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Grayslake: More Than Mated: Broken Bear

***

Alice Bello

Edited by Stephanie T. Lott (aka Bibliophile)

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Stormy

I was a long, long way from home: five states and fifteen hundred miles… give or take.

Gram died three weeks ago, and I hit the road the next day, after standing at her grave through the night until the sun rose again. My old Chevy truck ate up the highway, taking me farther away by the second.

I missed her desperately. I could still hear her voice, the warmth of her hand on mine, how she always smelled of cloves and honey.

I missed my family too: mom, my brother Bly and my sister Roxy.

But Gram was gone, and I needed some time to myself.

She would’ve understood. She always told us tales of spirit quests and the journeys of our  Native American ancestors.

She would have called my story Runaway Were-Puma Looking for…

Looking for…

What the hell was I looking for?

I wiped my dry eyes with my forearm.

I’d run out of tears by Oklahoma City. Now I was—

Where was I?

Oh, I saw a sign in the distance.

Grayslake, Alabama. Five miles.

Hmmm…

I hadn’t stayed more than a day anywhere so far. I just kept driving south-east—because that’s the way my truck seemed to want to go—stopping long enough to eat and sleep and shower, and then driving south-east again.

Day, after day, after day.

Not really the most scenic way to tour America.

Not the best way to forget your troubles and get happy again either.

All I did was drive and think. Think about Gram, about mama and Roxy and Bly.

And why the hell I hadn’t been there when Gram’s heart had failed her.

Why I hadn’t been there to pound on the old woman’s chest, and to blow life back into her lungs.

She’d practically raised us three while Mama was working double shifts at the family bar and grill.

Daddy had been committed—well, obsessed with making a baby werewolf with my mother. So we had him for five years. But once Bly was born, and smelled of wolf instead of puma, the call of the rodeo took him away. He sent postcards, sometimes. But they were years apart.

I hit the brakes and stopped, clenching my teeth so hard my jaw cracked.

The only sounds were of the Chevy’s engine running—a slight miss in the timing, something Bly would have had fixed the instant he’d heard it—and my own pathetic, near hysterical breathing.

Steady…

I opened my eyes and blew out all the air in my lungs.

I needed to eat and sleep again.

You need to quit blaming yourself, I heard my Gram say.

I looked up into the sky, at the pink and orange sunset that had only an hour ago been as blue as a cornflower. It was summer, so there was still time before it got dark. There were some fluffy white clouds… and one very determined dark gray one that looked to be headed right toward me.

I bit my lip, took my foot off the brake and hit the gas, making my old blue Chevy roar gamely as it rolled down the road toward Grayslake.

Chapter 2

About two minutes later I saw two things at the same time. One was a sign that read, “Welcome to Grayslake, population 5042”

The other was a thin older woman with a spine of steel, gunmetal gray hair that was pulled up into a neat as a pin bun, and a lethal stare.

She also had her hand up.

Not a wave, but a command to stop.

She didn’t look like Gram, but she certainly had the same You damn well better stop for me glower.

I stopped, pulling up alongside where she stood.

“How are you today?” I asked. I may have been raised with fangs and claws, but I’d been raised with manners too.

“I’m just fine, thank you.” She gave my old blue Chevy a long look over. “Could I bother you for a lift? My grandson works a short ways into town.” She smiled. It was dazzling.

“Sure,” I said right off and started to get out of the truck. I didn’t think she had a gun in her purse. I hopped out of the Chevy and ran around to open the door for her. She was a spry old gal, grabbing hold of the door and stepping up into the cab of my Chevy with an ease far more youthful than her appearance.

Maybe she did yoga?

She smelled strongly of chamomile tea and black licorice.

Maybe she liked Galliano in her tea?

Once she was seated and had pulled the seat belt about her, laughing lightly as it clicked, I slammed the door shut—it’s an old truck, and you have to slam the door to get them shut right—and jogged back over to the driver’s seat.

As I rolled down the road she hummed a sweet, familiar tune. But I couldn’t put my finger on the title. Just that I’d heard it before.

“I’m Stormy, by the way,” I said crossing over a small, narrow bridge.

“My name is Ester, but my grandson calls me Nonna.”

Oh, yes, the grandson she was going to visit.

“My grandson’s single, by the way,” she said, opening her purse and pulling out a small foil wrapped piece of candy. She offered the candy to me.

I didn’t want to be rude—I d been taught to be polite, and to accept things offered to me. But I shook my head when I caught a whiff of it. That was the source of the chamomile/black licorice smell.

“That’s nice,” I said noncommittally.

“He’s a good looking young man, my Maddox. A real catch.”

Good lord, she was trying to set me, a perfect stranger, up with her grandson.

I rolled my eyes to the heavens and bit the inside of my mouth. The spirits were having fun with me today.

“A Lone Bear, like his daddy and his brothers—makes for a lonely road until they finally find their mate.”

Jesus Christ Superstar! She’d just outed her grandson to a total stranger.

I gave her another sniff. Under the Chamomile and black licorice… she smelled of bear. A little stale smelling, but…

I bit my lip, suddenly very nervous.

It wasn’t everyday you gave a lift to an apex predator.

But I still couldn’t get over her telling me about her grandson.

Maybe she just didn’t realize that being a shifter was a dangerous thing in this day and age. Even if shifters were out of the closet, you didn’t go around telling everyone about it.

The old woman looked at me, her gray eyes sparkling, reflecting a little of the blue of the afternoon sky. “I think a nice girl like you would be wonderful for him. You’re a cat, right? A panther?”

Cripes…

“Puma,” I said miserably.

How in blazes did she know all this? Sure, she could smell as well as I could, but to be able to narrow it down to panther—which is just another name for puma.

Unless…

“Are you a witch?”

How on earth had I let a witch into my truck?

Witches came in many variations, but the most common one was the black witch, and they were a terrible, menacing thing, gaining their power from the pain and suffering—and deaths—of others.

“Yes, dear… I am.”

Fudge, sugar… argh!

“Black?” I ground out. This little ride had just gone colossally sideways.

“Do I smell like a black witch to you?” she asked with a little placating grin and a touch of her withered finger to her nose.

I sighed. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never met a witch before.”

“I’m no black witch. They reek of death and rot. I’m a white witch with a bit of the sight, that’s all. Drives people crazy sometimes, but that was back when I was alive.”

“What?” I about hit the brakes. Did she say when I was alive?

She blinked at me innocently. “What?” she asked back.

“What did you say?”

She pursed her lips. “Just now? Well, I said I have a touch of the sight, and it drives people crazy sometimes.”

“And after that?” I didn’t know whether I was scared or getting pissed at the old woman.

“Oh, I said especially when I lived in the city.”

Is that what she’d said?

“Folks are fine with a seer if she lives out in the middle of nowhere. But put one right beside you and you start getting paranoid.”

Oh…

“That sounds reasonable enough.”

But I still didn’t think that was what she’d said.

We were in town now, and going down the main street.

“There it is on the right… the one with the Stone Herbs Shop sign.”

I saw it. And low and behold, there was a nice wide parking space right up front.

I pulled into the spot but didn’t turn off the engine. I just sat there.

Was I that scared of the little old woman sitting in the passenger seat?

The little old lady that was a werebear and a witch?

A little old lady that could explode into an apex predator…

Or the little old lady able to kill me with a thought…

Yeah, I admit it. She scared the crap right out of me.

“I’m not going to harm you,” she said, teasing in her crinkled, singsong voice. “I need you.”

I turned and looked at her, her eyes met mine and I felt this little jolt—there was more to this old girl than being a shifter and a witch. I could feel it.

It had something to do with her smell too. That staleness…

“Need me for what?” I asked.

“I need someone magically inclined, little medicine woman.” She turned and tried to open the door to the truck, but it was sticking.

It did that sometimes.

I shook my head, reluctantly switched off the ignition, and then jumped out of the truck. A few steps and I was at the passenger side door, opening it for her.

“Thank you, dear. This truck of yours isn’t as old as me, but it has just as many stiff parts.”

I smiled. “Funny.”

She hopped down out of the truck with agility. Not so impressive now that I knew she was a shifter.

I closed the door and stared at her.

Medicine woman?

“You’ve got the wrong girl, lady. My Gram is…” I closed my eyes and pushed through the pain that still flooded me whenever I thought of her… and remembered she was dead. “She was the medicine woman of our tribe. But she’s gone now.”

She nodded and started toward the open door to the shop. It was propped open so the wonderful fresh air could waft into the enclosed space. She disappeared into the darkened doorway.

“I’m not sure who will take her place,” I said, following after her into the store. “She once told me it was passed down, but I’m not sure how.”

