by Celia Kyle
She sighed and shook her head. It would have been a mistake though. Heck, making out with him had been a mistake. The man—werebear—was all wrong for her. Super, duper wrong. Boinking the clan’s head guy would be only that, boinking and boinking alone no matter what he said when passion ruled them. Mia deserved more. She deserved flowers and poems and… Maybe not poems, but at least flowers!
The low ring of her cellphone brought her mind back to the present and snared her from her musings. The familiar, rhythmic beat of the Cups song from Pitch Perfect filled the air. Well, it was really called When I’m Gone, but Mia never could get the image of that actress busting out with a plastic cup and—
The song picked up again, telling her the caller hung up and retried the call. Leaning toward the end table, she snatched the phone and disconnected it from the charger.
“Hello?” She hadn’t even bothered to check the caller ID. Great.
“Hey, little cub.”
Mia smiled. “Hey, Daddy. What’s up?”
“Well, you know I worry and I called your grandfather’s house.” My house, she wanted to growl. It wasn’t much, and it was left to her by her grandfather, but she finally had something to call her own. It was hers. “And you didn’t answer. And then I thought about you surrounded by the clan. Visiting your grandfather in Grayslake is quite different from moving into town permanently.” Her father sighed. “I worry.”
“The clan here is nice.” That was a bit of a stretch considering her altercation with Griss, but stretching the truth was allowed when talking to parents. “I met the Itan and a few other clan members. I’m fine.”
A tense silence filled the conversation. “You met the Itan?”
“Well,” she cleared her throat and squirmed. There was nothing worse than being on her dad’s bad side. Human fathers were protective, but werebear parents were… whoa. “Ty needed help with something so I came by and, um, I’m staying for a day or two.”
“The rest, Mia.”
Silence descended, and she knew he’d wait her out. Dang it. “I, uh,” she cleared her throat. “I met the clan’s Itan. Ty.”
“You’re repeating yourself. You’re on a first name basis with the Grayslake Itan?” A mixture of skepticism and disbelief tinged his words.
Yeah, she understood his feelings. Humans and non-shifting half-breeds—quarter-breeds—weren’t exactly welcome in most clans. It was part of the reason she’d grown up in a human town while her grandfather settled in Grayslake. She’d been tolerated in small doses when she’d visited her grandpa, but moving in was a whole ’nother ball of melon. Van may have smiled at her at when he’d arrested Griss, but his true colors shined through when she’d arrived at the clan’s den and gotten hot and heavy with Ty.
“Yeah.” She swallowed against the growing lump in her throat. “I’m, uh, staying in the clan’s den for, um, a little while.” The words were a mixture between a statement and a question.
“I see. Hold on a second, Mia.”
Darn it. She’d gone from little cub to Mia. That did not bode well for the rest of the conversation. In a handful of seconds, the thud of a door closing came through the phone, and she figured her father had retreated to his office.
“Mia?”
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t you tell me a little more about what’s happened. I talked to you after your boxes were unloaded by the movers, and you didn’t mention any of this.”
She fidgeted. “It’s sort of new.”
“And what is ‘it?’”
More fidgeting. Gah, she felt like she was five years old and about to confess to stealing cookies. “Well…”
She couldn’t lie. So, she told him about the cub and Griss and Ty and more of the cub and… She definitely left out the tingly parts. Her father didn’t need to know about those. Like, ever.
“I see.”
Oh, “I see” was bad. “I see” was what she heard when she got caught by the lake with Bobby Pearson when she was supposed to be at Amanda’s studying. And that had been followed by him grumbling about her mother not being alive to handle the girl-boy stuff and a father wasn’t meant to talk about that and…
Her father sighed. “Ah, little cub. I never shoulda let you go out there. You’ve gotten mixed up with that clan. Curse the old man to heck and back for giving you that place.”
She smiled. Well, if he’d moved on to growling about Grandpa, he couldn’t be too pissed about girl-boy stuff. Not that she’d mentioned girl-boy stuff and Ty, but her dad had always had the ability to read between the lines.
She imagined him sitting in his chair, leaning back in the comfortable seat, feet propped on an ottoman and his humidor resting on the small end table at his side. She heard the distinctive clip of him cutting off the end of a cigar and the familiar flick of his lighter flaring to life. In her mind, she scented the sweet smoke and the way it brought comfort to her. If she were five, she’d crawl into his lap. Heck, even at her age now, she’d gladly sit on his lap for comfort.
“Little cub…” His words were filled with hesitation.
“Daddy?” Tendrils of worry snaked through her, pulling and tugging on her nerves.
“I don’t,” he sighed. “I don’t know how to talk about this.” The rough scratch of his hand across his cheek reached her. She could practically see him running his palm along his head and then down his face. Something he always did when he was upset.
“Dad… I don’t… You’re making me worry.” Worry was an understatement. Her father said something or he didn’t. He wasn’t one to waver and waffle. He never had been.
“I should come there. Tell you in person.” A sigh came through. “Your mother was young when she turned up pregnant with you.”
Mia scrunched her nose at her father’s wording, but it was the “old school” that lived in him. “I know.”
