by T. S. Joyce
“Impatient for battle?” Chase asked, studying the lineup of trainees he had for the rest of the day on his clipboard.
“Yes.” He inhaled deeply. “And no. It feels like I have so much more to lose than the other battles now. We’ve been in peace-time for so long.”
“That and you have Hannah now,” Chase muttered. Women made dominant bear shifters weak. If these two knuckle-heads beside him couldn’t see that, they were blind.
“I think she’s pregnant,” Riker said, though when Chase turned a shocked gaze to his alpha, it looked like he hadn’t meant to say the words out loud.
“Are you serious, man?” Brody asked.
“Shit,” Riker muttered. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s just a hunch.”
“Why do you think she’s pregnant?” Chase asked carefully.
“She smells different.” Riker cleared his throat. “And she tastes different.”
Chase arched his eyebrows, suddenly more intrigued. “Tastes different, how?”
“You know how, you pervy bastard.”
“Does she think she is?” Brody asked.
“She hasn’t acted like she does.”
Brody cocked his head. “Well, why don’t you enlighten her then?”
“Because what if I’m wrong? She’d be devastated. She wants a baby so bad. I can’t just tease her with something like that.”
“Again,” Chase called out as Joanna and Brad separated, panting. “I don’t understand. She’s human. Isn’t it supposed to be next to impossible for us to breed with humans?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like I was looking for it to happen so soon, if ever. I know she wants one, but I was prepared to forego fatherhood if it meant I got Hannah. And Jesus, it took Jenny and Blaine years to get pregnant. This just isn’t something I considered.”
“So, you don’t want a baby?” Chase understood that. Pairing with a mate was scary enough, but if he had a child with one, he would be tethered to her fate even tighter.
“Of course I want a baby. I want a little girl who looks like Hannah. But I swear to God, if you repeat any of this I’ll skin you both.”
Riker could do it too. Chase had been to battle with his alpha many times. The man hid a bloodthirsty beast inside of him.
Brody narrowed his eyes speculatively at his mate. “Jo is going to freak out.”
“Oh, no. You’re not even allowed to tell Joanna,” Riker said. “That’s an order.”
“Why not?”
“Because she and Hannah are close, and she’ll tell her. No. It stays between us until I know for sure.” Riker sauntered off and said over his shoulder, “I mean it.”
“Congratulations!” Brody called.
Riker didn’t turn around and Chase couldn’t be sure from behind, but the alpha’s cheeks swelled like he was smiling. Riker used to never smile. Congratulations? Brody had lost his damned mind. Their battle-hardened alpha was already balking against a war with the Long Claws because Hannah made him softer. Having a child would turn him into a marshmallow.
Chase would never, ever allow himself to fall for a woman like that again.
He spat onto the mud beside his feet and yelled, “Again!”
****
This was a terrible idea. Anya fidgeted in the bus seat and reminded herself to breathe for the tenth time in the past hour. Every mile that drew her closer to Bear Valley made her panic a little more. Already, it felt like the oxygen had been sucked from the bus and she eyed the window latches as the closest means of escape.
Nathan didn’t love her. He couldn’t if he could throw her to an enemy clan so easily. He hadn’t even said goodbye.
Maybe she should just run away. Make her way in the world alone and hope Nathan never caught up to her to make good on his promise to kill her if she didn’t succeed. Perhaps over time, he’d just forget about her completely. She chewed on her thumbnail and stared out the window as the blur of green alder and pine passed by. No, he’d hunt her to the ends of the earth if he felt she’d slighted him. That’s what he was doing with Joanna now. She’d never escape his wrath.
Plus she needed the sanctuary of the Long Claw Clan. It was too risky to live in the human world. She had to succeed on this mission or she’d be doomed to a painful end.
“Where are you headed?” an older woman with blue-tinged hair and thick glasses asked from the seat beside her. She smelled like hairspray.
“Sheridan,” she squeaked. Humans were terrifying. And why did the woman feel obligated to sit right beside her when there were so many empty seats on the bus?