It was darker in the store. They must be trying to save on the electric bill. But moments later my shifter eyes adjusted just fine.

And that’s when I realized I was standing in the little shop all by myself.

I blinked and looked around.

What the…

The most gorgeous man I’d ever seen—or imagined (thick amber colored hair, a beautiful face with a lush, kissable mouth, and a strong, broad-shouldered body—walked out from a backroom and gave me a smile. It didn’t make it to his eyes, so I knew it was just for show, but he did have lovely straight white teeth.

Teeth…

Was this her grandson… the lone bear… and apex predator?

My puma shivered inside me. She was usually fearless, but something about this man was making her want to run.

Stupidly I didn’t.

Instead, I stood there and tried to return the smile. I’m sure it was as fake as his was.

His fake smile slid from his face as if it had never been there. “Can I help you?”

I saw his nostrils flare as he took in my scent.

His eyes got really big, then.

He surely couldn’t be afraid of a little old puma.

“You smell like…” He just stood there and stared at me, his chest rising and falling with the quickening of his breathing.

Oh, crap…

“I’m a puma, garden variety, so that’s… what… you’re… smelling.”

He took two big strides forward and was suddenly standing not a foot away from me.

Double crap, that was fast…

“You smell like Nonna.” His voice had hardened and was intensified with a deep, vibrating growl.

I took a step back. This wasn’t good.

“Yeah, I gave your… your Nonna a ride into town.”

He stepped closer to me, his eyes darkening.

Gulp…

I started rambling. “She wanted me to help her with something—chatty little thing. A little too chatty.”

His eyes blazed gold. “What kind of sick joke is this?”

I tried to back away again but hit the wall.

I put my hands up in surrender. But my eyes were trying to steer me back toward that open front door.

“Her scent’s all over you!” he shouted, his voice booming like thunder in the small enclosed space. “Do you have something of hers on you?”

I shook my head and licked my very dry lips. “As I said, I gave her a ride into town. She was out by the city limits, by that ‘Welcome to Grayslake sign’.”

When he opened his mouth I saw his teeth were elongated. Fur had started to sprout on his face and down his arms, and his fingernails had turned to black claws.

He was going to shift right here and now.

And just like that the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen happened.

This man stopped his change.

Literally just stopped it right then and there. I saw the moment he stopped himself from losing control. The fur melted back into his flesh and his eyes turned back to their normal deep dark brown—but there were cracks in his irises where the gold of his bear was seeping through.

Holy cow!

I watched just long enough to see his teeth sink back into his gums—that was when I turned and ran for the door.

Once outside I scrambled around my old Chevy and fumbled with my keys, dropping them on the street, and crouched down to grab them.

The werebear wasn’t following me, but I still jerked myself into the cab of my truck and hit the gas the instant the engine caught.

Luckily, no one was driving by just then, or I would’ve crashed right into them.

I kept looking in my rearview mirror, relieved to see the werebear wasn’t coming after me.

Maddox…

That’s what the old woman had called him.

Sweet spirits in the sky, that was horrifying. I’d never seen anyone stop themselves from changing, not once they’d actually started.

And the way the bear was still leaking through, those cracks in the irises of his eyes. What in the world did that mean?

I shook that question out of my head.

First things first… I needed to get the heck out of this town.

Pronto.

I looked at my truck’s gas gauge. It was teetering on empty.

Who knew when I’d hit another town? This was pretty far out in the middle of nowhere.

I started scanning the city blocks as I careened down the street.

There, on the left: Jerry’s Gas Station.

Perfect.

I pulled into a pump and looked around, checking to make sure that werebear wasn’t coming after me.

But would he really do that in the light of day?

I shivered. I didn’t want to know.

The credit card slot on the gas pump was taped-over. A post-it said to pay the cashier inside.

Rock, hard place.

I jogged across the parking lot and pulled open the door to the station, making the bell taped to the top of the door clamor.

A tall, thin man stood behind the counter, and he smiled at me. “Hi, can I help you?”

Déjà vu…

I took a deep lungful of air and smelled human. Good, that was good.

Plus his smile was real. Just a happy guy.

I looked at his name tag: Jerry.

Must be the owner.

“I need to fill up.”

He nodded. “Cash or credit?”

“Credit.” I glanced nervously out the window. Still no sign of Mr. Werebear.

Good…

He took my card and slid it through his cash register. “Sorry about that. I’ve got a guy coming to fix the credit card readers this afternoon.”

“No problem,” I said, and then my stomach growled.

Loud enough that Jerry gave me a look.

“There’s a good place to eat down the street. Carly’s Burgers. Get The Contender. You won’t be hungry for days.”

He handed me my card back. “Your receipt will print when you finish filling.”

“Thanks,” I said and turned to leave.

“You’re welcome.”

I filled up my truck, snagged my receipt, and got back in my truck.

Still no sign of Maddox the werebear.

I slid out into traffic and immediately saw Carly’s Burgers.

My stomach roared this time.

Okay, a quick bite and I’d get my ass back on the road. If anything I’d sleep in my truck when I absolutely had to sleep.

Chapter 3

I parked, slid out of my Chevy and headed toward the restaurant. There were some umbrella-topped metal tables out front. I walked in the front door and the smell of delicious, greasy food greeted me. I walked up to the counter and a beautiful woman with blue eyes, blonde curls, and dangerous curves swept over to me. “What can I get for you?” Her smile was real too. And I could smell, over the succulent smell of the cooking food and fresh coffee, that she was human.

Her nametag read Lauren.

I looked up at the menu sign. It was a smorgasbord of yummy.   

What had the guy at the gas station said?

Oh, yeah!

“I’ll have a Contender.”

“For here or to-go?”

I thought about the werebear…

“To-go.”

“Fries with that?” she asked.

“Yes, with cheddar and chili…”

“Gotcha”

“And…” Everything looked so good. “Five cheddar chili dogs, onion rings and a large cherry pop.”

Oops…

I forgot humans didn’t eat like that.

Shifters ate like, well, like pigs. I can scarf down an extra large pizza with everything on it and be hungry an hour later. Maybe sooner.

“I like a gal that knows how to eat,” Lauren said and gave me a wink. “It’ll be about five minutes. Take a seat and I’ll ring you up when it’s ready.”

I tried to relax. I sat, crossed my legs, got back up, walked around counting the tiles on the floor, straightened a display of take-out menus… but I couldn’t stop checking the front window for signs of Maddox the crazed werebear.

I started looking at some of the photos on the walls, each one in its own dark wood frame.

The third one I looked at made my jaw drop.

There was the old woman I’d given a lift into town—Nonna, the werebear and witch—and she was standing in front of Stone Herbs Shop, the sign barely in the photo with her short little self, a lovely smile on her face.

This was making less and less sense.

She was obviously the owner of the little herb shop. Why would her grandson react like that to her scent?

“Hey there, pretty lady,” I heard. I turned and saw a towering man in a sheriff’s uniform sidle up to the counter, lean over it and plant a sweet, unhurried kiss on Lauren’s lips.

I smiled.

He had short cropped brown hair and…

One sniff and my smile melted right off my face.

Bear.

This had to be a joke.

Three werebears in the same town?

This was crazy.

I watched as they kissed again, and she ran her hand down his handsome, angular face.

“I’m going to be late tonight, baby.”

She sighed. “Van…”

“Pack business. You know how Ty is when there are too many new shifters in his territory.”

Cripes…

I was in a town with a pack.

How screwed up could this day get?

Okay, I was just going to…

Just then the radio that hung on the police officer’s belt squawked. He winced and pulled it off his belt, then spoke into it.

It squawked again, kind of like the teacher's voice in The Peanuts cartoons.

“Gotcha,” he said into the radio and holstered it again.

“Sorry, baby. I have to go. Got a couple cows loitering out on route 6.”

Lauren had slid out from behind the counter while he was talking into his radio. She pressed herself against him, sliding her arms around his tight waist and popping up on her toes to snag a kiss from her lawman.

I leaned against the wall and tried to blend into the wood paneling.

When they finally came up for air, she gazed into the man’s eyes with utter adoration.

“Be careful. Those cows on route 6 can be dangerous.”

A slow smile spread across the lawman’s face. But his eyes were dark and intense.

Pure desire…

“I’ll do my best, ma’am.”

She popped up and kissed him one more chaste time.

“Then get going, Mr. Abrams.”

If I hadn’t already known he was a bear, I’d swear from the sexy grin that he was a werewolf.

She swatted his butt as he left, and smiled wickedly as she watched him leave.

I breathed easier when she turned and headed back behind the counter. That meant the werebear Sheriff was gone.

I was tempted to take off.

I really needed to leave.

