The very small side of his brain not completely ruled by instinct screamed at him not to do this, that they had to do this right, or there could be dire consequences. But instinct was a powerful, elemental, and very primitive thing.
He had his woman back in his arms. He could never lose her again.
With a growl of frustration and exultation, Chance leaned in, stole her lips with his own, and planted a hard kiss, a promise of sorts. The meeting of their lips was a vow without words, one that proclaimed from there on out and forevermore, he would do anything and everything in his power to keep her safe.
She melted into his embrace. And it was that softness and yielding that cemented the thought in him that no matter what the cost, he would protect her. Always.
“I will shift—” he began.
“Bronwyn,” she whispered shyly. “My name is Bronwyn Crow.”
His heart trembled. For weeks, he’d roared out to her, calling out to the crow who’d stolen his heart, never knowing her true name.
Grasping her hands in his, he squeezed tightly and nodded. “And I’m Chance Hawthorne.”
She chuckled softly. “It’s good to finally meet you, Chance. Now are you ready to run away together?” Her eyes sparkled like a night sky full of glittering diamonds.
His lips trembled as he suppressed his own laughter. “Gods, what are we doing?”
She shrugged. “Being reckless and crazy.”
“I like it,” he said with the soft hint of a growl. But his words contained no anger. Oh no, this growl had everything to do with the rising awareness of her and the lust burning like a hot flame through his gut.
The footsteps neared, and she thinned her lips.
He nodded and shifted quickly. As fast as lightning, a thought intruded. Why wasn’t she shifting and flying away? Why was she so willing to ride him? Why had she run out there instead of flying?
But again, those questions were for later. He shifted, transforming once more into his powerful animal form, a form that nobody—not even the Queen of the Crows herself—would dare to instigate a fight with alone.
Grunting, Chance turned, waiting for Bronwyn’s slight weight to settle down upon him.
The moment she sat, he sensed something very different in her. Taking a giant whiff of air into his lungs, he almost roared when he smelled the telltale scent of a third soul. This one was a young, new life, smelling of fresh, clean powder.
A child.
He shook his powerful head, confused, curious, and terrified. And then, he was angry, very angry. Who had lain with his female last?
She patted his head as though sensing his very thoughts and whispered into his ear. “The child is ours, Chance. Now go so that I can explain it all.”
~*~
Light flooded his temporary quarters, a small earthen den he’d dug into the ground for the nights after he’d finished patrolling the crows borders. He’d been determined to keep close to Bronwyn’s nest until he retrieved her.
Thankfully, he’d been wise enough to build on grizzly territory. Once the crows discovered her missing, they would come for him.
But on his grounds, he wouldn’t stand alone. The crows were as bound by the rules of territory as he’d been. If they tried to bring an army against him, he would happily obliterate them for daring to keep Bronwyn from him.
Chance turned, barely leashing his anger. Lust and rage simmered in his veins. He spied Bronwyn, settled on the bearskin rug he’d been using as a bed the past few nights.
The bearskin came from an actual bear of course. He’d never dream of sleeping on one of his own. That would be barbaric.
At least they were well-hidden beneath the earth for the night. He’d concealed his den well, so it wouldn’t matter whether the crows flew the skies or not.
Bronwyn looked small and terribly fragile sitting there, staring up at him. Her burnished hair hung long and heavy around her shoulders. Her skin, which he’d recalled as being porcelain fair, looked way too pale and washed out.
Those gorgeous lips of hers that had wreaked such havoc on him were clamped between her straight white teeth as she worked them nervously back and forth.
Her hand crept down to her stomach, and the robe that had hidden the bump so well slid to the side, revealing a substantially pregnant belly for having only been two weeks along.
A muscle ticked in his jaw as he clamped his molars together. He wanted her desperately, but there was no way that could be his child. “Bronwyn, what is—”
Her eyes flashed fire. “Whether you want to admit it or not, the babe is yours, Chance. It’s partly why I came to find you, to let you know the truth.”
“Say it’s really mine.” He waved a hand and fought not to tremble from head to toe. “Why else did you finally stoop to come out and make your presence known? Princess.” He couldn’t help but hiss at the end.
Her eyes widened, and he knew his theory had just been proven right. The level of guardedness that had gone up in her realm the moment she’d returned, the constant winging of crows overhead, screeching and crying out at him to leave… he’d put two and two together.
She hugged her stomach with both arms. “You knew?”
His lips thinned. “I didn’t at first, but I figured it out. I might be a grizzly, Bronwyn, but I’m not stupid.”
His nostrils flared as she stood slowly to her feet and gracefully walked over to him. “Then if you know who I am, you must also know why I ran as I have.”
There had been chatter in the woods of a pending royal wedding. It hadn’t been hard to put two and two together. Even though he was furious about their situation, he wasn’t stupid enough to want to give her back. Or maybe he was stupid to keep her because kidnapping a royal soon-to-be-bride was about as stupid as it came. But she was his fair and square, by rights of the ancient ancestral ritual.
No Breed court alive that could deny that unalterable fact. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean their actions would come without consequences.
