As they picked their way down the path, trying to be quiet and sneaky, both of them thoroughly rubbed with musk sage and other strong-smelling botanicals, Alison busied her mind by naming every plant they passed, identifying the edible and the medicinal and the toxic. The plants near the citadel were all impossibly large. She saw blueberries as large as baseballs and a bush of northern monkshood with spurred fruit larger than her leg. It was unreal. But as they passed through the Rookswood, out into the forests surrounding Bearfield, the plants dwindled in size until they were normal again, though the distribution was odd. Alison would have said unnatural but after meeting the queen of the ravens, she wasn’t sure what that even meant anymore. There was a precipice her mind was approaching. As a scientist, she believed the world had rules. Hard, strict rules for how things behaved. There were equations that determined how large plants could grow, where they could thrive. But those systems that governed the rest of the world didn’t apply here. Bearfield was exempt. How could she accept that?
Creeping down the deer trails, toward the thicket where the queen swore Jack Sable lived, Alison saw plants that shouldn’t thrive in the western hemisphere at all. She saw plants that were thought to be extinct. She saw plants that resembled the familiar, but with tiny differences that made her head spin. So even trying to name and classify the world around eventually offered no solace. It was just as confusing and odd as the rest of Bearfield.
Could she really live here? Her dream was to open a bed and brew, to make amazing beer and put down roots somewhere kind and good. Was Bearfield that place? Or did horrible shifters lurk under every rock?
And most importantly, what was Michael? She knew he was more than human. The clues and comments had been too frequent to miss, but what was he? If he was her mate, and she was destined to be with him—well what if he was something awful, like a salamander shifter or some nasty thing that ate people? It could be possible, right? If skinny ass raven bitches could have secret kingdoms just north of wine country, anything could happen. But looking at the man, the strength of his shoulders, the taut roundness of his butt, the way he roved ahead and then always glanced back with kind, concerned eyes to make sure she was safe—she knew he wasn’t bad. Whatever he was, it was good and warm and sexy as hell.
Maybe being Michael’s mate wouldn’t be so bad?
They stopped for lunch when they were still an hour away from Jack Sable’s location. The queen had drawn a map, given Michael directions that made sense to locals but to Alison’s ears were no better than code. “Past Janet Paley’s tree, take the old stream path. But if you get to where the Withers farm was, you’ve gone too far.” That sort of thing.
Alison’s stomach was growling for food, twisting and knotting itself like it’d been days, not hours, since she’d eaten. From her bag she produced a heavy sticky roll and two sandwiches. One appeared to be thinly sliced salmon and the other was some sort of roasted veggies and hummus deal.
“Nice food,” Michael said, breaking his concerned silence.
“Thanks, but I can’t take the credit. Your brother’s wife gave me this bag before we left.”
“Mina? She’s an amazing cook. We’re in for a treat,” he said, splitting the roll in two and offering her the larger half. “But they aren’t married yet. Soon though, another few months.”
Alison saw an opportunity and took it. “Are they mated?”
Michael’s eyes went wide. “Sort of? It’s hard to explain.” He took the salmon sandwich and started to walk away, to eat a bit further from her, but Alison reached out and took his hand.
“Please,” she said, almost gasping at the heat that raged inside her when their skin made contact. “Please tell me about them. I need to get my mind off that raven woman, off this Jack Sable guy. I just need a distraction, for a little bit.” And so Michael told her. He left things out, she knew, but he told her the important bits. How Mina had wrecked her car while passing through town. How Matt had been her attorney and Michael had given her a tow. Gangsters, a fight, and then amongst all of it, love.
“And then she opened her bakery—well, sort of. It’s still in process, but she’s baking out of it for the locals and the hotels and the Lodge now. Just until she gets it all set to open up the front to the public.”
Alison devoured her sandwich like it was made of air and then bit into the sweet roll. Her eyes rolled back in pleasure as the sugars coated her tongue. “Holy crap,” she said. “This is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, ever. It’s a good thing she’s engaged or I’d have to marry her myself.”