If this was a pack town, then there were rules, and one of the most important rules was usually you had to get permission to stay even a day in a pack town.

“Your order’s up,” Lauren said from the cash register at the end of the counter.

I jumped, just a little. But she was too busy tossing plastic silverware and napkins into my big bag of grub to notice.

I walked over, forcing myself to keep calm. I paid her, gave her a nice tip, and said goodbye and thanks.

“You come back again.” She gave me a little wave as I left.

Okay. I looked all around and didn’t see the werebear or the Sheriff werebear.

I had a lot of food to eat, and I was sure that I’d make a complete mess of myself if I tried to eat and drive.

But I so wanted to get out of this town.

Argh!

I’m a shifter and can eat with the best of them.

I’d have this bag of food polished off in no time.

I sat at one of the metal tables with the umbrellas, popped the straw in my cherry pop and started emptying the to-go bag.

Ah… it tasted so good.

The Contender was a triple cheeseburger with bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo, ketchup, mustard and a beguiling mixture of spices rubbed into the meat of the burger.

Yum…

I dispatched that in about two minutes, taking little sips of my drink.

Don’t look at me like that… I’m a shifter. We have really high metabolisms.

Next came the chili cheese fries and my five chili cheese dogs.

The onion rings I could snack on in the car as I drove. I liked them best without ketchup anyways.  

I smelled her—chamomile and licorice—a moment before I looked up to see her.

“I didn’t think you’d scare so easily, little medicine woman.”

I glared at her, chewing on a mouthful of chili cheese fries.

She sat down opposite me, holding her little purse in her lap. The breeze didn’t even touch her tidy hairdo.

Neat trick…

She sighed. “I should have told you his bear was broken.  I apologize.”

I swallowed the chili cheese fries and sat forward, glaring at her with all the menace I could muster.

“His bear is more than broken,” I pushed myself back in my chair. “Have you seen his eyes?”

She nodded sadly. “He hasn’t shifted since his parents were murdered.”

My stomach dropped.

Dear lord…

“Did…did he…”

Her gaze snapped on me with fury. “Of course he didn’t kill them.” Her voice was like a whip. Add dominant to her list of powers.

I looked away. I didn’t want to see the pain that was in her eyes.

I knew it too.

“My son and daughter-in-law were killed by a pack of loupes.”

No…

Loupes were shifters that had let the animal inside them take over. They were vile, often psychotic, and raped and murdered and ate anyone that got in their path.

“My Maddox hid his two younger brothers in the forest. But the loupes found them.”

I felt my jaw shake just imagining it. How on earth had he survived?

“He was sixteen,” she continued. “And when they came after him and his brothers… well, he went berserker.  Not much was left when I got there. He’d called me, barely able to speak, and I got there as soon as I could.

“I took them home with me and raised them. But Maddox didn’t want that from me. He got a part-time job while he finished high school, and then he just worked and worked. Finally, he left and just wandered. A lone bear like his father had been.”

That was so… awful.

“So he hasn’t shifted since?”

She shook her head. “No.”

He looked to be in his late twenties now, but he was a shifter. He could be as old as fifty and still look that young.

“How old is he?”

“Maddox is twenty-five now.”

Ye gods and little fishes!

He hadn’t shifted in nine years.

“So when that bear of his finally rips its way out, it’ll be like a volcano.” I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.

My god, he’d almost changed back at the herb shop.

“He could have torn me to shreds back there, and then gone on a killing spree before someone stopped him.”

She looked down at her hands and nodded. “I know. He’s a danger to himself and others.”

I laughed. “Aren’t you the queen of understatement. He’ll murder everything in his path, who cares that he’s a danger to himself.”

Her eyes looked up at me and the blue of the sky reflected from her irises.

“I care.”

Yeah, I knew that already.

“And by a danger to himself, I meant he’s going to ask the Alpha of the pack here to kill him.”

My stomach fell again.

He wanted the Alpha to kill him before he hurt someone.

I felt my heart pounding in my ribs.

For some unfathomable reason, the thought of him giving up and having someone put him down just hurt my heart.

No one should have to feel so desperate that they would rather choose death than to live.

Especially a shifter.

Shifters didn’t get sick, they grew older very slowly—but when their animals became broken, then they descended into insanity.

And his bear had been caged up inside him for nine years.

It was beyond crazed.

“You have to help him, little medicine woman,” she said.

Was she crazy too?

“As I said, I’m no medicine woman. I’m just a werepuma, a girl with a background in bar and grill management, and that’s it.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but then her eyes widened and she looked behind me, her eyes rising.

Damn…

“He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

She nodded. “He looks calmer, though. That’s a plus.”

“I’m sorry I was so gruff with you earlier,” Maddox said.

He moved around the table until he was standing half way between me and his grandmother.

My mouth was suddenly so dry it hurt to swallow.

“It’s just, you…” he stopped talking and scented the air. “You still smell like my grandmother.”

I blinked at him.

How insane was he?

I looked pointedly at the old woman across the table from me. “There’s a reason for that.”

She sat there and sadly shook her head.

“What would that reason be?” Maddox’s voice had turned hard and brittle again.

Irritation spurred me to say something…

But as I took a deep breath to say it, my words turned to ashes on my tongue.

I looked at the old woman across from me.

She smelled stale.

Her grandson couldn’t see her.

He was so angry about being able to smell her, though.

And she kept calling me little medicine woman.

“Fuck…” I rumbled.

My grandmother would have slapped me in the back of the head for using such language.

But she wasn’t here.

She was dead.

She’d said her mantle of medicine woman for the tribe would be passed down.

And she had told me all my life how she saw the spirits of the dead, and that they sometimes talked to her.

I closed my eyes and bit my lip.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The old woman sighed.

Maddox said, “Tell you what?”

I opened my eyes and saw he was leaned over, his hands on the tabletop. He was staring at me with utter hostility.

I didn’t blame him a bit.

“You wouldn’t have believed me if I had,” she said. “I had to wait for you to realize it on your own.”

I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to make sense of it all.

But first things first.

I had a huge, volatile werebear in front of me, and I needed to calm him down.

“I didn’t know your grandmother was dead.”

His brows knit together.

I continued.

“I guess I see dead people, ghosts.”

He stood upright and folded his muscular arms across his chest. “Yeah, right.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s kind of a surprise for me too. But I picked your Nonna up at the city limits sign and drove her to your shop.”

“I don’t know what kind of sick joke this is, or how you found something of my grandmother’s.” He took a step closer to me. “But you’re going to give it back to me right now, and then you’re going to get the hell out of town.”

He was looking dangerous again…

The woman called Nonna blew out a disgusted breath and said, “Fine, we'll play it your way.”

I frowned at her. “What?”

“Tell him he still needs to buy me a new pair of lace panties.”

What the…

“Are you serious?”

She just stared at me.

“Okay,” I looked up at him and said, “She says you still need to buy her a new pair of lace panties.”

His glare turned into a frown.

“And if he doesn’t want me to start telling you about what he used to use his socks for when he was seventeen, that he’d better start listening to you.”

“This is just…” I closed my eyes and inwardly had to chuckle. This was just ridiculous.

“She says that unless you want her to start talking about what…” I looked to her again.

She said, “What he used to use his socks for when he was seventeen.”

That’s a strange…

Then it dawned on me.

“Ewww…”

She leveled me with a withering glance. “Just say it.”

I tried to shake the image of what she’d just said out of my head.

But truthfully, the thought of him now, naked, with his…

No.

No, no, no!

I was a good girl.

Well, not that good a girl.

I’d tried everything in that song Follow Your Arrow when I was in college that month and a half. Kissed lots of boys, kissed a couple girls, and drank way too much.

I’d gotten it out of my system real fast.

I’d also figured out I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to be or do, so staying in college—especially at those prices—was ridiculous.

I was a skinflint even back then.

I sighed and said, “She says that unless you want her to start talking about what you used your socks for when you were seventeen—and I’ve already figured that one out, thank you—you’d better start listening to me.”

His eyebrows knitted together. “What?”

I gave him a wide-eyed glare. “Don’t make her explain it, or anything else like it. Please.”

I saw the gears start to whirl in his head as he mouthed the word “socks.”

And then his eyes got wide, and he blushed.

“So,” he said, his voice cracking around the edges, “What does… what does she want you to tell me?”

I turned and looked at the gray-haired woman across from me. “I’d like to know that too.”

She gave us both a disgusted sigh. “Finally! Tell him he’s going to have to release his bear. Broken or not, it has to be done.”

I nodded. “She says you need to release your bear. That broken or not, it has to be done.”

He shook his head. “I can’t do that, and if she’s really… shit!” He scrubbed the back of his neck with his big, rough looking hand. “If she’s really here, then she knows damn well why.”

