“She sent you, didn’t she?” Jack Sable squawked in his odd accent. “She couldn’t stand the competition, eh? Eh?” He cackled with laughter, bouncing in his chair and spinning his handgun around like a child playing cowboy.
“Look dude, I don’t care what weird stuff you’re up to out here. I just want the box you stole from my mate and then we’ll leave. I promise no harm will come to you.” He tried to keep it friendly, to keep the growl out of his voice. But the bear was strong and supremely pissed off. Their mate was in danger and it was all he could do not to bear-out and fuck everyone up. The growl came anyway.
“Lies!” the raven shifter screamed. “Lies! You’re assassins! Sent to punish me. First she welcomes me with open arms and closed legs. Me! Jack Sable, alpha of Les Monts Groulx! I should be king here. She should be happy to lick my toes, to bear my young. The arts I know! The gifts I’ve learned! Traded much for them I have. But it was worth it, so worth it.”
“Les Monts Groulx? Is that in Oregon?” Michael sat on the floor in front of Sable, his arms locked in silvered cuffs. Alison was next to him, her hands tied with simple rope, her mouth gagged. This Sable guy didn’t seem to like women much. The wolves all had cuffs like Michael’s, though just one per wolf. Silver, suspiciously thin, and maybe an inch wide—weird runes were etched into the surface, shining with an eerie blue light. There was magic in the bindings. Michael hated magic. The few wizards he’d met had either been laughably fuzzy-headed, their minds eaten by whatever arcane depths they’d probed, or complete psychotic a-holes, like Sable. Something about bending the rules of reality either made a mind snap, or dissolved it.
“Oregon? Oregon!” Sable drew his gun and fired a shot at Michael. It harmlessly bounced off his shoulder. No weapon forged by man could hurt him, or so the old story went. “It’s Quebec, you provincial bumpkin. The center of North American culture.”
One of the wolves seemed to laugh at that in a yelping, barking, whining sort of way. Sable shot the wolf a glance and gestured with his hand, and the poor beast yelped in pain. It’s the bracelets, Michael realized, he’s controlling the wolves with them. He’s their alpha, he’s drawing their strength into himself and channeling it back to control them. What a jerk. With the bracelets on, the wolves couldn’t regain human form. He wasn’t sure how he knew, he just did. Just like he knew that if he shifted into a bear, Sable would control him as well. He was powerless, locked up, at the mercy of a lunatic raven and still completely naked.
At least it wasn’t raining.
“So what do you want with us? Are you going to ransom me back to my brother? I’m sure he’d pay handsomely for us. Before he ripped your head from your shoulders.” He didn’t want to say it, he wanted to be nice. But the bear in him was so furious it was getting to him. He couldn’t shift or he’d be a slave. But if he kept the bear caged too long, he’d shift anyway.
“Here’s what is going to happen. This queen, she has hid her people from me. Afraid I will capture them like I did my wolf pack, like I did you.” Jack Sable leapt up from his throne and danced around the room in manic glee, like a scarecrow caught in a tornado. “And I will. Oh I will! Jack Sable always wins. He always gets what he wants. Hee hee! The ravens hide too well. The shadows are their homes and these woods are so full of shadows. So I will make a deal with you, bear man—if you bring me the head of the Raven Queen, I will let your mate live.”
“But I’m guessing you’ll keep her right here. Forever. Just like the wolves?” The shift pulsed inside Michael, threatening to take him. The raven sorcerer was not allowed to mention his mate. He shouldn’t even look at her.
“Of course!” Sable’s jerking dance continued. “It’s my destiny to rule. It’s my fate! I’ve seen it written on the stars at night, on the underside of leaves, in the whorls of snow on the mountains of my home. You can’t stop fate, boy.” The raven produced a jeweled goblet from behind his throne. It was gaudy and ostentatious and about as authentic as a plastic spoon. He snapped his fingers and one of the wolves popped up from the pile and padded over to the heap of stolen treasures, selecting a bottle of wine. The wolf loudly gnawed the top of the bottle off, spitting the cork and shattered glass onto the floor, before gently gripping the body of the wine bottle in its teeth and pouring it into the raven’s cup. “Do you see?” Sable cawed. “When I found these mutts they were alone and terrified. Their alpha had been in a freak accident.” He winked theatrically. “But with a new alpha and a firm hand, even these mangy dogs can be trained to be useful.”
