by Holley Trent
“Should there be one?”
“I want Cherry Coke.”
Eyes narrowed, he glowered at her a few beats and pushed the cart to a pyramid of Coke products installed near the chips. He picked up two fridge packs and layered them inside the cart.
Silently, she followed him to the registers, shooting daggers at his broad back all the while.
He aimed them for a line three-deep with customers, although there were two shorter lines.
She tugged at the back of his shirt and pointed when he turned around. “We’ll be out more quickly if we use either of those.”
“I know. I…” He turned his face toward the patron in line in front of them, and the man was bobbing his head to the beat of whatever was playing in his headphones, oblivious to the party behind him. Bryan leaned in close to Tamara as she plucked up a Hershey’s Cookies ’n’ Crème. “I know the casher. Need a word with her.”
“Oh?” Tamara leaned around him and set her gaze on the waif behind the register. She drew in a long inhale through her nose, but there was nothing to glean from the sniff. The cashier wasn’t a made-Bear, as far as Tamara could tell, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a born one.
Bryan must have caught her train of thought because he leaned back in and said, “She’s tuned into supernatural stuff, but she’s not a shifter.”
“Ex-girlfriend?”
His resulting smile made her want to smash her elbow into his nose, but she wouldn’t be that woman. Dana had been teaching her how not to be that woman. Even if she was raging on the inside, she needed to keep that anger, bank it up, and use it when she felt too weak to fight.
“No,” he said, straightening his spine. “Not mine, anyway.”
When it was their turn to check out, the cashier’s gaze flitted from Bryan, to Tamara, back to Bryan again.
“She’s cool,” Bryan said to the woman. “She’s helping me.”
“Oh.” She took Bryan’s frequent customer card, swiped it, and began pulling their purchases across the scanner. In between the tomato soup and the bag of green apples, the cashier deftly flicked a sealed white envelope across the conveyor belt, which Bryan grabbed and stacked beneath his wallet on the little check-writing ledge.
“Any news?” he asked.
The cashier darted her gaze to Tamara again in a way that made Tamara cock her head to the side and narrow her eyes.
What, bitch?
“Uh…”
Bryan tucked the envelope into his back jeans pocket and gave Tamara a little turn toward the aisles and a pat on the bottom. “Tam, can you run and get a couple of loaves of bread? And I think Tony wanted everything bagels.”
She was about to tell him to get his own fucking bread, but the bagger chose that exact moment to show up. She figured they best not cause a scene when their goal was to be inconspicuous.
“Right,” she said, easing around the woman who’d queued into the line behind them. “Everything bagels.”
By the time she made it back with several bags, all the items were scanned, and Bryan leaned against the counter, waiting.
Tamara dropped the bread onto the moving belt and cast him a withering glare she hoped would freeze his cock off.
Seemed to have the opposite effect, because he grinned and handed the cashier a stack of bills.
Tam slid around him and pushed the cart toward the automated doors, mumbling under her breath.
“Asshole. I hope he gets his pecker caught in a bear trap the next time he’s out for a run.”
The bagger caught up to her, calling, “Help you out to your car, Miss?”
“How nice that chivalry isn’t quite dead. Of course you may—”
The growl bisected what she was going to say, and suddenly Bryan was there, hands on the cart handle, pushing. “No, thank you,” he said to the bagger. “Does she really look like she needs help, or were you hoping to get her phone number?”
The kid, who couldn’t have been much more than seventeen, flapped his jaw a few beats, then put up his hands. “I—”
Bryan paused just outside the doors and pointed back to the checkout lanes. “See that little old lady with those two hundred cans of Fancy Feast? Go help her.”
“Right.” The kid didn’t need to be told twice, and probably appreciated having the exit route.
“The nerve,” Tamara said, following Bryan yet again.
“You should know not to push buttons around me.” He started piling the boxy stuff into the truck bed first—the beer, soda, and so on. “It’s like dangling fresh trout in front of a bear’s snout and expecting him not to take the bait.”
“Who’s pushing buttons?” She tore the wrapper of her candy bar and took one large, satisfying bite. As the white chocolate melted on her tongue, she let the cookie texture register on the roof of her mouth and sighed, feeling calmer.
“You are. You can’t walk into a fucking room without every man, and some women, locking their gazes on you, and you go and lead the little shits on?” He tossed the paper towels into the bed with far more passion than was necessary.
She shrugged. “It’s my Shrew-ness. Psychic magnetism.”
“Psychic magnetism, my ass.” He pushed the few remaining bags onto the bed and slammed the tailgate closed.
“It is.” She batted her eyelashes and pushed the cart one-handed to the corral. When she returned, he was still leaning against the back, now with his arms crossed.
“What?” she asked.
“You do it on purpose. You’re like a pitcher plant. Luring small animals in close with your beauty and then digesting them.”
“Is that what I’m doing to you?”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing to me. Between you and my bear, I’m so fucking confused, I’m not sure if I should lick you or spank you.”
Both sounded nice, and she mused on it as she nibbled another piece of her candy bar.
