Burden

by Lila Felix

  Good man, I thought to myself, proud of the fact that he made sure my mate was safe before giving a rat’s ass about possessions or damage.

  “She is here with me. Tell me what you know,” I demanded as I shifted the truck into reverse and started to make my way home.

  “It was two grizzlies, young ones, too stupid to know that we were running patrols. But they came in from the swamp and went directly into your home. Martha called Aspen immediately after she saw them break through the tree line. She called Echo’s phone, but there was no answer. Rev and Aspen were called in. Julian and Saber were on duty, Alpha. They were apparently not trained well enough.”

  I barked back at him, “And where are the grizzlies now? Are they on my land? Which direction did they go?”

  “They chased them North. That was over thirty minutes ago. They are long gone. Rev and Aspen are approaching now. Wait…” He spoke to someone else, and it made me want to reach through the phone and strangle him with my bare hands. “Alpha, they got one. We have a grizzly. Rev is taking him to his cabin and we will restrain him there.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Flint and Aspen are in your home, ready to protect the Coeur. Martha is there too, for your peace of mind. I am going with Rev. Julian and Saber will be there too. They need to be questioned. Be safe Alpha.”

  With that, he hung up. Echo scooted over to me, having overheard most of the conversation. I was doing everything I could to fight my bear, deny him from breaking out of my human shell and tearing every grizzly in my path to bits. She grabbed my hand and brought it to her mouth and kissed it once and then murmured comforting words to me. She wanted me to calm down. She wanted me to take it slow and not tear anyone’s throats out. I assumed she meant my own clan, not the grizzly. Because as soon as I got the information I needed from him, he would be gutted by my claws and none other.

  I entered the lands and I could tell by the way the clan members were all huddled in their homes that their safe feeling of our lands had been compromised and maybe their trust in me.

  I carried Echo inside, despite her protests and made sure the door was locked about fifty times like one of those obsessive compulsive people who do some huffing shit if the door isn’t closed to their whacked out standards. I shifted right there outside of my house and trampled through the lands until I got to Rev’s house. I hadn’t planned it out well, since I was then in bear form without a stitch of clothing to speak of.

  Rev appeared and nodding at me, went back into his home and reappeared with a pair of shorts and turned his back while I phased back and dressed. The journey to his home had done nothing to numb my rage.

  “Where are you from?” The words were spoken directly from my bear through my mouth.

  He glared at me, and Rev took the initiative to clock the guy in the face, busting his lip open, causing blood to flood from the wound.

  Taken over by my anger, I felt the surge of a new power elevate in my core. I’d never felt the power of the Alpha rise, in me but my bear clamored in its presence and so did the grizzly. This was it. This was the true power of the Alpha which could only be brought out by their mate.

  “You will tell us where you’re from and what you were doing here—now!”

  I almost didn’t recognize my own voice as the boom of it reverberated through the room. Rev, Julian and Saber took a step back at my tone.

  “I am from the grizzly clan in South Dakota. You stole our female, and our Alpha has taken ill. He demanded we kidnap her again so she could heal him.” The words came out in a whoosh of forced exit.

  That was easy.

  Kidnap her again?

  “What do you mean again?”

  “Our clan was told of her gifts a long time ago after she was witnessed healing someone as a child. Our Alpha has had cancer for some time, and she healed him over and over every, time it came back. We took her as a cub for him. We had to do his bidding. He ordered us.”

  I turned around, no longer able to look the animal in the eye.

  “And what if you fail?”

  “I did fail.”

  “What is your punishment for failure with Horace?”

  “Death, Alpha.”

  Though the temptation to fulfill that punishment on the criminal myself seemed satisfying, I couldn’t kill someone who was commanded to do a crime. I conjured the new power again, “You will leave here. You are no longer allowed to be a part of any clan. If you ever step foot on any lands that belong to a bear, I will hunt you down and tear your throat out myself.”

  He looked around doe eyed and confirmed what I’d just said before throwing the door open and running at full speed towards nothing.

  “Alpha, he didn’t deserve to live.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he tried to kidnap our Coeur.” It was Rev who interrupted my thoughts.

  I got in his face, “Am I no worse than him? I stole her from her mother without even a second thought. She was taken from her mother, and I repeated the crime myself. If he deserves to die, then so do I.”

  Until the moment those words came from my mouth, I had no clue that in the last minutes I’d began to feel that way. But it was true, nonetheless. I went to the grizzly clan, and yes, saved her from Horace. But instead of trying to find her parents, I selfishly just took her as my own, disregarding our traditions and our law. I was no better than those monsters.

  Mine. Always Mine.

  My bear was fighting me tooth and nail, it had been since I made my decision earlier that day. I slumped back through the woods of our lands, taking the long way and on human feet back to the house. I opened the door to find Echo, Martha, Aspen, and Flint sitting solemn in the living room.

  “Aspen, Flint, you are dismissed.” I sourly seethed their way. They showed their obedience with a baring of their necks and then left swiftly but no further than the porch. It was their choice if they wanted to stay there. I stomped up the stairs and showered, trying to scrub away the entire day. The entire day was hell.

