by Amy Star
For almost the first time since they’d left Portland, Dylan truly felt what they had lost in becoming exiles. It was more than just the prospect of being among their own kind; sharing the magic of the transformation with people they had known their entire lives. If they’d run into trouble like this back in Portland—assuming they hadn’t done anything to really deserve it—they would have had the support of the sleuth. A ragtag group of lions that hadn’t even formed a true pride wouldn’t have the guts to stand up against an entire clan of were-bears. Dylan found the car keys in his pocket and shook his head, reminding himself that the very same clan he found himself missing was the one that had shunned him and Matthew both without almost any evidence at all—without even a proper trial to determine their guilt. Gutless bunch of teddy bear assholes, he thought bitterly, pressing the button to unlock the doors to the car.
Dylan drove around to where Nadine was parked and shut the engine off, getting out to help Matthew; his friend carried the box of whatever it was that Nadine had needed from her car easily, but even Matthew’s preternatural abilities would be taxed if he tried to both support the woman’s weight and carry her gear with him. Dylan took advantage of the situation for the excuse to get up close to Nadine, who smelled just as delicious as she ever had, pheromones mingling in his nose. The urge to press her up against the car, to rub himself all over her, taking on the delicious honey-lemon-lavender of her and casting some of his own scent onto her skin, was overpowering.
Dylan gritted his teeth, reminding himself that while Nadine knew what he and Matthew were, he couldn’t even think about getting her into bed until he’d gotten her basic trust—and anything he did to remind her of his animal nature would just make her distrust him all the more. Dylan breathed shallowly, trying to keep her mind-fogging pheromones out of his nose as much as possible, and helped her to limp to the car.
“She gets shotgun,” he told Matthew.
“I wasn’t going to call it,” Matthew replied.
Nadine glanced from Dylan to his friend and Dylan caught the subtle lift in her heart rate, the change in her smell. He had no idea whether the attractive pheromones were caused by Matthew or himself, but it was a good sign. Hell, maybe she’ll warm to both of us and we can share her. That’d solve a lot of problems. We would both be getting laid regularly and she’d have protection and neither of us would really need a sleuth anymore. Dylan checked, letting go of Nadine to open the passenger side door to the car for her as Matthew loaded the box from her car into the trunk. You’re getting way ahead of yourself, man, Dylan thought firmly. She barely believes the fact that you’re a bear—and the more it sinks in, the more she’s going to look at you and Matthew like you’re freaks. Let her get used to you first and then start thinking about how you’re going to court her. No need to rush things when she’s kind of dependent on you anyway.
“One more stop at your place,” Dylan told her, “and we’ll grab your meds while we’re there. You can make whatever phone calls you need to and then we’ll cook you up some dinner and let you get some rest. How does that sound?”
“It sounds like you’re trying to bribe me with basic courtesy,” Nadine said wryly.
Matthew snorted, opening the door to the back seat of the car and climbing in.
Dylan grinned at Nadine. “Not bribe so much as show you that we’re not just animals,” he told her.
He closed the door behind her and walked around the car to the driver’s seat, taking a deep breath. She is entirely too quick. God—if we can just get her to think of us as something other than jack-booted thugs, we could both have a lot of fun with her. And she could use that kind of fun. Dylan took another breath and climbed in behind the steering wheel, quickly turning the key in the ignition and putting the car in drive.
He needed to get through the errand as quickly as possible before he could relax; he needed to get the more erotic qualities of the woman he was trying to protect out of his mind. Of course, that’s not going to be any easier when she’s sleeping under the same roof. Do you have any idea what you’re actually doing right now? Dylan wasn’t entirely sure he knew the answer to that question—but he knew that he couldn’t convince himself of any other course of action.
