Marcus’s posture stiffened. “Well, anyway, I gotta go. Glad you made it, Miss Meadows.” The big man tugged on a jacket and gathered up his hat to make his way to the door.
“Call me Alison. Please?”
Marcus looked back. “You got it, Alison.” And then he left.
“I think he likes her,” Matt said.
“Did you see how he gushed?” Michael added. “I almost told him not to be so emotional. He may even have had an expression there.”
Matt snorted with suppressed laughter, then a woman’s voice from the kitchen asked, “Is she awake? Ask if she wants pancakes.”
“She wants pancakes, Mina,” Matt said.
Alisom didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. The idea of pancakes made her mouth flood with saliva, her heart race, her stomach gurgle. These men were bears. They could tell.
Matt shot a look at Michael, who was gazing at Alison with the biggest, brownest, more adoring eyes ever. “I’ll go set the table,” he said, leaving the two of them alone.
“So you’re a bear,” Alison said. Now that the urgency of their quest was gone, there were a whole lot of things they had to talk about.
“Do you mind?” he asked, genuine worry in his voice.
“I’m just glad you aren’t a were-snake or a hamster shifter. I’m allergic to hamsters.”
Michael laughed but then quieted as one of the wolves yelped in his sleep, rolled over and fell off the low couch where Alison had been ensconced. The big canine hit the floor with a meaty thud, then kept snoring.
“You were out three days,” Michael said, kneeling on the floor between wolves, getting as close to her as he could. “Shawna Killdeer gave you a massive dose of atropine and some other things I can’t even begin to pronounce. She said you almost didn’t make it, but that you had some help.” He reached out and touched her forehead with two fingers.
“The Raven Queen’s kiss?” Her forehead no longer had that cold burning feeling.
“Probably?” Michael shrugged. “Magic never has clear answers.”
One of the wolves scratched himself in his sleep, sending bits of hair and fur floating into the air.
“I’m covered in werewolves,” Alison said matter-of-factly. Her body was awake, but her mind wasn’t fully online yet. “Why am I covered in werewolves?”
“They were really worried about you and felt guilty about, y’know, you getting poisoned. Also I think they just have nowhere to go now. Most of them took off, heading back to wherever Jack Sable kidnapped them from, but these guys are orphans. Omegas. They don’t have an alpha and none of them are equipped to rise up and take the responsibility. It’s different for bears, so I don’t really know. They’re Marcus’s problem now.” Michael cocked his head. “But they’re kind of cute when they sleep, like giant smelly puppies.”
“We’re going to have extra bedrooms,” Alison said. And they’d need help cleaning the house, fixing the house, clearing the grounds and constructing the restaurant. A pack of eager-to-please werewolves might come in handy for those sorts of things. And she’d need staff once the place was up and running. Maybe it could work?
“Marcus already tried twice to go clear your house out, to fix it up. It took Matt and me both to hold him back. I figured you’d want a hand in it, want to make your own decisions. He understood that, but the guy can’t bear the thought of not doing a job that he could be doing, especially if it meant ditching your mom. She’s been on his ass since we brought you here.”
“My mother. Oh crap. She must be flipping out. I’m surprised she isn’t here.”
“She was for the first day.” Michael’s eyes were luminous, like pools of spilled honey in a sun-drenched meadow. Alison had to fight to pay attention to what he was saying. “She was right here, along with all of us, and the wolves, and the Raven Queen and about fifty different Bearfielders. Mina’s been cooking up a storm to feed them all. I think she’s in heaven.”
“Pancakes are ready!” Mina called out. Even through the stink of the werewolves, Alison could smell the pancakes. They smelled like sugar-dipped heaven. They were exactly and precisely the kind of food her mother would never let her have, the kind of food Drew made faces over while eating his poached eggs and dry toast.
