Southern Shifters: Inked By The Bear (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Black & White Series Book 2)

by Lissa Matthews

  “Rebecca, this is my brother Martin and his son, Michael. Gus’s daddy and brother.”

  “Younger brother,” Martin insisted. “She always forgets to add in the younger. Welcome to the family,” he said, tugging her out of Gus’s arms and into his own, enveloping her in a hug.

  “T-thank you.” When they parted, Bex smiled. “How much younger?” she whispered.

  Martin grinned and winked down at her. “Ten years.”

  “And he never lets me forget it,” Mary remarked from behind her brother.

  “Even though you conveniently try, I don’t,” he said over his shoulder at her. He turned back to Bex. “You are the spittin’ image of Rex, who was the spittin’ image of my sister.”

  Michael stuck his hand in. “Hiya, cuz. As my dad said, welcome to the family.”

  She’d barely shaken his hand, barely comprehended what he’d called her, when Luke’s voice carried across the porch. “What say, now that the family has been reunited, that we get down to business?”

  Gus growled. “Dammit. Blackwood. I told you I’d come get you.”

  “Hell, it’s not like my pack and I are a secret. Every one of you knows every one of us are out here. But I don’t have time to sit around on my ass waiting.”

  “Hey, asshole, this was your party. You’re the one who started this mess.”

  “Actually, I’m not. The one who fathered your woman and the rogue from my pack who trotted off with him, are the ones who started this. I’m just trying to find a solution to my pack dying out. That’s all I care about.”

  Martin skirted around his son and sister, taking a a seat in one of the rocking chairs and gesturing for Luke to do the same. “I’m not clear on how one thing has to do with the other.”

  Luke glanced at Gus. “You didn’t tell them?”

  “Nope. You can explain it.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Luke muttered. He took the seat across from Martin. He couldn’t have been oblivious to bears who wanted to rip him apart just for being there, just for being a wolf. Even Bex didn’t like him and he hadn’t done anything to her. Was it because…?

  “Before this goes any further,” she started to say, figuring now was better than later to ask her question. “Am I really like all of you? A shifter? A bear? I mean, y’all say I look just like Mary here and that her son looked just like her, too, and she said down by the lake that it’s possible I am one, I just… Am I?”

  “Yes,” Gus answered. Bex looked up him. His smile was soft and apologetic. “You’re like us. You are a shifter.”

  Mary stepped up and cupped her cheek. Bex’s mother used to do the same thing when she needed to tell Bex something difficult, when she wanted to reassure Bex that she loved her, even if Bex had been bad and misbehaved. It was the first gesture she’d made when she told Bex about the cancer, and the last gesture she made when she told Bex that it was time to let her go.

  Bex swallowed back tears and leaned against Gus for support. She wished her mother were there. She wished none of it was true. She wished so many damn things and none of them had anything to do with being part bear.

  “You’re my granddaughter. You’re Martin’s niece, and Michael’s cousin. You’re Gus’s mate, too. You’re part of our family. And yes, as Gus said, you’re a bear shifter just as we are.”

  “But how do you know? I have seen Gus change from a bear back to a man. I don’t change forms like that.”

  “No,” Gus agreed, and went on to explain. “Your bear has likely lain dormant all these years. Different things trigger when it comes out, when it starts to take over. High stress can induce it. So can fear, the need to protect.”

  “Blood sensing its mate can, too,” Mary added.

  “How does blood sense anything? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “I know it doesn’t, pretty girl. I know it doesn’t.”

  “I understand it,” Luke added. “All of your new found relatives understand it. Shifter blood is different. It contains properties that regular human blood doesn’t. Humans have their guts, their hearts, their brains that they can listen to. They also have stronger doubts about other humans and good and bad and evil. Shifter blood has a separate strain of DNA and the instinct is primal. We know when a mate is close, when we’ve tasted the enemy, when we’re making a bargain with the devil. You’ve lived as a human all your life. Our environment can change who we were meant to become.”

  “What are you trying to say, Wolf?” Michael ground out.

  “That the damn bear found a human who was strong enough to carry a shifter baby. That it is possible. That he didn’t do it the right way, the honorable way, the love and roses way, notwithstanding, he did find a human woman. Maybe she can’t shift. Maybe the DNA isn’t as strong as all that, but I don’t doubt and none of you do either, that she is one. It might take a generation or two of shifter blood to build up in her strain of DNA before offspring will be able to shift, but damn… It’s possible.”

  Luke was almost giddy, nearly bouncing in his seat and had Bex not seen it with her own eyes, she’d have never believed it.

  “How does that help you?” Martin asked, drawing Luke’s attention back to him.

  “Directly? It doesn’t. Indirectly, it gives me hope that my pack will be able to do the same with humans, that we’ll find one’s strong enough to carry pups.”

  “I’m going to assume you mean without resorting to violence.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “Just checking. Your pack’s reputation precedes you.”

  “I’m not saying we’re angels. Hell, we’re not even on the right side of the law sometimes. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  “I’m still not sure what this has to do with all of us. We’re grateful that you stumbled onto this young lady being our kin, but I’m not sure what you get out of it.”