“What no one has ever told you is… I’m not your biological father.”
The words washed through her, sliding into her brain, but she couldn’t make sense of them. Of course, he was her father. Of course! He’d tucked her in each night, kissed her scrapes, and banished every monster that lived under her bed. He cuddled her and held her close after her mother’s death and raised her as a single parent from that second on.
“W-What?” Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe.
“Little cub,” the sound of his palm scraping over the scruff on his cheek reached her once again. “Your mother was sixteen. She never talked about it with anyone but me. Told it once, and that was it. Never again.”
Mia’s eyes burned, the pain stabbing into her. She knew her mom had gotten pregnant young, and her dad stood at her side through it all.
“She went on a date with my best friend, the Itan’s son. Her first date, mind you. She wasn’t like some girls. And he,” her father—whether he liked it or not—coughed and took in a shaky breath. “He raped your mother, little cub. Left her bloody body on her parent’s driveway.” This time he cleared his throat and sniffled. “Two months later, I found her crying in the park. I was on my way home from a clan gathering, and there she was. Even with tears streaming down her face, she was so beautiful.”
“Oh, Daddy.” She could sense how difficult it was for him to say the words, but it was just as hard to hear them. No wonder her mother had hated her grandfather, heck, bears all together. “How…”
“She told me the story and I didn’t doubt her for a second. That town wasn’t like Grayslake, it—”
“Where?” Where did she come from? Where was the man who hurt her mother so she could kill him?
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is he’s gone for good. I challenged him and took care of him, and I’ve been taking care of you and your mother ever since. Your biological grandfather didn’t want anything to do with you, and you became mine.”
A tear streaked down her cheek, immediately followed by another. “I don’t look like you. That’s why.”
“You
’re the daughter of my heart and that’s what counts, Mia. Your mother never wanted you to know all this. She wanted to take it to her grave and made me promise to do the same.”
Her grave. Oh, God. Her grave. Mia’s throat collapsed, but she pushed the mangled words past her lips. “Is that why she…”
Is that why she killed herself?
“She loved you as much as she could, but she finally gave out when you were three. My heart near bursts for you, little cub. Me and you against the world. I watched you take your first breath, I caught you after your first step, and I heard your first word. You’re my little girl.”
A sob finally escaped. He was right. She knew he was, and she couldn’t dismiss the truth in his words, but that didn’t make the shock and pain recede. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“I didn’t want to ever tell you.” He sighed, and she imagined him puffing on his cigar. “But you’re in that town and you caught the Itan’s eye. Little cub, your biological father was the son of an Itan and even though you can’t shift, the blood running in your veins makes you very appealing to other powerful bears. You’re not a quarter werebear, but a full half and a very strong half at that. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“So, this is all biological? With Ty?” She hoped not, but what else was there. She’d gone from practically a virgin to gimme-gimme slut in less than twenty-four hours. “It doesn’t mean anything?”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying take care of your heart.”
Mia squeezed her eyes shut and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “He called me his Itana. I should leave, shouldn’t I? I don’t want some guy because—”
“Itana?”
She nodded and remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yeah, a little bit ago.”
“Then maybe you don’t have to worry about anything. To an Itan, Itana and what the average bear considers a mate are whole different ball games, little cub.” He sighed. “I wish your grandfather were still here. He’d explain things better.” Another puff, puff, puff reached her. “You know you can’t shift. It’s a result of how you were conceived.”
It’s a result of my mother being raped.
“When a cub comes from a mixed couple—one being a shifting bear while the other is a half-breed or human like your grandmother—that cub could be able to shift as long as those two were meant to be together. My father called them fated mates. He said that others were ignorant jackasses if they couldn’t see past their own assholes.”
“Language.” Mia let a small smile form on her lips. From the moment she spoke her first word and began picking up others from strangers, her father had been big on the “no cussing” rule.
Her dad harrumphed but stayed on task. “You didn’t, because of… Well, just because.”
Mia wiped away yet another tear while she tried to absorb her father’s words. “So, if it’s real, I can have cubs? Everyone says that can’t happen. That—”
“Yeah, well, damn near everyone is a speciest pig in bear fur, and they spout what they want you to believe.” Oh, her daddy was on a cussing streak. That meant he was really pissed. A low, rumbling growl that she felt in her bones came across the line. “It’s the truth. It’s not a gamble, little cub; it’s love. Plain and simple.”
And didn’t that leave her a lot to think about. Was this thing with Ty lust? Or the beginnings of love? Was it desire for her or the fact that she had her biological father’s blood in her veins? Then again, all questions paled in comparison to the one spinning in her head.
“Is this why she didn’t love me?”
“Oh, little cub, you’re breaking my heart.” He sniffled, and she pretended not to hear. “She loved you the only way she knew how.”
* * *
Ty cradled his head in his hands, begging his bear to take a back seat so he could deal with the problems in front of him. There was the normal paperwork related to running the clan’s businesses and his job as sheriff, and that was on top of the problem with Griss and Parker. Then there was Mia. Gorgeous, curvaceous Mia.
Who hadn’t reached her peak because his brother had been a sarcastic ass.
Damn, the bear rushed forward again.
