by Wilde, Kati
“Hi, Brandon.” All that shyness is there again as his giant grip swallows up her hand. “And this is my sister, Sam.”
In a county sheriff’s uniform. She tosses her hat onto the table and drops in next to Brandon. No shyness in this one. She lifts her chin to greet me and then turns to my brother. “What the hell does a werebear look like? Because these two are pulling some classic Hollywood horror movie shit, but you’re like…what? Winnie the Pooh? Because that’s the only bear I can think of that walks upright.”
His eyes narrow. “What about the Care Bears?”
“Ahhh, crap. Totally forgot about those. Do you have a big four-leaf clover on your belly?”
“No such luck.” And the fucker actually pulls up his shirt to show her his abs—probably hoping some muscle and hair will snag her interest. Probably praying it will, because the way Brandon’s looking at her tells me his interest is snagged hard. But maybe that’s how it is with us. One look, and we’re done for.
“There’s the Charmin toilet paper bears, too,” Alicia says mildly from beside me. She’s got her nose buried in the menu. Not looking at me yet. But that’s okay.
Her sister snorts out a laugh and Brandon shakes his head.
“My heart dies a little every time I see those commercials,” he says. “But an animated bear’s gotta make a living, just like everyone else. I guess wiping your ass on TV is one way to do it.”
The waitress shows up again, a trim woman of about fifty who already gave us plenty of sass and vinegar along with the pitcher of orange juice that Brandon ordered while we were waiting.
Her eyebrows arch when she sees who joined us. She looks to Samantha. “Just your usual, Sarge?”
“Yeah.”
“You too, sis? With double meat?”
Alicia sighs and hands over the menu. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She eyes me next. “You look like a double meat, too. Maybe a triple.”
Samantha snickers. “You’re earning that tip today.”
The waitress snorts right back. “Honey, if you put a little sugar on it, they’ll give you more than just the tip. So what does such a big and strong and handsome man like you want for breakfast this morning?”
Just my woman. But triple meat will do for now. And when the waitress disappears again, there’s no menu for Alicia to hide behind.
Hesitantly, she glances at me, and all the uncertainty in that look rips my heart to shreds. As if she isn’t sure how I’ll see her now.
I’m going to chisel away that uncertainty until it’s gone. And maybe she needs me to go easy, but I can’t be smooth and subtle any better than her untamed beast can resist the full moon.
“I’m crazy about you, Alicia Simmons,” I tell her now in a low voice, my palm covering the hands she’s got twisted together on her lap. “And when I say that I’m not going anywhere, I mean it. That ranger station up the street? Starting next week, that’s my new post.”
Her head shoots up and she stares at me, her green eyes wide. “You’re moving here?”
I nod. “I began looking for a job in this area about a month after our first conversation. And I got the best one.”
Hell, I got the best everything here.
I can see Alicia’s processing that news as the waitress drops by again to pour coffee into hers and Samantha’s mugs.
Samantha slides the bowl of packaged creamers to her side of the table. “So you’re taking Ranger Farley’s spot? I heard he was retiring.”
“He is.”
“The big log house at the other end of the station’s nature park comes with the job, doesn’t it?”
The district ranger’s residence. “Yeah, it does.”
Sam nods. “Alicia and I always liked that house.”
“Is that right?” I look to Alicia.
“Yes,” she says quietly. “The house and the park.”
Good. I have to let go of Alicia’s hands when she reaches for her coffee, but I don’t want to stop touching her. So I rest my hand on her thigh, instead—and she doesn’t tense or pull away. “Does that coffee still do anything for you?”
She stops, looking at me. “What do you mean?”
“The caffeine. We can drink gallons of that and not even feel a buzz.” I gesture to Brandon, who’s nodding. “Can’t get drunk, either.”
A wry smile curves her soft mouth. “I noticed that.”
“Tried a few times?”
A shadow passes through her eyes. “Yes.”
Trying to kill the pain and fear of what was happening to her, most likely. But couldn’t do that. Softly I ask, “Can you tell us what happened?”