Walking over to him, Bronwyn stopped with only scant inches separating them. Grabbing his hand, she placed it on her belly.
He inhaled deeply, wanting to pull away. But her small frame belied her strength. He could break her hold if he’d really wanted to, but after days without her touch, the hunger inside of him was too raw, too desperate to let him do it. He lost himself in the liquid depths of her inky eyes.
“The babe is yours, Chance. I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
His nostrils flared. Instinct warred with his own human nature. He’d been a reluctant participant of the ritual to begin with. Wild and carefree, he hadn’t wanted to be pinned down by a woman, even one as sexy as Bronwyn.
Then he’d touched her. She’d laughed for him, ran from him, until she’d turned and embraced his beast as her own.
He’d tasted the essence of the divine that lived within all Breed, inside of her, and he’d felt the rightness, the fullness of them. Everything had fallen into place for him then.
But a child? Now? So soon? He shook his head.
And she shook hers. Her grip was still just as strong. “No, I won’t let you pull away from me or walk away from this. I’m not asking you to raise this child, Chance, or even acknowledge it as your own.”
“Then what are you doing?” He ground out. When he glanced down, he was surprised to note she wasn’t actually holding onto him anymore. His hand was not only still on her stomach, but in a cradling, possessive form.
She slid her hands up the sides of his broad forearm, lightly rubbing the hairs there and made his body come alive from that one simple gesture. “I’m giving you the opportunity to know. Something few surrogates ever do.”
All his life, he’d lived in a bubble, content to keep to his kind and not travel too far outside the sphere of his own circle.
He knew of the crows to the south, of course. All grizzlies did. But he’d never given them anything but a passing thought, a cursory consideration that rarely intruded on the
ir personal lives. What he knew of the crows was very little.
The males were sterile, which meant the females were required to mate outside their own when ready to nest. But the hookups meant nothing other than stealing the seed of a willing partner. Both parties would then separate and go about their lives, oblivious one to the other.
Crowding her space, he framed her belly with both his hands. She could have backed up if she’d wanted to, but she stood her ground, holding her head high as her eyes flashed with challenge.
Against his will, his lips curved in satisfaction. He loved her fire, loved that she didn’t back down from his challenge. No Breed was stupid enough to tangle with a grizzly if they weren’t also of the same species.
But she had. She’d come to him from the very beginning.
The life within her womb stirred, and he inhaled sharply.
She smiled and planted her hand over his. “The child senses your nearness.”
“Two weeks?” he asked, still flabbergasted by all of this.
He’d inherited the responsibility but never dreamed it could, or would, be a possibility. His dreams of a mate hadn’t extended far beyond the bedchambers. He’d thought of having her naked in his arms, having her between his thighs, being between her thighs, diving down on one another at the same time. Hell, he’d charted a million different scenarios as possibilities, except for this.
Never this.
A child had never been in the cards.
His brothers would know that. They would laugh at the thought that this had happened to him already. Chance Hawthorne was the ladies’ man, the love ‘em and leave ‘em guy, the one who couldn’t bother to be tied down to anything or anyone longer than the time it took to make them come.
His fingers shook.
She nodded. “We gestate quickly. One month is all we need.”
“Why?” he asked. Not that he’d cared when she’d let him take her in the field. If this had just been some random hookup, none of this would have meant anything to him. He would have left, and she would have left, knowing they had each had a great time, and that would have been the end of it.
If the female had wanted to raise his child without him as part of its life, he wouldn’t have cared. He would have wished them nothing but happiness.
But the thought of Bronwyn leaving him now, of not having the chance to see his newborn… the thought made him feel twitchy with the first stirrings of rage.
Her hands gently cupped his cheeks. “Because what we did was different. I sensed the mating call on you when you took me, Chance Hawthorne. Sensed it and craved it. Though I knew I shouldn’t have.”
He closed his eyes, remembering her crow trailing him for weeks, picking through his bins, making a constant pest of itself. And now he wondered if it had all been just to get his attention. “I will not let them take you away from me,” he said with a growl in his tone.
She shook her head. “Mother returns at any hour if she’s not back already. By morning, her soldiers will be scouring the woods for me.”
Panic clutched at his heart, and he drug her tightly to his side, laying his hands on her lower back as he cradled her to him.
“Then we should wed.” He said the words so quickly and without much forethought that even his own eyes widened in shock.
From single, to father, to almost wed in a single night. Holy shit.
Gods, his brothers would tease him mercilessly. He hardly knew her, or she him, but they were a fated match, a pair predestined by the spirits of his ancestors. Even though there was much confusion in all of this, he knew they had to be together. He had no choice in the matter.
No other woman would ever be enough for him now. She’d ruined him. His cock would never even rise for another. Bronwyn was literally it for him. The thought that he could only ever have sex with her for the rest of his life made him terrified of losing her, but it was more than that too.
The magick of bonding went beyond merely superficial. It was a soul-deep connection of knowing you’d found the other half of your whole. Bronwyn’s soul was as much his as his was now hers.