Michael grinned. “Right? It’s a good thing Matt’s a shifter or he’d put on like a hundred pounds being married to her.”
Alison tried to chew, to enjoy the roll like Michael hadn’t accidentally admitted they were shifters. The big handsome man with the honey-brown eyes sighed and hung his head, knowing he’d messed up. She wanted to ask, to know, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. So instead she fished around in her knapsack and pulled out a long thin stoppered flask.
“Libation?” she asked, passing the flask to Michael. “It’s my own recipe. I sort of invented it in college. It’s a kind of mead made from orange blossom honey, but I add in sweet apple cider during the fermentation process to give it a sweeter finish. Well, now I use orange blossom honey. When I was in school I was so poor that I had to use like corner store honey. One of those honeybear squeezy containers, y’know? Also it didn’t ferment nearly long enough, that first batch. But I’ve worked out the kinks. ‘Orange blossom apple mead’ isn’t a great name, so I’ve always called it Honeybear Wine.”
Michael took the flask, popped out the cork stopper gently and sniffed at the liquid inside. A deep rumbling growl rolled out of his throat. He glanced up at Alison, his eyes wide with shock, but she just laughed.
“That’s an excellent response. Go ahead. Try some. I promise it isn’t poison. Actually, making this mead for my botany final is what first got me started on the idea of opening a brewery. At first it was a meadery, but mead just isn’t popular enough to make a whole restaurant around. Well, maybe in the city. They probably have mead hipsters in the city.”
Michael sipped the mead from her flask, his soft pouty lips grazing the top of the bottle so gently that it made her toes tingle. How would those lips feel kissing her toes and then her knees and then that sweetest spot just between her thighs? The gorgeous man groaned as he tasted it, his eyes squeezing shut with delight.
Then, in one quick motion, he was on top of her. It was so fast, Alison didn’t even see it happen. Her back was against the dry leaves and dust of the trail, her legs were parted with the big man’s hips between them. His eyes stared down into hers and she felt like if she looked too long the world would tip and she’d tumble into the swirls of gold in his eyes and be lost forever.
“Your honey wine is incredible,” he said, his voice a whisper. His breath smelled like honey and salmon and sun-dappled afternoons. He took another swig of the wine and then brought his lips to hers and then, in a trickle, let the wine pour from his mouth into hers. The wine tasted even sweeter than Alison remembered. She swallowed every drop and then whimpered as Michael’s lips pressed against hers in a fiery kiss. His hands slid up under shirt, the electricity of his touch making her skin sing with delight. Just being touched by this man felt better than any sex with Drew ever had. Something inside told her she should roll over, should slide her pants and underwear down and let him take her here, in the wild, like animals in heat. It’d be so easy, so right to give in to her desires.
As Michael’s hands found her breast and his wide rough thumbs began circling her nipples, Alison couldn’t resist running her hands down his wonderfully warm, magnificently hard body. His muscles were so firm they felt like oak under her touch. She’d felt mountains that were softer, steel that was more yielding. Not for the first time, she wondered at the feel of his cock. She’d already seen it, of course. She’d met his cock practically before she’d
met him. But seeing and feeling and stroking and tasting were all such different things, and Alison wanted to do all of them. The heat between them built and grew, like two forest fires racing at each other, becoming something greater, something primal and elemental. The length of his cock was pressed into her thigh and she had no choice at all but to reach down and unbuckle his pants and free it. His lips were soft and demanding on hers, his thumbs teased her stiff nipples until she felt like she was going to burst, and the fire in her needed to be quenched in the only way that would work.
“Take my pants off,” she moaned into Michael’s mouth.
But.
Then.
Came.
A.
Sound.
The crunching of leaves and sticks under a heavy foot snapped her attention to the edge of the path, where a very, very large wolf was staring at them with glowing red eyes. Alison went still. She never liked wolves. Unlike other predators, they liked to play with their prey. They liked to use feints and gambits to draw your attention one way and then—she looked behind herself and sure enough, three of the largest wolves she’d ever seen we’re creeping up on her and Michael. They were timber wolves, she thought, with a coarse light brown fur with smatterings of white like a line of snow across their midsections.