“Not much to tell.” She shrugs like it’s nothing but I can smell the fear coming off of her again. “We were in Aspen during winter break. I went for a walk, because the full moon on the snow and the mountains was so beautiful.” Her voice begins to waver and her eyes close. “And I was mauled by a monster who started ripping out pieces of me and eating them, then who ran off when people came to see why I was screaming.”
Holy fucking Christ. Eating pieces of her. Gut churning, I look to Brandon, who’s already texting our parents. Colorado’s right next door to Wyoming. If there’s a cursed wolf running loose on the full moons, they might already know something about it.
Or Sam might, too. “There haven’t been any other attacks there,” she says. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the police reports in that area.”
“Maybe it’s killing elk now, too,” Alicia says painfully. “And I was just the unlucky human in its path.”
I lightly squeeze her thigh. “Is that what you’re doing—hunting elk?”
She looks so haunted, so sad. “For now. Until I run across someone hiking or camping, I guess.”
“Nah, that’s not how it works.” Brandon sets his phone down. “The curse unleashes a beast inside you, but it doesn’t put anything into you. You are who you are. So a sick fuck who always secretly wanted to hurt people will go out and hurt people. When decent people are cursed, though—their beasts don’t go around ripping people up.”
She stares at him in disbelief. “I wake up covered in blood.”
“Of course you do. You’re hungry, so you go out and hunt. But if that bothers you, then after you tame the beast, you don’t even need to do that. Just can just…eat bacon,” he says as the waitress returns and places a platter heaped with potatoes and bacon and eggs in front of him.
By the time she’s distributed all the plates, Brandon and I have practically got a whole pig on the table. Alicia’s double meat order looks tiny next to ours. Her stomach growls loudly again. Her hands shake a little when picking up her knife and fork, but she neatly cuts off a small bite of sausage. Starving but controlling herself.
That takes some willpower. She probably doesn’t even realize how strong she must be to do that.
Across from her, Samantha digs into a stack of pancakes. “So you two were born like this?”
“Not exactly like this,” Brandon says. “I was a wee bit smaller.”
“Only a wee bit? I feel sorry for your mother. Is she the wolf or the bear?”
“Bear.”
“So then…how? And— Nope, nope.” Sam abruptly points her fork at my brother, stopping him just as he opens his mouth to respond. “Don’t even start. I know your type. You’re going to say something like ‘I can show you how a bear and wolf make babies, Sergeant Sam’ and then I’ll have to smack you.”
“My type?” Brandon appears wounded. “You’ve never met my type, Sergeant Sam.”
She snorts and shoves another bite into her mouth.
“But I wouldn’t mind if you smacked me.”
Samantha rolls her eyes away from him and toward Alicia as if to say, “See?”
Alicia’s smile appears, the one that first started showing after she got over her initial shyness with me. The one she shows with people she trusts. Her sister, obviously. Me, thank fucking god. But it looks as if Brandon might be win
ning her over, too. “But where does it start? How far back does it go?”
“Hell if we know,” he tells her. “On the wolf side, our great grandfather was bit. Don’t know who bit him or where that wolf came from. On the bear side, it must go way back, since we can only be born. But all we know is that in the mid-1800s, a woman came out of the woods in Minnesota and she married a fur trapper, and they had little bear babies. I don’t know of any bear or wolf who doesn’t have a similar story—and I figure most of that history is gone because it wasn’t exactly safe to announce what they were to the general public.” His phone buzzes and he reads the message. “Mom says they tracked down that fucker in January. So that’s that.”
A meaning that’s clear to me, but maybe not to Alicia. Her smile is gone, her face pale as she asks, “The one who attacked me is dead?”
“Yeah,” I say gruffly.
A tremor shakes through her. “Yesterday, when I was walking here…I heard you talking about tracking someone down. Was that about hunting me?”
