by T. S. Joyce
Denny stepped from behind a tree and pulled his shirt off. His chest was heaving, as if emotion was choking him like it was her. He approached slowly, then hooked his finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. With a serious look that was completely at odds with the natural smile lines of his face, he murmured, “This is me, Danielle. Remember your promise.”
Her eyes went wide, and she gasped as she absorbed what he was saying. Denison kicked out of his boots and jeans, then tossed them into a pile near the tree. Behind him was rolling mountains covered in pines and the gray morning sky. Above them, a giant bird screeched a call, and Denison stretched his neck up, watching it.
The first drops of rain spattered across his shoulders, and when he looked back at her, his eyes were the color of silver pond minnows. Flashing like the lightning in the distance.
She held her breath, afraid if she kept panting so hard, she’d pass out.
A smattering of pops echoed through the clearing, and his neck snapped backward. His form grew, and in a moment of disorienting confusion, a giant animal exploded from the man she loved.
Sand-colored fur covered every inch of him, and six-inch razor sharp claws the color of tar stretched from paws that were bigger than her face. His big block head shook back and forth as if he needed to rid himself of the last tingles of his transformation, and those silvery eyes she’d come to love watched her. His lips pulled back over impossibly long canines, weapons made for ripping and killing.
Her shoulders sagged, and she sank to the earth on her knees as he opened his mouth and let out a thunderous roar.
All this time, Denny, her Denny, had been harboring a grizzly bear inside of him.
****
Denison waited for the running.
He waited for the screaming.
Hell, he would’ve settled for a few curses tossed his way like Danielle usually flung into the universe when she was scared.
What he hadn’t been prepared for was crying.
Shit.
He lowered his head and approached her slowly, trying not to scare her any more than she probably already was.
Now she was sobbing, hiccups filling her throat as the rain came down harder on his mate. He didn’t want that—hadn’t meant to hurt her.
He was too riled up and scared to change back into his human skin, so he crept forward and emitted a low rattling noise, a worried question if she was a bear shifter and understood the language.
“I thought you were evil,” she sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck.
Denison froze, utterly baffled as she clutched his fur in her clenched fists. If he wasn’t mistaken, there were a few hysterical sounding laughs mixed in with her crying. Well, that couldn’t be good. Right?
“Denny, you’re not evil,” she said, easing back and looking him right in his bear eyeballs. “You’re a bear!”
Okay, Danielle was starting to sound excited.
Tagan had been preparing him for days for Danielle’s reaction, but none of the scenarios included her hugging her boyfriend, the freaking grizzly, around his terrifying neck.
Clearly, Danielle had been grossly underestimated.
He huffed a shocked-laugh sound and nuzzled her face until she giggled.
Relief flooded his veins, making him feel high as a kite. He’d smoked joints that didn’t have this much kick. With a rocking motion, he scooped her up, careful of his claws near her fragile human skin, and pulled her against his chest.
She was hugging him tightly and laughing like a maniac, proving all his fears and nightmares over the past week null and void. He’d been wrong to be so scared of her reaction.
“Denny, Denny, Denny, my big silly bear. This is your secret?”
She clutched tighter to his fur, and he rubbed his face against her cheek, then moved to the other side, showing her just how much he appreciated her being such a brave mate.
“I thought you were a vampire! Or a zombie. But you’re a werebear. How fucking awesome is that?”
Uh, not awesome at all until now. Mostly, being a werebear was a pain in the big furry ass.
She was sobbing again, shoulders shaking, and he hugged her tighter. And then she was…petting him. She ran her hands in long strokes down his shoulder blades as she cried against his fur. It wasn’t the scared kind of weeping he would’ve understood. Her shoulders relaxed with every heave of raw emotion.
Danielle seemed relieved.
Closing his eyes, he tucked his animal back inside of him and slipped into his human skin again. She felt so good in his arms as she tucked her elbows in and snuggled against the now smooth skin of his chest. He kissed down her neck, tiny rewards for her being so understanding.
“You let me in,” she said, pulling back and cupping his face. “You finally let me in on the big secret.”
“I trust you.” Denison’s voice was raw, but that came from the pain of Changing back so quickly. “You didn’t run.”
“I told you I wouldn’t. I don’t care that you have a bear inside of you! I still love you, Denny. Maybe more now because you finally shared that part of yourself with me.”
“Damn, Badger.” He leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, absorbing how good it felt to be with his mate and not hiding the biggest part of him anymore. She knew now, and she was still here. “I love you, too. More than anything. I was so scared I was going to lose you again.”
“No, silly bear. You’re stuck with me.” She grinned. “Don’t you know I love animals?”
He huffed a laugh and tucked a strand of damp hair behind her ear. “This isn’t all of it, though.”
“Tell me. Tell me everything and be done with it. No more hiding.”
“This isn’t a safe life.” He gripped her waist to try to steady himself. Every time he thought about his past, his body wanted to seize and reject the memories. “If you choose to stay with me, you’ll always be in danger. We don’t live in a trailer park in the woods because it’s our first choice, Danielle. It’s safest for us here. We are freer to shift without being found out, but there are people who know about us. If you stay, you’ll always have to be careful of everything you say to people outside of the crew. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder.”