*
Nadine looked around at the living room of the house that Matthew and Dylan had brought her to, trying to decide how she felt. Anger, frustration, fear, and an atavistic kind of thrill rose to the surface of her mind by turns. She hated the fact that she was having to rearrange her entire life all because of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but somehow the situation was—much though she hated to admit it—a little thrilling. Nadine hadn’t realized how much her life had assumed a routine, and how much she’d almost gotten into a rut. At the same time, though, it was only too easy to imagine that the friends of the man who’d grabbed her and held a knife to her throat were every bit as bad as Alex had been.
She wasn’t sure that she could wrap her mind around the fact of what Dylan and Matthew were; in spite of having seen Dylan’s hand transform into a bear paw right in front of her, and in spite of being reminded of that fact when she’d first met Matthew, the memories—and even the memory of the bear she’d seen, which had apparently been Dylan himself—had the quality of a dream. The things the two men had described seemed unreal, impossible. How could she make herself believe there were human beings who could become bears? Or would it be more accurate to say there are bears who can become human beings? Without having seen a person transform into a lion, Nadine almost couldn’t even believe that that was possible at all—even in a terrible dream.
But the threat posed by friends of a man who had almost killed her was a very real thing; Matthew and Dylan had both shown Nadine the text messages and emails they’d gotten from Alex’s friends. She couldn’t imagine that two guys who barely knew her would put that amount of effort into creating an elaborate hoax. There were definitely people who wanted to take the two men out and if she could trust their reports, those people could track Nadine as well, and Nadine had no illusions about the possibility of defending herself against more than one attacker at a time—whether they were simple humans like herself or something more supernatural.
“How are you feeling?” Matthew sat down in a chair a few feet away from the couch Nadine had taken over. “Are you sure you don’t want to take a nap or something?”
“If I take a nap now, I am never going to get any sleep tonight,” Nadine said, shrugging.
She had taken half of one of the pain pills the doctor at the hospital had prescribed for her: enough to dull some of the pain from her ankle, but not so much that she’d be unable to react to something, just in case either the lions that wanted revenge or one of her two hosts came up with something to do to her.
“Dylan’s not a bad cook, as long as he sticks to what he knows,” Matthew said, smiling slightly and glancing in the direction of the kitchen.
“What does he know?” Curiosity began to filter through the maelstrom of emotions running around Nadine’s mind.
“Meat, mostly,” Matthew said with a shrug. “He can cook a good steak, and his chicken and pork are cooked through. Simple stuff—you know, bachelor food.”
“Most of the bachelors I’ve known seem to live on ramen and pizza,” Nadine pointed out, looking around her doubtfully.
The two men’s presence was definitely written in the house, in spite of the fact that Nadine could tell they hadn’t been there very long. There was a smell to the rooms: faint traces of musk, with a green undertone, and something that hit her nose like the scent of clean dirt and moss. It was oddly pleasant, almost comforting in spite of how foreign it was.
“That shit is terrible for you,” Matthew told her, shaking his head. “Better to stick with meat and veggies. Maybe a little fruit—we do have a sweet tooth.”
“Honey?” Nadine couldn’t resist the little joke, in spite of her worry and frustration.
“Honey is a favorite of bears—wh
ether they’re two-natured or one-natured,” Matthew said, grinning.
There was something in his expression that made Nadine feel like he was picturing her naked, though she couldn’t say exactly why; the man wasn’t leering, and his gaze was settled on her face without wavering. She felt her cheeks warming up under his attention and took a quick breath to steady her nerves.
“You know,” she said, licking her lips and trying to keep herself from fidgeting. “It occurs to me that I don’t know anything about you or Dylan. Not really.”
“What do you want to know?” Matthew raised a dark eyebrow, settling in his chair more comfortably.
Without the impetus of fear or the adrenaline of a near escape, Nadine realized that both he and Dylan had a boyish look to their faces, a kind of youthfulness that belied their slightly cynical attitudes.
“Where are you from originally? What’s it like to be a bear? How—how did you even end up here?”
Matthew’s eyes widened slightly and then his smile came back.
