by Holley Trent
“I’m thinking of the little bit I know about Bears and wondering what questions I need to ask.”
“Remember what I said. You don’t need to be an expert. You’re sitting next to one. You only need to be an expert in Marcella things.”
“I’m not sure those are helpful in your style of work. My intuition is useless without me having more training about the circumstances.”
“You don’t always need intuition. A wild-ass guess can do fine. From there, you can start eliminating options.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged. “Don’t tell the Shrews I said that. For the most part, they’re far more methodical than the Bears on staff tend to be, the exception being Sarah because of her psychic shit.”
“She finds people.”
“Yep.”
“So, this would be easier if we were looking for a missing Bear rather than a missing place.” She looked down at the map, sputtered her lips, and then drew an invisible circle around a small forested area. “I suppose my wild-ass guess would be around here.”
His, too, but because he wanted to hear her logic, he kept quiet.
“Far enough from major populated areas and highways that people probably don’t accidentally stumble into the grounds. The place doesn’t look particularly friendly to recreational hikers or campers because there are no facilities or services available anywhere around, as far as I can tell. The size is about right for a Bear clan that probably only meets a couple of nights per month, and the trees provide good cover.”
“That’s where we’re going, then,” he said.
“Even when we’re there, I still won’t know what we’re looking for. Pinpointing would be so much easier if I could work up a tracking spell or two.”
“You’re in the learning curve. Like the rest of the Shrews, you’ll develop your own methods for efficiency in time. You can’t really believe they started off knowing exactly what to do.”
“They’re so good at what they do that I suppose I forget.”
“Remember, Dana was a police detective. She knows how to establish and enforce procedures.”
“All the Shrews did in their own ways, but I’m sure Dana helped them refine their methods. I don’t have the backgrounds they do. I think being a witch who’s used to working off signs and signals sets me at a real disadvantage when pitted against people born as plain-old humans.”
“You really believe that?”
“Lately, I do. I believe I was made to bypass part of my education because I was gifted in certain things, but I… I lack common sense in others.” Her voice trailed off at the end, and she looked out her window again.
He didn’t know the right words to tell her—didn’t know what to say to make her feel better about what she was. He’d never been adept at providing sympathy and comfort. Alpha Bears tended to rely on their mates to dispense those softer things.
But what if our mates are the ones who need it?
Where his mate was concerned, his mind automatically offered plenty of salacious tidbits, but nothing sweet or encouraging.
Try harder.
Eric would know what to say. He was good at comforting his Shrew, and patient, too. Soren needed to be more like Eric.
“I…”
She looked up at him, her dark, almond eyes wary.
He put his gaze back on the road and squeezed the steering wheel a little harder. “We can be…checks and balances for each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“I tell you when you’re thinking too rigidly, and you tell me when I’m being too reckless. Thinking plans through has never been my forte. Peter is usually my conscience. We haven’t worked together much lately.”
“Because of Drea?”
And you.
He didn’t add that aloud, though. He nodded and kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead.
The Ursu brothers had never talked about what would happen when one of them found a mate. Perhaps they’d both believed that the chance of either finding a suitable match was so small that they needn’t have been bothered with wasting the mental energy.
But then there’d been Drea. Peter had been waiting for the timid Bear to be ready for almost two years. In the time he waited, he changed. His priorities shifted. He was less likely to take the far-flung jobs Father sent to them. He wanted to be near his would-be mate, and Soren had resented his brother’s distractedness because he’d had to take up the slack.
When Marcella came onto the scene, Soren suddenly understood why his brother would turn his back on familial obligations. His priorities had changed, too. Sating his inner beast was no longer about coming hard and often, but in pulling his mate into his territory and in keeping her safe there.
He didn’t have a territory, though. Like Marcella, he was a wanderer. Sorry-ass alpha Bear that he was, he had nothing to give her, but he still had to have her because there was no one else for him.
“Soren?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I guess Drea had a little bit to do with it. He had a very hard time ignoring her.”
“I can see how that would be the case. He’s very protective of her. I sometimes find that tendency of dominant males to be off-putting, but somehow with those two, it’s sweet.”
“All I can say is as much as she needs someone like him keeping watch over her, he needs a woman like her to give him a purpose. One less aimless Bear on the prowl.”
Marcella turned toward him a bit, but didn’t say anything. She looked at him.
He didn’t know what else to say, so he drove in silence. He seemed to come out ahead when he said less, and when it came to Marcella, Soren needed to exploit every advantage he had.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Marcella stepped softly onto the roadside shoulder and pushed the passenger door of the SUV shut. As she scanned up and down the deserted road, a chill shot down her spine. A perfect gathering spot for a clan of Bears was necessarily isolated from civilization. They may not have driven for many hours—barely even one—but they may as well have been on a distant planet. Even for an isolated location, the place seemed unusually gloomy.