Alison held her arms up to Michael. “Get me out of here, there are pancakes calling my name.” The big man stooped and slid his arms around her, the skin of his palms grazing her bare thighs—where were her pants? Whose shirt was she wearing? But any concerns over the propriety of her clothes vanished at Michael’s touch. The sweet electricity returned, sending sparks across her skin and reawakening the sultry heat in her belly. Michael sniffed the air loudly, and a growl rolled from his throat.
“Are you sure we need to eat?” he said. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing and cradled her in his arms. Every place where their skin touched was another burst of electricity. Michael bent his head and grazed his lips against hers. “We could always eat later.”
She knew what he was saying, and the urge to have him carry her all the way back to her new home, to spread her out on the bed and take her was loud, but the grumbles in her stomach were louder. “It’s been three days.” She pointed at her belly. “This needs pancakes.”
“They’re lemon ricotta pancakes,” Mina yelled from the kitchen, where the sound of plates clanking and water running in the sink made Alison feel instantly, passionately at home. “We have fresh maple syrup, honey from the backyard bees, and a blueberry reduction sauce that will make you forget the first two even existed. Also, scrambled eggs cooked in so much butter that you’ll weep for what it’ll do to your thighs, cinnamon toast I baked fresh this morning, home fries, salmon that was swimming just an hour ago, and basically anything else you want.”
“Coffee?” Alison asked, nuzzling into Michael’s arms.
“So much coffee. But you better get over here soon, or Matt is going to eat everything himself.”
Alison squirmed an arm out from between her and Michael as he slowly carried her to the dining room, and then swatted him on the ass. “Faster, my good man!” she cried, laughing. He growled at her in answer, but it wasn’t a growl of anger. There was something sexy and dangerous in it. Oh yes. She wanted to hear that one again, soon. And more. First she’d fill herself with breakfast, and then she’d fill herself with Michael.
There was an intimacy between them, an ease of communication she’d never experienced with anyone before. She trusted him completely. She had no fear of him, of what he’d say, of disappointing him. They’d risked their lives for each other. She’d poisoned herself for him. They were fated to be mates and it wasn’t just words, like when Drew had told her he loved her, it was real. As real as the plate in front of her heaped with the most delicious breakfast she’d ever seen.
The two bears and their mates sat down to breakfast at Matt’s enormous wood table. It was a slab of redwood, cut crosswise so you could see the rings of the tree. There were hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand.
“This is a gorgeous table,” Alison said. “Did you make it yourself?”
Matt’s mouth was absolutely crammed full of pancakes and hot blueberry sauce, so Michael answered. “Our father made it on the day Marcus was born. He said he wanted a table big enough for his whole family to sit around. They say he knocked the tree down with one blow.”
“Where is your father?”
Michael looked down at his hands, uncomfortable with the question. “It’s complicated. See, bears like us are basically immortal. We live as long as we want to keep living. But if we get hurt badly enough, or often enough, or in just the right way, we sort of fall into a healing coma thing.”
“It’s like hibernation,” Matt added, around his pancakes.
“At some point he’ll wake up, but we don’t know if it’ll be tomorrow or next century.”
Alison’s heart ached for Michael, she reached out and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how h
ard that is to live with.”
“It’s not like he’s dead,” Michael said.
“But it’s kind of like he’s dead,” Matt said.
“It’s actually why I wanted the lockbox.”
“What do you mean?” Alison said.
“There’s an old family pendant, it’s the symbol of the alpha. Looks like a rampant bear, carved out of black stone. Maybe the size of my thumb? Our father wore it as a man or as a bear. The elders say he was so strong, so fierce, that he locked part of his strength away in the pendant, so that he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Or maybe as a reserve for times of trouble,” Matt added, filling his plate a second time.
Mina chimed in, “They think giving the pendant back to their dad might rouse him from his slumber. But it brings up all sorts of problems they don’t want to deal with.” There was a look in the woman’s eye, like she was trying to cut through the mens’ story to the heart of the matter. Alison liked her immensely.
“What kind of problems?”
“Marcus,” Michael said.
“Marcus problems,” Matt said.