“We’re originally from Oregon,” Matthew said, glancing once more in the direction of the kitchen. “We were exiled from our sleuth there, so we came here to get as far away as possible without having to leave the country.”
“What did you do to get exiled?” Nadine’s heart started to beat faster.
If they belonged to an entire group of were-bears—or whatever they’re called—then what would it take to get kicked out? It’s a group of people who turn into animals; they must have a pretty wide idea of what’s okay and what isn’t.
“We didn’t actually do anything,” Matthew said quickly. “It’s what we were accused of doing—wrongly accused of doing—that is the problem. The leader of our clan accused Dylan and me of killing a rival were-bear leader from Seattle. We weren’t even in the same place as the guy, and they didn’t even give us a fair trial, but he decreed that we would have to leave the sleuth and nobody else had the balls to stand up to him.”
“You’re sure you didn’t kill the guy without knowing who he was?” Nadine thought of the dead man who had caused her current deranged life. “I mean, I know you and Dylan are capable of killing someone.”
“We’ve never killed anyone without a good reason for it,” Matthew told her; his voice had taken on a slight chill. “I know it’s hard for you to understand—normal human society doesn’t really allow for something like that—but there are…there’s a lot more ‘law of the jungle’ stuff among shifters like us.”
“Or law of the forest in the case of a bear,” Nadine muttered, almost more to herself than to Matthew.
He grinned. “Exactly. There are ways that we deal with other shifters that aren’t exactly legal…but it’s our way. Can you get that?”
Nadine shrugged. “Whether I can or not, it’s not like I can judge,” she pointed out. “I don’t…I don’t have the same experiences as you, so I don’t know what it’s like. And there are other cultures—regular human cultures—that have like…” She licked her lips and considered what she was saying. “Very different standards of justice.”
“You’re right about that,” Matthew said, nodding. He took a deep breath. “Anyway, Dylan and I didn’t do a damned thing to that clan leader, but someone found him murdered, he was murdered by two people working together, and the book got thrown at us. We had to leave the sleuth and make our own way.”
“That must be difficult,” Nadine said, trying to think of how she would feel if she had had to leave a community of people who shared something as elemental and secret as the men’s two-natured status, and move across the country without any warning. “Do you—are you…I guess it’s probably insulting to say ‘making friends’ down here…” she blushed, feeling the awkwardness of her question.
Matthew grinned. “We’re making contacts here,” Matthew said. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, considered, and then shrugged. “There are sleuths in Florida, but this particular region is sort of neutral territory—which is why the work’s been so good for us. Without a lot of affiliations for the different shifters, there’s not as settled a way to deal with disputes. So Dylan and I take care of business.”
“By killing people,” Nadine said blandly.
Matthew shrugged. “Not always killing people. Sometimes just bringing them to whoever wronged them. We chased a guy down into the Keys last week—it was the second or third assignment we’d gotten.” Matthew grinned. “You ever been to Key West?”
“A few times,” Nadine admitted.
“If you’re still feeling decent about us after all this cools off, we should make a trip down there,” Matthew suggested. “I’d like to check it out with someone who knows where to go.”
Nadine snorted. “I’m probably exhausting all of the leave I have this year,” she pointed out. “All because that asshole decided he wanted to use me as a human shield.”
“You know, you didn’t do a bad job defending yourself,” Dylan said, coming into the room. “Dinner in ten.”
Dylan threw himself into the other chair in the living room and looked at Nadine for a long moment, and once more, Nadine felt as though she had somehow magically become naked. Neither of these guys has seen me naked—that I know of. Nadine’s mind reminded her of the fact that she’d been unconscious for a significant chunk of time the first time she had met the two men. But I’ve seen him naked. Her blush deepened, her face growing hotter and hotter until Nadine took a quick breath and suppressed her sense of embarrassment.
“I got grabbed by a guy with a knife—how is that not a bad job? If I was good at it, he wouldn’t have grabbed me.”
Matthew and Dylan chuckled.