Soren strode around to the back of the truck and popped the latch.
“What are you getting out of there?” She walked around, figuring she’d see for herself and spare him the response. Plus, she needed to be doing something besides standing around watching shadows move.
She caught him popping the lens cover off what looked like an expensive DSLR camera.
“Good to have some baseline information about a place on file, yes?” he asked.
“In case you have to come back someday?”
“Not only me. I don’t gather information only to keep it to myself, just like you won’t. Everything you learn, you’ll take back to the Shrews. What I learn, I feed to my father and perhaps to Peter. They add it to their general knowledge bases to draw on the next time they need to make educated guesses about similar problems.”
“So really, you’re doing two jobs at once.”
“Almost always.” He slammed the gate shut, and tipped his head toward the forest. “There’s a bit of a path there. I tried to avoid parking near probable Were-bear trails, so this may be a lesser used one made by wild bears.”
“How far into those shadows are we going?”
“Not far. After all, we have to talk to a particular barbecue cook right after the restaurant closes. Don’t want to risk her slipping away before we get back.”
She gestured toward the trail. “Lead on. This may be my assignment, but you’re the one with the experience.”
He chuckled and eased between the double trunks of a forked tree. “So, you’re letting me have my way?”
“Due to the absence of a better plan, I’m acquiescing that you may know some things I don’t.”
At the sharp poke of bark against her palm after having used the sturdy tree to catch her balance, she opted to put on her gloves.
Soren gave her a speculative lo
ok over his shoulder before settling his gaze back forward. He needed to look ahead to be able to scale the fallen tree blocking their way. “Generally when I wear gloves,” he said, “I’m trying not to leave evidence behind, or I’m trying not to get my hands bloody. Which is the case for you?”
“I suspect you don’t mean the second choice in the way I’m hoping, but I suppose, for the time being, that’s closest to the truth.”
He slung the camera’s strap over his shoulder and reached up to help her over the log.
She’d managed to climb onto the massive thing with only a little bit of embarrassment, but short of getting on all fours and backing down slowly or taking a leap and hoping she didn’t break off an ankle in the soggy tangle comprising the forest floor, she needed his help.
“I guess there’s no place for pride in the wilderness,” she muttered.
He got her to her feet with one arm, somehow managing to keep her upright in spite of the immediate misstep that had her right foot tangled beneath a rogue tree root.
She fell against his chest and swore under her breath at his sultry chuckle.
As she tried to untangle her feet, he didn’t let go. He let her flail like a clumsy, miserable wretch in his arms.
“Oh, let go of me, you buffoon.”
“I guess you didn’t spend much time in forests in Jamaica.”
“That would be a safe assumption.” Somehow, she managed to plant her foot onto ground that felt mostly stable and root-free, and she ducked under his arm.
He kept his hand held out, and one eyebrow hooked upward. “Sure you don’t want to hold on? I’m better acclimatized to the terrain. I have extraordinary vision and have better instincts for how to move.”
“No, thank you.” She turned on her phone’s flashlight and pointed the beam at the ground ahead. “Like hell if I’m going to get tripped up by another root. I’m the thing with the brain. The flora will not defeat me.”
“Okay, well, you also need to be mindful of burrow holes you could get a foot stuck in and, also, try not to disrupt any bee or wasp nests. They’re pretty active this time of year, and you can’t always tell they’re in the trees until after you bump them.”
His grin broadened.
So of course, she looked up into the branches.
She didn’t see any nests, but she pointed her flashlight toward the canopy, anyway. “I’m fairly sure you’re trying to gas me up.”
“Why would I do such a thing?” There were fangs in his grin and a hell of a lot more brown in his hazel eyes than there’d been before.
She poked his chest and then wagged her finger at him. “Don’t you dare shapeshift with me here. Dealing with you on two legs is bad enough. I don’t want to chase you around when you’re on four.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to do a full shift.”
His nostrils flared.
He pointed the camera toward the waning sun. “That way.” Without looking back, he got moving again.
She took one last glance into the greenery for things that might sting, one more at the ground for things that might trip or sprain, and then marched after him.
“Interesting,” he said after a couple of minutes tromping through soggy leaves.
“What?”
“The scent. Mostly dispersed since it’s been a couple of weeks since the last Bear gathering, probably, but the hormones read to me as almost entirely female.”
“And why would that be unusual?”
At the edge of what, judging by the clean-cut stumps encircling it, appeared to be an artificial clearing, he brought the camera to his eye and started taking pictures. “In wild bear populations, the females generally don’t overlap with their territories. Their areas are small enough that they shouldn’t have to. Being people as much as beasts, Were-bears, of course, are different.”
He walked around the edge of the clearing, and she followed.
He was still taking pictures of everything, likely trying to document the place from various angles.
