray sludge. The sludge covered everything, the walls of her life, the dreams she’d had as a little girl, it suffocated the life right out of her. Then, an inkling of something surfaced, there is always Lucretia…there is Ambrose… it is possible… the thoughts tapered off.

  Eva moved slowly through the park. She heard a dog barking in the mist but the mist was too thick for her to see any dog or owner. A light rain began to fall as Eva moved forward. There was a sound behind her and Eva turned to look into the mist but saw nothing.

  Leaning over, Eva grabbed a heavy rock the size of her hand. She looked it over then put the stone in her pocket. She plucked another one from the side of the path and filled her other pocket. She picked up several more and put them into the pockets that lined the inside of her jacket. She buttoned the coat to the top and pulled the sash tightly against her body before stepping onto the base of the bridge.

  Her shoes were the only mark of sound around her, a hollow and lonely sound.

  As Eva got to the middle of the bridge she felt a tight hold on her body, but there was no one there.

  She grasped at the rail and leaned over, looking into the water that seemed to open its arms to her. How easy it would be to let herself fall in, she would be like a stone herself, drifting to the bottom where she would never have to live a life without her voice.

  Eva didn’t want to stay around long enough for the gray sludge to take over her life. Without music, without her voice she didn’t even want to be alive. Eva stepped up, pushing herself on top of the stone wall. She moved her legs to the other side and looked again into the water below her.

  The rain was racing down onto her face. Her hair began to stick to her neck and cheeks. Her body was feeling at one with the water and she hadn’t even entered it.

  She felt the tight
grasp of hands on her shoulders, but saw no hands there. Then, just as she began to wonder, she felt a push.

  Her body sprang from the bridge and in the snap of a moment Eva knew she didn’t want the water. She didn’t want eternal oblivion. She wanted to live.

  Her fingers reached wide and her hands grasped for the stone. Her fingers held tight, but her body was heavy, so heavy, too heavy to hold. The rain poured down and her hands began sliding down the stone.

  Just as she was about to let go, to give into gravity, to the rain, and to the water waiting below, she felt another grip.

  A real hand was holding her wrist. She looked up and found Ambrose leaning over the wall. As if she weighed nothing at all, he pulled her up by the arm, grabbing the rest of her body with his free hand when she was close enough for him to hold.

  Eva fell sobbing into his arms.

  Heavy, full breathes of panic pulled into her lungs and she shivered all over as Ambrose moved a hand over her head.

  “I was just…” She looked up at him. “I didn’t… I just felt this awful silence…this…”

  “Don’t explain, you can tell me everything later.” Ambrose held her close again then lifted her off her feet. “Right now I think we should get you home.”

  Ambrose walked with Eva in his arms, across the bridge, across grass, across the park. She laid her head on his shoulder and let herself be held, let herself be carried. It felt like a complete abandonment of her worries, at least for the moment.

  When he reached the edge of the park she put a hand to his chest, “I can walk now.”

  Ambrose put her feet down. They could barely see outside the thick mist. He kept a hand around her body as they walked across the street and to her building.

  “This was my parent’s apartment,” Eva said as she opened the door. She walked in and Ambrose followed.

  “I was raised by my great aunt, until her death, and got emancipation at fifteen.” Eva looked around, trying to see her apartment the way Ambrose would. “She kept the apartment for me.”

  “It’s lovely,” he spoke softly. His hands turned her and gently unbuttoned her jacket. When he took it off her, he reached a hand into a pocket and pulled out one of the stones.

  Eva was surprised to see it, she hardly remembered lifting it from path and putting it on her body. Then he pulled another from the other pocket, and the ones from the inner lining.

  “I don’t understand what came over me…” She looked hopelessly at the stones, then at her hands that now seemed to have betrayed her.

  “You are cold, and wet, you should change.” Ambrose put the jacket away and led her to her room.

  “What has come over me?” She turned to him.

  “Change, I’ll make you something hot to drink.” He walked out leaving her alone in her room. Eva took off her soaked clothes, then changed into warm lounge pants and a supple sweater. She put wool socks on her feet, grabbed an oversized tee shirt and a pair of Jerome’s pants that she’d borrowed on the night she’d spent at his apartment and hadn’t yet returned, then padded out to the living room.

  Ambrose was walking out of the kitchen with a teacup and teapot.

  “Did I use the wrong thing?” He asked, looking at the items in his hand.

  “No, that’s perfect—my mother always drank tea from teacups, I almost never use them—I should…” She held up the clothes. “The pants are Jerome’s, he let me borrow them when I forced myself on his couch.”

  Ambrose sat the teapot and cup on the coffee table then began taking off his shirt.

  “The bathroom’s just over there,” she looked toward her bathroom door. The sight of shirtless Ambrose again might be too much for her to bear.

  He walked off and she could hear the swish of clothing. When he came back out, Eva was snuggled under a blanket on the couch. The sound of soft rain drummed from the window and at last she felt safe.

  The tee shirt pulled across Ambrose’s chest, tight against the muscles in his arms and Eva bit her lip.

  “How did you…come to be in the park?” Eva tucked her knees in tight to her chest and held her mother’s teacup under her face.

  Ambrose sat on the couch across from Eva and exhaled.