The wolf’s eyes belied the idea he was trained. He had murder eyes. If Michael could deactivate the bracelets, the wolves would do his job for him. But how? What did Michael know about magic?
Jack Sable lifted his goblet to his mouth, about to sip the wine, when a furious roar shook the earth. Marcus. Marcus was coming. He’d heard Michael’s call and was on his way—not so far, in fact. The roar made the raven freeze, all the blood draining from his pallid skin. But then a wicked smile split his face in two. He put the goblet down and leapt up.
“Is that the alpha I hear? Oh, and it sounds like he’s crashing about as a bear? How unfortunate for him.”
“Leave him out of this,” Michael growled. He was on the edge of shifting. Marcus’s call was too much, too strong. Every bear for fifty miles would come at once to help. Every shifter would shift and obey their alpha, and fucking Jack Sable would be there with his enchanted traps to catch each and every one of them.
“I need to take a quick look outside. Stay here,” he squawked to his wolves. “Make sure the bear doesn’t do anything stupid. And if the woman tries to leave, kill her.”
Jack Sable shifted into his raven form and flew out through a hole in the wall.
Michael fell onto his face, panting. The bear was forcing its way to the surface. He couldn’t stand the threats against his mate. He needed to defend her, to protect her. He rolled over onto his back, his arms cuffed painfully behind himself, and roared at the pain. He’d never held in a shift before. His bear wasn’t used to being denied and it really, really didn’t like it. The wolves backed away. They were smarter than they looked.
He could feel claws pressing through his fingers, his bones creaking and snapping. His skin burned with the need to change, to sprout fur and rampage. The bear didn’t understand traps or cages or magic bracelets that turned you into a wizard’s butt monkey. He closed his eyes and tried to think about something that wasn’t the silver bracelets cutting into his wrists, or the way Sable pointed his gun at Alison, or Marcus getting caught and enslaved by the damn wizard. It was no use. He had no calm to cling to, no life raft in his storm of emotion. The bear was coming, and when it did, he’d be under Sable’s control. Sable’d be able to make him do anything, hurt anyone, and he’d be unable to stop.
But just as the bear was emerging, Michael felt warm, soft lips press against his. Cool hands stroked his forehead. He opened his eyes and Alison was leaning over him, a half-smile on her delicious lips.
“Hey, you,” she said. “You looked like you needed that.”
Michael nodded, mesmerized by her. He couldn’t find his voice. All of the storm inside him, the rage and fury, was just gone. Vanished. Dispelled by a kiss. “Thanks,” Michael said, his voice strained. “I thought you were tied up?”
“That guy is as bad at tying knots as he is at getting dressed in the morning,” Alison said. “And I have a really dumb plan. Can you hear him out there? Tell me how far away he is?”
“No, he’s too small. He blends in with all the other birds.”
“Okay, well. Hmm,” she said, chewing her lip as she thought. Michael’s cock twitched at the sight of it, rising to half mast. Alison saw it from the corner of her eye and cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Sorry,” he said, shrugging. “You just look so amazingly sexy when you do that. I can’t help it.”
Alison took his cock in her hand and squeezed it gently. “We will have so much more time for this later,
but I really need you to concentrate right now.”
A growl rolled out of his throat. “If you want me to concentrate, you shouldn’t grab me there. That’s whatever the opposite of concentration is.”
“Distraction?”
“What was that?”
“Do you find my hand on your cock distracting?” She smiled at him with wicked glee, like she had no idea how much danger they were in.
“What was the question again?”