He was so afraid of what his bear might do, he’d held him in until he was nothing but rage and fury.

I looked to the old woman. “I don’t think it would be safe to let his bear out. It could be a disaster.”

He looked at me, and then to where his grandmother sat. It probably looked like an empty chair to him.

“I’m going to have it taken care of,” he said, his voice flat and nearly inaudible.

I stood up and looked him straight in the eye. “That’s not the way either.”

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “You don’t know shit, lady.”

God, this was a ghoulish conversation.

“I know you’re going to ask the Alpha of this town’s pack to kill you, and I think that…”

His eyes bored into me with so much hate.

“What do you think?” he spat at me. “You think it’s easy to decide this? I’ve been trying to figure out how to get rid of it for years, thought if I just pushed it back, kept it locked up it would go away.”

A shifter’s animal is a living thing. It gives its strength to its host, and the host gives it life. There was no getting rid of it.

“I think you need to stop trying to get rid of your bear.”

He laughed at me. “Do you know what it will do if it ever gets free?”

The thought of that would probably give me nightmares for years to come. And the thought of him releasing that bear anywhere around me made me want to run.

Run for my life.

But…

But it broke my heart to think of this man giving up, letting that precious life of his go.

I looked at the old woman. “You said I could help him, with his broken bear. How?”

“That’s… complicated.”

I leaned across the table and looked into her eyes. “It really isn’t. You said I could help, so you must have some idea about me. A plan?”

She gave me another disgusted sigh. “Everything has to be in a rush with your generation. Rush here, rush there. No patience.”

“Um… what’s she saying?” Maddox asked.

I stood up straight again, glaring at the old woman. “She says we need to be patient.”

“Now I know it’s her,” he growled. “That’s her favorite saying. You have no patience, be patient… show a little patience!”

She pursed her lips and gripped her purse tight enough to make her knuckles turn white.

So the wind didn’t affect her, but she could make her knuckles turn white.

Ghosts are a mass of complications.

“I’m hoping you’ll stick around long enough to… to let this thing sort itself out.”

I pointed my finger at her. “Look, lady, I have no plans on staying here or anywhere for very long. I…”

I had someone to get over…

I had an enormous hole in my life, in my freaking chest…

“I don’t need to stick around here trying to fix your grandson. So if you really want him and his bear fixed, then you’re going to have to spit it out!”

I suddenly realized Maddox and his grandmother were both watching me.

Maddox had this indescribable look on his face. His gaze was burning right into me, but not in the violent, rage-filled way it had been before. This was…

Different.

Made my face warm and…

Damn…

His gaze made my body start to thrum, like a guitar string.

The old woman, though, had a look of concern on her face.

“Fixing his bear is going to help you too.”

That I doubted.

“How’s that?”

She took a breath, and I thought she was going to tell me…

But then she said, “And there’s a monster out in the woods behind my house.”

I blinked at her. “A monster.” I looked at Maddox. “She says there’s a monster in the woods behind her house.”

He laughed. “I’m staying there while I…” He waved that away. “I think I would know if there was anything back in those woods.”

I looked to her. “And since, technically, we’re all monsters here, I think we’ll be safe enough.”

She pounded her little fist on the tabletop. And the thud it made must’ve been something Maddox could hear because he spun around and looked to where his grandmother was sitting.

“What was that?”

“Your Nonna beat her fist on the table. Very dramatic.”

“The monster,” she said, steel in her voice, “is a dark fae.”

I didn’t know much about the fae. They had come to this land far after my people, so they weren’t as ingrained in my culture or our stories. But Gram had spoken of them with reverence and fear.

“Salt,” I said. “Salt and iron are their weakness… that’s all I know about them.”

“Yes,” she said, “but that isn’t going to be enough with this one.”

“Why not?” I was getting tired and needed to sleep. So I didn’t sound all that kindly.

She seemed to know that, her expression softer somehow. “Because it’s old and sneaky, and I didn’t even know it was there until it was too late.”

I stared at her as that little nugget of knowledge seeped into my brain.

“Is it what killed you?”

Maddox turned toward me. “What?” Anger was like a whip in his voice.

“Careful, dear,” she warned.

He kept looking from me to where his grandmother was seated. I could feel the agitation radiating from him. He was only hearing my part of the conversation.

“The monster in the woods is a dark fae, and it killed her,” I said. Better to just put it right out there.

A growl rumbled out of his chest, making my heart skip a beat.

I saw the gold shimmering through the cracks in his irises.

He spun and demanded, “How do I kill it?” of his grandmother.

He needed to calm down, and right now.

His bear was trying to get out, and with us out in the open, and a town of innocent people surrounding us, I had to do something.

I reached out and touched his hand.

I don’t know why I did it. It just felt like what I should do.

Something snapped the instant I touched him: an electrical, magical, chemical thing. It was as if a light switch had been turned on, and we were both bathed in a nearly narcotic, blissful light.

I saw his body sag as the breath whooshed out of his lungs. My hand went all tingly where I was touching him, and I swear I could hear the wind singing to me as it blew through us, washing away our anger and fear effortlessly.

He looked over at me, and the golden cracks in his eyes were gone, only the dark, drowning deep brown of his eyes remaining.

Oh boy… What the heck was happening?

He looked down at where we were holding hands. Slowly his brow furrowed, and he bared his teeth.

With a deep growl, he pulled his hand from mine, making whatever magic we’d fallen into snap off as if it had never been there.

I fell forward against the table and luckily sat down in the chair I’d been in, instead of falling flat on my butt.

Maddox held his hand to his chest, his nostrils flaring. “What the hell are you?”

Hell if I knew. A couple weeks ago I’d been a bartender at my family’s bar and grill, and a werepuma. Now I could see dead people and magic things without even knowing what I was doing, or how… or that it was even going to happen.

“Don’t do that again!” he roared at me.

There were a couple of middle-aged women not twenty feet away, across the street, and they were watching us with rapt attention.

I panted, suddenly winded. “Deal.”

He staggered to the side a few paces, turning as he looked around him.

If he felt anything like I just felt, he was pretty darn dizzy. And had a slight case of dry mouth.

I reached for my cherry pop.

“Ask him how he feels,” the old woman said to me.

I glared at her. “Probably pretty crappy, with a side of dizzy as hell.”

Her fierce eyes bore into me. “Ask him how his bear feels.”

His bear…

“Now!” she demanded.

I held up my hand to her. I got it.

“How does your bear feel?”

His eyes locked on me and for a split second, he looked normal and calm… but a moment later I saw the golden cracks start to appear again, though dimmer.

“Just like he always feels…,” he growled, “like he wants to kill something, and kill it now!”

Okay, that answered that.

He slammed his hand down on the table, and the metal bent, leaving the impression of his hand on the tabletop.

He stared at me with utter hatred. “Tell… whatever it is that’s talking to you that I’ll kill whatever’s in the woods behind the house. But I never want it or you coming anywhere near me again. Got it?”

My bout of dizziness faded and I felt the icy claws of fear scratch up and down my spine.

This man, this bear, was dangerous.

And if I didn’t get the hell out of here he was going to be the death of me.

Literally.

I licked my dry lips and forced my voice not to break, squeak, or wobble. “Consider it done.”

Maddox stood there for another few moments, his eyes crackling with the gold of his bear, the muscles in his jaw tense and pulsing as he stood there.

And then he just turned and walked away. He walked away at a rather fast, somewhat inhuman gait, but technically it was a walk.

When he was out of sight I started to collect my still half full takeout containers and shove them back in the bags.

I wasn’t hungry anymore, and I didn’t think I’d need to sleep for a week with the adrenaline pumping through my veins right then.

“You can’t leave,” Nonna said.

I looked down at the handprint in the metal table.

“Watch me.”

I turned and shoved my bags of half-eaten food in the big trashcan by the front doors of Carly’s.

“He has no idea what he’s getting into,” she said as I climbed up into my truck and slammed the door shut.

“He’s a big bear, he can figure it out.”

The old Chevy roared to life and before the old woman could holler anything else at me I slammed my foot on the gas and peeled out of the parking lot.

My heart was hammering in my chest as I lurched through town, stopping for a light here, and trying not to rush through a stop sign by the post office.

I just wanted the hell out of this town.

I could hear the rage in Maddox’s voice as he said, “I never want it or you coming anywhere near me again. Got it?”

I got it.

But that didn’t mean that same heart that was beating so fast from fear wasn’t a little broken.

Something, somewhere inside me wouldn’t stop pinging.

Something stupid inside of me was urging me to turn around and drive back.

He needs me…

He needs a therapist.

“He really does need you,” Nonna said from the passenger seat of my truck.