Ah, fuck. “Just to talk, baby. To see what kind of werewolf was running around town—someone decent or someone like the one who bit you, or maybe someone who already tamed their beast. But as soon as you walked through the door, we knew who we’d be looking for. And I already knew the kind of person you are.”
Expression uncertain, her eyes search mine for a long second before she nods. She drops her attention to her plate again, cutting away another small bite. “So…how do I tame it?”
Voice low, I tell her, “By falling in love with me.”
Her gaze jerks up to meet mine again. “What? That’s not funny.”
“You think I’d joke about that? I’m dead serious.”
Her lip trembles before she pinches it between her teeth, hiding her face as best she can by staring down at her plate. “That can’t be right,” she whispers.
“It is.” Beneath my hand, her smooth thigh is taut, quivering with tension. “And that’s where this thing between us was always headed, yeah? Even before you were bit. So let’s just keep on going.”
She gives a little shake of her head. “But it can’t be that simple.”
“It is. Mostly.” The falling in love part sure was simple for me. Might be more complicated for her, though. “And like I said, I’m sticking around here. So we’ve got time for it to happen. If it takes longer than the next full moon, that’ll be all right, too—because I’ll be out there with you.”
She gives me another of those haunted looks. “With the beast, you mean.”
The beast is Alicia, too. But I don’t push it now. That idea might take a while to get used to, and it’s clear she believes there’s a vicious monster inside her, just like the one who attacked her. And she’s terrified of what it might do.
But she’s also sitting right here, not at all scared of me. Though she’s seen what I can become. So in time, maybe she’ll also stop being so scared of herself.
Her brow furrowed slightly, Sam asks, “Does a gold chain have anything to do with this taming?”
And that was damn unexpected. I meet my brother’s eyes, see the same surprise there. “Yeah, it does,” I tell her. “How’d you know that?”
We only know because of our great grandfather—and the story of when he was tamed by my great grandmother.
“Internet.” She drags out her phone. “We’ve scoured about every site there is, looking for answers. The problem is, how do you know what’s bullshit and what’s real? But what you’re saying now reminds me of this. And I bookmarked— There it is.”
Brandon pushes closer to her, looks at the screen. “‘A History of Wolfkin and Bearkin. Based on the research of Bjørn Virtanen.’ Shit, that’s a good start, because we’ve run into people like us who do call themselves wolfkin and bearkin. So who’s this Virtanen?”
Sam shrugs. “I looked up the name but got nothing. So here we go…Norse epics and runes, blah blah blah, bears are berserker warriors, and there are also warriors with wolf skins that are called— I can’t even pronounce that word.”
Reading over her shoulder, Brandon tries an, “Ulfdugha…?”
“Whatever. Are you guys impervious to fire and most weapons?”
“Yeah, we are.” I look to Alicia, who’s quietly eating again. “Did you know that? Can’t get burnt, can’t get stabbed or cut by anything made of iron. Which means you’re safe from steel, too. Lead bullets hurt a bit—so does silver, but it doesn’t kill us. Just takes longer to heal.”
Tightly she nods. “Okay.”
Ah, baby. My heart fucking aches for her. The curious science teacher I know wouldn’t just meekly accept what I just told her. She’d ask all kinds of questions about how and why it works.
But she’s hurting bad right now. I can feel that pain, can smell the hopelessness coming off of her. And what’s hurting her now isn’t a weapon or fire, but inside her.
“Who even made this site?” There’s a little tussle on the other side of the table as Brandon swipes his finger down the screen, apparently trying to scroll past whatever bit about the gold chain that Sam’s trying to find. “There’s barely anything here but the notes and research. Is there a contact number?”
“Just a generic email.” Pulling the phone out of his reach, Sam pivots in her seat, presenting her back to him. “I never sent a message, though. Alicia didn’t like that it was all based on mythology and legends instead of science. And for all I knew, it was someone who uses this site to lure in unsuspecting werewolves and kills them for their pelts.”
“Holy shit, you got real dark there. Send me the email address, I’ll do it.”
