“The Mac an Tsaoirs aren’t here either. Something’s wrong!”
Gunnar skulked nearby, lit by the glow of the great, blazing bonfire set on the beach. “He has run. Perhaps those closest with him have aided the escape. Perhaps they have all run. No man may miss his own trial, or scorn the council in this manner. It is forbidden.”
“No! No way! He hasn’t left this island!” Hunter insisted; Riona gestured him quiet.
“We must declare them fugitives,” she said to the assembled bears on the sands. “Their rights are stripped. Dane cannot stand for Alpha. The Mac an Tsaoirs are banned from our Gathering. The girl’s life is forfeit.”
“No one will touch the girl.”
The voice was loud and strong, fearless—shocking.
There was a gasp and ripple in the crowd; it parted at its fringes to let someone in. Dane stepped through, soaking wet and carrying an equally drenched Ginger. She was unconscious, hanging limp in the firelight. The tide was coming in, loudly, behind them.
“Ginger! My God!” Hunter said, starting forward; Riona rose a restraining hand to him again.
“What has happened?” she asked, gazing at Dane with the girl in his arms.
“A trick! A trick to soften your judgment. It’s treachery,” hissed Gunnar; Riona silenced him with a look.
“No one will touch this girl,” Dane repeated, his voice steel.
There was a silence: no sound but the rolling waves and the brittle stir of driftwood. The bears on the beach looked at each other, at Dane, at Hunter; at their elders, confused.
“Why,” asked Riona, calmly, the bonfire gusting, “shall no one touch her, Dane? She has no right to be here. She is human.”
“No,” Dane answered, his eyes pure gold. “No one will touch her, because she’s one of us.”
Between a Boss and a Beast
(Alphas of Storm Isle: Part 4)
By Sophie Chevalier
Table of Contents
(Part 4: Between a Boss and a Beast)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 1
Ginger knew what guilt felt like.
It hurt. It was painful, really, more than anything else. It was a load of rocks in your chest.
The only cure was forgiveness—assuming you could get forgiveness. If you couldn’t, if there was no absolution, then it hurt even worse. Pure, unleavened guilt.
Raw, unrefined, uncut, unprocessed guilt.
And that was exactly what she wanted Dane to feel.
It was morning. Sunny. She could hear that the Mac an Tsaoirs were up—the children were already getting loud—but she stayed rolled in her quilt in the bed loft, facing the unfinished wood of the wall. It didn’t seem worth it to get up.
A spoon was being banged on the table downstairs; the baby started to cry. One of the toddlers shrieked. She could hear Eimhir trying to hush them.
There was a smell of food, but it turned Ginger’s stomach. If she’d been faced with a spread of nothing but chocolate cake, chicken samosas, and strawberry éclairs, she still wouldn’t have been able to touch it.
It wasn’t because she wasn’t hungry. She was hungry.
But she was hungry for meat.
She was hungry for fish, wet from the river; for venison so fresh that it steamed; for winter-killed elk, sharp and cold.
She’d never wanted these things before, and she hated wanting them now. She hated Dane for making her want them. For making her a monster—something less than human.
The sounds of the family having breakfast downstairs were cheerful and normal, but they left her cold. It was a family of animals, and now she was an animal too.
She closed her eyes, but didn’t doze. Gradually the meal downstairs finished; she heard the back door open and close, and then the sounds of the toddlers thumping and tussling on the deck outside.
What time was it?
Well, what did it matter, anyway?
“Ginger?”
Someone was coming up the loft ladder: Catríona. Ginger didn’t stir. It’d been days since she’d given much evidence she was even alive.
“I brought you food.”
She forced herself to answer that. “I’m not hungry, Cat.”
“Yes, you are. Sit up.”
“Alright. I am. But not for breakfast food.”
Cat sighed. “Sit up, Ginger—please. It’s hot. I made it specially for you.”
Stiffly, Ginger pulled herself into a sitting position, running a hand through her dirty, mussy hair. The borrowed T-shirt she was wearing—a souvenir from some fishing competition of Angus’s—smelled unwashed, but that was her fault.