He sighed and stole it away. “Get in the truck, woman.” He walked away, finishing off her candy in two big bites.
“Ass.”
She couldn’t make sense of this man. Was he running hot or cold? She wasn’t the kind of woman who would typically be so eager to put a label on things, but his interaction with the cashier had woken something in her she hadn’t felt since before the Shrew study. Back then, when she got jealous, it was because her self-esteem was low. And when she felt low, whether it was because of something her boyfriend had said or simply because she was wired to be negative, she acted out. But that was the way little girls acted. She wasn’t going to lash out, any more than usual, even if she did feel a gnawing pain in her gut at the thought of Bryan so much as touching another woman.
She’d joked when it happened to Dana, and swore that it would never happen to her when Sarah fell head-over-heels for Felipe. But what she hadn’t understood at the time was that she was casting aspersions on something she really didn’t understand. Maybe it was the Shrew trend. Maybe there was something off about them now that made them more receptive to partnering up. Or maybe it was just time, and circumstances threw them together with exactly who they needed.
She pulled the passenger door shut and drew the seatbelt across her torso.
“Are we together?” came a little voice, and it took a moment for Tamara to realize it was hers.
She didn’t look up, and he didn’t say anything as he backed the truck out of its space.
He didn’t say anything at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Fuck, she’d have to ask that.
Bryan worried his lip between his teeth as he steered toward the bunker to deliver supplies and meet the Shrew, Astrid, who according to Dana would be waiting for them near the intersection.
Of course they were together, especially now that he knew what she was. His bear was running in goddamned circles in his mind, begging for a bigger taste of her.
Bear would have to wait until things settled down.
He shook his head at the road, and scoffed. Fresh blo
od. He wouldn’t have imagined it’d come right to him. He’d always assumed he’d find some human woman to settle down with, and maybe turn her eventually, but this was even better. A tailor-made scenario, really. He didn’t have to worry about accidentally making her Bear, because she already was one. At the same time, she couldn’t shift, which meant she didn’t have to mix with those made hooligans during the full moon. Wouldn’t be exposed to the danger of overzealous hunters in the woods, although being a Shrew she likely had her own special brand of danger already built in.
They’d settle down and have a couple of Bear kids, if she were able to carry them, and the Ridge line would go on, unbroken.
He’d gotten so caught up in his thoughts that he hardly noticed when the heater came on, blowing in his face and drying his eyeballs. Stealing a glance from the road, he looked at Tamara and found her shaking.
Shit.
“Tam?” He gave her side a nudge. “You all right? You gonna be okay until we get back to the bunker?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said through chattering teeth. “I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.” He pulled the truck over to the roadside and yanked up the parking brake. He was out of the truck and around to the other side before she could jam down the door lock. “Why are you trying to lock me out?” He reached across her waist and pushed in her seatbelt release.
She crossed her arms over her chest and kept her gaze locked on the road ahead.
Any other time, he would have taken it for the snub she intended it to be, but she was difficult to take seriously with her entire body shaking and teeth rattling like stacked plates during an earthquake.
Sighing, he pulled her out of the truck and wrapped his arms around her. He chafed her back with his palms, and said, “Shrew, you are no good to me like this.”
“G-g-great. I’ll check in with Dana and go home. I mi-miss sleeping in my own b-bed. Maybe Doc can figure out wha-what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing—” He clamped his lips shut, remembering what Mr. Ursu had said. He needed to rouse her lazy bear—make her angry enough to stand up and growl back. That meant he had to offend the bear’s vessel, whom already was angry, but not in a way her bear particularly cared about.
Her chin brushed his sternum as she tipped her face toward his. “What?”
Lie. Make something up. “Um. There’s nothing I can do for you out here on the roadside. Let’s go take care of business at the bunker and get you a cup of coffee. We can cuddle later.”
She snorted. “Cuddle?”
“No need to be clinical about it, Tam, but if you’d prefer I do it that way…”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, if it were just medical intervention, I wouldn’t enjoy it so much.”
A slight narrowing of her eyes reminded him of talking to some foreigner who knew English in theory, but when confronted with a native speaker, couldn’t make sense of all the words in the speed they were spoken in. He knew, though, that Tamara’s English was as good as his, so the only thing being lost in translation was motive. She was likely suspicious, and had the right to be.
He’d spoken the truth, though. He liked holding her, and feeling like he was good for something besides hurting people. Healing felt so fucking much better than harming. And also, he needed her trust. If she didn’t trust him, he couldn’t anger her in the way her father claimed he needed to. He wished it didn’t have to be him. He would much rather some other Bear make her angry—send her to the precipice—so he could swoop in and clean up the mess he’d made, but this was an intimate, messy thing.
This was his chore. If he wanted the woman, he had to take his medicine, and he knew it’d be bitter going down for both of them.
“I think I’ll be okay until we make it back to the cabin.” Her fingers made a gentle press at his chest, not really pushing him away, as though her heart weren’t really in the action. “Try to keep the hormones at bay, okay?”
