Mountain Men II: Primal Hunger

by Mandy Monroe

  "Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth. If. You. Want. To. Live."

  It was clear Bain was on the verge of losing control. Gavin's arms tightened around her and an angry growl rumbled in his chest, low and menacing. She barely had time to process that when she heard a different roar and turned in time to see a shimmer covering Bain's body, his body lengthening and thickening, his face shifting to form the snout of … a bear.

  Maura gasped. Bain roared, and Seth pissed himself in fear. Where Bain was a moment ago, now stood the biggest Grizzly she had ever seen. Seth screamed and Bain slashed him across the face with his claws. Deep cuts swelled and blood ran down his cheek. Bain simply roared again.

  Maura stared, mouth agape, at the scene unfolding in front of her. The head injury must have been more severe than she’d thought if she was hallucinating. Her gaze darted back to Gavin and there was a lion face flickering across his features as if he were struggling to keep from changing, also.

  Her chest constricted and throat closed. Her lungs burned with the need for oxygen, but she couldn't drag in enough air to fill them. Gavin yelled something to Bain but he sounded tinny and far away from her ears. She panted as stars twinkled in front of her eyes and the last thing she registered before darkness took her was looking up in the concerned faces of both men.

  Consciousness returned in small degrees. First she felt the sway of someone walking. There were large arms banded behind her shoulders and knees, and cracking one eye revealed a strong square jaw.

  Bain.

  The events all came rushing back and she struggled to sit up. Bain stopped, but he was reluctant to set her down.

  "Bain put me down."

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. You’ve been through a lot.” His eyes met hers and concern furrowed a crease between his brows.

  Maura couldn't help her gaze bouncing back and forth between the two men. "Wait. What just happened and where is Seth?"

  She wondered if they had killed him while she was out. Would they kill her, too?

  "Seth ran off when our attention was on you and your condition."

  Bain looked contrite.

  "I'm sorry I let him escape."

  "Were you going to kill him?"

  Gavin and Bain exchanged a brief glance, but Bain spoke first.

  "I wanted to, for what he tried to do to you. But I couldn't. I was going to turn him over to the sheriff, file charges, and, well, firing his ass goes without saying."

  "You turned into a bear."

  Bain turned pleading eyes towards hers. She couldn't look at the hurt in his eyes right now. It woke a deep urge to comfort him but she couldn’t do that just then. Her gaze swung to Gavin instead.

  "You were a lion."

  Maura half expected laughter and ridicule at the absurd idea that they turned into animals, but it never came. Gavin spoke first.

  "Maura, sit. Let us explain."

  Her legs lowered her on a nearby rock in an almost instinctive obedience to his instruction. She scrambled away from them, needing distance to process what was about to happen. She was still having difficulty mentally digesting the fact that they weren't denying her accusation.

  "Are you like werewolves? Were you bitten?"

  "No, we’re shifters. We can turn into our animals at will. We don't have to wait till a full moon or anything. We were born shifters. Our parents were and we are."

  "How are you different animals?"

  Bain sat near her, lowering his bulk to the ground. Even with her sitting on a sizable rock, he still sat taller than her.

  "Gavin was adopted by my mother."

  "Oh."

  "His mother found me and took me in. That's why I’m named Gavin. It means lion. Barrett means bear. I’m a lion raised by bears. My name means lion bear."

  "Oh."

  Maura's mind raced trying to take in all that she was hearing. She couldn't reconcile this with the world she knew around her.

  "The farmer couple are rabbit shifters whose warren was raided by wolves."

  "So there are werewolves."

  "Yes, but they’re shifters also. They have a stronger pull to shift and run during a full moon but not in the way you see in horror movies."

  "And they’re bad."

  "No, their warren was raided by rogue wolves. Shifters are like anyone else. There are some who are good and some who like to hurt others. It's a tossup in any population."

  Maura digested this bit of information and surprisingly it made sense. She decided she had to be sure of what she’d seen.