“Here. Buckwheat porridge, with jam and oats.”
Catríona set it in Ginger’s lap, on top of her folded-back quilt. It was in a pretty blue breakfast bowl, one chipped on the lip. Maybe one of the children had played with it.
“Thank you,” Ginger said automatically. The jam swirled into the porridge—thick, purple, and seedy—smelled sweet and hot. “What kind of… what variety is this? On top?”
“Boysenberry. Eat up.”
Ginger took the spoon, but it felt foreign in her hand. A flash of what she really wanted—cold, thundering water, with pink-and-blue salmon running the current—blinded her.
“It’ll all pass, Ginger,” Catríona said quietly. “All of it. You’ll be alright.”
“I don’t want to be alright. I want to be me.” Tears stung her eyes.
“You’re still you, honey,” Catríona soothed. “There’s just a new side to you, that’s all. You’ll learn it, and you’ll be fine. I promise.”
“I can’t go home. I’m from the city. You said bears can’t live there.”
Catríona hesitated. “Dane does it.”
“I’m not Dane!”
“You’re his woman, that’s—”
“I am not!” Ginger exploded, almost upending the porridge bowl. Her eyes flashed. “I am not his woman. No.”
“Alright,” Cat clucked, undisturbed. “Shhh… Listen, mo muirnín, you’ll get through this. We all want to help you. The first step to feeling better is eating this breakfast. Just focus on that.”
“Funny,” Ginger muttered bitterly, “because a few days ago, everyone here wanted to kill me. Now they all want to help?”
“The porridge, love.”
“What’s the second step, if this is the first?” Ginger forced a spoonful into her mouth. It was warm and thick and felt good going down, she had to admit.
“A shower,” Catríona said firmly. “It’s only cold water we’ve got, but it does the trick. And you need it, honey. Take it from a friend.”
***
The shower was outside, and as cold as the waters of Baffin Bay. Ginger had to bite back a shriek as the head rained floods down on her.
As fast as she could, she washed herself, able to hear the children playing on the deck nearby over the drumming of the water. It was a wooden stall, barely private, and the planks underneath were slick with fine moss.
She worked shampoo into her hair. How had she ever gotten into this? Would she ever go home? Was she doomed to spend the rest of her life like this? Living in Kootenay with Riona’s people? Living with the Mac an Tsaoirs on Cape Breton? Living with Hunter, tooling up and down the Pacific coast on his boat?—
Hold on.
She froze, the lather thick in her waves.
His boat.
One of Eimhir’s children screamed; there was the sound of a tussle on the boards. Angus’s voice was telling them to break it up and play like nice cubs, or go inside; she could hear his heavy footsteps on the wood.
Why should I stay here? I don’t have to stay here. Is there any law on me to make me stay here? Now that I’m—like this? Bears can go where they want. Not like humans.
The children whined, but then they started to laugh. Angus laughed too.
I’m one of them. I’m free in their eyes.
I’m free and I can go. I’m going to go. Just go.
I can’t stand this anymore. I’ll go home.
Faster than she ever had, she rinsed her hair, soaped and washed her body, and ducked out.
It barely occurred to her to wear a towel; the human part of her only managed to remind her at the last second to wrap up. Her natural shame was almost totally gone.
***
“Catríona.”
“Ginger?” Catríona was making lunch, chopping carrots on the cabin’s messy, pan-and-dish-crowded pine counter.
“I want to go on a walk.”
Catríona looked up. Her eyes sharpened, but she didn’t speak. Then, finally: “Remember to take your amoxicillin.”
Amoxicillin. Amoxicillin-clavulanate. Bears, the Mac an Tsaoirs had explained, healed better and faster than humans, and more cleanly, too. Still, they’d insisted she take a course of antibiotics—in case Gunnar’s mouth was “full of poison,” as Eimhir had put it, tightly. The wound on Ginger’s thigh had closed, but it still tingled, and the places where his teeth had broken the skin were a raw, fishy pink. Catríona was on meds also, because he’d put his mouth on her too. Bastard.
