by Zoe Chant
"Everything that's been stored in the barn is probably going to need some work to get it running properly. How about I just bring some tools over in the morning? I can do an inventory, see what you have and if any parts are needed for repairs."
"That would be awesome. Thank you so much. And, uh ..." She hesitated by her car. A blush deepened the slightly dusky tone of her skin. "We haven't really talked about me paying you for the work yet. This doesn't really feel like the right time, after we ... uh ..."
"Don't worry about it," Cody said quickly. "We can settle up later. Right now, let's just focus on getting your farm in good shape again."
Crystal took a deep, relieved breath. "Yes. That's a good plan." She turned to unlock the car door, then turned back to him. "Oh, I almost forgot. Do you have a bird book I could borrow, back at your ranch? I want to learn some of the local birds."
"Sure," Cody said, his heart lifting. "I'll bring one over in the morning."
Her answering smile was brilliant, and it kept him warm and light as he got into his truck and waved to her out the window.
She liked it here; he could tell. Some part of her heart yearned for this place just like his did.
Of course it does. We're mates. We're meant to be compatible, the only people in the world for each other.
On some level, she loved it here. She had to. She wouldn't be his true, fated mate if she didn't.
***
Cody never got tired of the view of the Circle B as he drove into the ranch yard. It was late afternoon, the sun slanting long and golden across the mountains behind the ranch. The hills were dotted with grazing cattle. He drove into the circle formed by the three ranch houses, with the barns on the far side, and parked in front of his trailer.
For all of his life, everything he'd needed had been here. He'd never even imagined there might be anything he would ever want that wasn't here.
Could he leave, if Crystal wanted to?
Yes, he decided. A life with her was worth it, no matter where it took him.
But he hoped he could find a way to change her mind. He hoped it was a choice he wouldn't be forced to make.
"Cody!" Saffron called, waving from the porch of the house she and Remy shared as he got out of the truck. "Yoo-hoo! We made extra meatloaf! Do you want to eat over here with us, or have me bring a plate across?"
"No need to put yourself to any trouble."
Saffron made a sound like "pfft" and went back into the house, with a squirming Baz tucked under her arm like a toddler-sized football.
Cody got out of the truck and went into the trailer to change. One thing about living around a bunch of shifters: if he didn't want them to know he'd just had sex that afternoon, he'd better get cleaned up a little bit. The fact that his shirt was missing most of its buttons was probably a dead giveaway as well.
He heard the door of the trailer bang while he was in the trailer's cramped shower, so he made sure to cover up as much as possible with a towel and his wrinkled shirt before cautiously poking his head out, but there was no one else there now. Saffron had come and gone, leaving a foil-covered plate on the table with a sticky note that had a smiley face scribbled on it in marker.
Cody sighed and got a clean shirt out of the closet. He knew the others meant well, and he appreciated it, but it still made him feel a little bit like a guest in his own home. For years, the bachelors of the Circle B had split the cooking duties among themselves. Now Saffron and Tara usually took turns cooking for him and bringing food across the yard. The one thing that was still refreshingly the same was that Alec, the clan alpha, made breakfast for everyone on most mornings, inviting the whole clan—or at least anyone who was available—up to the big ranch house for home-grown eggs, home-smoked ham, pancakes, and bread fresh from the oven in the old-fashioned cookstove.
He had to grin to himself; when Crystal had offered to pick up breakfast from Marge's Diner, he hadn't thought to warn her how much food was involved in one of Marge's "usuals" for the Circle B Ranch boys. Farmers ate a lot. Shifters ate a lot. Put the two together, and you needed enough food for a small army.
He ate alone, sitting on the trailer's steps and watching life on the ranch go on around him. Tara came out on the porch of the house she shared with Axl and had a hollered conversation across the yard with Alec, mostly having to do with whether Alec's mate Charmian could pick up a few things on her way home from work, since Axl was going to be working an evening shift at the sheriff's station and she was almost out of diapers, which she'd forgotten to pick up while she was in town earlier that day.