“They’re worried that if their father wakes up, he and Marcus will have to fight to see who is alpha. The loser will likely either be dead or exiled forever.”
“Oh my god,” Alison said. “They can’t just like hug it out? Be co-alphas?”
Michael shrugged in his Michael way and Alison’s heart swelled ten sizes. “Anything could happen. Marcus could step down. Dad could pledge his support to Marcus. It just doesn’t seem likely.”
“Also, the older Bearfielders still see Marcus as the upstart, snot-nosed kid even though he’s been on the job like twenty years or whatever,” Matt said. “We could be looking at a very polite, very civilized, very quiet civil war in Bearfield.”
“Or maybe not,” Mina said, dancing away into the kitchen and returning with a giant pitcher of mimosas. “Maybe they’ll surprise you.”
Silence consumed the breakfast table, as everyone fought with their own thoughts. It could have lasted quite a long time indeed, if it wasn’t for the eight hungry werewolves who woke up all the same time, dashed into the dining room in wolf form, and then shifted into men. Naked men. One second Alison was shoveling delicious eggs into her mouth, and the next she was surrounded by werewolf penises dangling all around her. And they hadn’t bathed in weeks.
Mina jumped to her feet. “No,” she yelled, pointing at the door. “We do not shift in the house and we do not eat naked. I’ve laid some clothes out for you in the guest bedroom. Get dressed.”
The wolf boys looked at the food with tear-filled eyes and trembling lips, glancing at Mina to see if she was serious.
“She’s serious, guys,” Alison said out of the side of her mouth. “But if you get dressed fast, there’ll still be plenty of food left. If you take your time, Matt might eat it all.” The bear shifter looked up at the mention of his name. His third plate of food was empty. When he saw the wolves staring at him he growled low and deep and let his eyes flash golden.
The wolves thought about it for only a second, then raced to the bedroom, pushing and shoving at each other as they ran. The youngest was probably eighteen and the oldest in his mid-twenties, but they behaved like puppies.
Matt sighed once the wolves had left the room. “What on earth are we going to do with them?”
“Well,” Alison said. “I think I’d like to hire them.”
“And wasn’t Marcus saying he could use more help with the construction firm?” Mina said.
“It’s Bearfield,” Michael grinned. “They’ll find their place here.”
When the wolves raced back to the table, Alison stifled a laugh. The eight of them were above average in size, but still very far from being able to wear Matt’s clothes, so Mina had given them some of hers. They wore pink and light blue shirts that would have been roomy on Mina but which were too tight on them. Her short shorts were even shorter shorts on the wolves. If they felt embarrassed about it at all, it didn’t show. The boys sat down around the table or leaned against the walls, holding forks in their hands like they’d forgotten how to use them. Jack Sable had kept them in wolf form for months at a time, and apparently that did bad things to a shifter’s socialization skills.
After breakfast, the next stop was the police station. Old Pete had taken custody of the lockbox right away, holding it so it could be opened with all interested parties present. The phrasing was neutral, but the meaning was clear—he didn’t want Alison’s mother to be able to accuse anyone of tampering with the box, in case it didn’t contain what she hoped it would.
As they were entering the police station, Michael pulled Alison aside. “We didn’t really tell your mom what happened, of course. The whole you were unconscious because you were poisoned while sneakily defeating some upstart raven sorcerer story would be hard for her to swallow, y’know?”
“So what did you tell her?”
“That you had food poisoning from bad mushrooms?” Michael smiled sheepishly.
“I’m a botanist, Michael. That is literally the worst cover story you could have come up with. I’ve been able to identify edibles since I was a girl scout.”
“I know, I know. But in my defense, I think your mother has such a poor understanding of how awesome you are that she bought the story.”
There was a tension in the air between them. The good kind of tension. Between them existed nothing but possibilities and potential. Alison shivered with anticipation, not just for the sex that they both knew was coming, but for the future they’d build together. Others could think she was too curvy, but it didn’t matter because she knew she was beautiful and Michael did too. Her mother could think her dreams were unrealistic or doomed, but it didn’t matter because they were her dreams and she’d realize them, with Michael’s help. She’d known the man for such a short time, but already she couldn’t imagine living without him. And they hadn’t even slept together yet.
