by Zoe Chant
But she fought it down. Earlier, she'd drunk deep of the pleasure he gave her, basking in orgasm after orgasm. This time, she struggled for self-control as well, fighting herself back down as he thrust into her with each stroke. She wanted them to go over at the same time; she wanted to feel him claim her at the exact moment they reached their shared climax.
And, as always, Gannon responded to her need without words, keeping his strokes slow enough that it never quite brought her to her peak. It was glorious and maddening, driving her ever higher but never letting her go over the edge.
She found herself gasping, "Please, please ..."
He smiled again and pushed deeper into her. She could feel his body shaking with his efforts to hold himself back, keeping them both rising and rising, heat mounting in her like a furnace ...
And just when she thought she could bear it no longer, he gave a sudden hard thrust and, at the same time, his mouth found the soft place where her shoulder met her neck. For an instant she seemed to hang there, suspended on the very brink—and then his teeth bore down, and a jolt of pure sensation shot through her, any pain lost completely in the intensity of the pleasure that it brought. At the same time he jerked and she felt the heat as he filled her, and with that, she tumbled into the white-hot cascade of the most blindingly powerful orgasm that she'd ever had in her life.
It went on and on, her body shaking as the waves rolled through her, until finally she sagged in a sated heap on the bed.
Gannon rolled to his side and slid out, so that he could take her in his arms and hold her. "Mate, mate," he whispered, rocking her slowly.
Daisy reached up wonderingly to touch her newly marked neck. Her fingers came away sticky, but the wound was already starting to heal up, and the feeling was more like the muted ache of a healing scab than a fresh injury. "How does this work?" she asked. "I'm not a shifter now, am I?"
Gannon's chest vibrated with his deep laughter. "No, but the claiming mark will heal up faster than you normally would. In a day or two, there'll be nothing but the scar."
He brushed her neck beside the bite mark with his lips, and she was startled by the surge of desire that washed through her. It was shockingly intense. And for an instant she thought she caught the answering wave of desire in him, as if she was feeling his emotions as well as her own.
"Wow," she whispered, curling into him.
Gannon kissed her hair and rocked her slowly, until she fell asleep in his arms.
Chapter Ten
Gannon woke without any clear idea of what had awakened him, until a brisk tap came at the door of his room. He guessed by the angle of the moon shadows outside the window that he'd been asleep for an hour at most. Daisy was deeply asleep, so he carefully untangled himself from her and padded naked to the door.
Charmian was on the other side. "You need to get out here," she said without preamble. "Alec is already up. You'll see why. And, for the last time, please put some pants on."
She closed the door in his face.
Gannon padded back over to the bed. Now that he was fully awake, he was aware of a low undercurrent of tension in the air. He couldn't even figure out what was giving him that impression, but his bear's hackles were up. Something was wrong. He could feel the restless stirring of his bear inside him.
Daisy continued to sleep. He looked down at his newly bonded mate for a moment, at the perfect bow of her mouth and the spill of her pale hair across the pillow. The fresh claiming mark was a darker smudge on her shoulder.
He pulled a blanket over her perfect body, and put on the jeans he'd borrowed from Alec. Quietly he let himself out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him, and walked barefoot into the living room.
The room was dark except for the lamp at Alec's desk, lighting that corner with its soft golden glow. The desk was where Alec spent most of his time when he was doing the account books for the farm, or sometimes just reading. It was located between the wood stove and the big picture windows looking out at the pasture. That way, Alec could stay warm while still looking out at the sweeping expanse of pasture with the mountains behind it, the land that he and his bear had claimed as their own.
Charmian and Alec were at the desk, engaged in a low, tense conversation, but what drew Gannon's attention was the windows. The heavy drapes covering the windows had been pulled shut, blocking off the view of the pasture. This was something he'd never seen in the summer before. Even at night, Alec left the drapes open, because he loved looking out. The only time Gannon had ever seen the curtains drawn was on the very coldest of winter nights, to help conserve heat inside the house.
But now they were closed.
The tension he'd felt in the guest bedroom was much stronger here, curling tightly in his belly.
"What's wrong?" he asked softly.
Alec looked up and jerked his head at the stairs. "Go up and look out a window. Use the one in my bedroom. It has the best view."
With a drumbeat of nervousness thumping inside him, Gannon climbed the stairs. What was wrong? He didn't smell smoke or hear anything at all outside. There was nothing that should be causing this subtle quaver of tension. But Alec and Charmian felt it too. Gannon could smell Charmian's fear. Alec didn't seem afraid, but he was the alpha; he always had to be in control. This was something Gannon understood very well from his own years as his clan's alpha.
He walked quietly down the upstairs hallway. He'd never been up here, and he was acutely aware that he was trespassing in his alpha's den. He had permission, though, and he tried to calm the bear inside him as he put his hand on the half-open door to Alec and Charmian's bedroom.
The master bedroom was a huge room that took up one full end of the second floor. As in the downstairs living room, there were large picture windows looking out, providing a nearly 360-degree view of the ranch. From up here, it was possible to see the entire spread except for the parts that were blocked by the rest of the house. The curtains on these windows were pulled back, letting in a silver tide of moonlight.