“Alright.”
“The pills are by the sink. Pour yourself a glass and pop one, hon.”
“Alright,” Ginger repeated, stepping to it. She filled a cup, placed the pill in her mouth, and downed it.
“Take my spare jacket.”
“Cat… no, I couldn’t. I’m already wearing your closet.” Her plaid shirt and thick, shapeless jeans were Catríona’s. She’d had to roll up the arms and legs because she was so much shorter. Only the Bean boots were her own.
“Take it. It’s that suede one, there.”
“I don’t…”
“It’ll give me piece of mind,” Cat insisted inflexibly. “Wear it. There’s a real chill in the air today.”
Ginger held back a sigh. “Okay. I will.”
“Will you be back for dinner?” Cat flashed her a concerned, brow-furrowed look.
Ginger hesitated. “I might be.”
“Alright. Don’t go too far. Stay in our territory.” She cut right through a fat, hard potato. “You’ll know where it ends now.”
“Okay,” Ginger said, terser than she’d meant to. Cat didn’t seem offended.
She strode to the cabin wall, took down Catríona’s spare coat—it was a soft, fawn suede, slightly worn, with big white borg lapels and huge pockets. She zipped it up.
“Back before dark, at least,” Cat said, just before she stepped out the door.
Ginger lowered and then raised her eyes. “Back before dark.”
And she left.
Chapter 2
Catríona was right. She could tell she was in the Mac an Tsaoirs’ territory now, with all the new senses she had. She could smell where they’d rubbed on the trees, and not just Angus’s scent, but Cat’s and Eimhir’s—strong, omnipresent; proprietary.
It was strange, smelling everything like this—so acutely, so powerfully, so totally. She kept putting a hand over her nose to block out all the scents, but they still reached her, hundreds of them. The forest smelled damper and richer than usual; she could smell the fast musky heat of the squirrels and the cold dewy greenness of the ferns; she could smell the wet bark of the trees and the sharp stiffness of the needles. It was so distracting that she almost walked through a strand of spiny devil’s club.
She reached the border of the Mac an Tsaoirs’ territory with their neighbors’. The neighbors had a pungent, paw-pad-leathery smell; Ginger didn’t know it, or them. But she knew that past their turf was Hunter’s cabin.
She crossed the boundary line, not caring about bears’ borders.
***
There it was. Hunter’s cabin, grey smoke curling from its woodstove’s chimney. She crossed the clearing toward his home, the spruce and yellow cedar creaking in the wind.
He was outside, chopping wood. But he sensed her—smelt her—looked up and saw her. He’d been about to split a log, but the axe dropped right out of his calloused hands.
“Ginger.” His voice was a whisper.
She stopped three or four feet away from him, watching him. She knew her face was closed, almost unfriendly, but she couldn’t help it.
There was no sound but a vesper sparrow’s tittering and the groan of the woods for a long minute.
“Have you seen yourself?” he asked quietly. His expression was half-horrified, half-captivated. “In a mirror?”
“No. Why?”
“Your eyes. Your eyes have gold in them.” His gaze was locked on hers. “It’s really true. About you… my God.”
“Yeah, it’s true.” His look—too intense, too engrossed by her face—irritated her. “Pick up your jaw, Hunter, it’s not that shocking. Everyone knows.”
“You’re one of us.” His voice was low. She could smell the sweat on him, smell the thick fiber of his flannel. Smell his salt-and-evergreen scent. “You’re like me.”
“And fuck my life because of it!” she exploded. “This is not something I wanted! I am not happy!”
“No—I know,” he said, raising a hand. “Listen, have you changed yet?”
Her blood iced up. “Changed?”
“Yeah. You know what I mean by that, Ginger, come on. Changed forms.”
Cold anger choked her. How dare he talk about the thing she was most afraid of?
“No,” she managed thickly.
