by Roxie Noir
“What the hell? I could have done something else today if you’d just let me know you didn’t want to come over.”
Nathan still didn’t look at him, but he pulled the screen door open and stepped inside, barely looking at his older brother.
“You still wanna shift?” Nathan said. His voice sounded oddly distant, almost bored, like he wasn’t really paying any attention to what he said.
“What’s your problem?” Miles said. He could feel his bear rising to the surface. No one could bring it out of him faster than his brother.
“You think you’re doing me some favor by coming over here three hours late to shift with me?”
“Fine,” Nathan said, his voice still ringing a little hollow. “Can I use the head first?” He began to turn away from Miles, toward the bathroom.
Miles stepped forward and grabbed his brother’s arm. “Only if you’ll fucking look at me,” he said, and yanked his brother toward him.
Then, as the other boy turned, he saw that the back of his white t-shirt had brown and pink splotches on it. Instinctually, Miles knew something was wrong.
“What happened to your back?” he asked, his brother’s arm still in his iron grasp.
“Nothing,” Nathan said, trying to wrench his arm free.
Miles ignored the other man and pulled him closer. Suddenly, he could smell blood — Nathan’s blood — and the singed scent of burned flesh, combined with nervous sweat. He’d been too angry to smell it earlier, but there it was, clear as day.
“What’s wrong with your back?” Miles said, his hand so tight around Nathan’s arm that he knew it would leave a bruise.
“Nothing,” Nathan muttered. He tried again to wrench his arm free, but Miles was still stronger.
Miles looked down at his younger brother. He had a couple inches on him, and at least thirty pounds of muscle. He leaned down, getting his face close to Nathan’s. He wanted to make himself very, very clear.
“Tell me,” he said.
Nathan said nothing.
“You’re burned, I can smell it. Tell me what happened.”
“It’s fine.”
Something in Nathan’s manner was starting to unnerve Miles — his glassy stare, the way he wouldn’t make eye contact with his brother, the dead way he was speaking.
He couldn’t put his finger on it, but this, combined with the kids he’d been hanging out with lately, the way he’d been out until five in the morning most night, gave Miles a bad feeling in the very pit of his stomach.
“Let me see,” Miles demanded.
“Let me go, man.”
Miles let Nathan go only to grab the neck of his shirt and, in one giant pull, rip the whole thing apart.
“Hey!” Nathan exclaimed. “What the fuck, man—“ but Miles had him by the arm again, holding him in a painfully tight grip.
Miles’s breath caught in his throat.
It was a brand.
Someone had branded his brother, burned his skin right off his back.
And it was enormous.
In this middle was an unmistakable grizzly bear, in profile, Ursa Minor inside, just like his own tattoo.
But below that, in big, capital, ugly letters below, were the words TRUE BEAR, a star between them. The thing took up most of Nathan’s back, and a clear fluid was slowly dripping out of it.
“Who did this to you?” Miles snarled. He could feel the white-hot charge of shifting, forced himself to hold his bear back while his brother told him who’d burned this into his flesh.
“It’s nothing,” Nathan said.
“Tell me who fucking did this,” Miles said. “I swear to god I will find them and—“
Nathan finally wrenched his arm away and backed away from Miles, looking half insolent and half terrified.
Then it hit Miles: it was intentional.
His dumb younger brother had intentionally let himself be branded, a huge thing on his back that Miles knew would heal into ugly scars.
He moved to block the front door, trying to keep Nathan from getting out.
“What kind of idiot are you?” he shouted. He could feel himself slowing losing control. “That’s going to be on your back forever, and it’s going to look shitty once it heals. The fuck does true bear even mean?”
“You wouldn’t know, would you?” Nathan said, his face suddenly filled with disdain. He stood up straight and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “True bear means putting our kind first, not being ashamed of what you are.”
Miles ground his teeth together. “What are you saying?” he managed to get out.
“You think you’ve got everyone tricked, but you’re only half bear,” Nathan sneered, suddenly brave. “You talk a big talk, but when it comes down to it, you wouldn’t kill for the pack. We all know you’ve been in love with Delilah for years, and she’s hardly a bear at all.”
For one moment, Miles saw pure white. Without meaning to, he shifted, and in a furious rush he felt the fur and claws come out, tearing through his skin, his teeth suddenly sharpening and growing, the floor getting further away. He tried to say something, but it came out as a roar, and he looked down to see his brother, mid-shift himself.
With one paw he caught Nathan in the shoulder and sent the slightly smaller bear flying into his dining table. It split down the middle and Nathan stood from the rubble, his shoulder bleeding, and he limped back to standing.
On his back, Miles could see the missing fur where the brand had been: an ugly circle with dots in the middle, utterly unreadable.
Nathan roared and tried to lunge at Miles, but Miles sidestepped him easily and dealt him a hard blow on the head as his brother moved past, crashing into a table it a lamp on it, completely shattering it.