“Still, Were-bears are similar enough to wild bears that there wouldn’t be so many females concentrated in a high ratio to male bears in a single place. They don’t want to be around each other. They want to be around their males.”
“Oh, that’s not cocky at all.”
He shrugged. “It’s simple biology.”
“So, what are you implying?”
Finally, he did step out into the clearing, scanning the sky overhead as he walked.
Marcella looked up, too. The moon wasn’t completely up yet. It was still fighting the sun for real estate, but she suspected that the Bears had an excellent of the celestial body from that location.
“Tell me your theory,” he said.
“Ugh, here we go again.”
“You don’t need to know much about Bears to offer a guess.”
“Well, the only guess I could make is that the group has few males. If these Bears are indeed all made-Bears, that creates yet another question.”
“What’s the question?”
“I’m feeling a hell of a lot like Watson to your Sherlock right now, but okay.” She shrugged. “I’ll play along. What I want to know is if the population is as unbalanced as you suspect, was the ratio intentional, or were males and females turned in equal numbers only for something to later happen to the males?”
“Same question I have, so let’s see if we can find the answer.”
“How?”
He grinned, showing off a face full of sharp teeth. “Ribs.”
___
“Are you going to let me do the talking, or am I taking the backseat in the investigation again?” Marcella cut Soren a withering look and slouched lower in the passenger seat.
He watched her fiddle with the seat warmer switch and noted how the hinges of her jaws convulsed. She was staring somewhere in the general vicinity of his nose. All things considered, his was a pretty good-looking nose for a Bear, thanks in large part to his mother’s more elegant genes. So many Bears were ugly motherfuckers. It wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to say his father had mated way up.
Still, he wanted Marcella to catch his eyes, not his nostrils. He tipped his chin down and raised an eyebrow.
She sighed. Her gaze twitched upward.
“I believe you have enough information to ask the questions you need. Or at least, the questions you need to start with.”
“So, you won’t interject?”
“No.”
“And you won’t loom annoyingly behind me like a probation officer trying to catch me slipping up.”
“I’m certainly going to loom, but I’ll do so subtly.”
“That’s a complete contradiction. Looming requires a certain obviousness, and even if the woman can’t read you as a Bear, she’s going to think you’re a threat from your size alone.”
“You keep underestimating my charm.”
“What difference does charm make if you’re not going to be speaking?”
“I never said I wouldn’t be speaking. I said I wouldn’t interject.”
She closed her eyes, pulled in a long inhalation, and then breathed out. “I swear, talking to you is like negotiating with a hungry raccoon. The raccoon is always going to do what it wants, and then the bozo will knock over your trashcan in spite of you.”
“I’m keeping you on your toes, da?”
At the movement of the restaurant’s side door, Soren gave Marcella’s arm a nudge. “Look.”
They were parked on the road shoulder, discreetly for a giant SUV. In that position, they might have been visiting the restaurant but were just as likely to be utilizing overflow parking for the church across the street. According to the sign, Bible study was in session, and the lot was full.
The cook stepped outside carrying a full black trash bag. She hauled the garbage to the dumpster set at the edge of the property. She lifted the heavy lid as though it were as light as a feather. Soren knew better from experience. He’d done plenty of dumpster di
ving in the course of doing his job.
After tossing the bag inside and letting the lid fall, she rubbed her hands on her apron and started back toward the door.
Marcella reached for the handle, but Soren grabbed her left sleeve.
“Wait,” he said.
Her lips parted, likely to speak some objection, but before she could get the words out, he said, “She’ll come back out. Wait.”
“How do you know?”
“Watching. I don’t have to observe one person for long to guess their habits. People, no matter where they are, are mostly the same. She tossed the bag because she’s about to clock out. She may be working closing shift, but she won’t stay as long as whoever owns or manages the place. She’ll go home as soon as the grease traps are empty, the griddles scraped down, and the floor is mopped.”
Marcella pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and, watching the restaurant door, worried the bit of flesh. If she kept doing that, the lip was going to be chapped, and that would make him sad. She had such lovely lips. That was why he found himself stroking along the place where enamel touched skin, trying to free the lip from the grip.
Her stare fell to his hand.
“Stop doing that,” he said.
She nudged him away, but released the lip. “Stop micromanaging me. You’re not only interfering in my case but now you’re telling me what to do with my body?”
“I’m only trying to stop you from ruining Mother Nature’s good work. You should be thanking me.”
“I—” Growling, she shook her head, and put her back to him.
“So simple. ‘Thank you, Soren.’ Try saying them. Three little words. So easy. You may even be relieved after speaking them.”
“How about these three words? Go fuck yourself.”
“Aw, pet.” He clucked his tongue and picked up one of the long dreadlocks hanging down her back. He’d never known anyone else who’d had them, and his curiosity was only going to get more intense the longer he was near her. Of course he was going to touch.