Unbearable Cage (The Grizzly Next Door 3)

by Aya Morningstar

  Run after her! he thought, but dream Seth walked as slow as ever. Shift! Charge through the forest as a bear. She’ll shift too and you’ll see each other! Dream Seth remained human, and his mate walked farther into the forest.

  And then Seth woke up. His back hurt, and his knees throbbed. Ugh, he’d fallen asleep in his truck again? He opened the door and stepped outside, and then he stretched. He tried to crack his neck, hoping it would suddenly relieve him of all stiffness, but he’d never been able to do that, and the attempt just made him sorer.

  At least he healed fast. If he were a human, his neck might be sore for two more days, but he’d be good as new in about a half hour.

  He checked his phone and saw that he had six missed calls and three text messages. He skimmed through and got the picture: Patrick wanted to know where he was, then he was pissed at him for not showing, and finally he had given up. Seth assumed the voicemails were from the woman Patrick had tried to set him up with, but he just deleted those without listening. That woman, Anne—or was it Anna?—wasn’t his mate. He knew that, so why bother?

  He’d decided to take a quick nap in his truck before going to meet Anne. He had planned to go, but mostly because he owed Patrick. Seth didn’t need too much sleep in the fall, but when he slept, he slept. Nothing woke him up except for the firehouse’s loud, blaring alarm. It rattled his bones and jolted him awake, so as long as he napped in the firehouse, he never missed a fire. But cellphone ringtones and text message sounds? Forget it. Those never woke him up.

  It was already 1 a.m., so Seth decided to just apologize to Patrick tomorrow. For now he’d just go home and sleep off the kinks in his back in his nice, big bed.

  He got back in the truck and started it up. Then he went down the empty main road. Cascadia Falls was small, and anyone still out now was in a bar, not driving around town. He turned down the little road he lived on, and he hung his hand out the window as he drove. The cool fall air felt nice on his arm, and he considered just shifting when he got home and having a run through the forest. He lived at the very end of the road, well past where it went from paved to dirt. As he drove, the houses became farther and farther apart, and then he smelled smoke.

  He squinted and looked for signs of fire, but his eyes weren’t as keen as his nose. The fire was upwind from here, so he drove faster and fumbled for his phone.

  He called Patrick, mostly because he was the most recent of the firefighters on his recent call list, and just as Patrick answered, Seth saw the fire.

  “Stone, you bastard,” Patrick’s voice said.

  “Pat, no time. There’s a fire at the Waters’ house, 9827 Wald Lane.”

  “Got it. I’ll sound the alarm. Don’t think this gets you off the hook for—”

  Seth hung up. The fire was bad, and Seth knew Lily Waters lived there alone. The bedrooms were all on the second floor, and while the fire on the second story didn’t look as bad, the first floor was engulfed. It would be at least eight minutes, maybe nine, before whoever was on duty got here with a truck and equipment. Seth doubted they could even save the house, but he knew he could save Lily.

  If he went in now.

  He jumped out of his truck while it was still moving, and before he even touched the ground, he’d shifted.

  His senses intensified, and he let his grizzly instincts take over. Mostly. He needed to guide his bear upstairs, but he and his bear had every incentive to save her. Seth had grown up with her, and she was like a little sister to him. He’d never forgive himself if he couldn’t save her.

  In the distance he spotted a man. He couldn’t smell anyone, but he knew he saw him. It was a dark shadow in the distance, and as soon as Seth shifted, the figure began running. It wasn’t suspicious for someone to gawk at a fire, but it was suspicious to not call it in, or to run away when someone showed up. Or maybe he’d run away because he’d seen Seth turning into a bear.

  He didn’t have time to worry about this. Lily was in danger, and saving her was all that mattered right now.

  He roared as he cleared the lawn, and then he hit the metal gate. Shit! Wasting time! He couldn’t open the gate as a bear.

  He shifted back, and as soon as his thumb separated from his paw, he grabbed hold of the gate and tore at it. The metal bent but didn’t break. Seth grunted and pulled until he felt every muscle in his body burn, and finally the hinges peeled and broke, and he threw the whole gate to the ground.

  He rushed toward the front door, shifting back to bear form as he went. The wooden door was nothing for a grizzly bear, especially since it was so weakened by the fire. He pushed his full bear weight onto it, and the door collapsed like cardboard into the house. Then the flames were all around him, but Seth didn’t stop to think. He knew only that he needed to get upstairs, and so he laid his paws onto the first of the steps, but the stairway creaked and groaned.

  Shit. He’d have to go up as a human. He couldn’t risk destroying the staircase with his full shifted weight, but he’d be more susceptible to the smoke and fire as a man. He had no choice. He needed to save Lily, and she’d be twice as vulnerable as he was.

  He bounded up the stairway on two legs, and after just a few steps the flames cleared. The smoke was as thick as ever, but the scorching heat subsided. He’d noticed that the brunt of the heat was coming from the kitchen, which was more or less underneath the upstairs hallway.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, the hallway was on fire. The stairway was clear, but there were thick pillars of flame cutting him off from the bedroom.

  He could charge through, and he’d probably be scarred for months. That didn’t matter, but if he’d be scarred for months, would Lily survive at all? He took a deep breath and steeled himself to go anyway. Once he found her, he could re-evaluate, but she’d die for sure if he didn’t reach her soon.