“I remember the part about the chain,” Alicia says abruptly, her expression as wooden as her voice. The bickering from across the table falls silent. “That it was comparable to the werewolf making a marriage proposal—the chain connects her to the man she loves until he either rejects her or accepts her. And he if accepts her and the beast, it heals the rift the curse put between them, and they become whole. If he rejects them, she and the beast die.”
“No way in hell am I rejecting you.” I’ve already accepted Alicia. All of her. “So we’ve just got to wait until you love me and your chain is around my neck.”
Her eyes suddenly glow bright green, shimmering with tears. “Except that’s not all, is it? It’s not only that I have to fall in love with you. You have to love me, too. And I—” She breaks off, her trembling lips pressing tight together, despair flaring through her scent.
Abruptly she shakes her head and is up out of the seat, heading for the restaurant exit.
Shit. I start to haul up after her, but a boot planted in the seat that Alicia just vacated stops me from sliding out.
“Hold up, Ranger Ranger.” Sam must know that I can move her foot with a flick of a finger, but doesn’t seem to give a fuck. “Let her be for a minute.”
My jaw clenches. “She’s scared and hurting, goddammit.”
“Yeah, she is. She’s also about to cry, and she hates it when anyone sees her do that. So give her a minute to pull herself together, so she’s not scared and hurting and embarrassed.”
Fuck. I want to argue, but Alicia’s sister knows her better than I do. And I’d be a fool not to listen.
With a snarl, I settle back down, my gaze following Alicia out of the restaurant. She doesn’t go far. Just leans back against the brick wall of a storefront and tilts her head up, gasping in air.
I’m watching her, barely listening as Brandon asks Sam, “Are you married? You don’t smell married.”
“How the hell does a married woman smell?”
Like she’s got a man in her bed, his scent clinging to her. Even after her shower, Alicia came down smelling like that. And her scent’s all over me, too.
I’m fond of smelling married already.
Brandon doesn’t explain that part. And doesn’t conceal his satisfaction when he says, “Divorced, then. Are you over him? Do you need a rebound?”
“Do you li
ke digging holes or does it just happen?”
“Kind of just happens. But I’m actually trying to figure out why your name tag says ‘Green’ and your sister is a Simmons.”
“Why is he Ranger and you’re Brandon?”
“Anywhere but here and home, I’m Ranger, too.”
“But are you a Ranger Ranger? Because that’s twice the Ranger.”
“Until about three weeks ago, I was.”
“Forest Service, too?”
“Army Ranger.”
“Shit. I had you pegged as a jarhead.”
“Now I’m deeply, sincerely offended. So you make it up to me by telling me why you’re a Green. Are you married? Or was Alicia?”
I know she wasn’t. Still the mention of Alicia’s name draws my attention away from her for the barest second, to see her sister watching me with a considering look in her eyes.
“Try again,” she tells Brandon.
My brother finally pulls his head out of her marital status. “Stepsister?”
“Close. Except her dad and my mom never married. Just lived together for a while. Until my mom realized there was nothing but an asshole beneath that charming smile. So she kicked him out, but we kept Alicia.”
Outside, Alicia stiffens slightly. As if suddenly listening in.
Then she goes rigid when I ask, “And her father just let you keep her?”
“Let us?” Samantha laughs bitterly. “He was all too happy to wash his hands of her. But her mom was just as bad. Her biological mom, that is. And between the two of them, they bounced her back and forth for almost fourteen years, neither one wanting her. And telling her so. But we wanted her. So we kept her.”
Parents who didn’t want her or love her like they should. Who tore her down. Might be why she was so certain I wouldn’t stay. And why she thinks that I’ll never love her or accept her.
Jaw set and thumbs flying, Alicia types on her phone.
Her sister’s buzzes, and after a brief glance at the message, Sam lifts her voice. “You want me to shut up, come in here and stop me before I start telling him what happens to a shy, nerdy girl in high school when she’s got buck teeth and braces, crazy red hair, and eyeglasses as thick as paperweights. He ought to know why you’re so fucking afraid and that it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with his fangs.”