It wasn’t just that she’d stumbled onto her mate when she moved to Bearfield, she’d found a man who felt in her bones like her long-lost best friend.
The air in Bearfield that day had that delicious summer quality when it’s almost too hot, but just dry enough to be bearable. The kind of day that made you want to work with your hands outside, to paint or build or brew, to have a picnic or find a secluded glen to make out with the person you love. But inside Pete’s house-turned-police station, it was hot and muggy and tense.
The old sheriff and his bristling mustache sat on one side of a wickedly off-balance table across from Alison’s mother. Between them was the lockbox. They looked like Wild West gunslingers, each daring the other one to draw first. Neither looked away when the door opened.
“Hey, Pete,” Michael called as he entered the room. “Mrs. Meadows, so nice to see you, too.”
“Hello, Mother, Mr., err, Pete.” Alison realized she had no idea what Pete’s last name was. Even the nameplate on his uniform just said “Pete” on it.
“Alison, this ridiculous man has been holding my property hostage for three days while you swanned around with this backwoods lothario doing god knows what.” Mrs. Meadows took her eyes off Pete long enough to cast a coldly appraising look over her daughter. “Oh dear lord, what on earth are you wearing? You’ll never attract a man if you keep dressing so dowdily.”
She was wearing her hiking clothes, with a light jacket she’d borrowed from Mina. Apparently the Morrissey boys had a type and that type wore nearly the same size clothes. Alison considered telling her mom that she didn’t have to worry about attracting a man now that she’d found Michael, and that she’d never had to worry about it, really. There’d been Drew and a few others before. But Michael was the first good man she’d found. And she was keeping him. But there was no point in saying such things to her mother. The woman would hear what she wanted to hear.
“Mother, do you formally drop the charges against Michael?”
“That will depend on what is
in the lockbox,” Mrs. Meadows said, without breaking eye contact with Pete. Was Pete a shifter too? A bear? He lacked the sheer size of the Morrissey brothers, but his gaze was inhumanly steady. And something in his slumped shoulders and bristles gave him a very animal appearance. Maybe he was a badger shifter, a wombat shifter?
“Mother, that was not the deal. You said if brought we the box to you—”
“I know what I said,” her mother snapped. The woman’s placid demeanor twisted in spite for just a moment, revealing the ugly cruelty that Alison always thought of as her mother’s true face. “But I’m changing the deal.”
“Why are you like this, Mom? You do this every time. You make a deal, issue a promise, and then when someone actually comes through on one of your almost impossible challenges, you refuse to hold up your end. But if someone fails to fulfill their side—like remember when Alicia’s grades dropped at Berkeley?—then you force them to hold up their end. It’s wrong, Mother.”
“And anyway,” Michael added, the growl in his voice sending prickles up Alison’s spine, “you signed a contract.”
“I sign lots of contracts!” Mrs. Meadows bellowed in Michael’s face. “But I never give up anything I don’t have to.”
“You remind me of a raven I just met,” Alison mumbled.
A nearly sub-audible growl rolled out of Michael, shaking the windows and making Alison’s teeth itch. He had his palms on the table and was leaning in towards her mother. A very childish part of her wanted to see him bear out, to terrify her mother in the way she’d terrified Alison so many times over the years. But she knew that way lay nothing but disaster. Mrs. Meadows collected grudges like they were antiques to be cherished and polished and displayed for all to see. And she always found a way to get revenge. If she knew about the shifters in Bearfield, she’d find a way to tell their enemies, to raze the town to the ground.
Alison placed a hand on Michael’s back and the tension in the man evaporated. He glanced back at her and with the briefest of looks knew her thoughts. It wasn’t telepathy or even shifter senses, it was that on a very primal level he understood her in a way that no one had before. How exciting. How terrifying.
A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) Page 10