Her dark eyebrows drew up with concern. “Who else knows?”
God, he wished he could swallow this down and never talk about it. He’d never admitted this to anyone but Tagan. But he was dedicated to doing things right this time around with Danielle. He couldn’t keep secrets and expect her to stick around for half-truths. He inhaled a deep, steadying breath. “When Brighton and I were sixteen, my parents left us alone for the first time to have a date night. I know that sounds extreme, but my family wasn’t part of a crew. We were out there in the middle of the human population, trying our best to blend in, and my parents were protective. My sister had already moved out and joined up with a crew in Denver, but Brighton and I were still too young. We wanted Mom and Dad to trust us to be home alone again, so we weren’t about to have a raging party or anything. Just some pizza for dinner, and we had a pool table, so I was planning on kicking his ass at that. But half an hour after Mom and Dad left, these men came for us. Black ops type, dressed in helmets and bullet proof vests… Shit.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, not entirely sure he could do this without breaking down. Denison stood and kissed the top of her head, then moved toward the pile of clothes and began redressing to give him something to focus on other than telling this damned story.
“I don’t remember much. Only flashes. White rooms. A man with black hair in a white lab coat and a surgical mask. A long hallway.” He fastened the snap on his jeans and dragged his burning eyes to Danielle’s. “Screaming. Mine and Brighton’s.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Danielle murmured. She looked like she was going to be sick.
“I think we were sedated so we wouldn’t Change, or maybe they did something to my head to erase what I’d seen, I don’t know, but I have this nightmare. I get it over and over. I
think maybe it’s a memory. I’m walking down this hall, and I feel drunk, like my feet aren’t really touching the floor. But I look in this window and Brighton is laid out on a table, strapped down while these two doctors are cutting into him. There was blood everywhere. Only, my brother isn’t sedated. He’s looking back at me, eyes wide like he can feel every cut they are making on him. And I’m burning, like I’m on fire, and my bear rips out of me. And I rip through these chains on my wrists and ankles and shred the two people who were walking me down the hall. And then I wake up. Every time.”
“Is that what happened to Brighton’s voice?”
Horror had transformed her face. Horror and devastation, and he could tell she was cut to her middle with his admission because she was wearing the same haunted look he’d seen in the mirror for the last nine years. He pulled his shirt on and avoided eye contact. Any emotional upheaval from her now, and he was done for. His throat would clog, his voice would shake, and his animal wouldn’t allow such weak behavior. He’d Change again to avoid the pain.
Danielle approached and rubbed her hands up his back. He let her reassurance wash over him. When she wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her palms against his stomach from behind, he pressed his hand over hers to keep her there. Her cheek rested between his shoulder blades, and a warm, calming sensation spread from where she touched him, downward until his limbs tingled with the comfort.
“Brighton won’t talk about what happened,” he murmured. “He won’t talk at all. They took his voice from him and scarred his body with their testing. He hasn’t ever said it, but I think he remembers. It’s an unspoken rule between us that we just don’t ever bring it up. Brighton will disappear for days if I do.” Pain seared through Denison’s middle as he remembered the awful years after they’d been taken. He’d been lucky enough to have been spared the memories, but Brighton had gone dim and became a ghost of his former self with whatever demons he was carrying. “When I came around, we were back home. Brighton had gotten me back somehow, but he was cut up real bad. We’d been missing for three days. Three days at the hands of people who knew exactly what we were. This would be your life, Danielle. You would be at risk if anyone ever found out.”
“The others in the Ashe crew… are they like you, too?”
“All but Skyler. She’s a falcon shifter, but she is one of us in all the ways that count.”
“All the ways that count,” Danielle repeated in a hushed voice.
Denison turned and rested his back against the giant evergreen, then pulled her closer, settling her between his splayed legs and against his chest. “I want to be with you. My animal chose you as my mate years ago when we were together. There was never going to be another for me because that’s how it works. If a shifter like me is lucky enough to find a mate, it’s a onetime bond. I have instincts, and they constantly urge me to claim you.”
“Claim me? Is that the biting part Brooke talked about?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard and hoped he had the right words to explain. “We can still be together if you’re human. We don’t have to do anything. We could stay just as we are. We could live the rest of our lives happy, just like this. There would be no bite, though. That would Turn you. I don’t need that to be with you. It would hurt, and I don’t want to hurt you. You should know how it is because the guys will bring it up.”
“Are Brooke and Skyler claimed?”
Denison nodded slowly.
Her face fell, and she dropped her gaze to his tattoo. “I can’t belong to the Ashe Crew if I’m not claimed by you, can I?”
His chest hurt as he watched the pain flash across her face. “Not as a human and not according to our traditions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be with me and live with me. The Ashe Crew would still be your friends, even if you aren’t a shifter.”
“But I wouldn’t be family. Not like you all are.” Her soft brown eyes went round. “Brooke said it was hard to have babies. Would it be hard for us, too?”