  "When you’re an animal, do you know what you are doing? Do you remember things? Would you know me?"

  Gavin ran a palm up and down her spine as Bain reached to engulf both her hands in one of his. Their warmth was soothing. It began to calm the nerves that had been frayed in the past couple hours. She should be as wary of these two as she was of Seth but just couldn’t muster the effort to remain distant from them. Bain's deep voice washed over her when he answered.

  "We know you in our animal form. We can also speak to each other telepathically over great distances. Our life span is quite a bit longer than the average human and the cold doesn't affect us as much as it does humans."

  "Although Bain does have a tendency towards hibernation in the winter. He likes his sleep."

  "And Gavin likes to laze and nap in the summer sun like a big cat."

  Maura let a small giggle bubble past her lips at the mental image that brought. Her mind whirled taking in this information.

  Shifters.

  They turn into animals.

  She shook her head. Ever since getting to this retreat she’d been worried that somehow, someway, she was slowly losing her mind. Beginning with her affair with these two men and now this. It was too much.

  “Maura …,” Gavin began.

  “No.” She shook her head again, trying to clear her mind. “I need to go.”

  Gavin and Bain traded furtive glances at one another. She wondered briefly if they would now threaten her, or worse, to ensure her silence. Who would believe her anyway?

  Hey, sure the guys that own the most successful fitness retreat to date really turn into animals at will. The river has the Lochness monster and Bigfoot leads hikes into the woods, too.

  She’d be fitted for a straight jacket faster than she could blink.

  Maybe she needed one because she was clearly having a psychotic break.

  “Maura …,” Bain began to speak, but she cut him off again.

  “No! Show me how to get back.”

  Both men looked pained and saddened, but she couldn’t accept that right now. They were freaking animals for christsake! Luckily the walk back wasn’t too terribly painful. She was still stiff and sore from her bumps and bruises of the day, but that paled in comparison to the heartbreak from her inner turmoil.

  Maura had really begun to develop strong feelings for both of her men, shifters, whatever. They had gone to great lengths to make her feel beautiful and treasured. Shouldn’t it have been apparent that something was horribly wrong if these men wanted someone like her? She would have resisted, knowing they weren’t for her. Tears welled in her eyes.

  She kept reminding herself this situation was always meant to be temporary, but couldn’t help a seed of hope planted in her heart that maybe it was something real this time. She had fallen hard for these men in the short time they were together and felt like leaving would be like leaving a big chunk of her heart behind.

  As tears spilled over, Maura wiped them away quickly. It had to be this way. What other answer was there? Their lives were here and her life was somewhere else, at least what she called a life.

  Thinking about returning home to her house all alone and sleeping in an empty bed night after night after becoming used to sleeping sandwiched between these two beautiful men broke her heart all over again.

  Bain could hear her uneven breathing and could smell the salt of her tears. Every hitched breath she tried to hide from them o
n the hike home lashed across his heart like a whip. His heart was being flayed open seeing her so hurt. They should have told her everything when they talked about mating. He just thought it would be too much at once and now it was possibly too late.

  Bain frowned and pushed that thought from his mind. He simply couldn’t accept that. He searched his mind for something, anything to say to ease her suffering but came up blank. She would think he was lying if he told her he loved her at this point. But he did.

  She was more than he had ever hoped to find in a mate. Her courage and strength made his look paltry in comparison. Maura had endured so much but managed to retain so much beauty in her soul and refused to let others jade her. There were many in her life that had made her feel worthless and it had damaged her self esteem, but she could still see so much beauty in people, it awed him.

  All too soon they arrived at the door to her cabin.

  When trying to enter, she stopped them.

  “I need to be alone.”

  Bain’s heart cracked just a little further seeing the pain and confusion on her face. He wished he could restart all of this and do so many things differently. Gavin looked equally as pained as he felt and he knew they were all in for a rough night.