  “You need to start talking—now.” Echo commanded from the other side of the bathroom door.

  I huffed a sound of defiance through my nose and continued to soap up again.

  “I’m not gonna let you turn into your father.”

  “Maybe it’s too late. I’ve been lying to you. I’ve been keeping things from you. Hell, I even broke some bear laws. I’ve already turned into the bastard.”

  “I’m going downstairs,” she replied and I heard her footsteps thumping down the stairs and into the living room. She paced back and forth while I rinsed and decided to face the music—or the Echo. I threw on a pair of black sweatpants and went downstairs. There was no way I could sleep in that state. I expected to see anger, but there were tears upon tears snaking down her face. I’d broken the very thing that caused my heart to beat.

  “Sorry isn’t gonna cover this one, is it?”

  She shook her head, “Not even close.”

  “Then what?”

  “Listen to him.” She didn’t mean a person, she meant my bear. How could I be so stupid? How many times had I implored her to listen to her bear, swearing to her that her bear would never steer her wrong in terms of what I needed from her—what our bears needed from each other.

  I released a great huff of air, closed my eyes and let him guide me. He begged me to hold her, he pleaded with me to soothe her ache. Sitting down on the couch, I pulled her to me and she melted immediately. I told her everything, every single detail about her mother, what it could mean for us if we were separated, about her being kidnapped and about me feeling like I was no better than the rest. I told her about Horace and she confirmed she’d healed him many times form the beginnings of cancer. She shivered in my hold after I ceased speaking. I tried to move, wanting to see her face. There were so many emotions swirling in her head.

  Then after what seemed like hours she got up and left me sitting there and went to bed without another word. I crawled in behind her sometim
e later. I wrapped my arms around her, praying to the Creator she didn’t push me away. She turned in my grasp to face me.

  “I won’t leave you.”

  I didn’t know if that made me happy or not.

  “Your mother has a lot to teach you.”

  “So what? I go and learn more about how to heal and break what we have in the process? There has to be another way.”

  “There’s not. Believe me, I’ve wracked my brain for days about this. If I go you’ll be distracted. And she says everything she needs is at her home, near the land of her people. There’s no other way. If you don’t go, she could easily claim rights over you anyway. And I won’t accept the alternative.”

  “Which is what?” She was getting more and more agitated.

  “The alternative is you stay here, we complete the mating rights, we have cubs, and you are happy…for a while.”

  She pushed back with her hands on my chest, “And then what?” She squinted, daring me to speak the unspeakable.

  “Then you get angry. Either because you can’t heal someone, or because your mother dies without you ever really knowing her and learning from her like you could’ve, or one of the cubs hurt themselves and you’re unable to help them.”

  She flopped on her back and crossed her arms in rebellion. “So what? I’ll get over it.”

  I sat up and chose my next words carefully. I needed her to understand what she was giving up—for a life with me. I could see her reflection in the TV screen, and when she released her arms I began, “You won’t. It will begin with your aggravation over not knowing your mom and not being able to pass your gift on to our children. Then that frustration will turn into full blown anger and it will fester and eat away at you until you realize the target of all that hate—me. Before you know it you’re leaving a room as soon as I enter it, I’m staying out late drinking myself into oblivion because I can’t stand how much my mate despises me and we’ve gone years and years without a hint of love. I won’t do that to you.”

  She rolled her eyes and sat up beside me, “You can’t know that. You’re being dramatic.”

  “Yeah, I can. I was the child of one of those matings.”

  She leaned over and bumped her head on my shoulder, “I swear, I could never hate you.”

  Though I believed her words, I had to stay true to my resolve. So for the night, I would accept her truth and let us be happy. But I wouldn’t let her suffer the fate of my mother.

  She tried to hide a yawn, but I heard it.

  “Come on, we need to sleep. We’ve had a big day and I’m not going in tomorrow. We can sleep in, I can make my mate a huge breakfast and then we can do whatever you want.”

  She threw herself back on the pillow and then wound her arms around my neck, “We didn’t decide anything.”

  “We did,” I said, pulling her tighter to me, “We decided that I love you and I want you to be happy.”

  “Goodnight, Hawke.”

  “Goodnight, Echo.”

  We spent the next week avoiding the elephant in the room. Neither of us spoke of it, but I knew when she stared off in space and furrowed her perfectly shaped eyebrows that she was thinking about it. I came home to her as soon as I could at night after my day off and spent most of the night just staring at the woman who changed my world with the first beat of our hearts.

  But my promise would be kept—even if it killed me.

  He wasn’t with me anymore. Sure, he was in my presence, physically, but there was this notch in our bond that I could hear creaking and cracking as it split us open. And my bear made attempts to reach him through our bond—the anguish she felt after her mate failed to respond was almost too much to handle. But I tried to get through it, hoping to the Creator that he was just going through a rough patch. I thought maybe after my mother visited and he saw that I wasn’t going with her, he would be okay. And certainly she wouldn’t claim some stupid rights over me as if we were in the sixteenth century.