  “I saw someone following you as you walked away from my building, I thought…. I thought I’d better walk you home.” He brushed a piece of real or imaginary lint from the fabric at his side.

  “I was just walking and suddenly felt…so tired. I could barely stand to live, to breathe, to exist, knowing—” she could hear the shaking of her voice. It felt wrong, dangerous to say such words out loud. “I felt hands on me, but when I looked, there was no one there.”

  “There are evil things that run through this world, your world…my world…”

  She wanted to ask, to understand exactly, in minute detail what he meant by his world. Eva nodded not ready to enter waters she couldn’t swim out of.

  “Those thoughts, you have control over them, but… if you open yourself up to the them, to the thoughts that would do you harm…then…well, it’s dangerous. We…me, and those like me, we are in the darkness, we are of the darkness, but we are not the darkness.” Ambrose pulled his face together in thought.

  “You and people like you? You mean…” Eva couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “Yes,” Ambrose nodded.

  “It was the darkness that seeped into my mind, brought despair…the hands I felt, that pushed me off?” She leaned forward and set her teacup on the table, unsure that her hands could keep it steady any longer.

  “When your voice is gone—then you will truly be in danger.” Ambrose looked at the tea, the cough drops on the table, then turned to look her in the face. “I could take that all away from you.” He leaned forward slowly. His hand raised and he trailed a finger along Eva’s neck. She felt the cold movement of his fingertip, his eyes running hot against the cold of his body. “You would never have to worry about losing your voice… I could take you into the shadows where the impenetrable darkness would never be able to find you again.”

  Eva sucked in her breath. Her body responded to Ambrose’s touch in a way that her mind had no say over. She felt her mouth open.

  She looked into his eyes and felt the need to say, yes, bubbling up within her. Her mind said it, her eyes said it, but she couldn’t say it.

  “Are you hungry?” Eva asked, letting the words slip from her mouth. “We could order something.”

  Ambrose pulled his hand away but the soft chill lingered along her neck and through her body.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said looking at her, “not for food.”

  Eva stood. “Thank you for seeing me home.” Eva looked to the window and noticed that the rain had stopped and mist had risen.

  Ambrose sat for a long moment then got to his feet. “I think that’s my cue to go.”

  Eva walked him to the door and watched as Ambrose stepped out. He looked back at her once, then turned and walked down her hall. With every step he took she had the impulse to call to him, to run into his arms, to give herself over to him in every possible way. But she just watched as he walked away.

  Chapter Seven

  The next week Eva spent inside her apartment. She ordered groceries to be delivered and a courier from Luciano brought her pieces of the score for her to begin learning before rehearsals. She knew that the score would change as they went, as he heard her voice.

  She played out her notes on the piano knowing her voice wouldn’t even hum out the music. Every day she considered going to Luciano, telling him she wasn’t up to singing the part of Lucretia. The words, the story, everything terrified her.

  Usually just after she considered giving up the role, she then thought of going to Ambrose. Walking into his apartment, opening herself to him. Giving herself completely over to the music, that lay within her when she was with him.

  Bridget came to spend two nights on her sofa on her way to Cincinnati. Bridget was subletting her apartment and she no
longer had use of her own bed.

  “We have chamomile, Throat Coat, or a lemon ginger,” Bridget called from the kitchen. Eva smiled at the way Bridget had appropriated Eva’s tea as being theirs, and not solely Eva’s.

  “The second,” Eva said from the living room. Eva trailed her fingertips along her throat. She was weak and it brought a malaise, an over riding sadness to her life. Perhaps the doctor had been right and all she’d needed was vocal rest. Maybe if she hadn’t sung for Ambrose, hadn’t gone to the audition, she would be better by now.

  Bridget brought the two mugs in. “When do you start rehearsals?”

  “In a week.” Eva held her mug in her hands, the tea too hot to drink yet.

  “It makes no sense, you were able to sing for them? And you’re sure you’ll be able to sing at rehearsals?” Bridget raised her eyebrows.

  Eva nodded, not meeting Bridget’s eyes.

  “Ok, if you say so.” Bridget stirred her milky concoction. Bridget had taken over the living room for two hours both days, to warm up and then work through the music she’d been given by the Cincinnati Opera.

  Eva had almost asked Bridget to sing through the part of Lucretia for her, so that she could at least hear the music on someone’s voice, but she didn’t dare. Eva let her eyes travel over the photocopied sheet music in her hands. Her mind tried to stitch the words and the music together, but what she really needed was to sing it, at least once, before showing up to the first rehearsals.

  “How are you feeling?” Bridget put a hand on Eva’s knee.

  Eva looked up surprised at the concern she heard in Bridget’s voice. “Fine… my voice will be just fine, I just don’t want to strain it with the practice.”

  “No, I meant… you have a stomach bug or something, right?” Bridget leaned back into the sofa.

  “Oh, yes, something.” Eva’s stomach had been queasy after so much tea and the endless cough drops. She smiled at Bridget, “Just too much tea I think.”

  “As long as you’re not pregnant,” Bridget said jokingly.

  Eva smiled at her friend but her heart stopped beating for second. Eva picked up the score in front of her. She’d annotated the English translation of the Italian that Luciano was writing the music in.