MAJOR (MC Bear Mates Book 5)

by Becca Fanning

  “I didn’t know you were working here, Pip,” Major said, frowning at Mars for a split second before he snatched his attention back and gave it to her.

  “You didn’t?” she half-squeaked then winced at how goddamn high her voice had gone.

  Could she be any more obvious? Jesus wept.

  He shook his head, then with a bemused tone said, “You smell different.”

  Whether he meant it as an insult or not, she didn’t know, but she reared back nonetheless and backed into Annette by mistake. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  Annette glowered at Major. “What are you trying to say? She stinks or something? She smells fine to me.”

  Pip felt like kissing the woman for finding a way to reassure her. It had been so hard not to try to smell herself at his words. Only knowing how weird she’d look sniffing her armpits while on the job had kept her in line.

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way.” He shook his head like he was trying to shake off the cobwebs. “You smell like…” He gulped, shook his head another time, then pinched his nostrils with his fingers in an act that completed her mortification. “I need some air.”

  He stormed off, forcing his brothers to make way as he passed down the aisle to the door again. The three of them stood and watched as he went outside, bent over, and pressed his hands to his knees like he’d just run a marathon and needed to get his wind back.

  “What the hell’s up with him?” Annette groused. “You smell fine, Pip. I’ve no idea why he’s being such a jerk.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’ll find out,” Mars told his mate before squeezing Pip’s shoulder and retracing Major’s footsteps.

  Her knees felt wobbly, and she didn’t know why, so she tried to put a brave face on what had just happened and said brightly, “Can I get you a coffee?”

  Annette studied her a second, looking for what, Pip didn’t know, and then nodded. “Please. I’m gagging for something that wasn’t made in a vending machine.”

  Pip giggled, rounded the counter, reached for the pot, and poured Annette a mug. Suddenly, the entire group of bikers converged on her, coffee on their minds too, and she spent the next few minutes seeing to them and taking their orders. Walking into the kitchen, she pinned the slip to the board and shouted out the many, many dishes of food that would have Hector, the short order line cook, busy for the next twenty minutes.

  She escaped to front of house and saw that the men, nearly fifteen strong of them, had settled into small groups and had taken seats at some of the banquettes. Annette, however, was at the counter, and Pip got the feeling she was waiting for her.

  “What are you guys all doing here, anyway? It’s rare that I see one or two brothers a month, never mind a dozen plus in one go,” she asked, tone friendly as she went about brewing more coffee. This was not her first rodeo at making breakfast for these guys.

  They could drink coffee faster than a Ferrari hit sixty miles an hour.

  “Mundo’s mate nearly went into labor.” Annette sighed tiredly and took a deep sip of coffee. “She’d have been way too early, but the hospital managed to get her on track. We went in last night and only just left when she got the all clear.”

  Pip froze in her task as utter astonishment overwhelmed her. “Mundo’s going to be a dad?”

  Annette grinned. “Yeah. We’re all as freaked out as you.”

  Her eyes flared wide. “That’s going to be interesting.”

  Talk about understatement. Jesus, she loved Mundo like a brother, but he wasn’t exactly father material. At least, he hadn’t been. She’d not seen him in ages. He’d been sent down for a while, and learning he had a mate lessened the hurt she’d felt at him never coming to visit her. Especially as she knew he knew where she worked. Hell, they’d both been a witness to Mars and Annette’s first meeting. That was the last time she’d seen him, and he’d been his same old man-child self.

  “Yeah. I get the feeling it’s going to be one of those ‘it takes a village’ kind of projects,” Annette commented ruefully. “Although his mate, Christie—she’s nice—is a lot more down to earth and serious than Mundo. He’s changed a lot since I first met him.”

  “Oh?”

  Annette fiddled with the sugar dispenser. “I think you left around about the time I got involved with this bunch of toe rags. Back then, Mundo was definitely not one of the most serious brothers. But he’s on the council now, and he’s helping manage one of the shops in the city. Well, I say that. He’s in training to run it before one of the old guys retires.”

  Pip smiled. “I always liked Mundo. He never…” She broke off, biting her lip, and reverting her attention to the coffee pot.

  “Don’t worry. I know what you did. You can speak freely.”

  Annette’s words were kind and without malice. Pip hunched her shoulders. “He always treated me kindly.”

  “Not all the brothers did?”

  She shook her head. “Moses was a jerk. The guys that hang around him were all shit heads too. You could only avoid them so much, but I tried my best.” Another understatement.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I know. We had major problems with him and his lot. Moses is dead now.”

  Pip gasped. “No way! How?”

  Annette wrinkled her nose. “You really don’t want to know. Most of the crew that hung around with him are exiled. They were pulling mutiny within the ranks, saying Mars had taken over as Prez ‘illegally’.” She snorted. “Like anything is legal in an MC.”

  Pip smirked. “You’d be surprised. It always astonished me how many rules and regulations they had. One time—” About to share one of the many tales she had of the craziness of life in an MC as a bunny, she froze. The words wouldn’t spill from her tongue as something caught her eye from the window. Wincing, she saw Major bend over outside the diner like he was about to puke or something.