"Call her yourself, woman!" Alec bellowed back. He was fixing one of the posts on the front porch of the big ranch house, and didn't even pause in his hammering to fire his answer back in Tara's direction. "I'm not your answering service!"
"I'm trying to be courteous to you as the alpha, you big ox, but if you want me to just go over your head and make decisions, I can happily do that—"
Tara and Alec really liked each other, though any newcomer might think the exact opposite. But Cody knew better. He'd watched them advance from a cautious truce to a truly sibling-like tendency to give each other shit. Theirs was a hard-won affection, and all the more genuine for it.
Tara had been the first mate to come live on the ranch; in fact, she was probably the first human ever to live there. Cody still remembered vividly how Alec and Axl had ended up in a dominance battle over her. They'd nearly killed each other that day. As a traditional alpha, following in his father's footsteps, Alec had resisted change coming to the Circle B with everything in him.
But mating with Charmian had mellowed him out more than Cody would ever have believed possible. Now he could usually be found playing with the new cubs or playfully responding in kind to Tara's good-natured teasing. Charmian's scruffy little dog Bucket was lying beside him right now, head on his paws, watching Alec work on the porch railing while waiting for his mistress to come home.
Through the open window of Remy and Saffron's house, the sound of the family's quiet voices and little Baz's high-pitched giggle could be heard. The cattle lowed softly to each other in the pasture.
This was home. It had always been home.
But no matter what happened with Crystal, things were going to change. Whether he went to live with her in St. Louis—which everything in his soul rebelled against—or brought her to live here with him, and built her a house with his own hands, like Remy and the rest of the clan had built a house for Saffron, it would all be different ...
He lost himself temporarily in pleasant thoughts of planning out the location of each room, deciding how many bedrooms they'd need for the future children they'd have, locating the kitchen to receive the warmest morning sun. He didn't know what kind of things Crystal liked yet, but he wanted to give all of them to her. She'd mentioned birds, so maybe they could have a bird feeder in front of the living room window, where she could watch the birds whenever she liked.
But chasing on the heels of that daydream came another thought: Crystal's family farm.
It was really just a stone's throw away from the Circle B, with the old road connecting them. On the Martinez farm, they wouldn't actually be any farther away than Gannon and Daisy, who were technically still on Tanner-Hayes land, back up in the hills at Gannon's cabin.
And the main part of the ranch was getting a little crowded. It was nice to have everyone close together, but there were times when Cody really enjoyed the solitude of taking a horse out to one of the back pastures to check on the stock. Just him, the sunshine, and the creak of his horse's harness. And the families on the ranch just kept growing. Tara and Saffron already had their cubs, and he wouldn't be surprised if more would be coming along anytime. Pretty soon it was going to be a whole little village up here. Adding another entire household might crowd the ranch yard to the point where people were going to start tripping over each other.
He liked Crystal's family farm. It wasn't home yet, but, if Crystal was living there, it m
ight start to feel that way.
His bear liked the idea too.
Don't get ahead of yourself, he scolded. First things first. Crystal didn't know about fated mates yet. She hadn't decided if she was going to stay.
He needed to get Tara's take on this. She was sensible and discreet. She wouldn't go telling the entire clan about his business if he asked her not to. And, if Axl was still in town, this would be a good time to talk to her.
He left his plate in the sink of the trailer's tiny kitchen to wash and return to Saffron later, and walked across the yard in the soft golden glow of the setting sun. The sound of an engine made him look over his shoulder. Charmian's Jeep was just driving into the yard. Alec, who was bent over sanding the repaired porch post, stood up and watched her park. Even from here, Cody could see his body language relax, his serious demeanor giving way to something brighter. Charmian got out of the Jeep and Alec trotted down the steps with the tail-wagging dog beside him.
Charmian sprang into his arms and he buried his face in her neck, lifting her entirely off the ground—she was a good foot shorter than any of the uniformly tall Pinerock bear shifters.
He could have that.
Would have that, he hoped.
Charmian wiggled an arm free of Alec's embrace and waved to Cody. "Hey! Are you going over to Tara and Axl's?"