“Ty?” Van eased into his musings, but his beast was still too close to the surface and craved his brother bear’s head on a platter.
“Enforcer?”
His brother’s gulp was audible. “Yes, Itan?”
Good, at least the man realized his anger still lingered heavily. Normally, Ty wasn’t such a hot-head. But the past twenty-four hours had been nowhere near normal. After a few snatched moments with Mia, his life irrevocably changed. Shifting cubs and his clan had taken a back seat to all but Mia and what she cared about. Which meant his world now centered on Mia and Parker. “You have one minute, sixty seconds, to deliver your news.” He glanced at his watch. “Go.”
“Griss will be tailed the moment he leaves the jail. Calls to neighboring clans revealed that he was born into a clan in Cutler, Alabama. Left when he was eighteen. Bounced around a bit until he showed up here when his brother and sister-in-law died a week ago and he took over looking after Parker. Things are still murky as to whether he even has a right to the cub, so child services has placed him in your care for the time being. Linda over there says it’s sketchy, but as long as no one takes a long look at his file, you should be fine. You’re not exactly licensed to be a Foster Parent.” Van chuckled, but Ty didn’t find the pause amusing.
“Why’d he leave Cutler?”
“His parents died unexpectedly.” Van’s implication was clear. Rumor was Griss killed his parents.
“I see.”
“And the facts are that Cutler’s Itan, Thomas Holmes, is old as hell. He doesn’t have any cubs of his own. His only son was challenged by his friend at sixteen and lost. Thomas’s brother, Griss’s father, was in line for the job. Then it was going to go to Griss’s brother. Now the only thing standing between Griss and the position of Itan in Cutler is Parker and the old man.”
Ty let his eyes drift closed. “So we think Griss is trying to get rid of the cub to give himself a straight shot to the top.”
“Yup.”
He took a deep breath and let it out nice and slow. “Who else knows he’s in our territory?”
Van shifted in his seat. “You, me, and the Cutler Itan. As far as the line of succession, the old man didn’t even know Parker’s parents had passed.”
“Damn it.”
“I convinced him to stay put for now. I gave him as few details about Parker as possible and simply told him he’s in your household now, but…”
Ty finished his brother’s thought. “But Parker is the next in line and Thomas will want the boy under his roof so he can be trained.” He spat a curse. “Mia’s going to be upset.”
Van cleared his throat, the squeak of leather against leather as he changed position echoed through the room. “About Mia…”
And the bear charged forward, anxious to hear his brother’s words, ready to shove them down Van’s throat if he didn’t like them. “Yes?”
“I heard what you called her.”
His beast huffed. “And?”
“She’s human, Ty.” Van shook his head. “You can’t have a human Itana. Who’s gonna lead us when your cubs can’t shift? Where will the clan be? You have to think of all of us, not just yourself, man.”
Wrong thing to say. Hell, no one should whisper a word about Mia unless it was to praise his choice. The bear was that defensive of what he claimed as his. “Van?”
His brother’s gulp was audible. His animal even managed to tune into the rapidly increasing beat of Van’s heart. Thump, thump-thump, thump-thump-thump.
“Yes, Itan?”
“I grew up thinking of the clan. I live and breathe for the good of the clan. I sweat, bleed, and cry for the clan. From the moment I awaken until the second I go to sleep I do nothing without considering the clan.” The crack and snap of the bones in his fingers drew
his attention to his hands, the human half of him was quickly giving way to the bear inside. No one questioned his dedication. No one. “And if the clan has anything to say about my Itana, they can leave or meet me in the pit.”
“Itan?”
Ty barely heard his brother’s gasp over the massive roar his bear shoved through him. The subtle shift of the bones in his hands suddenly transformed to the rapid-fire push of his bear. His skin melted within a breath, slithering back while the beast slammed into him. One moment he was sitting at his desk and the next he stood on back legs, towering over his now kneeling brother.
He bellowed, mouth wide and teeth bared. It’d been less than a day, and already he’d had enough of his clan members talking badly about Mia, giving Mia the cold shoulder, and practically spitting venom at her as she passed. The only welcoming words she’d received had been from him, Parker, Isaac, and Gigi.
Ty climbed over his desk, the wood creaking beneath his weight, but it didn’t snap. His forefathers had ordered the table built to withstand the massive heft of their shifted bodies. He lumbered through the center of the room, pausing long enough to snarl at his brother, his enforcer.
He knew the rage was over the top, more than excessive, but it was uncontrollable when it came to Mia. Now that he’d met her, his heart beat for her and her alone. To talk bad about her was to disrespect him, and an Itan never tolerated disrespect.
The wide hallway lay before him, the walls built far enough apart to allow full-grown bears to manage the path. He took off down the length, his bear having one destination in mind. Mia could calm him, help him get the bear under control. The beast acted on instinct, it’s black-and-white brain not knowing how to combat verbal wounds. And it hated that. It hated that it couldn’t protect her from everything. It wanted to claw and destroy every syllable flung against her, but fur could do nothing.
The man could. It knew that, as well. So, the bear would go to the female who could pull the human through him. Then he could soothe her. Promise to care for her and make her their Itana.