I jumped and swerved, just missing someone’s curbside mailbox.

“Cripes! Don’t do that!” I ground out through gritted teeth.

“Do what?” she asked, her eyes innocent.

I was just about to tell her where to shove that innocent routine when she said, “The dark fae already has its claws in him. He has no idea. And with her hold on him, if he leaves the house tonight, she will take him.”

She looked into my eyes as I slowed my truck to a stop at the side of the road.

“It will kill him.”

This isn’t my problem.

I gripped the steering wheel and willed my foot to stomp on the gas again.

He doesn’t want my help.

I closed my eyes and all I could see were those broken brown eyes, cracked with his bear’s gold.

“He might just try to kill me.” I leaned back in the seat of my truck and stared at the old woman.

She waved my statement off with a flick of her hand. “He was just being dramatic. He was raised a gentleman. He’d never hurt a lady.”

My eyebrows rose. “Think his bear’s a gentleman too?”

“He needs your animal to safely release his bear.”

I shook my head. “No, he needs a pack and an Alpha, and a freaking miracle.”

She just kept talking. “And he’ll need your magic to sever that thing’s hold on him.”

Magic…

Until a minute ago I had no idea I even had magic.

“I don’t know how to do that.”

I didn’t know if I ever would.

“He still needs you,” she said. “Without your help he’ll die tonight… and you know it.”

The chance that that man would stay in the house when the thing that killed his grandmother was just outside his backdoor was slim to none. I know I’d be out there, claws and teeth ready to tear into her.

And that meant that tonight really was the night he would die.

Whether I could stop that from happening was up in the air.

I was pretty sure I couldn’t stop it.

But part of me couldn’t bear the thought of losing Maddox. Not to the dark fae, not to his crazed bear. Not to anyone.

Shiiit…

“Tell me what you know about the Fae.”

Chapter 4

Maddox

My brothers and I had come here after our parents were murdered.

I stood in the kitchen of Nonna’s house, staring out the back window.

The woods behind the house had been where my brothers had played, and where I’d watched them, to ensure they were safe.

And this was where Nonna had watched over us, washing dishes, or cleaning vegetables.

Always watching out after us.

And I hadn’t been here when she’d died.

When she’d been murdered…

I hadn’t even suspected.

But that fae in the woods would die bloody tonight.

I’d picked an old iron carving knife from the back of Nonna’s knife drawer. It had a good balance. Obviously—from the dark though gleaming patina of the blade—made before mass production.

I had a container of iodized salt too, one with a picture of a little girl with an umbrella on it.

I should have been afraid, right?

But I wasn’t.

That probably wasn’t good.

But all I could think was that I wanted to carve up this piece of otherworldly crap and feed it to the fishes in Grayslake.

I felt the bear inside me growling its approval. It wanted blood too.

I would never let it out, though.

Since that day, when I’d killed those loupes who’d murdered my parents, and had come, covered in their blood, to kill my brothers and I, I had never shifted again.

And I would never.

I would never claim the sick and twisted animal inside me either.

It was an abomination.

Others of my kind were connected with their bears.

That was nice, for them, but I could never be like that.

I’d fought many shifted bears in the past, and had won every single time.

But I’d never killed again.

But now I would.

The sun had set, and somehow I just knew that dark fae was out there waiting for me.

How long had it been out there, watching me?

How long had it been preying on my grandmother?

I gripped the knife harder. It felt good in my hand.

I thought of the beautiful, infuriating woman from earlier. Her flesh had been tanned with a splash of freckles, and her hair had been long and straight, almost dark enough to be black, but not.

Stormy…

Was that her name?

She hadn’t told me. But I was almost positive it was Stormy.

As if someone had just whispered it in my ear.

My heart pounded harder just thinking about her.

If only I wasn’t broken.

And if only she was the one for me.

But she wasn’t.

She couldn’t be.

She deserved someone better.

The moment I walked outside, the night air seemed to tingle against my flesh, like walking through a spider web. I should have suspected it wasn’t just the cool of the night. But my anger and the need to make that thing bleed led me straight out through the backyard and out into the dark woods, knife in one hand, the canister of salt in the other.

***

I’d been in the state of New York, far to the north of the fabled city, when the authorities there had tracked me down.

I’m a lone bear, or so Nonna had called me. She’d said that’s why neither I nor my brothers could stay in one place very long. My father had been like that.

That’s why we’d been on our own and not in a pack like there was in Grayslake.

That’s why the loupes had chosen to hunt us—we were easy pickings.

Two bears and three cubs.

We hadn’t had a chance.

The policewoman and her male rookie partner had tracked me down, having been notified by Grayslake PD.

They hadn’t been able to find my brothers. They’d only found me from a postcard I’d sent a few days before.

I’d thanked the police officers, quit my job and started driving south to Grayslake. Took less than a day, since I only stopped to use the restroom and fill the gas tank.

I had a key still and let myself into the house.

There had been no crime scene tape.

Nonna had been found out back in the woods.

They’d said it was probably a heart attack, that she’d been lying on the ground, no signs of a struggle.

I’d slept on the floor beside her bed, trying not to let the anger rise in me.

I needed to be in control.

I was always in control.

I would bury Nonna, sell her herb shop, or close it down.

And sell the house?

I didn’t think I could do that. Not for anything.

Maybe I’d give it to her pack when I left. I think she would like for other bears to live in her house, to have a family live here.

When I woke the next morning there had been dishes of food left on the kitchen table, all smelling delicious—I hadn’t eaten since I’d left New York.

Had I left the door unlocked, or did someone have the key?

There was a note pinned to the top of a plate of still warm sausage and bacon.

We’re sorry for your loss and hope this helps in the days ahead.

It was signed Regina Florents.

She lived over the hill, and I remembered her coming over to have tea with Nonna in the winter, and lemonade on the front porch in the summer.

They probably had keys to each other’s homes. Probably had for decades.

That day, after eating and taking a shower, I’d driven into town, took a look around Nonna’s herb shop. She’d had it since I could remember. I was pretty sure it was one of the first shops in the town, first being a general store, and then slowly narrowing its focus into just herbs.

She owned the building and had remodeled it way back then into several shops, hers being in the middle. There was now a beauty salon, a sporting goods store, and a trendy looking coffee shop.

I’m not sure why, but I opened the shop and started working in the shop. She had regular customers, and I’d done my fair share of working in the shop in my teen years. Somehow, it just made me feel like she wasn’t really gone.

Now, walking out into the night-shadowed woods, I saw that I had just been deluding myself.

She wasn’t coming back, and no matter what I told myself, I was just staying here to not feel her loss.

I would kill the thing that killed her, and then I would go to Ty, the local pack Alpha, and ask him to end me.

I hoped he would see how necessary it was, for me, for everyone else too. For their safety.

I stood in the middle of a stand of trees, right where Nonna had been found a few weeks before.

But I didn’t feel anything…

Not angry, not guilty…

I felt numb.

And that’s when the creature showed itself.

Tall, willowy, and unearthly.

I tightened my hold on the carving knife.

But as it came closer, it seemed to change. Its stark lines turning to feminine curves, its naked, husk-like skin turning to soft, silky flesh, a sheer gown of green draping from her shoulders—she was a vision.

Somehow I knew, just knew she’d been here a long time, in this land, and she’d been so happy to find my grandmother. She’d fed from her magic and her animal for a full cycle of the moon.

I didn’t find that disturbing, and I was no longer angry.

I was just standing there, staring at her, waiting for her to tell me what she wanted me to do.

Like she was…

My master…

She smiled as that thought whispered through my mind. Her lips were blue and cold looking, but also delicious looking.

She came closer and I felt my body respond to her. My pulse quickened, my flesh burned and my cock hardened.

She reached out toward me and I thought, for just a moment, of the knife in my hand…

But it was gone, and so was… well, whatever else I’d had in my other hand.

I looked into her eyes, and the frosty green made me think of frozen swamp water.

You are mine… came a coarse whisper in my mind. You will be delicious.

The moment her hand touched my face I felt her drawing on me, sipping me like I was…

Like wine… the cold voice mused. Delicious…

My legs shook and my heart skipped a beat.

Just like being in love… she mused.

Love.

I’ve never been in love…

She lifted her other hand to the other side of my face, cupping my jaw in her cold, rough hands.

Those hands looked so soft…

If I ever fell in love… I would want it to be with someone like…

And just as I thought of her, she appeared at the edge of my vision.

“Stormy,” I breathed, feeling something well up in me just looking at her.

The fae pulled her hands from me and hissed. Her face was stark and cold, and her hands had smoke coming off them.

I fell back against a tree, my heart slamming against my chest and my lungs burning.

My legs felt as if they could hardly hold me upright.