"Sure am," he agreed, changing his direction and loping over to them instead. "Want me to take something over for her?"
"Yeah, I have some stuff in the back. Alec ... erk ... put me down!"
"Didn't hear the magic word." Alec's eyes danced with humor. It was hard to believe this was the quiet, serious alpha Cody had known all his life.
"Put me down, you overgrown—no, that's probably not it." Now Charmian's eyes were sparkling too. "How about this?" She closed her mouth over his, planting a kiss on him that was so heated Cody felt his ears turning pink.
When she finally peeled her lips off his, Alec gazed at her with a dazed expression and then lowered her carefully to the ground. "Yeah," he said weakly. "That'll do."
Charmian grinned and turned back to the Jeep. "So Tara texted me a shopping list. I brought diapers and a new laser cartridge for her home office printer. Here you go—and thanks!"
"Glad to help," Cody told her. He crossed the yard with the bags in his hand and a bounce in his step. Thanks, Charmian. Now he had a plausible, non-Crystal-related excuse to talk to Tara.
He mounted the steps to Tara's porch and knocked.
"Come in!" Tara said, popping up unexpectedly in the open window beside the door and making him jump. "Sorry," she added, stifling a smile at his reaction. "I was just doing some light work on my laptop by the window. I've put Lexie down for the evening, so come in quietly, please."
He did so, also taking care to wipe his feet in front of the door. The house had been redecorated since he and Remy used to live here, and now the old-fashioned pieces of furniture, most of them built by his and Remy's parents and grandparents, were mixed with Tara's things from the city, assorted expensive-looking antiques and art pieces. Cody didn't know much about art or interior decorating, but to his eye, the whole thing worked a lot better than he would have expected. Everything harmonized—was that the right word? But then, Tara had a good eye for that kind of thing.
"You might hear some babbling and cooing," Tara said, patting the baby monitor beside her. She was curled up on a couch under the window, one of the new pieces with a brocade cover. "She's learning to fall asleep by herself now. It works pretty well as long as you under no circumstances interact with her after she's been left alone. Would you like coffee?"
"Sure. Uh, I brought—" He held out the bags.
"Ah! Thank you. I thought I heard Charmian's voice out there." She hopped up from the couch. "I'll grab you a cup of coffee as soon as I put this away."
"It's okay. I know where everything is."
He was in the kitchen, stirring a little creamer into his coffee, when she came back from stowing the supplies he'd brought, the baby monitor in one hand. She set it on the counter and accepted the cup of coffee he handed her: a dash of cream and one packet of calorie-free sweetener, just like he knew she preferred.
"Thanks for bringing the things over from Charmian." She smiled. "How'd your day as a hired man on someone else's ranch go?"
Oh right, the family grapevine. Of course everyone knew about it.
"It went pretty well." Understatement of the year. "I'll be over there again tomorrow. Uh ... can I ask you a personal question?"
Tara's blue eyes sparkled. "Sure. We're all family here. I gotta warn you, if it's anything personal about me and Axl, I might need to have him—"
"Not like that," he said hastily, blushing. "Well, it is about you and Axl, but mainly I just wanted to ask—how did you know that he was your mate? Speaking as a human, I mean." As he asked the question, his eye was drawn to the little crescent-moon scar of the claiming mark on her neck, half hidden under the waterfall cascade of her red hair. "What did you feel?"
Her smile quirked up at the side. "If you'll recall, he was arresting me at the time, so what I felt was mainly annoyance."
He was so used to Tara living here, as one of the family, that it was very strange to remember she'd been a fugitive at the time, and Axl, as the county sheriff, had been trying to bring her in. "Wow. I actually did forget."
"It was quite a sight, too. I'd taken off my skirt to run through the woods, so he caught me halfway up a fence I was trying to climb over, wearing nothing from the waist down except my panties and shoes. Since he's a gentleman, he gave me his shirt to wrap around my waist, except I'd thrown a cup of coffee on him earlier, so I got to march through downtown Wildcat Forks with a wet shirt draped over my legs."
Cody stared at her. "Uh ... wow. Okay, I don't think I've ever heard quite that much of the story before."