  “Do you know what happened to Rex? That’s his name, right? Do you know what happened to him? To the wolf who was with him? To Gus’s birth parents?”

  Behind her, Gus tensed, as though bracing himself for something unpleasant. “Luke,” Gus said, the warning clear in his voice.

  Martin waved Gus to silence. “Go on,” Martin urged Luke.

  “I don’t know everything I need or want to know, but I think I know enough. For instance, I don’t know what happened to your bear specifically, but I know what happened to our wolf. Poachers, not legit hunters. I can’t…” He shook his head and tightened his jaw before continuing. “I won’t go into what they did to him, but the arrows were enough to tell us how he was killed. I’ve been searching for not only a way to keep our bloodlines viable, but also to search out the poachers who had been killing in the mountains. The human authorities can’t help us. They can only do what their laws allow. We abide by slightly different laws, ones that if we work together, we might be able to solve a few of the deaths that have occurred over the years.”

  “We never found Rex. Not…” Martin shook his head and looked down. “Not all of him, at least. Like your wolf, we found arrows. Bastards didn’t even take the evidence.”

  “I bet if we put them together, they’d be identical arrows, too.”

  “I heard tell of another family of bears who were killed in the mountains, but those were by gunshot,” Michael said. “And I was a kid.”

  “Word travels fast among the packs and clans whenever there’s a shifter killed by any means other than another shifter. Over the years there’ve been several bears killed by bow and arrow and a few by shotgun. Guns you can explain away as hunters and maybe even stray ammunition, but not a bow and arrow. Not to take down a bear.”

  “You have a theory,” Gus bit out. “You have another goddamn theory and you’re just doling it out, little by little. I told you I thought it was poachers who killed my parents. I told you I’ve heard things, seen things, but you’re just… Fucking spit it out, Blackwood.”

  “I’m careful. I don’t know what they already know, and I�
�m not about to put myself further in harm’s way without going through this point by point, bit by bit. So, yes, I have another theory.” Luke stood and stomped toward Gus. “I have a lot of them about a lot of things, but this? Yeah, I have one main thought. It’s not a pretty one and it once again involves someone from Bex’s mother’s past.”

  Bex watched as the two shifters stood toe to toe, breathing fire at each other. She watched as her new uncle and cousin slowly took up residence at Gus’s sides. She watched as pain and sadness, fear and determination… As anger changed the look on Gus’s face with each word that passed through Luke’s lips.

  She watched, as though she stood outside herself, as all eyes turned to her once more. She had no idea what Luke was talking about this time. She had no idea who Luke was talking about this time. The longer he stayed on her porch, the longer he talked, the more confused she became and she decided enough was enough. “Look, I’m lost. For twenty-four years, I only had a mother, and snippets from conversations I didn’t understand.” She drew a circle in the air, encompassing everyone standing on her porch. “I’m new to all of this. You’re all new to me, and I’m lost. The only people from my mother’s past that I knew of was her fiancé and his family, primarily his father. That’s all. That’s it.”

  Luke’s gaze locked with hers. He smiled, feral and predatory, and fear slithered up her spine. “Bingo.”

  Chapter Five

  Gus sighed.

  Bex left the porch and walked toward downtown with his Aunt Mary. For all intents and purposes she was his aunt and just as she had with Gus all those years ago, she wanted to know everything about Bex. Gus couldn’t blame her. He wanted to know everything about Bex, too.

  He wasn’t sure Bex wanted to know any of them. Not anymore. Including him. But he couldn’t dwell on that right then. He had to trust that she was all in with him, the way he was all in with her. He had to trust that even with all the recent revelations, that how she felt, or was beginning to feel about him hadn’t changed.

  He turned his attention back to his father and his brother, and the wolf who had been pacing the porch for a few minutes after his latest bomb drop.

  The wolf was antsy. Gus understood.

  Everything, the whole world seemed to be splintering apart around him and Bex, though Bex had to be feeling it more than he was. Everything she knew about herself had been called into question in the last twenty-four hours.

  Shit. If he thought about, it had all been called into question ever since Gus walked up to her back in North Carolina, really.

  “Son?” Martin addressed him, laying a hand on Gus’s shoulder. “She’ll be all right.”

  “Will she? I wish I had that much faith. She’s strong, but I don’t know anyone strong enough to handle all this.”

  “You should look in a mirror sometime, then.”

  “That was different. I was a kid. I don’t even remember them.”

  “And she never knew her father.”

  “But finding out she’s a shifter? How does an adult cope with that?”

  “She’s got you to help her.”

  That was true and unless she told him to, he wasn’t leaving. “So,” he said, fixing Luke with an unblinking stare, “who do you think is behind the poaching? The father?”

  Luke gave a casual shrug. “They never found the fiancé.” His tone was conversational, but Gus knew better than to take it at face value. Not to mention the heaping helping of implication in Luke’s statement.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because along with the humans searching for the man, there were shifters looking for the wolf and the bear. They heard the stories about the man who disappeared into the woods and never came back. Stories about the man who was dragged into the woods by a bear of a man.”