I looked past the fae woman, to where Stormy stood. She had a sword in her hand, long and elegant, and she stood with it pointed at the fae.

“I think you have something of mine.”

Chapter 5

Stormy

It’s amazing how much someone could know about a subject. Maddox’s grandmother went on and on and on about legends, parables, fables and why each one of them was true and untrue at the same time.

It was like having Gram explaining a vision quest to you and discounting the parts she didn’t experience when she went on one, but also telling you about the parts others had sworn had happened to them on their vision quests.

Like trying to learn how to do something on the computer using a book of riddles as a guide.

So aggravating.

I hadn’t learned anything useful in the two hours I’d been listening to her.

But I did have a headache, and I was irritable and scared—of what was waiting for me in the woods behind the old woman’s house, and of her grandson.

When that bear of his ripped out him, it would kill every living thing for miles.

And there would be nothing I could do about it.

I could be the lucky first to die…

“Okay, okay…” I shook my head and gritted my teeth. “I just don’t see how any of this is going to help me.”

If only the thing in the woods were of Native American origin. I wouldn’t know how to stop it, but at least I wouldn’t be going in blind. Gram had been teaching me, grooming me to become a medicine woman without me even realizing it.

“It shouldn’t be able to affect you as it does Maddox or me.”

“Why? And how is it affecting Maddox? He didn’t even know it was out there all this time.”

The old woman’s eyes were so sad. “She’s been weaving her magic into him, even through the protections of my home’s threshold. There was just me living in there for so long, the power of the threshold was diminished.”

I held up my hand. “Weaving?”

“She is fae. Her magic is like a thin thread, and it penetrates and makes knots. That’s how it slips into you undetected until it’s too late.”

It was still so creepy talking to someone about how they were murdered. “And you didn’t know?”

“I had thought their kind had left these lands long ago. So I became lax in my defenses, and did not heed the signs.” She smiled with regret. “You know what they say, twenty-twenty hindsight. I can see what I missed now. The early cold that only seemed to be near my home, how the forest had grown silent at night, too silent… and then there was that humming.”

“Humming?”

“She sang to me at night. I thought it was just someone’s radio. And after brushing that thought aside once, she had me. It just seemed so natural to have her singing to me at night.

“Then one night, when I decided I was tired and needed to go to sleep, I went out the back door instead of up the stairs to my bedroom.”

I swallowed, so afraid of what she was about to say.

“I wasn’t a bit surprised to see her there. At first, I saw her for what she really was… but that image slipped away and was replaced by the beauty she wanted me to see. I lay down by her feet, like a dog… so tired. And she sang me to sleep, petting me.”

The ghost shook herself and gave me a pained glance. “She had been feeding slowly on me for over a month, and then, that night, she finished her work, drinking my magic and my life force until my heart stopped and I died there in the woods.”

“And you’re sure that’s where she’ll be tonight?” A ghoul in the night, with magic powers and the ability to consume magic and life itself.

Horrifying.

“Maddox will go out there tonight to avenge me, and she won’t be able to resist. She’ll take him tonight just from convenience.”

My puma growled out her hatred for that thought. She already thought of Maddox as hers.

Which was insane. Just a couple hours ago she had been ready to run from him, so afraid of what she saw in him. And now…

And now we both had placed our claim on him.

Absolute lunacy.

“But why do you think that I won’t be affected by her?” I couldn’t grasp it.

“Because of your blood, your lineage. I can already see your magic is like the wind, like the water in a stream, like the earth itself: fluid and as different to hers as possible.”

I gritted my teeth.

“Magic… that’s all I get? My magic, which I still have never used and know nothing about… that will protect me from her?”

“From her magic, yes, but she is fae and ancient, she will be a superb fighter to have lasted this long. But you have fangs and teeth on your side.”

My puma murmured her approval. She wanted to taste this creature’s blood.

My mind lit on something she had said earlier.

“You said mankind drove them out of Europe with… metal?”

She nodded. “With their white god and iron, yes.”

Iron… “You wouldn’t happen to have a sword made out of iron, would you?”

The old woman smiled. “It would happen that I do, in a tool shed about half a mile from my home.”

I quirked an eyebrow at the woman. “Why so far?”

She shrugged. “It’s been a long time since monsters—ones I couldn’t kill with my fangs and claws—roamed these woods. As I said, I neglected my defenses against them.”

She gave me the quirked eyebrow right back. “So, are you trained in fighting with a sword?”

I shook my head. “Ax, knives, bow and arrow, staff and spear, even a shotgun, but not a sword… do you have a shotgun?”

“Afraid not, dear… never liked them.”

Me either…

The old woman smiled then. “But I do have something else in the tool shed.”

***

“I think you have something of mine.” I felt myself falter for just a moment—not sure where that came from, but immediately realizing it was true. I pointed the heavy and clumsy sword at the dark fae before me.

And let me say, for the record, she was one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen. Parts of her looked like an animal, parts like a tree, the face barely possessed the general make up of being human.

That face and her entire body rippled for a moment. I guess she was trying to cloak herself, as Nonna had said she would. But, as the old woman had predicted, I wasn’t being affected by it.

That was good.

Maddox stood there, staring at me as if he was lost.

My puma hissed as I started to see the silky, mist like threads, all the color of blood, that spun from the fae into the air and were anchored in Maddox’s skin.

The fae woman glared at me, her eyes pitch black. “Go away, little cat—this bear is mine.”

I shook my head and walked toward her, willing myself not to shake. She was the scariest thing I’d ever seen. “As I said, he’s mine.”

She smiled and her fangs were just hideous. “I saw him first.”

I blinked. “You’ve got me there. Maybe we could flip for him?”

She tilted her head, trying to digest my words.

I held up my sword at her. “Pointy end wins.”

She chuckled—sounded more like the warning of a rattle snake. “I guess I could glut myself on cat and bear.”

Okay, that made my legs shake. But to my credit, my arm didn’t so much as twitch, and my voice was cold and calm. “Then come get some, bitch.”

I don’t know what  I was expecting, but she flew at me as if shot from a catapult, and on the way she tore a small tree out of the ground and brought it down at me with a lightning-quick strike.

And just like that she knocked the sword right out of my hand and sent me sailing through the air like a fly-ball at a softball game. A good-sized elm tree stopped me about ten feet away, catching me and then dropping me to the ground in a boneless heap.

Everything went black as I watched the fae woman stalk toward me.

Chapter 6

Maddox

My bear wanted out.

It was excruciating.

It was ripping at my insides, roaring in a rage I’d never felt before.

And I knew I should be angry too.

But I wasn’t.

I just stood there, watching as the fae woman jumped and flew through the air, suddenly armed with a freaking tree. I watched as she walloped Stormy with the tree. Next thing I knew Stormy was flying through the night air and landed with a sickening crunch against another, much sturdier, tree.

It felt as if my bear had punched a hole through my chest, its entire arm reaching through, trying to get at the fae woman. But I just stood there, watching with no real feeling in me, just the pain of having my bear ripping through me.

Dimly I realized that if my bear did get out, the fae woman would die, and so would Stormy.

Oh god…

I took a step closer to the fae woman.

She turned and glared at me, and swung her arm in my direction. The air screamed at me as it cut into my flesh. But it didn’t hurt near as much as what my bear was doing.

“Stay where I left you, slave. I’ll get to you soon enough.”

She turned and looked down to the ground, where Stormy had been lying just a moment ago.

But Stormy wasn’t there.

Chapter 7

Stormy

I walked into my grandmother’s kitchen.

I didn’t wonder how I got there.

I didn’t think to ask… well, I didn’t think to ask anything.

Gram stood at the stove, pulling a roasting pan from the oven.

I was so happy to see her. I walked up and hugged her around the neck, and kissed her weathered cheek.

“I love you,” I said, feeling tears well in my eyes.

“I love you too, little cat.” She shooed me over to the kitchen table. “Sit down, sit down. I made your favorite: beef roast with baby carrots in sugar water, and mashed potatoes and gravy.”

I swiped at my tears with my hands and shook my head. “No, Gram, I’m not hungry. I just want to…” I just wanted to hug her again and never let go.

I’ve missed you so much.

Gram hit me with her Don’t you disobey me glare.

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry.”

Oh boy…

“Yes, ma’am.” I turned and took my usual seat at the kitchen table, the one that was right next to Gram’s chair at the head of the table.

“That’s my good girl.” She came over and put a plate heaping with hot, delicious smelling food in front of me. “Now dig in. You’ll need your strength.”

I lifted my fork and tucked into eating my Gram’s marvelous food. It tasted so good.

I blinked while I chewed, “What do I need my strength for?”