"Few people have," she said dryly. "As you can see, Axl and I didn't get off to the most promising start."
"No kidding." He hadn't realized how lucky he and Crystal had been. They might have some things to work out, but at least he hadn't had to deal with having his mate on the opposite side of the law. "So .. how did he explain things to you? About being a shifter, and fated mates, and all of that."
"Well, he just told me. I guess after you've had to explain to someone that you're a wanted fugitive, framed for a crime you didn't commit and pursued by your father's homicidal business partner, everything else doesn't seem to matter as much."
"So you took it okay?"
Tara looked thoughtful as she sipped from her coffee cup. "I guess it didn't seem entirely real until he shifted for me. That helped a lot. I realized I wasn't afraid of him as a bear; I couldn't imagine him ever harming me. That goes along with being his mate, I think. And of course, it helps that he's just about the sexiest thing I'd ever seen. Still is, come to think of it."
Cody had a bad feeling he was blushing again, especially when Tara reached out and squeezed his arm.
"And are you going to tell me why you're so curious about it all of a sudden?"
"Can't a guy be curious about things?"
"Yes, but I have a feeling this is more than idle curiosity. Have you found her, Cody—the woman you've been hoping to find for so long?"
"I ... think so," he said, hedging.
"If you aren't sure, then she's not. That's one thing I know about shifters. You always know."
Cody had to look away from her affectionate, knowing expression. "Okay, yeah, I'm sure. I knew it the moment I saw her, and my bear knew too. But ... look ... we're still working out some things, so if you could keep it to yourself, I'd really appreciate it."
"I won't breathe a word," she promised. "But you might want to stay away from Gannon for awhile. That guy knows stuff without being told. So far, he's guessed every single time one of us is pregnant before we were sure ourselves, and I think he'll take one look at you and figure out you've found your mate."
"Hmm. Thanks for the warning.
" She had a point. People tended to underestimate big, quiet Gannon, because he stumbled over words a little bit and spent most of his time in the company of animals—or, lately, his sweet, gentle mate Daisy. But Cody thought it was because Gannon spent so much time as a bear that he was so intuitive at picking up on nonverbal cues from people around him.
"So who is it? Remy said there's a single woman on the Martinez place. Is it her?"
"For a city girl, you sure have picked up the basics of small town life in a hurry."
"Like, never let a good piece of gossip escape unspread?" Tara laughed. "If you think that doesn't happen in the circles I grew up in, then you obviously know nothing about New York high society."
"Nope, you're definitely right about that."
"Oh, Cody." She set her coffee cup down so she could give him a hug. "I'm sorry you and your mate are having problems. You'll work it out, you'll see. If Axl and I could find a happy ending, so can you."
Cody had always thought of humans as relatively soft and small, especially ones like Tara and Daisy who weren't very physical people to begin with, but her arms were surprisingly strong. She'd been learning to work around the farm, not to mention hauling a baby around everywhere. That had to pack some muscle on a person.
Thinking about kids gave him a strange feeling in his chest. Crystal and I could have cubs of our own. Beautiful cubs, with her brown eyes and my lighter-colored hair ...
... If she wants kids. I don't even know that much about her.
"It's not so much that we're having problems," he told Tara as he let her go. "Actually, we're getting along great so far. But I've only just met her, and she doesn't want to stay in Pinerock County."
"Neither did I, when I first got here. This was the last place in the world I wanted to be. And now I can't imagine myself living anywhere else."
"What changed your mind?" he asked hopefully.
"What do you think changed my mind?"
"... Ah."
"You're a great guy, Cody. And I think I understand what you were trying to ask me earlier. Yes, humans do feel the mate bond. We might not recognize it for what it is, the way you do, but we definitely feel it. Just ask any of us. Well," she added, "not Charmian, because I expect she'll deny it to her dying day. It's not scientific enough for her. But she'd walk through fire for Alec, and I can guarantee you she's felt like that since the day she met him, because I've felt that way about Axl, even if I tried to deny it at first. I have one piece of advice for you, though."