“That’s not good.” He was serious—worried, even. “You need to.”
“I won’t.” The thought of being six hundred pounds of musky, furry muscle was more than she could bear. I’m human. I’m a girl! I’m not an animal! “I’m not going to.”
“You need to,” he repeated. “It’s bad for a changeling to wait. The need builds up until they lose con—”
“Don’t. Don’t call me that. I won’t be that. I don’t want any part of this world.”
“I know,” he said again. “But it’s too late to go back. It can’t be undone, Ginj! I know you’re upset, but—”
“Take me home.”
There was a pause; she’d blindsided him. “’Scuse me?”
“I want to go. That’s my right now. Isn’t it? I can go, I can come, I can fly off to China.” She rose her arms demonstratively, like an airplane. “I’m free. I’m equal to everyone else. I can make choices, and I choose to leave.”
“Leave? You can’t.”
“Yes, I can.”
That twisted him up. “I mean… you can… but… fuck, Ginger, you have no idea. You just have no idea. You think you’re burning up with instincts now? New ones, scary ones? It’s just going to get worse. You need us. You need to—”
“Don’t tell me what I need. I’m sick of being told what I can and can’t do, and where I can and can’t go, and whether I can or can’t live. I’m tired of hearing about who I might belong to.” Her voice thickened with disgust. “Isn’t it enough that you people turned me? Made me something—something I’m not? Something animal?”
“Ginger…” But she didn’t want to hear or see him be sorry for her. She didn’t want his sympathy.
“Hunter. Take me back. Back across the strait.”
“I won’t.”
“Take me to Saltspring Island.”
“No.”
Her voice rose; a real note of pleading slipped in. “Please! Please take me, Hunter. I want to go. Let me go.”
“Ask MacAlister to take you,” he answered, getting gruffer while she got softer. She could tell it hurt him to hear her begging.
“No.”
“He said no, too?”
“No, I mean I won’t ask him. I won’t talk to him. I don’t want to see him.”
Hunter hesitated. “He saved your life, Ginger.”
She stared at him, biting her plush bottom lip, knowing she looked upset. “Saved me, but not my life.” The wind roughened; a
dead pine branch fell behind her in the woods. She was tired of the woods. “This isn’t my life. It’s not my life.”
“Ginger…” She was wearing him down.
“Please. I can’t stay here. I won’t.”
He stared at her for a long time; she could see the wheels turning in his head. Finally, he bent down, picked up his axe, and thumped it into the chopping stump. “You know what, Ginger? Okay. I will take you.”
Why? What changed his—no. Doesn’t matter. I’m getting off this horrible island.
“Now?”
“Yeah. Now. Come in, I’m just gonna get some stuff.”
He went indoors and she followed. His cabin was the same as always: rustic, crowded with gear and tackle, pine and fish and charcoal smelling. She leaned on the wall near the door while he got a bag down from a hook and started stuffing things into it.
“You going on a trip?”
“Mind your business, Ginger.”
She frowned, turned away; crossed her arms.
After a few minutes he seemed ready. He swung the pack onto his back, gripping the frayed strap.
“Do you want a snack?”
“Cat fed me.”
“Hmm.” There was a glint in his eyes. “Force-fed you?”
“Intubation, basically,” she admitted. “We good?”
“Guess so, if you’re not hungry. Get my jacket down. You’re standing right next to it.”
She turned, saw his canvas field jacket hanging on a peg, and pulled it down. It was surprisingly heavy.
“Here,” she said, handing it off to him; their knuckles touched, and she yanked her hand back like she’d been shocked. Hot, almost irresistible impulses were flooding her from that simple contact.
Images of him biting her throat hard enough to leave a mark—of his hands gripping, bruising her hips—of him holding her down—animal things, animal desires—
“Ginger,” he said, bringing her back to reality.
Her underwear had moistened. He was looking at her like he saw right through her. Like he knew.
Alphas of Storm Isle (Complete Boxed Set: Books 1-5): Werebear Shifter Menage Romance Page 17