  His heart dropped to his stomach when her door clicked shut and they both heard her stifled sob coming from the other side of the door. Both men trudged silently back to their office. Gavin called the police station to report the incident. The sheriff promised to come out that evening to take statements from everyone and took Seth’s information to be on the lookout.

  Gavin pulled out a bottle of whiskey and gestured to Bain. He nodded miserably and downed his dram in one swallow. Bain welcomed the whiskey burn down his throat and lifted his cup indicating a desire for a refill which Gavin was happy to oblige. Gavin was the first to speak up.

  “She’ll be ok. She just needs time to adjust.”

  Bain grunted and tossed back another glass of whiskey. His chest was tight at the thought of her leaving. Maura had become an essential element to his life in such a short time. He simply couldn’t imagine a future without her. He would be crushed under the weight of his sorrow. Holding his glass out, he didn’t even pause once it was filled to toss it down his throat. He wanted to drown the dread that this was more than she could accept.

  It was a miracle that she had felt the mate pull to both of them and that he and Gavin were co-mating the same woman happily. They couldn’t believe their luck. Fate had truly chosen well for them. They made a perfect trio. His instincts to protect and provide for his mate was appeased in that he trusted Gavin implicitly to care for her to the utmost of his ability with him and in the case of his absence. If anything happened to him or if he had to be away he had no worries about her wellbeing. He knew Gavin felt the same.

  They had gone through that whiskey bottle and were well into splitting the second bottle when the alcohol began to take effect. His shifter metabolism required a much higher alcohol content to get drunk, but it wasn’t impossible. The numbness he sought didn’t find him till after another bottle and Bain finally slept draped across the desk.

  Chapter Six

  “She’s gone.”

  Gavin jolted awake, ignoring the pounding in his head. A quick glance at the clock showed it was late afternoon. There was no need to question who Bain meant, there was only one ‘she’ that would cause that look of panic on his face. Cold fear washed down his spine.

  “For how long?”

  “Not sure, woke a bit ago and saw her car wasn’t here anymore. I checked her cabin just in case. Everything’s gone.”

  Gavin glanced at the clock, running fingers through his hair then scrubbing his face with his palm. He was on his feet and walking out the door in a flash when a thought came crashing through his head and he froze.

  “Bain, we still don’t know where Seth is.”

  Bain froze in his tracks and stared at Gavin. Dread lit his eyes.

  “Shit.”

  “OK, if she took the time to pack and load the car, she hasn’t been gone too terribly long. She couldn’t be very far. He may be a hundred miles from here by now.”

  Both men rushed toward the car, attempting to squelch the growing dread that was rapidly mounting. Gavin could feel his lion, irritated and restless, pacing in his mind. His lion wanted his mate and, quite frankly, so did the man. His need to see Maura. smell her unique scent, and assure himself she was safe and whole, was a physical ache in his chest. His lion kept growling Find! Protect! Mate!

  It threatened to overtake his rational thought. He forced those thoughts in the back of his mind and took a deep breath. They needed to concentrate on finding her now. Everything else could be worked out later.

  Gavin wanted to believe she was fine, just upset, and left without incident. But his mating instinct was blaring sirens of warning. As they got to the car he opted to drive, Bain was too close to succumbing to his animal and that would not be the best idea to have him that agitated and behind the wheel.

  “There’s only one route she could have taken out of the park. It’s the only outgoing road. So we should be able to track her at least that far.”

  Bain barely nodded and returned to staring blankly. They rolled down the windows to attempt to pick up her scent, as faint as it may be, there were slight traces of it still wafting through the air. It had been some time before she had been through, but not so much that her scent dissipated entirely.

  Gavin felt like jumping out of his skin as every mile crept by. He knew his speed was closer to low level flying than high speed driving but couldn’t force himself to slow down. He felt urgency to find her clawing at his insides. After twenty minutes her scent became much stronger.