Nathan got up again, stumbling a little more. Even in bear form, Miles worried a little — was his brother okay? — But as he thought that, Nathan struck out, raking his claws down Miles’s chest, just barely drawing blood.
In a pure rage, Miles struck out, catching Nathan right across the face. His blood dripped onto the floor of Miles’s house, and Nathan looked at it for just a moment.
Then he charged the screen door, tearing it from its hinges, and loped off into the forest outside Miles’s cabin. Miles tore after him, his claws raking across his small front porch, as he watched the smaller, lighter form of his brother disappear into the forest, the patchy skin on the back where he’d been branded bright red against his nearly-gold fur.
He galloped into the forest at full speed, his bear fully in charge. Nathan was right there in front of him, and the other bear looked over his shoulder.
Nathan fell down a ravine. It wasn’t deep, ten feet at most, but he landed awkwardly at the bottom and the very first thing he did was look up at his brother, face full of fear, before righting himself and tearing away, crashing through the forest with no regard for being seen or heard.
That one second made Miles catch up with his bear. He fought the urge to race after his brother, tackle him, wrestle him to the ground and — well, then what? Was he going to hurt his brother even worse for the crime of hurting himself?
He panted, standing on all fours, watching the space that Nathan had run into. Fury made his long, sharp claws clench into the dirt, but he stood still.
You can’t do anything, he told himself. Violence just leads to more violence. Walk away.
Still in his bear form, he turned and walked in the other direction, his big furry form loping along.
Chapter Eight
Delilah
Delilah had found a pair of old overalls way in the back of her dad’s closet, so she’d washed them, put on a t-shirt, and even though it was midnight, she was furiously scrubbing the bathtub, her hair pulled back in a sweaty, messy ponytail. She was kneeling beside the tub, scrubbing at the disgusting gunk lining it with both hands.
As of that moment, she had called Miles’s house no less than seven times and left two messages on his answering machine. He hadn’t called her back yet,
so she decided to deal with it by cleaning.
I should have just let it go, she thought for the thousandth time. It’s not like we’ve never had sex while drunk, after all.
She stood and started the shower, letting it rinse away the suds so she could see the spots she’d missed. Her father had, apparently, gone years without cleaning this bathtub, and it was a revolting mess, perfect for an angry midnight cleaning.
I didn’t want it to be some drunken mistake, though, she argued with herself.
Delilah had thought about what a reunion with Miles might be like more than once. Probably more than a hundred times, not that she bothered to count. What kind of loser couldn’t get over their high school boyfriend, after all? California had millions of men, and one of them ought to be the right one.
It was also true that she’d finally started thinking less about Miles in the past year or two, and when she realized that, she was glad that she was finally getting over him — only to have to come back to Fjords to deal with her father’s affairs.
Still, she’d expected it to be different. First, she’d fully expected him to be mated already. He had to be one of the most eligible bachelors in Fjords. He was stable, employed, and would be one of the top contenders for alpha when Roy passed it on. What shifter woman wouldn’t want that?
Second, she’d really, really thought that she was over it by now. She had assumed that, if she saw him at all, they’d be like old friends reminiscing about good times, but not particularly wanting a return to them. But instead, when she’d seen him smiling through the car window, she’d felt sixteen again, like she’d been struck by lightning, like her heart might stop right then and right there.
That, she was certain, was not how people felt when they were over their exes.
The knees of her ugly overalls were soaked through with stray shower water. She turned it on again, aiming the head around the stall, getting all the soap from the tiled walls, the bottom of the bathtub, and finally rinsing off her hands and feet. She dried herself on the towel she’d left outside the tub.
Suddenly, Delilah was exhausted, just looking at the newly clean bathtub.
There are a million reasons he hasn’t called back yet, she reminded herself. He could be out with his friends, or with his parents, or doing almost anything.
Not everything is about you.
Still, she couldn’t help but worry that this was about her, but she shook her head and shrugged it off, stripping out of her overalls and tossing them into the hallway outside the bathroom before she took a long, hot shower and then went to bed.
When the phone rang the next morning, Delilah was on her knees in the bathroom again, clearing out mini hotel soaps, shampoos and conditioners from under the sink. They were all half-empty and most had spilled somewhere over the years. Delilah was afraid she’d have to replace the whole cabinet, since the bottom where it had been wet was getting moldy and rotten.
“Shit!” she shouted to the inside of the cabinet, crawling backwards as fast as she could, and then running to the kitchen to find the phone. She caught it mid-way through the last ring before it would go to her dead father’s answering machine.
“What did I do to deserve two whole messages?” said a deep, familiar voice on the other end.
Despite herself, Delilah laughed.
“I just wanted to talk,” she said. “I thought maybe the first one had gotten deleted by accident or something, so I left the second.”
“Very thorough,” he said.
Something whirred and then clanked in the background of Miles’s phone. “Are you at work?” Delilah asked. She looked over at the clock and realized it was already nine in the morning.
“I’ve been here two hours already,” he said. “Mechanics work an early schedule.”