She let go of his now achingly hard cock, then bent down and kissed him again, laughing against his lips. “You are such a goof. I am going to have so much fun getting to know you, and being your mate. But for now, let’s escape from this douchebag, okay?”
The wolves rose to their feet, growling at once with teeth bared and thick coils of spittle dripping from their mouths.
The bear in Michael stirred. “We can’t leave this place without the wolves attacking.”
“But if we don’t leave, they don’t care what we do, right?”
“I guess?”
“Okay, I’m going to dump some wine on you now.” And before he could say anything, she lifted Sable’s trashy tourist goblet and spilled the sour wine all over Michael’s face.
“Ugh,” he said, spitting it out. “Your honey wine is so much better.”
“When he comes back, you need to taunt him about drinking his wine. Can you do that? Just be a huge ass about it.” Alison darted over to the wall of the thicket, where a tangle of purple flowers bloomed. They had the same over-large look as the ones near the Raven Queen’s citadel, with a bulbous meaty pod and a white hooked thorn on the side. As she picked them, she yelped as the thorns cut into her palms. But it didn’t stop her. With bloody palms Alison picked a dozen of the flowers and crushed the pods over the goblet. A thin purple fluid trickled from between her fingers into the drink. Discarding the mashed heap against the treasure pile, she then found a clump of musk sage and rubbed it all over her hands to hide the smell of the crushed flowers.
The wolves watched, but did nothing.
“What is that stuff?” Michael asked.
“Aconite,” Alison said, smiling at him. “Super poisonous. And I think I may have gotten some in these cuts on my hands, because they burn like the dickens right now.” Her smile weakened and a look of fear came into her eyes as she quickly retied the gag and wrapped her wrists loosely in the twine bindings, again pretending to be a model captive.
Within minutes Sable returned, flying into the room silently before exploding back into his man form. The air was full of the stink of shift scent, the spicy bloody smell that accompanied transformation.
“Oh he’s close. He’s so close,” Sable cackled with glee as he rummaged behind his tattered throne for more enchanted cuffs. He was ignoring Michael and Alison, which would have been a good thing, except that meant he was going to skip the wine and go straight to capturing Marcus.
“That’s tasty wine,” Michael said. “Hope you don’t mind that I had some.”
Sable froze and turned towards Michael, his eyes narrowing as he took in the purple stains marring the shifter’s mouth and chest.
“It wasn’t as good as the queen’s, of course,” he continued. “But that’s to be expected. You just do it for show, don’t you? I mean, that’s not even a real goblet or real jewels. I can spot pasteboard jewelry at a hundred paces, you ridiculous man. And a pewter mug with a shitty paint job even easier. It’s like a metaphor for you, isn’t it?” The raven sorcerer went still with rage, so Michael kept on. “A pretender. An upstart. You lack the qualities of a real ruler, so you dress up and make a mockery of it without even realizing it’s what you’re doing. Take this chair you’re on, for example. The queen had a genuine pre-Victorian, French-designed divan with fluted ash legs original to the chair and an upholstery job that, while not original, was still at least a hundred years old and performed by a true craftsman. And what do you have, some garbage chair? I mean, I like ikea as much as the next guy—I’ve been to the one in Emeryville more times than I count—but you pick that as your throne? You should have come by my shop. I have a great used toilet with antique shit stains that you’d be right at home on.”
Jack Sable trembled with rage. Had Michael overdone it? If he lashed out and killed Alison, that’d be the end of them. Of all of them. Michael would bear out, and get enslaved. And every one of his friends and family would fall prey to the sorcerer’s bindings until eventually the weird awful raven became the de facto ruler of the shifter clans of North America.
The raven shifter lifted his goblet to his lips and emptied the whole thing, slurping noisily as he drank. “You think you are more cultured than I? You backwoods redneck. You country pumpkin. You classless American fool. I am from Montreal! We invented culture, you barbaric ape. And I am a raven, cleverest of all animals. You have nothing on me.”
“There’s an animal more clever than ravens,” Michael said, grinning at the raven shifter.
“Who? Dolphins? Dolphins are assholes. Have you ever met a dolphin shifter?”