Gram set a frosty glass of milk to my right. “So you can kill that fae, of course.”

The fae…

The image of her flying through the air at me with that damn tree in her grasp flashed through my mind, as did how she’d looked as she came at me while I was blacking out.

She was a monster out of my worst nightmares.

“I don’t think I can take her,” I confessed.

She nodded, her brow creased in concentration. “Your bear will have to help.”

My bear…

“She has him under her spell. His grandmother said so, and I can see the threads of her spell if I try real hard.” Plus, if his bear got out, it would kill everything in its path, including me.”

“Don’t think like that.” Gram smacked me in the back of the head with an oven mitt.

I glared at her. “You can hear my thoughts?”

She smiled wickedly. “Death has its benefits.”

You’re dead… I remember now…

Gram sat at the table and picked up her cup of coffee. She always liked it strong and black. “Nothing will ever change that, as nothing will ever change how much I love you, your mother, or your brother or sister. But…”

I turned and look into her faded eyes. I remembered them being so much brighter.

“If you’re going to survive this fight, and save your bear from that nasty creature, you’re going to have to work fast.”

I pushed my half-eaten plate of food away and turned to face her. “Tell me what to do.”

“Your magic isn’t just something to be called upon: it’s in you, in every cell of your body.”

I don’t get it…

“And your magic is even more potent when you’re in your puma skin.”

I blinked. “I’m a weapon.”

Gram smiled. “As much as a two hundred pound puma with long fangs and claws can be.”

My mouth dropped open and I gasped. “I do not weigh two hundred pounds!”

“You do when you shift, Stormy. We all grow larger than we should be able to.” She looked far too satisfied with herself.

I was about to remind her that she had a bald spot on her backside the last time I ever saw her shift into her puma, but she interrupted my thoughts by pointing to the frost covered glass of milk.

“It’s time to get back, don’t you think?”

I didn’t want to leave—didn’t want to ever leave her again. But this wasn’t real.

And I had things to do, and a monster to kill.

I reached out and took hold of the ice-cold glass of milk, and as I brought it to my lips and started to drink the world turned white.

Chapter 8

“Stay where I left you, slave…” The fae woman’s voice was cold and inhuman, but it did ring with possessiveness.

That’s what snapped me to.

That this crusty, ancient bitch thought she had any claim to my Maddox, to my bear…

I went from lying on the ground at her feet to jumping up into the tree I’d been smashed into moments ago. I glared down at the fae as she realized I was no longer lying at her feet.

I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out the cold iron trowel Nonna had led me to in that old shack.

I dropped down from the tree and raked the cold, sharp edge of the trowel down her back, leaving it stuck in her about halfway down. 

She screamed with an inhuman, feral howl. I rolled away from her as she flung her arms at me, trying to get at me. I relished that scream when I saw the lovely red blood of the fae running down her back, and the blade sticking out of her back.

My cat wanted to attack, but I knew I’d only surprised her. I could see that the injury I’d caused her was already mending.

I couldn’t take her on my own.

I needed Maddox.

But he was being held by her magic.

Ah yes, the magic…

With a whisper of consent, my animal’s magic flowed through me, and in a heartbeat of pain and the shredding of clothes, I stood on four paws, baring the fangs of my cat at the fae woman.

I could see the silken threads of the fae’s magic even better in my puma form. Gram had been right.

I just hoped she was right about the other things.

The fae reached back, trying to pull the trowel from her back, the iron smoking from where it was sticking out of her.

Now was my best chance to test Nonna’s theory.

I raced across the clearing and jumped in the air, opening my jaws, my teeth bared, as I sank my fangs into the thread-like streams of the fae’s magic. It hurt, like biting into razor-sharp threads of glass, but the blood I tasted was not mine.

It was the blood of the fae… and it tasted good.

The fae whirled on me, letting out another pained cry.

Good, it hurt her too.

I flung myself at another silken thread of her magic, biting down all the harder as I severed it with my fangs. I tasted more of the fae’s blood.

It flung itself at me and I felt its sharp claws slice into my back.

But my puma wasted no time with pain. She wanted to taste more blood.

And we both wanted to free Maddox, even if the fae bitch killed us trying.

Another thread was severed, and another. The fae chased me around the clearing, but, whether it was the iron trowel still sticking out of her back, or the severing of those magical, bloody threads, she wasn’t fast enough to catch me.

I raced toward the last thread and saw Maddox look over at me, his eyes fogged still with the fae’s magic.

But the instant I sank my teeth into the bloody thread, I felt the fae’s magic snap, and immediately I saw the gold of his bear ignite in his eyes, the golden cracks blazing as his bear burst free.

I must have stopped, watching Maddox’s bear emerge because the fae grabbed hold of me, her claws gouging me as she lifted me into the air by my throat.

“You’re dead, stupid cat!”

With a rip of cloth I heard the menacing roar of a grizzly right before it hit the fae like a freaking train.

I tumbled to the ground, rolling to the side. The world was fuzzy at first until I shook my head and pulled myself up so I was standing on all four legs.

The scene came into focus as I blinked the dazed out of my eyes.

Maddox had the fae pressed against the ground, his teeth deep in the meat of her shoulder. He was growling ferociously, and the fae hissed like an insect from hell.

And then with a sound like a gunshot, the fae hit Maddox so hard he flew through the air and landed on the other side of the clearing from me.

In an instant, he was up on his paws and roaring his displeasure, a cloud of dust and debris roiling up around him.

The fae woman stood there, blood gushing from the wound Maddox had inflicted.

Hell, he’d bitten a freaking chunk out of her.

She looked over to Maddox.

At the huge grizzly he’d become.

But Maddox stood there, in the middle of the clearing, staring at me.

Okay, this wasn’t what I expected.

When his bear got free it should have been trying to kill everything in its way.

Including me.

But instead, it was just watching me.

That was until the fae woman got too close to me as she stalked around us, that’s when he turned and showed her his menacing jaws.

I looked from Maddox to the fae woman and back again.

I saw in his eyes a mirror to my own thoughts.

The fae would die tonight.

Right here.

As if we’d planned it, Maddox and I started to circle the fae woman. I saw her pulling her magical threads together, snapping them around her as if they were whips.

That’s fine. Killing prey that didn’t fight back wouldn’t be near as satisfying.

Maddox bounded forward first, and the fae slashed him with her magical whip. It made him flinch, and that’s when she jumped up over him and ran towards the forest.

No… she doesn’t get away…

I launched myself after her, gliding over the ground, my puma’s urge to give chase intoxicating. I could smell her fear, and it smelled good.

The chase was over all too soon.

She was losing blood so fast that she was too slow. I jumped onto her back, my claws ripping into her cool flesh, and I sank my fangs into her neck.

She screeched and threw me off her, but she didn’t have the strength to throw me very far, not like before, so I landed easily on my paws and lunged back into her to bite her in the leg.

She swung her arms at me and tried to claw at my eyes, but I was too fast and retreated out of her reach.

Just then I heard the crunch of twigs and branches, and as the fae woman whirled around in that direction Maddox came through the night cloaked trees. Pushing her to the ground, he ripped her chest open with his claws. With her head in his great jaws, he shook his head as his claws continued to shred, until the fae’s head came off and bounced away into the forest.

All was still for a moment as Maddox stared down at the fae woman’s mutilated corpse. He looked up to me, his bear eyes a blaze of gold.

I should have been afraid… I should have been running away from him. His bear should be a beserker, a loup…

But I wasn’t afraid of him, and neither was my puma.

He stared at me, and I stared back at him.

I scented the air, and though there was so much blood, I smelled Maddox: his bear, his fur, the musk of his longing.

Longing…

Maybe that’s a romanticized word for what I smelled.

Want…

Whatever it was, it made my desire for him all the more potent.

My blood burned with it, my breath crackled with it, my muscles twitched with it.

Maddox stood up on his hind legs and I watched, breathlessly, as he changed from his bear into his human form.

He was so beautiful.

So graceful and amazing.

Maddox…

My Maddox…

Mine, I thought just as my puma called it out in her fierce, hissing roar.

My puma melted away, swifter and with less pain than she had ever left. Usually, she does not want to change back, not until she is exhausted and sated. But not now.

Now she wanted to be in the same form as her mate.

I closed my eyes on that thought.

Mate…

This can’t be.

I stood up and opened my eyes to find Maddox staring at me, his eyes still bear gold, but the rest of him completely and heartstoppingly human.

My god, he was beautiful. 

The most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

I took a stumbling step toward him, and then another, not used to my human legs yet.

Maybe my puma wasn’t as gone as I thought…

He strode to me, his long legs eating up the distance between us so much faster than mine.