  Bain sat up with his nose in the air about the same time Gavin detected the scent. They looked at each other, threads of relief just began to become interwoven with the cold dread they felt all morning. All of the sudden Maura’s honey vanilla scent became tainted with traces of blood. If Gavin thought he felt cold dread before, he was wrong. It was nothing compared to the glacial cold that washed down his spine, when he smelled her blood.

  Bain growled low in his throat. Gavin couldn’t help but rumble a growl of his own. Their mate was bleeding, she was injured, and she needed them. His lion was throwing himself at the walls that separated them in his mind. A few minutes later, the car rounded a sharp curve and screeched to a halt. There, in the middle of the road, sat Maura’s car partially covered by large rocks and boulders. Gavin and Bain scrambled out of the car and made their way to Maura’s.

  The airbag had deployed and there was some blood on it and the door handle on the inside but not a life threatening amount. Gavin further investigated the car and found her phone and purse in the passenger seat. As he pulled himself back out of the car he caught a different scent altogether. Bain shouted for him from atop the mound of rocks. The scent was stronger there.

  “Seth.”

  He could no longer restrain his beast. His lion came roaring to the forefront. Bain shifted into his bear, as well. In this form, their sense of smell was far stronger. Gavin and Bain followed the scent trail of Maura and Seth into the woods for what felt like an eternity to both men. The smell of blood had dissipated but the mingled scents of fear and aggression was a torturous trail for the men to follow.

  Knowing Maura was at the mercy of that piece of shit was slowly driving him insane. He had to force himself to concentrate on the fact that she was still alive and close. He could hear Bain’s bear crashing through the brush a few yards away. Their sense of urgency was tangible in the air between them. Gavin felt rage and fear in equal measure clawing up his chest and gripping his throat. He had to put his full focus on the scent trail, his mind kept trying to slip into what ifs and that could drive him mad and worse, make him make mistakes. There was no room for error in this.

  Gavin couldn’t stop a roar ripping free of his throat when he caught sight of Seth and Maura. His mind almost blanked wit
h rage when he saw Seth’s hands on her. Maura was struggling, hands bound behind her back, and Seth had cut free some of her clothes with the knife he kept with him. Seth was openly groping her and tears streaked her face. Gavin heard Bain bellow and crash forward a titan of anger and aggression.

  Seth whipped around toward the noise and pulled a gun from his waist band. He fired off a couple shots in the general direction that Bain’s roar came from and Gavin pulled up short. He reached out with his mind and connected with Bain, reassuring himself that bullet was indeed a wild shot. Seth’s eyes were wide and wild and Gavin knew there would be no resolving this without bloodshed.

  “See, you fucking freaks of nature!! I came better prepared for you this time!”

  Seth was waving the gun wildly around, that meant he didn’t really know where they were or where they were coming from, just in the general direction of the noise. Gavin had to force his mind to focus on details so his rage wouldn’t take over and cause him to make mistakes that could be fatal to them all. He circled around to the left while Bain approached more head-on. Gavin worked to calm Bain and lay a plan to get the three of them out safely.

  The pistol Seth was waving around wouldn't do much against either of them in this form. Bain's hide was a bit thicker and he maintained a more head on approach. Gavin circled around to the rear of where they were while Seth's attention was focused on Bain. Bain slowed his approach when they came into sight. Seth grabbed Maura and used her as a human shield, putting the gun to her head. Gavin fought the instinct to charge forward and rip Seth’s throat out with his teeth. The lion in him roared and fought, wanting desperately to protect their mate.

  Bain came forward into Seth's line of vision and, in response, Seth pointed the gun at him. "Where’s the other freak? I know you two are always together."

  Bain merely stared silently in his bear form, there was no real way to answer him without shifting back to his human form and that would leave him more vulnerable to gunshot. Seth put the gun back to Maura's head and Gavin could smell the insanity coming off of him. Seth's hand was shaking and Gavin knew the gun could discharge in his unsteady hand and almost dove for him when Bain's voice sounded in his head.