Michael chose that moment to unzip her pants. He was so focused on her, that he’d missed the wolves. Alison slapped his hand, trying not to move too much. “Michael!” she whispered. “Wolves!”
He glanced at her quizzically, like she was asking him to do some sort of sex game he’d never heard of, but then his nose twitched and the man leapt to his feet in one fluid motion.
His pants remained behind.
Michael stood in the middle of the path, between Alison and the three sneaky wolves, butt naked, his hard cock pointing at the beasts like a secret weapon.
“What the hell is this?” Michael growled, a rumbling bass rolling from his throat, so deep and powerful that it shook Alison’s bones.
“Timber wolves,” Alison said, finding her feet slowly after taking time to fasten her pants.
“Shifters,” he said. “What the fuck are werewolves doing in Bearfield? Your kind aren’t allowed here.”
The three wolves looked at each other, backing away from Michael. They had the look of beasts who’d gone after prey only to realize they’d stumbled on a predator. The lone wolf, the one facing Alison, crept closer. She wished she could growl and roar her strength to the canine, to make him clench his fluffy tail between his legs like a terrified little doggie. Instead she just looked the wolf in the eyes and said, “Get the hell away from me. This man is my mate.”
Saying it made it true. She was his mate. She’d known since they first touched. Denying it, hiding it, pretending it was something else didn’t change the fact that they belonged together. She’d expected the relief that flooded her veins when she said mate, but the utter light-hearted happiness that followed almost knocked her down. Most people spend their entire lives chasing love without ever finding the real thing. They settle. They mistake affection for romance. They choose companionship over the toe-curling, panty-wetting awe of real love. But she’d found it. She wasn’t even thirty yet, and she’d found her true love. And oh, by the way, he was a gorgeous mountain of a man with a heart of gold and the sexiest shrug you’ve ever seen.
The trees on either side of the path rustled, and more wolves emerged, circling them with fangs bared, slavering with thick clear drool. There were at least ten wolves. Maybe more.
“I know this is weird timing, and we just met,” Alison said. “But if we’re going to be torn apart by wolves I just wanted to say that I’ve really enjoyed meeting you, Michael Morrissey.”
“Thanks?” Michael said. “But we aren’t going to be torn apart by wolves.”
“Is this confidence or experience talking?”
“Both? Maybe?”
“That didn’t sound too confident.”
“Sorry, semantic arguments and wolf fighting don’t really go together for me. I may pick the wrong words to sandwich.”
“Sandwich?”
“See?”
Alison looked back and up at the man. He was grinning at his own goofy sense of humor. It was hard to be terrified of wolves at a moment like that, but she was trying. She reached back behind herself and felt his naked butt, firm and warm, like a basketball left in the sun all morning. She gave it a squeeze. “I love you,” she said. “I don’t know why or how, but I love you.”
The growl in Michael’s voice deepened. “I know,” he said. And then added, “I want you to jump onto my back, and hold on no matter what happens.”
“This is a weird time for a piggyback ride.”
“Please.”
The wolves barked and growled as Alison clambered up Michael’s back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed his powerful back with her thighs. He smelled like sage still, but under that was the Michael smell that made her eyes close with delight. She buried her face in his neck and smelled him, just smelled him, taking his scent into her.
“You have one chance,” Michael growled at the wolves. “One chance to leave without getting hurt. And if one of you so much as touches my mate, I will sever your spine with my teeth. Got it?” Michael fell forward, landing on his hands and knees, and then, faster than a blink, there was a bear where Michael had been. It happened so quick, Alison could barely believe it. But she was now astride the back of a very large bear with fur the color of molten honey. The same color as Michael’s pretty eyes. The beast’s body was hot under hers, and his fur was remarkably soft against her skin. Should she clutch his neck and risk sliding off forwards? Bears weren’t built like horses, after all. Their necks pointed firmly ground-wards. Or should she scoot back and ride between his shoulders? A more comfortable position, but risky if he decided to run. Or fight.