  Just before he took a step, he saw a dark shape materialize within the smoke and flames. Without thinking, Seth ran and grabbed hold. It was Lily; he could smell her even through the smoke, a nostalgic scent that reminded him of tire swings and walks along the creek. She was covered in damp cloth, thank God. The flames lashed and burned him, and he slung Lily over his shoulder and rushed her back to the relative safety of the stairway. He checked her and made sure her face was covered in the wet cloth. He peeled up the cloth and checked to see that she wasn’t burned. She looked okay, considering she’d just run through a pillar of flame.

  “Can you hear me?” Seth shouted. “Lily? Are you okay?”

  “Seth?” she mumbled, her voice muffled by the cloth. “I’m...okay.”

  Before she could speak another word, he flew down the stairs with Lily on his shoulder. He cleared three or four steps with each long step. In a few more heartbeats, they were outside, and Seth lowered her gently to the ground just before the street. He ran his hands up and down the cloth covering her. In many places it was already dried out and hot. He pulled the cloth from Lily’s head, which thankfully was still ever so slightly damp.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Seth? How did you—”

  “I happened to be driving by,” he said, “I guess it’s lucky for you that a firefighter lives down the street from you.” He grinned, trying to keep her mind off the facts: that her grandparents’ house was burning to the ground behind her.

  She looked back at it anyway and then back at him. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Seth said. The sirens had just become audible to him, but Lily probably couldn’t hear them yet. “I’ve called it in. We’ll do our best to save it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  LILY

  Lily woke up coughing again, but when she breathed in there was only crisp, fall air. Cold fall air. She was wrapped in a blanket, and there were flashing lights everywhere. A fire truck, an ambulance, and the dying flames of her dying house.

  And then there was Seth Stone. Of course it would be him that rescued her. She’d fought her feelings for him nearly all her life, and just when she�
��d finally laid those dreams to rest as schoolgirl fantasies, he saved her from a burning building.

  Seth rushed over to her when he saw her sitting up. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. His hand was so big and strong, but he squeezed with such a gentle tenderness. He smiled down at her, and the faintest wrinkles appeared at the corners of his wintry blue eyes as he smiled. He was in his late 20s, and he was the kind of man who would only look hotter and hotter as he aged.

  His hand was warm on her bare shoulder, and the EMTs from the ambulance were crowding around her, seemingly rushing Seth away so they could take her.

  “How long was I out?” she asked. She coughed loudly as he answered her.

  “Only a few minutes,” Seth said. “They’re going to take you to the hospital, but miraculously enough it looks like you’re fine. No burns...but they want to check out your lungs.”

  “You’re going too,” an EMT with a clean-shaved beard said to Seth.

  “No,” Seth said. “I’m staying here to try to save her house.”

  As Seth said that, there was a loud groaning sound from the house, and an entire outside wall slid down and collapsed into dust like a fragile sheet of tissue paper. The second-story floor was visible from outside now, like a cross-section of a dollhouse, and then the floor buckled inward and dressers and nightstands—and Lily’s bed—all slid across toward the buckling floor. The furniture all settled in the center, and Lily and Seth held their breath as they watched, but only moments later the entire floor collapsed, and the furniture fell through to the ground floor like it was dropping through a funnel.

  “Does your home insurance cover fires?” Seth asked, no longer maintaining the illusion that the house could be saved.

  “It would have been thousands of dollars to rewire everything. The place was so old...they wouldn’t cover it as is, even with a high premium.”

  Seth’s hand was still on her shoulder, but now he took hold of her hand and squeezed. He looked her in the eyes and said, “I’ll go with you to the hospital, and once you’re released, I’ll take you home.”

  Lily raised her eyebrows and looked at the collapsing ashes that had been her home.

  “I mean my place,” Seth said, “just down the street from you.... You shouldn’t have to stay in a hotel after something like this. You can stay as long as you need to while you look for a new place.”

  Lily opened her mouth to protest but coughed instead.

  Seth squeezed her hand and stepped away so the EMTs could take her, and before she could get a word of protest in, they’d loaded her stretcher into the ambulance and had slammed the doors shut.

  “Your friend said he’s going to follow behind us in his truck,” the bearded EMT said.

  “Great,” Lily said. She had meant to sound grateful, but bitter sarcasm coated her voice.

  Her friend. They’d always been friends, and Lily had always wished they were more. It was not that she didn’t want to stay with Seth, or that she wasn’t incredibly grateful for his offer—honestly, what would she do if he hadn’t offered?—but she’d had to try so hard to think of him as just a friend, and keeping her distance from him was a part of that. Not that she avoided him or blew him off, but she declined invitations from him where it would just be the two of them together, and she made sure to never drink around him. He had this incredibly masculine scent about him, as if in addition to being a man, he was some kind of powerful animal. That sounded crazy, but the more Lily drank around him, the weaker she was toward him. She would stumble and slur her words, and Seth would take hold of her to help her walk, and more than once—in these moments—Lily had nearly said “I love you” right into his ear. Probably she could have said it with no real consequences, as Seth’s idea of her as a little sister was so ingrained in him that he simply would have said “I love you too.” But God, how that would hurt, to hear those words from him but with a totally different meaning than she wished.

  He’d never love her like she loved him, and staying at his place was dangerous. And stupid. But he’d saved her from a fire, and she had nothing and no one, and her heart fluttered and her blood lit on fire when she thought of living with him, if only for a few nights. He’d insisted, hadn’t he? She’d still put up some resistance, but if Seth Stone’s rock-hard will overtook her, then she’d have no choice but to live with him, as stupid and naive as it was.

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