“No. Not dolphins,” Michael said. “Her.” He nodded at Alison, who waved at Sable.
“But . . . But I tied you up?” the raven said before falling very heavily backwards, toppling over his throne, and rolling into his mountain of treasure, which shifted and trembled and then spilled over him in a tinny clatter, like an avalanche of pennies.
With a tink tink tink, the bracelets fell off of Michael and all the wolves.
“What the hell was that stuff you gave him?” Michael said, turning to Alison just in time to catch her as she collapsed. A white froth bubbled on her lips.
“Aconite,” she said in a weak voice, a smile on her lips. “Monkshood. Devil’s Rocket. Woman’s Bane. Also called the Queen of all Poisons.” She coughed harshly, her body doubling up in pain. “I think I may have done something very stupid.” She clutched at Michael with her bloody palms, stained purple from the juice of the poison.
Michael clutched her body to him and roared, letting all who could hear that his mate was in trouble. “Marcus,” he said. “Where are you? I need you!”
An answering roar sounded from not so far away, but judging by the tremors in Alison’s body, it was far enough away to be useless. She was going to die.
The reddish wolf padded over and sniffed at her, then transformed into a young man with a thin wiry build. He had red hair and a close-cropped beard. “Please, let us help,” the boy said, his eyes full of tears. “This is wolfsbane poisoning. We know a cure. But we must take her to it, there is no time.”
Michael slung Alison over his back, looked the wolf in the eye and said, “Lead the way.” He almost added, but if she dies, you die. But he didn’t need to. The wolves could smell it on him. To lose a mate was a terrible thing.
The reddish wolf shifted and barked at the rest of the pack and then they took off in a storm into the woods. Michael followed seconds later as a bear, with his mate carefully balanced in the middle of his back.
Chapter 8
Bearly Survived
When Alison woke, the first thing she smelled was frying butter. She heard the sizzle of the pan, a murmuring of voices. Something soft and heavy and warm was on top of her. Her eyes felt gummy and took a moment to open.
There on top of her, and around her, was a pile of wolves. The same wolves from before, from Jack Sable’s pack. But what were they doing on her? She didn’t feel in danger or threatened. She felt cozy, sleepy like a Sunday afternoon.
The house was unfamiliar but pretty, with polished redwood beams forming the floor and walls. It was a log cabin on a grand scale, built for a large family and outfitted with the comfortable touches that said home to her. Not a vacation rental.
Alison tried to push the wolves off, but the big animals were snoring soundly and she didn’t think it was a good idea to push too hard. They were wolves, after all. So instead she called out to the voices murmuring nearby. “Water,” she said, her voice a cracked whispe
r.
The murmuring ceased and in the span of a breath, she was surrounded by the biggest, handsomest, most concerned-looking men she’d ever seen. Michael and his two brothers loomed over her, their faces all showing the same expression with a deep furrow right between the eyebrows.
“Hey, hi. How are you feeling? Take it easy, you’ve been out a while.” Michael handed her a water and she sipped it gingerly, the cool liquid stinging her throat.
“Is this your house?” she asked Michael. She didn’t want to talk about the elephant in the room, any of the elephants. She’d almost died. She knew it was a risk when she poisoned Jack Sable, but it was her risk to take. Aconite is crazy toxic. Giant mutant aconite probably more so. But she was alive, and probably fine, and felt vindicated in her reckless behavior.
Matt laughed, like the idea of Michael living in a house like this was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “Michael’s house is somewhat smaller,” he said.
“It’s a shack,” Marcus said, his voice barely louder than a whisper.
“I usually sleep in the woods,” Michael said, shrugging and grinning at her.
“Then I guess you’ll have to move in to my place.” Alison drank some more water and felt instantly slightly better. “I’ve got like eight bedrooms after all.”
“I was hoping I could share yours.”
“Good, because only one of them is clean.”
“Poor thing, it must feel out of place. Maybe we should make it dirty?”
A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) Page 9