She held onto the neck.
Michael-the-bear took a deep breath, stood up on his hind legs and let loose a bellowing roar that made the wolves scatter, brought tears to Alison’s eyes and sent birds exploding from every treetop for a mile around. The sky was thick with birds, with ravens. If help was coming from Bearfield, they’d know where Michael was now. Was every person in the town a bear shifter? Was an army of five thousand bears, some with glasses still perched on their noses or trailing yarn from the knitting projects they’d dropped, coming to help?
Michael fell back to his feet softly. He glanced back at Alison, perched on his back, and she saw that he had the same eyes. Human eyes, in his scruffy bear face. Did he know her as a bear, or was he a mindless animal now? The scientist in Alison had like a million questions. If they got through this, she was going to sit Michel down and make him answer all of them. Well, after they took care of a few other sweaty, sticky, licky, thrusty things for like a week straight.
How could she have been so into Drew? So worried about what that man thought? It didn’t matter that she was curvier than most girls, that she had dirt under her nails, that she dressed more like a hiker than a fashion plate. Michael saw those things and loved her. Their love was a crucible already burning away her impurities, her doubts, her self-loathing. The fire in her was hotter than ever and it’d burn at least until Michael took her, if not longer. And every second it burned, more of the real Alison was revealed.
Michael looked at her and shrugged his big bear shoulders in exactly the same way he did as a man, and there was the proof that he was still there. Inside the fur suit, her mate was protecting her.
Five more wolves approached from down the trail, from the direction they’d been headed. They were so large they walked single file on the dusty path. On the middle wolf—larger than the rest with oddly reddish fur—sat that raven jerk who’d robbed her home. He was grinning with a lopsided mouth, his teeth large and luminously white. His nose was even bigger than Alison remembered, hanging off his face in a way that would make toucans jealous. He had greasy straight black hair and a face that was bot
h thin and doughy. He wore a long battered leather coat over jeans and a shirt advertising some band with more skulls and umlauts in their name than actual letters.
“So you’re Jack Sable?” Alison said as the man approached. He looked so out of place in the woods. He looked like he should be working in a dingy music store, having pointless arguments about album art with other employees while he ignored customers. Or like he should be in a van, selling weed to college kids.
Michael growled under her, the vibrations deeply pleasant as they traveled up her thighs.
“We were not formally introduced,” he said, giving a short bow from the wolf’s back. He had a strange accent, like French but not French. French-Canadian maybe? “Mister bear, whatever your name is. I am only going to say this once. Shift back to your muscle-bound lumbering man form or I will put one bullet right through your mate here.” The raven man produced a matte black handgun from under his coat and aimed it squarely at Alison’s chest. “And just so we don’t have any more confusion about these matters, you are both my prisoners now.”
Chapter 7
Bearly Captured
They’d been so close to the thicket where Jack Sable was squatting, Michael could have kicked himself. Another quarter mile down the trail and they would have been there. But no, he had to stop and drink Alison’s amazing honey wine and kiss her amazing lips and smell her amazing wetness drawing him in. As a rule, Michael didn’t have many regrets. He lived a simple life of hard work, good sleep, and easy pleasures. But if the goddamn raven shifter killed his mate before he had a chance to live his entire life getting to know her, he’d be furious. He’d crack the mountain with his rage. Even now, his bear thrashed about inside him, clawing to get out.
The thicket where Sable lived with his wolf pack was a poor imitation of the Raven Queen’s citadel. It was an overgrown thornbush, thick with flowers and choked with weeds. The thorny tendrils formed a canopy overhead, reducing the sun to a scattering of beams piercing the darkness. The wolves lounged in beast form in a loose pile, surrounding a central point where a cast-off ikea lounger moldered. Did Sable realize he was making a shabby mirror of the queen’s splendor? Or was this just what ravens did? The far wall of the lair, behind Sable’s ratty throne, was a heap of stolen goods. TVs, laptops, bowls full of jewelry, jars of pennies. Somewhere in there was the lockbox. Michael was sure of it. And in the box was the pendant. His father’s pendant.
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