“Ah, small town girl, huh? I’m going farther down the line to visit my daughter and grandchildren.” She pointed to Anya’s naked ring finger. “You’re not married yet?”
Anya shook her head. Honestly, she didn’t even know if she was mated, much less involved in the human tradition of marriage.
“Ah, well you have plenty of time.” Her voice cracked with age. “You’re young still. Of course, in my day everyone got married young. I was seventeen when I married my first husband, Stewart.”
“Your first husband?” She thought humans were monogamous, but perhaps she’d been mistaken.
“He died in the war. Took me years to get over him and move on, but I wasn’t made to be alone forever. Besides, Stewart wouldn’t have wanted me mourning him for the rest of my days. He was selfless like that.”
She thought of how Nathan couldn’t let go of anyone he deemed his, and felt wistfulness for a relationship like the one the old woman had shared with Stewart.
Anya gave her a polite smile and turned her head toward the window once again. Her reflection in the pane looked scared, and she closed her eyes against the sight of her weakness. It wasn’t a new reflection. She’d been like this for the past two years. Sometimes she hated the person she had become, and now she would be a spy in a pathetic attempt to remain mated to a man who didn’t care for her. She swallowed bile down and hoped she wasn’t going to be sick right here in front of all these humans.
The bus pulled through a town, a small one compared to some of the others the bus had taken her through since leaving Wyoming. An old, dilapidated sign read Welcome to Sheridan, and she stiffened. This was it. Nathan had told her she was to get off here.
This was the first time she had ridden a bus, and she leaned forward on the edge of her seat. Would the bus driver stop, or was she supposed to tell him this was where she was supposed to get off? The main drag wasn’t that long, and they were coming to the end of it.
“Sir,” she called, hefting her wheeled luggage and scrambling over the old woman. “I need to get off here.”
The bus driver was a handsome man, with caramel colored skin and a bright white smile. His eyes found hers in the rearview mirror and he braked. “You sure?”
“Is that okay?” she asked timidly. She hated disappointing anyone and the man was frowning at her.
“Of course, it’s just…I’ve never dropped anyone off here. Not many people live in these parts. This is usually just a drive-through town.”
“This is Sheridan, Montana, right? At the base of the Big Horn Mountain range?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Okay,” she said, relieved. “This is it, thank you.”
The door hissed and opened, and she gave the bus driver one more timid wave before she stepped onto the pavement and lowered her floral-patterned luggage to the ground. The doors closed as the bus pulled out, and she stood here like an idiot in the dust shower.
Tasting grit, she scrunched up her face and turned in a full circle. Right. Now what. She scanned the town, but it seemed to be almost abandoned except for a few cars in front of an old diner and a police cruiser in front of the law enforcement office at the end of the street. Nathan hadn’t really explained how to get to Bear Valley from here, only that she needed to get creative. Whatever that meant. She knew the direction at least, so she pulled up the handle on her suitcase and dragged it along behind her, grateful she’d str
apped sneakers to her feet when she’d dressed this morning. There were roughly thirty miles from here to the center hub of Bear Valley, if Nathan’s directions were right. She tried to estimate how long it would take her to walk that, but the number was too depressing to dwell on for long.
By mile three, her stomach growled and she would’ve cut off her own pinky for a tall glass of ice cold Pepsi. Maybe she was lacking the creativity Nathan had assumed she harbored. This was probably not at all what he’d had in mind, but it wasn’t as if she could just go ask a human to give her a ride to bear shifter territory. They were probably already going to skin her alive. If she showed up with humans, the Bear Valley Clan would torture her.
She’d heard stories.
Shadows stretched across the road as the sun sank lower in the sky. She was going to have to walk through the night and she was already tired and sweaty, and her legs felt like lead. She wasn’t conditioned for physical activity anymore, and something about that didn’t sit well with her. She was a bear shifter, one of the strongest creatures on earth, and her legs were complaining about walking?