  Gus thought back to one of the first real conversations he’d had with Bex, the one where he’d learned how she’d been conceived and what she’d told him about the mayor. “And you think think it’s his father? Beck. That was his name. Beck was her mom’s fiancé.”

  Luke gave a short nod. “That’s my suspicion, yes. As I’ve gathered information over the years, talked to the wolves who were involved in the search, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. Because the bear wasn’t from around our parts, I never was able to investigate, or even make inquiries. No one knew much about bear shifters, or nothing they were willing to part with.”

  “Fuck. It’s like a never ending cycle.”

  “What do you have to back this up other than conjecture?” Martin asked. His question was valid and on some level, Gus figured that Luke knew it, only Luke’s exasperated sigh didn’t convey it.

  “Look, the man was an avid hunter and preferred the bow. None of that was a secret. He had more heads on his walls than the forest should’ve been able to support. His son was all the family he had and Bex’s mother being raped was a blight on an otherwise pristine family name. He never got to run for governor.”

  “That wasn’t her fault.”

  “And how often is the blame placed on the victim among humans?”

  Gus nodded. “Is he still alive? The mayor?”

  “Yes. Needless to say, he’s not mayor anymore. He still maintains a residence in Bryson City and I definitely get why your woman didn’t want to stay in the same town. He has a private hunting club, too. I don’t know what the criteria is for membership, but whenever something like that is private, it’s been my experience that it’s never for any good reason.”

  “But it’s all conjecture. You’re trying to tie one thing to another, and those two things to something. Do you have a file or something?”

  “I have a whole damn cabinet dedicated to this.”

  “Then, I’m going to ask you again, what’s the real purpose of you being here and bringing it all up? You’re stirring up a hornet’s nest and I’m struggling to understand why and what you get out of it.”

  “An answer to that would be nice, Blackwood. You know what happened to your pack member. And you think Rex was killed by the same people You also think my parents were gunned down by them, too, which I’m still not seeing the connection on that one. What do you get out all this?”

  “I can’t just want to look at your pretty face?”

  Gus snarled. “Want to see my pretty fist up close and personal too?” Luke hadn’t given him a reason yet, but that didn’t mean Gus didn’t want to deck the wolf shifter just for the hell of it.

  “I want an alliance,” Luke said finally, with no shortage of defiance in his tone and stance. Gus was taken aback. He hadn’t considered that. An alliance. He had to admit it was a really bold idea and possibly a really stupid one, too.

  “Bears and wolves?” Martin asked. “Off the record?”

  “Yes. Nothing formal. An oral agreement.”

  “Why?”

  “My pack needs freedom to roam, to search for mates. We need to do so in different areas and I’d like to see if we can travel into Tennessee a bit further than we’ve previously been able to. If we’re going to expand our population, we need new ground to cover.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “We’ll help you find the poachers. Or the hunters. We’re faster, smaller, more stealthy. Dealing with the poachers will not only be good for bears, but for all shifters.”

  Gus had underestimated Luke. The wolf knew how to bargain and how to hit at the heart of things. Getting rid of the poachers would be a good thing. He’d like to keep his hide for a while longer.

  “The area we reside in is too small,” Luke continued. “We need more land, seek out new places to look for mates. You can provide that and I can help you track those who’ve hunted you in the past and who may hunt you in the future.”

  “How do we know we can trust you? That you won’t come onto our lands and start picking off bears?”

  “It wouldn’t do me any good to start a war. My pack’s numbers are too low for me to be that reckless. I have no interest in anything that will get
anyone killed. I’m interested in survival.”

  “I see.” Martin looked at Gus, then. “What do you think, Gus? I mean, these are your parents we’re talking about, too.”

  Gus turned his attention to Luke for a long moment before replying. I understand what he’s asking and I know why he’s asking it. We’ve talked a bit, as he said earlier. I didn’t know this was his end game though.”

  “You trust him?” Michael asked. It was hard to look beyond the disbelief and distrust in his brother’s voice, but Gus had to try.

  “I wouldn’t say that, but like he said, he’s more interested in the survival of his pack than he is in starting a war between bears and wolves. If he wanted violence, he and those he brought with him could’ve taken me and Bex out yesterday. He’s not shown any aggression beyond some trash talk. I think he’s sincere.”

  “I see. We’ll have to discuss it with the rest of our family and those who live close to us. I’m not going to make a deal without their agreement. I need to know if any of theirs have gone missing or turned up less than whole.”

  “I’ve already told you that I’d know if there was.”

  “Regardless, Wolf. I’ll be making some calls.”

  Luke shrugged as if what Martin said didn’t matter, only Gus knew it did. He could see it in the stiff posture and in the strained lines around the wolf’s mouth. Luke didn’t like being second guessed. He wasn’t used to it. He wasn’t used to being beholden to anyone, to putting his faith and the lives of his pack into the hands of others, especially bears.

  None of them liked being questioned. None of them liked being doubted. They all had egos and pride.

  “Look at it this way, Wolf,” Gus said, trying to placate Luke. “You can stick around until we hear from Martin, and I’ll finish your ink.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Michael added. “I think I’ll stick around, as well.”

  “Don’t trust me? I’m wounded.”

  “Screw you.”