“Can we get coffee sometime today?” she asked. “Maybe when you get off work?”
“Not drinks again?”
Delilah blushed and was glad Miles couldn’t see her. “Not drinks again,” she confirmed. “I’d like to keep my head on right this time.”
“Winnie’s diner is still open,” he said. “I’m off at four. Any time after that.”
“Perfect,” she said, a knot starting to form in her stomach. “I’ll see you there. Have a good day at work.”
Delilah spent the rest of the day cleaning, throwing her dad’s junk away, and practicing what she was going to say to Miles. Last night had made it wildly, abundantly clear to her that she couldn’t have a brief fling with him. She was leaving in a week, and Delilah knew that she couldn’t break Miles’s heart again. Even if they tried to pretend, anything they did would be more than just a hookup, because every romantic feeling she’d had about him had come flooding back in the past twenty-four hours, and Delilah knew that they only way to stop that was to deny, deny, deny, and then once she left, she could start getting over him again.
It would be a lot easier if they didn’t sleep together.
Still, as she cleaned the house all day, she kept thinking about the sleeping bag in Miles’s truck. She couldn’t believe he’d kept it for all these years — was he keeping it as a reminder, or because he’d forgotten all about what they’d done under it, and now it was just another emergency blanket?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. You are going to keep it in your pants, and the two of you are just going to be friends.
At three-fifteen she got into the newly clean shower, washed all her sweat off, then got dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans — more or less the uniform she’d brought. She piled her hair into a bun on top of her head, didn’t bother with makeup, and was out the door in half an hour.
Chapter Nine
Miles
In a corner booth, Miles sat and waited for Delilah. He’d left work fifteen minutes early, barely able to concentrate on what he was doing.
At the diner, he sat and read the placemat over and over again, full of ads for things to do in Fjords and the surrounding towns. Most of the ads were for other places to eat, hotels, and fishing boats for hire. After all, tourists who liked to fish were big business in Fjords.
At least something was.
Miles took another sip of his milkshake and the door opened.
She walked through, just wearing jeans and flannel that somehow still hugged her curves perfectly, her auburn hair in a bun. Miles had been glad to see hadn’t changed that, even as it seemed like every other woman he saw was dyeing their hair blond.
When Delilah was in bear form, her fur was exactly that shade, somewhere between red and brown. With the sun at just the right angle, she looked like she was glowing.
How many times had he thought about a scenario like this: just sitting somewhere, looking up, and seeing her walk in? It was never exactly out of the question, not while her dad was still living in Fjords. Miles had always held out a secret hope that she’d come back home someday, and maybe, here it was.
“You were early,” she said, sitting down. “It’s only five ’til.”
Miles smiled and shrugged. He had to fight the urge to lean over and kiss her, the urge to act like she was still his.
“You know me,” said. “Prompt is my middle name.”
She watched him with an amused look at her face as she scooted into the booth. “I don’t think that’s the Miles I remember,” she said, teasing. “I remember a guy who was always redlining his truck to get me home by my curfew.”
Miles grinned at her, leaning back in the booth. Somehow, this felt incredibly right.
“That was totally different,” he said. “We had an excellent reason to be out late.”
He could have sworn he saw Delilah blush, but the waitress came over and saved her. She took a long look at Miles’s milkshake and ordered her own.
“I’ve spent the day cleaning my father’s disgusting house,” she said. “I think I earned it.”
“So what did you want to talk about?” asked Miles. He rested his big hands on the table in front of him, the underside of hi
s nails clean but permanently stained by his work.
Delilah looked at them and not at him.
Then she sighed, lacing her fingers together and fiddling with them, nervously.
“About the other night,” she said.
“What about it?” Miles asked. He was starting to get a bad feeling about it. She’d run away, for one thing, and for another, he couldn’t help but notice that they were getting milkshakes at a diner, not having a romantic dinner and drinks, and certainly not getting busy by the fireplace at his house.
That last one he’d given a lot of thought to for the past day or so.
“I don’t think we should do anything,” she said. “I’m only in town for a week or so, and I think we should just stay friends.”
Miles felt like he was sixteen and getting dumped by a high school girlfriend.
“Just friends?” he said. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”
“I think it’s the best thing,” she said stubbornly. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes.
“Delilah, we’ve already—“ Miles heard his voice start to get a little louder, and he sat back, taking it down a notch for the benefit of the other diner patrons. “We’ve already done stuff. I know you’re not in town for long, but why not just have some fun?”
Deep down, Miles knew he couldn’t just have fun with Delilah. He wanted something more and he thought he probably always would, but he would take whatever he could get from her. If that was a week of “just fun” before she left again, then he’d have a fantastic week, and the future Miles would have to deal with all that heartbreak.
“It’s not fair to you,” she said.
“To me?”
“I know it hurt you when I left before,” she said. “I’d call my mom, and she’d say she’d seen your mom — this was before she’d moved to Anchorage — and hear all about how you were moping around, barely eating...”
Miles snorted.