  That Friday night he came in and he was completely on edge. He snapped at me over dinner for no reason and then went to his office for the rest of the night. I sat by myself, read those damned romance novels, and wished for my mate to come back to me in spirit. I imagined this was how his mother felt, isolated and alone, reading her novels while her mate, the Alpha, was secluded in his icy office in his frozen state of mind. I flipped the page of the paperback novel and realized the pages of it were slightly rippled and warped. I moved my thumb over the waves on the paper, leaving a wet spot on the page. I didn’t even know I’d been crying. That’s what the ripples on the pages were—they were the tears of Hawke’s mother as she cried, fantasizing over a life and a love she no longer possessed.

  No, that wouldn’t be me.

  I got up, replaced the book in its shelf, and stalked into the office. Hawke was hunched over his desk working more on his scowl than any actual job. I cleared my throat and I felt a response in his heartbeat, but nothing else.

  “Excuse me, Sir. Have you seen my mate? He’s tall, handsome, loving, sexy as hell and he always spends lots of time with me? I’ve been missing him.” I tried to be sassy and smart but the last sentence broke free coupled with a teardrop.

  He looked up at me and echoed my sentiment, the tears welling up in his eyelids.

  “I’m here,” he croaked, unconvincingly.

  “You’re not. Physically, you’re here, but mentally you’re somewhere else. And your bear…”

  “My bear what?”

  “He pulls away from her,” I rubbed a circle with my fist over my chest, feeling her despair like it was an ultra-painful form of heartburn.

  He stared at me for the longest time and a jumble of decisions flitted through his mind.

  “Run with me,” he demanded with a sad, half smile.

  “Okay.”

  My bear would never deny him.

  I walked out the back door, and I no longer cared for pretentions. I stripped myself bare right in front of my mate but true to his nature, his eyes remained locked with mine. He walked over to me and I gasped at the proximity of us, with nothing on.

  “I will love you forever. I hope you know that. No matter what happens. No matter how far you are away from me, we,” He grabbed my hand and touched it to his chest over his heart, “You will always be our mate, our first thought in the morning and our true desire in the night. Nothing will ever change that.” I was struck dumb by his completely honest profession. Then he bent down slightly and kissed my mark. But before I could grab him and show him how deeply his words had stung me, he’d shifted.

  I smiled as the shift came over me, reveling in the change in posture and gait as my bear took over. It was then that I realized exactly how hurt she was. She didn’t run away playfully, waiting for him to follow. Instead, we just laid down and waited for our mate to reach out to us. I felt the warmth and wetness of his nose as he muzzled my own. But it wasn’t until after a thorough showing of affection that my bear responded. She finally got up, accepting his wordless apology and ran with her mate. He’d done a complete about face and now showered my bear and, in turn, me with love and affection through our run. We shared a meal of swamp rabbit and played under the setting sun. He was mine again in this form, but it was his other form that I really worried about.

  The next morning, he got up before me, whispering a morning greeting into my ear and then slipping out of the room. I put on a long sleeved sweater dress and some black knee-high boots. I’d bought the outfit on one of Martha and my shopping trips. I pulled a brush through my hair and braided it over one of my shoulders. This was it. I was going to meet my mother and I hoped to the Creator I didn’t completely turn her off.

  Hawke walked into the room as I finished up and his heart thumped almost violently in his chest, causing mine to do the same.

  “What?”

  He smiled, and for a second I thought my Hawke had returned to me, “It’s you. What did I ever do to deserve a mate as captivating as you?”

&
nbsp; I blushed under his praise, “You’re you. That’s what. I can’t think of a more deserving male.”

  “Your mother is here, my love.”

  Cardiac arrest took over, “I didn’t hear the door.”

  He chuckled, “She’s pretty graceful and light-footed. Besides, I saw her approaching and she came in behind me. She’s waiting for you in the living room.”

  “Will you stay with me?”

  “Don’t you think you need time with her alone?”

  “I guess so. Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  He took my arms in his hands, “Go down there. She’s very kind. You’ll love her—and if you need me, I’m a breath away.”

  “Okay.” I smoothed down my dress one more time and went downstairs, leaving Hawke in our bedroom.

  I saw her as soon as I came upon the railing of the stairs. She was looking at pictures of Hawke on the mantel, and I realized we’d never taken pictures together. I would have to see what he thought about that later. As my foot landed on the floor, after the bottom step, I muttered a simple, ‘Hello.’

  “Hello Echo. Hawke was certainly right in saying you are very pretty.”

  “I look just like you,” I answered.

  “That’s true. You bear a striking resemblance. And thank goodness for it. We may have never been reunited otherwise.”

  She made no move to hug me, no dramatic tears or dramatic declarations. She stood, a pillar of strength and calm. I half expected a lone breeze to blow through our house and make her white dress billow out around her. That’s the kind of spirit she conveyed, one of tranquility.

  “Hawke says I was kidnapped.”

  She looked at me like I was insane, “Yes, of course, did you think I left my newborn babe in the woods to be eaten?”

  My eyes must’ve given her the affirmation of her sarcasm. “You did. You thought I gave you up?”

  “I was told they’d found me in the woods. Almost twenty years of lies tends to wear down on a person.”

  “Well, I hope it doesn’t take twenty years to reverse it.”

  I shrugged.