All of the pampering that had occurred since she’d become mate of the alpha suddenly seemed less valuable than she’d originally thought. Pampering had left her weak. Maybe when she got back, she would ask Nathan if she could do some training with the other bears he was preparing for battle. He would say no, that it wasn’t her place, but she could try. Maybe if she asked long enough, and pestered him, he would let her. She was obviously less coveted than the other mates anyhow, so maybe he would let her do it just to get her out of his hair. If she didn’t ask, she’d never know for sure.
Bolstered by a plan to become stronger, she lifted her chin higher and picked up her pace. The breeze was turning cooler and the forest was starting to come to life with night sounds. Crickets, frogs and locusts filled the evening air and she smiled to herself. This place would be beautiful if it didn’t hold such an awful clan of bears. She should appreciate this eternal hike, because at the end of it, she would probably be skewered and roasted over a fire and eaten by cannibal bears. The thought gave her chills and she stopped and pulled an oversized cotton hoodie from her luggage.
Nathan hated when she wore comfortable clothes, but he wasn’t here right now, so she had packed all of her favorites. He liked her in dresses with no panties. She’d explained to him once that dresses weren’t the best for working in the gardens, but he’d become angry and didn’t talk to her for three days because she’d defied him. Funny how her sticking up for herself always read as defiance to him. At least on this lonely stretch of road, she could stomp as much as she wanted and not worry about all the eggshells she’d been walking on for the last two years.
A siren blared behind her and she nearly jumped out of her skin. What kind of terrible shifter didn’t hear a car coming up behind her? True, her bear was hiding deep inside of her, scared of her own shadow as usual, but still. Frightened, she shielded her eyes from the flashing red and blue lights and squinted against the headlights that were threatening to singe her retinas.
“Miss, can I help you?” a man in a police uniform asked as he stepped from the driver’s seat of the cruiser.
“Uh, no? I’m fine. Just visiting some friends up the road.” Shit, was he going to arrest her? She wasn’t jaywalking or anything, but he wasn’t getting back in his car either.
“It’s not safe on this stretch of road at night. Or during the daytime either, for that matter.” His voice sounded like a careful warning.
Oh, she knew that. The monsters up in these mountains were going to rip her to shreds, but she was helpless to do anything about it. Nathan ruled her life, and he’d decided she would put herself at risk, so she was. “I’ll be all right. Thanks for your concern.”
He approached slowly. “My name is Blaine. I’m the sheriff of Sheridan. I’m on my way home but it just doesn’t sit right with me leaving you out here hiking along the roadside. Can I offer you a ride?”
“Uhh.” She frowned at the dark road before her. How could she shake him? He smelled human, and she couldn’t ask him to take her to Bear Valley without pissing off some seriously scary bears. He didn’t seem like he was budging though. Maybe if he just took her to the mouth of Bear Valley’s main road in, he’d leave her alone. Shyly, she dropped her gaze to his immaculately polished leather shoes and asked, “Do you know where Bear Valley is?”
Narrowing his eyes, he canted his head. “You’re trying to get to Bear Valley?” His voice sounded lower, but maybe she was just imagining his tone of suspicion.
“Yes.” Her voice came out a squeak. He was human and a gun gleamed from a holster at his hip and he was really, terribly scary when he was glaring at her like that.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Anya Bure.”
“Of what clan?”
The question made her gasp. He shouldn’t know about clans. He was other—one they hid from. If she answered him, would he take her admission and burn her with it? Did the humans of Sheridan know about the Bear Valley shifters?
“My wife lives in Bear Valley,” he explained.
“Your wife?”
He rubbed his hand over the two day scruff on his jaw and lowered his voice again. “My mate.”
“But you’re human,” she said, baffled.
It seemed to be enough, because as soon as she hinted that she was more than she probably seemed, Blaine turned back for his car and called a terse, “Get in. I’ll give you a ride.”