When she feared, he felt it. For two weeks, he’d felt her panic, her worry, and moodiness. It had made him crazed, almost to the point of violence, to get her back. Each day, he’d gone to her boundary, bringing in whatever treasures he could find: fish fresh from the streams, piles of twigs and tree stumps, stones, even some nuggets of gold he’d managed to fish out of the ponds in the mornings.
All of it was meant to let her know he would be a good provider for her. She only needed to trust him, believe in him, and she would never have to worry another day in her life.
But where he had no choice, Bronwyn did.
She could choose to leave him. Yes, they were fated, and surely she felt that connection as strongly as he did.
But bird Breed rarely, if ever, married for love. They were practical and rarely prone to letting matters of the heart dictate their future path.
The females were responsible for the rearing and training of their chicks. The males were hardly involved except in the defense of their borders. They were loveless matches. The males often ran off and whored around, and the women stayed back, kept house, and raised the offspring.
He was desperate for her to escape that fate.
“Marrying you would mean nothing to my dame. Our courts do not recognize any marriage outside of our own.” She said it softly, clutching his fingers tightly in her hands.
His jaw set. “I will not hand you back, Bron—”
She shushed him with a finger to his lips and shook her head gently. “And I don’t want to. I’ve wanted to know you for ages, Chance Hawthorne.” A smile graced her petal-soft lips as she held up her hand so he could see it.
He snorted when he spotted that damned piece of red string around her ring finger. “I thought you meant to kill me that day.”
She laughed, and the sound of bells filled his soul. “I did, you bastard. You bruised my damned wrist. And I might have come back to pour salt in your eyes the next day if you hadn’t tracked me down and given me the best sex of my life.”
Pride swelled through his chest. He hadn’t forgotten their one day together either. Wetting his lips, he spread his legs wide. His stance was territorial and claiming as he feathered his fingers up her naked back. “Did I now? Well, then… how about we do that ag—”
She rolled her eyes. “You bears only ever have one thing on the brain, don’t you? Sex. And more sex.”
He snorted. “Food’s in there too. But yes, mostly sex. Lots of sex,” he said with a shivery tenor in his words.
She trembled, just as he’d hoped she would.
“Cheeky bastard.” She giggled then swatted at his shoulder. “Do try to stay focused, bear. We have a problem on our hands that needs fixing. After that, sex. Deal?”
His brows rose. Sex? Oh yes, he could focus as long as that was his prize. He’d never slept with a pregnant woman before. How different could it be, really? But then he glimpsed at her breasts and saw how they’d become much more plump than he’d remembered them being, and it was all he could do not to toss her down on the bed and ravish her, problems be damned.
A corner of her lips rose, and her dark eyes twinkled when the cock he could no longer control bumped her hard in the hip.
“Hm. I see I maybe have you for the next five minutes so I’ll make this quick. There’s only one way to ensure my family would no longer fight to take me back.”
She was talking, and he was trying like hell to pay attention. But the skin of her throat right where the hollow met her shoulders drew him like a moth to a flame. He planted greedy little nibbles along her collarbone, sucking and licking as he went.
She sighed, and her long, black nails sank into his biceps, hard, making him wince from the wicked pleasure of pain and lust.
She smelled of the forest and skies and of new life. Her scent was addictive. It had been before, but now she was marked by him, filled by him.
“Mine,” he rumbled, losing himself to the madness of that instinct. He was worse than a teenage boy reading his first Playboy.
Bronwyn’s laughter inched through his veins like fire. “Okay, maybe less than a minute. Will you pay attention, caveman?” Her fingers dug into his chin as she jerked his face up. Delight sparked through her glittering eyes. “Do you see me?”
He frowned grumpily. He wanted to taste her some more. “Yes,” he ground out. “But make this quick. I’ve a need to claim you again, woman, to dip my tongue between your thighs and well… you know how much bears love honey.”
“Good gods,” she squeaked then shook her head. She sounded surprised by his candor.
“What’s the matter, little bird? Not used to hearing a man talk dirty to you?”
She wet her delectable lips with the tip of her bright pink tongue. “No. Rolo never said anything like that to me,” she whispered gravely.
“That’s because he’s not me,” he growled. “And he’ll never have you. Know you as I will, I’ll kill him first.”
The threat clung to his words in a deep rasp. The bear and man vied inside him for dominance. The bear was straight up winning. The last thing his bear wanted to do was talk about stupid stuff like Rinki, or Ronko, or whatever the hell his name was.
“He’s gay, Chance. And he’s my best friend. So be nice,” she warned with a stern set of her lips.
Immediately, the fire in him cooled. “Well then, I like him better already.” He grinned cockily. “Now, where were we?” He reached for her just as she stepped outside of the circle of his arms.
She smacked his hands away and wagged a finger beneath his nose. “Give me a minute before you go all growly, sex fiend on me, caveman. Good gods.”
She harrumphed as though she were irritated, but he knew she wasn’t. He could see it in the flush of her skin and the brightness in her eyes. She was just as turned on by him as he was by her. The woman had it bad.
But what could he say? He was damn fine-looking. A total catch, really. He chuckled.
Then she gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was thinking, and she was not amused, and could he please focus.
Chance: Mating Fever (Bears of Kodiak Book 1) Page 4