“I don’t know if I can help it. Maybe you should crack the window or something.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
She climbed back in and he tucked the blanket he kept behind his seat around her, and drew the seatbelt over her cocooned body. Before closing the door, he leaned against the frame and waited for her to meet his gaze.
“What?” she asked.
“We are together, you know that right?”
Her face was a blank canvas, devoid of expression, and the stillness of it made those spring green eyes of hers look cold all of a sudden.
If she refused him now, he didn’t know what he would do with himself. Yeah, his bear would be unsettled at the slight, but he—Bryan—would register the burn more keenly than any rejection he’d experienced in recent history. The stakes were so high now. Everything falling apart and coming together all at once. This woman was meant to be in his future, and he would prefer it be with her by his side and not at his back.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice was so soft, if he hadn’t also been Bear, he might not have heard it at all.
“Good.” He shut the door.
___
Astrid waited near the bunker’s road turn-off in her rented sedan and followed the duo down the path toward the stream and rock face where the bunker entrance was situated.
Immediately after parking, Astrid joined them at the truck and wrapped her arms around Tamara in a warm hug.
As a general rule, the Shrews weren’t a particularly outwardly emotional bunch, but they had an unbreakable bond that would have been difficult for outsiders to understand. They were responsible for each other, in a way. If one of them should be hurt or worse, killed, the damage to their psyches would be irreparable. They worked so well as a team because of their unerring trust in each other. Even when they all cast their skeptical eyebrows up at Tamara for her sometimes-rash behavior, she mostly felt it was the gentle scolding done by sisters who cared, and not by judgmental outsiders.
Astrid pushed her dark brown bangs out of her eyes and let Tamara lead her to the rear of the truck. They both grabbed grocery sacks handed to them by Bryan, whom Astrid cast a sour look at, and headed toward the bunker entrance.
Bryan led the way, carrying the paper towels, and set down his bundle at the door. “Let me do a quick scouting to make sure everyone is in the cells they were left in.”
Tamara nodded, and he pushed the heavy door in and disappeared down the corridor.
Left alone with Astrid, Tamara didn’t know what to say in response to the searching stare her friend gave her. There were so many questions in that stare, and Tamara wasn’t sure she had answers to any of them.
“Go ahead and say whatever it is you’ve been holding back,” Tamara said, shifting her weight.
“Fine. I will. And where’s your holster?”
“Not wearing it. Been doing hand-to-hand fighting mostly.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Astrid fixed an accusing stare on Tamara. “Because we take the path of least resistance, remember? We’re not caped crusaders. If there’s trouble, we aim and warn.”
And that usually broke up about sixty percent of their would-be tussles.
“I’m aware of that, but it’s more like a rule of thumb than a formal guideline.”
“Maybe Dana needs to make it a guideline, then.”
Tamara shrugged. “Okay.”
Leaning her head toward the open door, Astrid whispered, “I would like to say this isn’t like you, taking a side case on your own and not checking in for a week, but it is like you. I just don’t understand why you’d do it.”
“The why is simple. I want to go home. I know the Were-creature politics have pretty much ruined Patrick’s life and it’s all trickling down to Dana’s, so naturally we should be here where the shit is at its worst. The cops back in the Triangle can work the cases we’re not there to do, right?”
One of Astrid’s pristine eyebrows arched toward her bangs.
“Look, I want to get my life back to normal, too, but I want to do it in a way that keeps our team intact. The fact you did this without running it past Dana—”
Tamara transferred a grocery bag to her left hand and put her right hand up. “I already got this lecture from Sarah.”
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t privy to that conversation, so you’re going to get it again. Do you think Dana would have said no if she knew what the plan was?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I believe it’ll make things worse before they get better. Dana’s all about keeping the peace, but I think in this instance that’s a mistake. The Bears got themselves into this trouble because they were too peaceful to even defend themselves from an internal attack. They wouldn’t cast out the people who were doing them harm. Now, there’s more bad than good in the group, and the folks who would want to be let out can’t be. Gene won’t have it. He needs the manpower. People to do his dirty work. That’s what Bryan is trying to bring down from the inside.”
Astrid opened her mouth to say something, but Bryan returned, reaching down for the bundle of paper towels.
“All clear,” he said.
Tamara bobbed her head toward the open door and Astrid nodded. They walked down the hall and up the stairs in silence, not speaking again until they dropped the grocery bags on the small kitchenette counter, and Dustin whistled with appreciation.
“That our new jailer? Hey, girl. I’m Dustin, but you can call me Dusty or baby or whatever you want.”
Astrid, with her back turned to the catcalling Bear, fondled the butt of her Sig Sauer pistol and ground her teeth.
Bryan’s growl had the other bear quickly recanting.
“Sorry!” he called out from his cell. “Can’t help myself. It’s like a sickness. I mean, can you blame me? I like the ladies. Healthier than weed, right? Well, maybe not.”
“Fortunately, I won’t be here very long. I’m just here as a patch until Dana can figure something else out,” Astrid said to Tamara, although she was eyeing Bryan.