He wished the answer was different. Wished he could put her mind at ease and tell her that someday he would be able to give her a cub. He wouldn’t keep the truth from her anymore, though. From here on, she got nothing but honesty from him. She’d earned it. “It would be hard for us. Impossible maybe.”
She dropped her chin to her chest. He’d dealt her a blow, and he rubbed her back in sympathy. He wanted to give her the world, not take things away from her. They’d never talked about having children, but she would make a wonderful mother. She was caring, sensitive, and had deep empathy, and the thought of never watching her swell with his child ripped his guts out.
“We don’t have to decide anything right now,” he murmured. “Even without the mark, you’re mine, and I’m yours. I don’t care if you stay human. You are my mate.”
“Yeah?” She looked up, doe eyes brimming with moisture and full of hope.
If she only knew how deeply she’d burrowed into his heart, she’d never be insecure about his devotion to her again. “Always.”
Chapter Twelve
How was Danielle supposed to settle down and have a professional business meeting with Reynolds and Darren after everything she’d found out over the past twenty-four hours?
Her mind was frazzled with the influx of information she’d absorbed. Vampires! Damn, had she been wrong. She’d made friends with a crew of badass, rip-roaring, protective-as-hell grizzly shifters.
She leaned over the steering wheel of her jeep and laughed out loud. Denison was a lumberjack werebear! Now that was sexy.
Sexy but dangerous.
He wasn’t a danger to her, though. Every instinct she possessed screamed that he’d never hurt her. Even yesterday when he’d Turned in front of her, he was a gentle giant. He looked scary enough with his big barrel chest and powerful arms that shook the earth with each thundering step. But his eyes had been soft and sad when she’d been crying with the relief of finally understanding what he’d been hiding from her. No, he wouldn’t hurt her, but rather he lived in constant danger.
She’d wondered why Denison hadn’t gone big with his singing. Why he hadn’t left this tiny town and made a name for himself. Anyone with ears could tell he was special with that clear baritone, natural affinity for musical instruments, and a memory for lyrics that stretched for miles. Now, she got it. Big dreams like that would be a risk for a man like Denison. It would expose him to more people and put his animal in situations he wouldn’t be able to control. He wouldn’t be able to hide his shifting eye-color or the snarl in his throat, and it would put all shifters at risk. So here he was, year after year, frozen in time as he played his weekly gig at Sammy’s and plucked out tunes around the bonfire for his crew.
She was so proud of what he was, of the man and the bear he’d grown up to be while she’d been away, but that didn’t mean he led an easy life.
What he and Brighton had gone through when they were teenagers was awful. Even if he didn’t remember much of his time being tested on, she’d witnessed firsthand the devastation in his face as he told the story. No wonder Brighton didn’t want to talk, not even at a whisper. His missing voice had to be a constant reminder of what had been done to him. If she chose to stay here with the Ashe Crew, she would have to learn to be overly careful to protect the people she loved.
She’d done as Brooke asked and knocked on her door after she and Denison had come down from the mountains. Brooke had showed her a beautiful painting she’d done of Danielle and a grizzly, Denison, sitting beside each other on the edge of the landing, looking out over the stars, sitting close to each other but not touching. Afterward, Brooke had sat her down and told her of how she had been Turned by Tagan at the cruel order of the last alpha. She had told Danielle about how he’d killed one of his own crew to save her and explained how hard it had been when she’d first been Turned. She had told her about how much it had changed her from the person she used to be. Danielle had already known what she would gain by joining the Ashe Crew—frien
ds, family, and an unbreakable bond and sense of belonging—but Brooke had also let her know exactly what she would be giving up if she chose to allow Denison to claim her and put a bear inside of her.
She had a big decision to make, but she couldn’t make it now. Not when her head was supposed to be wrapped up in this meeting.
There was an environmentalist outpost half an hour’s drive from the Asheland Mobile Park. She hit the brakes and pulled to a stop in front of a dilapidated log cabin with overgrown landscaping. She tried to match it to her memories of the outpost from her internship here years ago, but couldn’t. She frowned and checked the directions Reynolds had texted her again. 101 Pine Pass. This was definitely the place.
A black SUV was parked alongside the house, and she stifled the nervous flutters in her stomach as she exited her jeep and gathered her notebooks. This would be her second meeting with Darren, but her first with Reynolds, and he was the one who held the power to extend her contract so she could stay here with Denison.
With a deep breath, she stepped around an empty, moss-colored birdbath and knocked on the front door.
“Come in,” a man called from inside.
She opened the door and squinted into the dark room. The lights hadn’t been turned on, and it took her eyes a couple of seconds to adjust after coming in from the sunny weather outside.
The cabin seemed to be one room and definitely not the outpost she remembered. In the middle of the floor was an old desk, polished to shining, and a high-backed office chair turned away from her.
When she closed the door behind her, the chair turned, and the man from the lumberjack competition, the one with the pitch black hair gone silver at the sides and cold hazel eyes, stared back at her with the empty smile he’d given her the first time they’d met.
“Mr. Reynolds?” Her voice trembled as frost blasted up the back of her neck.
“The one and only. Have a seat, Ms. Clayton. I do believe you have some information I need.”
“Right.” The beetle infestation.