Gannon walked softly to the window, and inside him, he felt his bear stiffen in anger and alarm.
There were bears out there in the moonlight.
A lot of bears.
Gannon could never remember seeing this many bears in one place before. There had been about a dozen adults in his clan. Alec's clan was even smaller, with only five adult males, though the clan was growing steadily as the various members of his clan claimed their mates.
But he could see at least two dozen bears just from where he was standing. They were spread out across the pasture, some alone, others in clumps of two or three. Gannon turned slowly to scan the rest of the ranch, and felt an unpleasant shock of violation when he saw that they weren't just in the pasture. Some of them were in the yard, in the very center of the circle of ranch houses. One, in fact, was standing up in the bed of Alec's truck, its big paws resting on the roof of the truck and its ears pricked.
No wonder Alec was on edge. It was a wonder he wasn't bellowing a challenge to the heavens. Charmian must be working to keep him calm. Gannon wasn't even in charge, but he could feel his bear's rage at the others' invasion of their territory.
Lights were on in the windows of the other houses across the yard. Remy and Saffron were up, it looked like, and so were Axl and Tara. Cody's trailer didn't display any lights, but he was probably lying low, waiting to see what happened. No bear shifter could have slept through something like this. No wonder Gannon's bear had awakened him, even before Charmian knocked on the door.
The invading bears had the ranch completely surrounded.
What do they want? Gannon wondered, furious and baffled. And where did they all come from?
Even as he watched, another bear drifted out of the woods into the moonlit pasture. He revised his rough count upwards. Allowing for the fact that there were probably more bears he couldn't see, either because they were hidden by the house or still in the woods, he thought there must be thirty or forty of them.
<
br /> The ranch was surrounded by a bear army.
But we don't DO this. He'd never seen or heard of such behavior before. He knew these were shifter bears, even if he didn't recognize most of them—though he was pretty sure he recognized a couple, even at this distance, old scarred veterans from his former clan. It wasn't impossible for clans to attack each other, or for shifters to group up in gangs. But he had never seen or heard of this many bear shifters in one place. And he'd certainly never heard of bear shifters invading another clan's territory like this. Among the different kinds of shifters, bears were some of the most territorial, second only to wolves.
The alphas, Sofia had said. Alphas, plural. And in the logged-out area, they had been attacked by a group of huge bears, most of whom had come from clans other than Gannon's.
This is an alliance of clans, Gannon thought, and sensed the grunted acknowledgment from his bear.
But why? How? As far as he knew, this kind of alliance wasn't something bear shifter clans ever did. At most, the clans in the mountains deferred to the Guardian, but they weren't supposed to work together like this.
And more importantly, why were they here?
There were far too many of them to fight. If that bear army rushed the houses, they might take some casualties, but they would inevitably win, even if all the members of Alec's clan were capable of fighting. And several of them weren't. Saffron would be a tough fighter, except she had little Sebastian to worry about. Tara and Charmian, for all their courage, were both human, lacking the speed and toughness of shifters, and Tara was pregnant.
And we're all scattered and separated anyway, Gannon thought. Together, the five big male bears who formed the core of Alec's clan could probably put up a fierce defense, but they were scattered, each in a separate house, most with mates and cubs to worry about.
He turned away from the window and descended the stairs, coming down to find the argument between Alec and Charmian escalating. They were still trying to be quiet—which he now realized was to keep the sharp-eared bears outside from hearing them, not to avoid waking up Daisy—but their voices were becoming more heated.
"You have plenty of guns in the house," Charmian snapped.
"I'm not going to take up guns against my fellow shifters. It's not something we do."
"Oh, but sitting here waiting to be killed is something you do?"
"You're human," Alec growled. "You wouldn't understand."
Charmian bristled, standing over her seated mate, all five feet of her, with her arms crossed defiantly. "What I understand is that my home, my friends, and the man I love are in danger, and if I have to take one of those rifles and go upstairs and pick them off one by one to keep us safe, I will do it."
"You will not." Alec's voice carried such a powerful force of alpha control that Gannon could feel his own bear shudder with it. Even Charmian, human though she was, seemed to feel it; he saw her flinch. "Those guns are not for shooting shifters. Humans, yes, if they threaten us and we have no other choice. But we do not behave like hunters against our own kind. We do not defend ourselves except with teeth and claws."
"I'm human," Charmian shot back. Gannon could see how much strength it was taking her to stay rooted in place, not bending against the force of Alec's will, but she didn't waver. "I don't have to obey shifter rules."
"Yes, you do. You agreed when you came to live here that you would respect our ways."
"There's a difference between respecting your customs, and just lying down and letting an army of bears tear me apart. I'm not going to do it."
"I don't think you're in danger anyway," Gannon said.
They both snapped around to look at him, and Gannon had to struggle to keep his bear from either forcing him to his knees, or mounting a challenge against Alec's dominating alpha will. It wasn't just Alec that he felt it from, either. If Charmian had been a bear, she might not have been a large bear, but she would definitely have been an alpha. Even as a human, she was able to get other humans and most shifters to obey her, without even seeming to realize that she was doing it.