  Was he okay?

  The breath stuttered in her chest at the sight of him, and she had to grip hold of the counter for support.

  What the hell was going on?

  Usually, she experienced a ‘why do birds suddenly appear?’ moment whenever she saw him. Key word being saw. The room had frozen without her even knowing he was the guy walking through the damn door!

  Something weird was going on, and Pip knew she had to get control of this situation before someone else did. Namely Major or Mars, who had both, in the past, proved themselves excellent at stonewalling her.

  Well, not today!

  Chapter 3

  “What’s going on, bro?”

  Mars’s words penetrated the weird fog that hazed his mind. It hadn’t been there when he’d been on the road. If anything, his mind had been clear.

  He’d had time to think, time to reason, time to see that what Mars had said was true, and that he had to let go of the notion of a mate. Well, that Juanita was his one and only anyway.

  While they’d waited on news of Christie’s status, he’d called Juanita and broken things off with her.

  Her tears and screeches of rage had nigh on broken his heart, but he’d stayed strong. He wasn’t sure how or if she’d retaliate, but at least he’d handled that particular mess he’d made, and all within hours of Mars discovering the truth.

  The crazy thing was that as hard as it had been to break things off with her—his mind still fucking with him and saying she was more than just a girlfriend—actually calling it quits had shown him the truth of it.

  She wasn’t his mate. Because if she was, nothing, not even the Goddesses themselves, could keep her from him.

  And though her tears had wounded him, they hadn’t been stab wounds to his heart.

  He wasn’t sure what Juanita was to him. Maybe she was just a mind fuck that came to every Shifter when they hit a certain age, because there was no doubting the fact that years of solitude played havoc with a man. But whatever she was, girlfriend or lover, she wasn’t his mate.

  News that Christie and the cub would be okay, that they needed to sta
y on the ward for more monitoring but all was well, had lifted his spirits. Then, when Mundo had told them all to ‘fuck off back home’ and get some rest for his sake as well, the long ride back had cleared away any cobwebs that had settled in to roost.

  Truth was, getting over Juanita would take time, time nobody would give him because to them, she wasn’t his mate and therefore wasn’t important. It didn’t matter that she had been to him. In the Shifter’s mentality, Juanita was nothing more than an easy lay, like every other woman who wasn’t a mate.

  He’d have to deal with his confusion and hurt in privacy, and the ride back had been the start of that. He’d let the tears flow as the wind had burned them back into his skin. Had let the road unwind him when everything about him was twisted up inside.

  It hadn’t healed him—only time would do that—but it had helped.

  Some.

  “Major?”

  Mars’s voice did something neither expected; it triggered Major’s Bear. A growl sounded from inside Major’s chest, so loud and so violent it had Mars’s hackles rising.

  Major froze, aware the bear had acted on its own, and moved up and out of the position he’d been in—crouched over, hands on his knees—to standing straight. He backed off and said, “I don’t know what the fuck that was about, Prez. I’m sorry.”

  He could see from Mars’s posture that his bear had been roused. Considering Mars had the strongest beast in the Clan, he’d have to be suicidal to challenge him.

  Maybe Mars realized that, because he held out his hands in acceptance. “It’s okay.” He sucked in a deep breath that Major knew was supposed to be cleansing. “What the fuck is going on with you, brother? I’m getting fucking whiplash from your moods tonight.”

  “I don’t know,” Major confessed, pressing his back to the brick add-on of the local diner. It was old school East Coast, like a shiny bullet. Only the annex had been made out of brick years ago to increase the kitchen space.

  The dull texture rubbed sourly against his leather cut, but he ignored it, didn’t even wince, as the mortar scraped and scratched the material on his way down into a crouch.

  The floor beneath him was dusty, and the air was filled with particles still settling after a fifteen-strong convoy of bikes had stormed into the parking lot. Not that it mattered. Settling his ass on the ground was all that counted before his Bear did something stupid like charge Mars.

  A challenge he had no hope of winning was the last thing he fucking needed.

  As he sat there, trying to figure out what the hell was going on with him, traffic carried on driving past ten or so feet away. His Bear grumbled, disquieted by the proximity of the vehicles, but he ignored it, again surprised by his beast’s reactions.

  Normally, they got along great. Things had been sticky since he’d met Juanita, sure, but nothing this crazy.

  Nothing as fucking mental as challenging his Clan leader, for example.

  The door to the diner opened, and with it, came the sweetest scent. It fucked with his senses. His bear was overloaded with the tang of oil and gas, the stench of the road, as well as the grease and perfume of fatty meats sizzling feet away in the diner’s kitchen.

  But this… This was like fucking wildflowers or something. And this from a guy who didn’t think he’d ever even smelled a wildflower in his goddamn life!

  The beast basked in the scent. He wanted to roll in it, to embrace it, to claim it for his own.

  Jerked from one extreme to another, it was a handful of seconds before he even had the wherewithal to raise his head and look for the source.

  He stared at her like she was a cold bottle of water and he’d been in the desert for the past few days.