“Anyone can get grabbed,” Dylan pointed out. “But dealing with the situation once someone grabs you takes a bit of skill.”
“Luck,” Nadine said, shaking her head. “I mean—I took some basic self-defense classes when I was in college, but I never really thought I’d be capable of using any of the information they gave me.”
Matthew shrugged. “You jabbed him in the solar plexus and gave him a spiked instep—that’s not bad. Two more hits and you’d have gotten the high score.”
“Two more hits? Where?” Dylan’s lips twitched with the start of a smile.
“Nose and groin. The big spots to disable an attacker.”
Dylan looked her up and down speculatively. “You know, if your whole life completely goes to hell and you don’t have a job anymore, we could show you the ropes.”
“I am not mercenary material,” Nadine said firmly, shaking her head again. “I’m just an office nerd.”
Both Dylan and Matthew looked at her intently, and Nadine had the sudden urge to grab the throw draped over the back of the couch and hide behind it.
“You’re a lot tougher than you think you are,” Dylan said quietly. “You’ve got a good bit of grit to you.”
“It’s pretty hot, actually,” Matthew said, smiling slightly. “It was good to see you take that guy down, even if he did slice you in the process.”
“Yeah—that’s another thing,” Nadine said, crossing her arms over her chest. “He cut me—that’s not really a stellar recommendation. He could have easily killed me.”
“You got away quickly enough that your cut only took a handful of stitches to fix,” Matthew pointed out. “Face it, Nadine, you’re a closet bad ass.”
“Maybe you should consider letting that part of you out more often,” Dylan said. “It was hot as hell, seeing you do that.”
“I wasn’t doing it to be hot,” Nadine said, scowling at the two men. “I was doing it because somehow the two of you couldn’t figure out how to get me away from the guy holding a knife to my throat without getting me killed.”
“He was about to break,” Matthew said with a shrug. “He didn’t have anywhere to go, and if you’d agreed to walk with him to your car, one of us would have gotten the drop on him.”
“So I didn’t need to get cut at all,” Nadine said irritably. “I could have
just waited a few more minutes and then—what—he would have dropped me?”
“Probably not,” Dylan said. “He would have slipped up and we’d have gotten you away from him. You might still have gotten cut—only worse.”
“That’s comforting,” Nadine said dryly.
“Besides, you kicking out like that meant that he was dead easy to take down,” Matthew said cheerfully. “He was still trying to get a breath in when Dylan and I took care of him.”
“I don’t really want to think about that too much,” Nadine said, feeling a chill work down her spine at the knowledge of just how Dylan and Matthew had ‘taken care of’ Alex.
“Well, dinner is probably done,” Dylan said. He looked at Matthew. “I cooked; you serve.”
“Who cleans?” Matthew raised an eyebrow at Nadine’s question.
“We’ll flip a coin,” Dylan said with an indolent shrug. “It’s technically Matt’s turn to wash dishes, but if he serves it kind of goes even.”
“How long have you guys known each other?” Nadine looked from one man to the other; they didn’t look like brothers, but they acted as in synch as if they’d been in the womb together.
“Most of our lives,” Matthew said, rising from his chair. He turned and walked towards the kitchen, leaving Nadine alone with Dylan.
“We were so young when we met that I can’t actually remember how old we were,” Dylan added. “And we were thick as thieves in our old clan, which is why we got exiled together.”
“You heard that?” Nadine looked in the direction that Matthew had gone in, worried that her questions might have caused tension between the two.
“I’m a bear,” Dylan pointed out. “Preternaturally acute hearing, sense of smell. Vision isn’t super great compared to a lion or a wolf, but it’s pretty good, even at night.”
“What’s it like?” Nadine bit her bottom lip, wondering if she was being too intrusive. Nadine, they practically abducted you from work. You don’t even have your own car to leave if you feel like it. They’re supposedly protecting you from were-lions. Ask whatever questions you want.