"They're the wild clans, aren't they?" Gannon went on, now that he had their attention. "The wild bears of the mountains. The ones I came from. If they're here, then they must be here for me."
"It doesn't matter why they're here," Alec said, his low voice carrying a hint of a snarl. "They are in my territory, and every last one of you is under my protection. If I have to challenge every single one of them to protect you, I will."
"Oh no you will not," Charmian put in.
If she hadn't been his mate, Gannon fully expected he would've seen Alec shift to his bear and put her on the ground. He'd seen Alec throw down his brother and cousins for lesser insults. But all Alec did was take her hand.
"Charmian," he said quietly. "I love you, body, heart, and soul. You're everything to me. I respect your courage and value your advice." He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. Charmian gazed at him, the angry defiance in her eyes fading into glittering tears. "But ... I'm also the alpha of my clan. I'm a bear shifter. And there a lot of things about us that just aren't like humankind. We have instincts that we have to control, and ancient laws that are designed to keep us safe from humans. We have ways, Charmian, ways that we have to be, and while I have been able to flex and learn and change, I can only change so much. I am a man, but I'm also a bear, and I don't think you would want me to be anything else."
"No," she sighed. Tears glimmered on her lashes. "I wouldn't."
Gannon watched them, thinking briefly of Daisy. Is this what it might have been like, if he were the alpha of his own clan, with Daisy as his mate?
But he wondered if Daisy would have been happy as an alpha's mate. The mate of an alpha had to be fierce and strong enough to enforce her will on the clan as her mate's co-leader. Daisy was courageous and fierce in her own way; he had no doubt of it. But she seemed to prefer making the people around her happy. Daisy was a ray of sunshine, a person who liked to get along with other people. She wasn't like Charmian ... or like Tara or Saffron, for that matter. She was brave, and he had no doubt that she'd fight for what she believed in, but she wasn't the kind of person who would be happy if she was in charge.
And that was the moment when he really, truly let go of his long-held hope of being a clan alpha again. Ever since he'd been cast out by his clan, there had been a part of him that had clung to the dream of going back in triumph. The rational part of him knew that his clan would never accept him with the exile mark; he would have to not only challenge and defeat the new alpha, but every last one of them, and even then he would only be able to enforce his dominance through fear rather than respect, because they could never truly respect him. But there had still been a part of him that had hoped for it.
But now, watching Alec and Charmian as Charmian leaned forward and folded her mate into her arms, Gannon realized that he didn't want it. He hadn't even been aware of how much he'd come to cherish his quiet life of solitude among the pines. He didn't want to go back to the sort of life that Alec led as the clan alpha, always having to mediate clan disputes and make decisions that affected all of them.
Daisy wasn't a suitable mate for the alpha of a clan, and Gannon realized now that it was because he didn't want to be clan alpha, either. She was his perfect mate, his complementary foil, and he recognized just from the short time he'd known her that Daisy had a yearning for peaceful wild places that matched his own. Neither of them would be happy with an alpha's life of challenge and dominance. Gannon only wanted to go back to his cabin and live quietly and peacefully there, and he knew without having to ask that it was exactly what Daisy would want, as well. He'd seen it in her face when she was there.
But in order to give her that peaceful life, he was going to have to deal with the problem of the wild bear clans who had surrounded the house. And while Gannon did understand why Alec, as the alpha, considered it his problem, it really wasn't. They would never have come here if Gannon hadn't led them here.
/> With this in mind, he turned and strode for the door.
"Gannon!" Alec snapped. "Stop right there. That's an order from your alpha."
Gannon turned back. Alec's alpha dominance rolled off him; it only brought out his bear's aggressive side, and that wasn't what they needed right now. As he looked into Alec's eyes, he could see that the clan alpha understood that Gannon accepted his dominance not because he had to, but because he wanted to.
"I'm sorry," Gannon said softly. "Thank you for everything."
He turned his back and opened the door. Alec snapped an order at his back, and Charmian shouted something equally imperative, but Gannon ignored both of them. He only had eyes for the ring of bears in front of him, facing him in the moonlight.
Chapter Eleven
Daisy woke with a jolt from a confused and jumbled dream world. A feeling of anxiousness and urgency pursued her back to the waking world.
She lay in bed as her heart rate slowly calmed down. When she reached out to touch Gannon's side of the bed, it was empty and cold.
A stripe of lamplight showed under the crack in the door, and she heard the creak of someone moving around upstairs. It was still night outside the windows of the bedroom, but the household seemed to be up.
It's a ranch, she thought. They get up early, I guess.
But that didn't explain her feeling of restless unease. Nightmares could make a person anxious even after they woke up ... but she didn't think these were ordinary nightmares.
She rolled onto her side and pulled the blankets around herself, trying to sort out the hazy and mixed-up impressions from the dream. It felt as if she'd been on the verge of a breakthrough with her memories. They weren't gone, just confused and buried, and in her sleep it seemed that things had started coming back, only to flee again upon waking.