  “Pip? What’s wrong?” Mars asked, breaking into Major’s confusing thoughts like a punch through a window.

  “Nothing,” she told him brightly. “Just wondered what you guys wanted to order? Annette told me you wouldn’t mind if I broke this up.”

  Which meant Annette somehow knew he and her mate had almost come to blows. It wasn’t the first time he’d suspected the two of them could communicate telepathically, but this was the biggest confirmation thus far.

  Three Goddesses had created Shifters. Shifters were their kin. And in gratitude to their loyalty, the Goddesses gifted them mates that were fated, from birth, to be with one of their children.

  Shifters could only procreate with their mates, and those mates were always humans. But to make up for the genetic weakness, the Goddesses granted each human mate a gift, a talent that was released after the couple bonded.

  Once bound and claimed, that gift would manifest.

  No couple shared what the gift was. It was something they kept private, between them. The whole MC knew what Christie’s was, mostly because it was weird as fuck and was the cause for her epic morning sickness—she had a highly sensitive nose, which pregnancy had exacerbated.

  Major, even though he’d been out on club business a lot during the days and had spent a lot of nights with Juanita, couldn’t count the number of times he’d seen Christie bending over something and puking her guts up.

  There was no way no one could fail to be aware of what her talent was.

  The usual secrecy behind these talents meant Major would only ever be able to suspect what Annette’s gift was, but she was aware of too much for it not to be telepathy.

  The only way she could know so much of the MC’s past was if she could read minds.

  Literally.

  Although, something flashed in Pip’s eyes... something that disregarded his last few thought processes. Had she just lied to him?

  “Major?” Pip’s voice was like a cool hand on a feverish brow. It rolled over him, caressed him like silken sheets on his naked form.

  Shit. Best not to think of silk sheets. Otherwise he’d think of the last time he’d had Pip underneath him.

  Only, she hadn’t smelled like this before. He’d have known.

  As he racked his brain trying to figure out what the hell was going on, he said, “Yeah?”

  He winced at the huskiness in his tone, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just bit her lip and murmured, “You want something for lunch?”

  “A burger. Please. With bacon and an egg. Sweet potato fries.”

  She nodded, smiling at him, then disappeared inside the diner, which meant Mars had had time to place his order. Major had been too wrapped up in trying to collect himself, as well as figure out why little Pip, club whore extraordinaire, was suddenly smelling so enticing.

  Mate.

  The word reverberated in his head like the silver ball in a pin ball machine, scoring thousands of points as it went, wrecking his shitty brain, and generally fucking up his life.

  He’d been so goddamn sure Juanita was his mate, and only hours after saying farewell to the idea, his Bear decided to do this to him?

  And with a woman he’d known for fucking years?

  The door opened again, the bell tinkling as she appeared once more. Her scent had him thinking all kinds of crazy things, things that made no fucking sense, things that tore at his control and ripped him apart from inside out.

  “Mate!” he let out with a growl that had Pip freezing in place and Mars rushing over to his side.

  “What the fuck is going on with you, Major?” he hissed. “Mate? She can’t be. You’ve known her for years!”

  “Tell me something I don’t fucking know, Mars. I don’t understand it, but I’m barely managing to contain my goddamn bear here. He’s only not going insane because you’re mated and you stink of Annette.”

  Mars studied him, letting him know he didn’t appreciate the wording by the flash of color that came and went in his eyes, but Major, for once in his life, ignored the warning.

  Unlike moments before, he didn’t give a shit that Mars was his leader, didn’t give a damn that his was the strongest bear in the surrounding thousand square mile area. All that was on Major’s mind was her.

  “What’s going on, guys?
” The quiver of fear in her voice was intolerable. It made him leap to his feet, dust surging up all around him as he approached his scared mate. The act stunned Mars who staggered back, nearly falling flat on his ass, but he was quick to rear up to a standing position once more.

  Major stalked toward his mate. Her scent riled him up and calmed him down. It was the poison and the antidote. It filled his senses until all he knew was her. But not just any her. Pip.

  With every step he took forward, she took one back, which was part of the reason why his bear wasn’t calming the fuck down.

  He’d never seen the look of disconcerted fear on Pip’s face before. She’d been around them all far too long to be afraid of the usual shit that went down at the clubhouse. So why was she scared now?

  Didn’t she like him?

  Didn’t she want him as mate?

  His bear howled in agony at the thought.

  The stories of Mars and Annette’s first meeting were infamous in the clubhouse. At this very same diner, they’d nearly set the place on fire with the heat they’d let off after their first meeting. And yet his mate, his Goddess-gifted mate, was backing away from him.

  Uncertain, he ceased moving forward. Pip stopped moving back.

  “Major?” she asked in a voice that nearly broke his fucking heart. “What’s going on? Why are you being so weird?”

  He held up his hands. “I’m sorry,” he told her, voice like gravel with the emotions he was repressing. “I don’t mean to scare you, but my Bear is in control now.”

  She frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m as confused as you.”

  Another frown was aimed his way.

  “I-I don’t understand.”

  He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and basked in her scent. Now he was close to her, it was even better. A thousand times more powerful. A million times more potent.