A human and a bear shifter, married and mated, and now she’d just about seen it all. What was the point if they couldn’t have offspring? Their pairing would be a genetic dead-end. The Long Claws would’ve killed him and his mate for such frivolousness. She looked up the road once more and wondered what kind of clan she was putting herself in front of.
The wheels on her luggage jounced along, and Blaine lifted the burden from her hands and set it gently into the back seat, then opened the passenger side door for her. She smiled her thanks and tried to settle her breathing. She was going to pass out if she didn’t stop panting like an overheated dog.
What if he were lying and he was a shifter-killing human like the ones that dotted their history? What if he were really taking her off into the woods somewhere to kill her slowly, and she’d just hopped in right beside him without even putting up a fight? Stupid.
Panicked, she placed her hand on the door handle and Blaine frowned as he slid behind the steering wheel. “I won’t hurt you. I live on the outskirts of Bear Valley with my mate but the alpha, Riker, is my brother-in-law. I can take you straight to him. I’m assuming you’ve come to see him?”
“Benson Riker is your brother-in-law? And he didn’t kill you for mating his sister?”
Blaine gave a short laugh and looked at her like he was waiting for the punch line. Then he laughed again and shook his head as he pulled back onto the highway. “I imagine his sister would skin him alive if he tried,” he muttered with a smile still lingering in his voice.
She was confused and scared and none of this made any sense. This wasn’t how clans were run. Rubbing her eyes, she counted to ten silently and tried to keep her heart from leaping out of her rib cage.
“I came to see Joanna Penn,” she told him.
Dark eyebrows winged up, he shot her a surprised look. “You know Jo?”
Jo? The name fit her almost sister mate, and for some reason the freedom of her choosing to go by her shortened name made Anya smile. “We were friends once.”
She wasn’t offering any more information and Blaine, the seemingly smart man he was, wasn’t asking. She was glad. Lying had never been a talent of hers and if she was going to get through this, she was going to have to offer as little information about herself as possible.
Chapter Three
It was almost ten o’clock when Blaine pulled the cruiser through the last grove of lodge pole pines. A field of moon-kissed wild flowers and grass swayed in the breeze. Even i
n the dark, the Big Horn Mountains were visible behind the row of homes that lined the clearing. They were capped in snow and stood as sentries over the clan. Lights dotted the windows, and Blaine pulled in front of a big home that looked like a dollhouse.
A fire pit cradled lapping flames that illuminated the happy faces of a small crowd in front, relaxed into bag chairs. Two women held sticks with marshmallows over the fire, but when Blaine pulled to a stop, the sound of laughter died down and one of the men unfolded from his chair. He was huge.
The others followed his lead and Blain opened his door and stepped out. “I found a stray on the side of the road,” he explained as she pulled the door handle.
This was the moment she had been dreading since Nathan decided to throw her away yesterday. Nervous flutters filled her stomach, making her nauseous and shaky.
The big man approached and she sank to her knees in front of him, tilting her face to expose her neck. “I’ve come seeking sanctuary.”
The man looked behind him with a furrowed brow. He was striking in the moonlight. Thicker than Nathan, with designer scruff on his chiseled jaw. His short hair was dark, reddish maybe? She couldn’t tell the color in the shadow of the baseball cap he wore over his forehead. Seconds felt like minutes as he studied her and boldly, she held his gaze. As shocking as her brazenness was to her, it didn’t seem to anger him at all.
“Get off your knees, woman. If you need a safe place to stay, you need to talk to my alpha.”
“Oh. You’re not Benson Riker?”
He snorted and shook his head. “No, ma’am. Riker’s inside getting his mate a drink.”
“On account of him bitch-slapping my beer out of my hand and spilling it everywhere,” a woman near the fire said.
Okay. The great alpha she’d heard so much about was serving a woman a drink. “I’m sorry for my mistake. I just assumed you were Riker because…”
His lips quirked up in a slow smile. “Finish that sentence.” He was authoritative and a little pushy, but with an edge of humor. She didn’t understand him. He reeked of dominance and his words practically dripped with self-confidence, but now he was offering his hand to help her up.