He was covered in the fae woman’s blood. It was streaked and splashed all over him, across his chest, over his arms, down his stomach and his legs.

And it covered his mouth…

His eyes glowed so beautifully in the night… I was mesmerized.

He leaned forward and oh, so very slowly, kissed me.

The kiss was gentle and so delicate. As if he was afraid of hurting me.

Silly bear…

I reached out and took hold of him, my hands clasping around his neck as I pulled him into the kiss all the more.

I opened my mouth and he licked into me, his tongue flicking across my teeth and then brushing against my tongue.

He tasted of wildness and the fae’s blood, and something else, something so different…

Maddox.

Yes…

He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me against him. I felt his manhood as it lengthened and hardened against my thigh.

Yes… That too…

I reached down and stroked that lovely, spongy piece of him, and his chest rumbled as I stroked him.

He was so big, so very big.

I couldn’t wait to have him inside me.

I licked the blood from his mouth, his lips, his chin, and down over one of his insanely muscular pecs.

He pulled my face back up to his, his kisses deeper, demanding, and so very possessive.

Yes, take what’s yours…

It wasn’t me thinking these thoughts… but I didn’t disagree with them.

Not at all…

He’s mine, and the thought of anyone else even touching him made my puma hiss with insane possessiveness.

He pushed me against a tree, picking me up and draping my legs around his hips.

I was wet and ready for him, and when he pushed himself up into me, even as huge as his cock was, it slid into me as if I was made for him.

Sure, I felt some pain as my vagina stretched to accommodate him, but it was the good kind of pain, the kind that makes your eyes roll up in your head, and your pussy pulse and turn slick as hell.

So very wet.

His bear rumbled in his chest, and I felt it in my breasts, against my rib cage.

Yesyesyesyesyes…

He took my lips again and I raked my nails down his back, drawing blood, and then digging my hands, and my nails into his very muscular, and very soft butt.

Is there a flaw in this man’s body?

I didn’t know, but I was going to enjoy the hell out of finding out.

Abruptly, he pulled us away from the tree and whirled us down to the ground.

In moments he ripped himself out of me (which made me cry out in dismay) and had me turned so that I was on all fours in the dirt and the rocks.

He entered me roughly from behind, but my pussy was ready for him as if I’d willed him to do it. I arched my back and pushed back against him, making his cock fill me all the more.

Yes… oh yes…

He fell on me, his mouth on my neck, licking the blood from my flesh, his hands squeezing my breasts, making my body shake and pulse as he slammed into me over and over again.

We fucked like animals. We fucked as if we’d wanted each other forever, and this was our one and only chance to have each other.

He bit down on my ear, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to hurt.

That sensation zinged straight to my pussy, and I clamped down on him all the harder.

Yes, fuck me harder… Harder!

I would have screamed it, but I couldn’t form words. All I could do was scream and cry out, and occasionally yip when his cock hit that wall inside me, the wall where I end.

I named it getting popped in the cervix because that’s pretty much exactly what’s going on.

He leaned up off me, one hand on my shoulder, the other tangled up in my hair. The tempo of him slamming into me with his hard, thick cock sped up, and I heard him growling as he seemed to lose control, jamming himself into me with heedless abandon.

He cried out and I felt him fill me with his seed. Before I knew it his cum was sliding out of me, sliding down my thighs.

And then I felt his teeth sink into my shoulder.

The pain was exquisite, the burn of his teeth in my flesh, the feel of his lips, and how his cock jerked and pulsed inside me.

Yes, please, please, please...

Claim me.

I was shaking, and crying out in utter joy, my body on fire. The feel of his claiming mark on me made my flesh burn and my blood boil as it pumped inside me.

I felt his teeth slowly slide out from my flesh, replaced immediately by his gentle tongue, as he lapped at my wound.

He was so hard now, and he churned himself in and out of me so slowly.

My legs and arms shook so hard now if I was about to collapse any moment.

His cum was still spilling from me, and I could see it spilling onto the ground.

He’d marked me, inside and out.

It was insane, utterly crazy… but made perfect sense.

He was my mate, and I was his.

But I’d only just met him…

I closed my eyes as it all slammed down on me.

This couldn’t be happening…

Not now…

Not yet…

I love him.

He pulled himself out of me, making an animal growl as he slipped from my grasping sheath.

Oh god, I felt suddenly so empty.

He picked me up from the ground and I saw his eyes were still glowing gold.

Solid gold.

A thought stirred in my head, a thought that made all this even worse.

Was this all just his bear?

My heart sank as I fell against his chest, trying not to cry as he carried me through the forest toward the house.

If this was all just his bear, and he really had no control of what had just happened between us…

I closed my eyes and tried to lose myself in the depths of my mind. I needed to be away from him, didn’t I?

The next thing I knew he was setting me on the sink of a small yet spotless bathroom. I watched as he started the water of the shower, and when the heat pleased him, he turned to me. His eyes were still gold: not exactly glowing, but a sparkly metallic.

He picked me up and carried me in under the hot spray of water. It felt so good beating against my sore body, over my roughed up flesh. I had scratches, cuts and bruises all over. But most of the blood that was running off me with the water was the fae woman’s.

That was a satisfying thought.

My enemy’s blood washing down the drain.

Maddox picked up a bottle and squirted out a bit of amber liquid. Immediately I smelled daffodils and lilies, a light scent that seemed to help clear my jumbled thoughts as he smoothed it through my hair and started lathering.

There may be no more sensual feeling than having your hair washed by someone else.

My body felt all these little shocks and quakes as he ran his strong hands through my hair. He rinsed my hair and then started soaping up my body, his calloused though gentle hands caressing my flesh, making sure every inch of me was lathered, his talented fingers grasping my ass, fingering my swollen pussy, and pinching my nipples.

And then he rinsed me… thoroughly.

Every time his hands touched me it was like I was a cat arching to get petted.

I turned and took the bottle in hand, squeezing out a large bit of the stuff and start cleaning my bear.

My bear…

Didn’t sound right…

Didn’t feel right…

I cleaned him as meticulously as he had cleaned me

I lathered his wondrous chest, leaning in after the soap is rinsed off, and taking his nipple into my mouth, biting lightly, making him growl.

I smoothed the soap down his abs, still lower to his crotch.

I found him wonderfully hard, his cock jutting out from his thatch of light brown pubes, his shaft curving upward ever so slightly.

I had to use both hands while lathering his cock and balls, they were that big…

I walked around him, not letting him pull me into another mind blowing kiss, as I started on his back side.

The man literally did not have a bad angle. I stared at his shoulders, those thick, brawny slabs of muscle, the smooth, thick flesh, and the way his body tapered into that perfect V some men have.

My god, the way his spine curved down into his ass, two perfect dimples right there, calling out to be licked.

I lathered up that beautiful ass: meaty and muscular, yet still soft and pliant with youth.

So beautiful.

He turned and pulled me into an irresistible kiss, deep and hot. I didn’t even notice what he was doing until I suddenly abruptly pulled up in the air, his hands on my ass, lifting me up until my pussy was at his eye level.

“What are you…?”

He buried his mouth in my crotch and started to devour my pussy.

Oh god…

I was up by the ceiling, hands up against painted wooden beams, my head and shoulders pushed against the wall of the shower, the tiles cool against my flesh.

But I didn’t care. I felt like I was floating in a cloud of pleasure. And I guess I was.

His arms didn’t so much as tremble as he held me suspended in the air, his mouth sucking and licking and nipping at my sex, my vagina, my pussy lips, my clit.

“Please…” I cried out, ready to explode. “I need you inside me!”

I heard him chuckle and felt the vibration of it against my writhing pussy.

He pulled his mouth from me to speak.

“But I’m not finished with my meal.” His voice as so dark. Darker than I remembered.

Was the bear still in charge, even now?

I was trembling in his hands, my pussy pulsating, practically ready to catch on fire, and as wonderful as his tongue and teeth and lips were, I need his hardness inside me.

“Please…” I whimpered. “I need you inside me.”

With no strain at all, he lowered me down until we were eye to eye, and then impaled me on his long, thick cock.

I hissed as I sank down on him.

He seemed even larger than he was in the forest, and my vagina struggled to open up and take him all the way in. But it did, and before I could say another word he was slamming himself up into me, not even using the wall, just holding my ass in his rough hands as he pulled me up and down on his cock, and then varying by thrusting up into me harder and faster.

Yes, this is what I wanted, this is what I needed. I needed for him to have me in every way possible.

I wanted to remember it all. Ever touch, thrust, nibble, and kiss.

I felt the heat of my orgasm rising up from my core. Yes, he was what I wanted, more than anything else in my entire life.

Maddox…

His breathing became erratic and he slammed up into me with utter desperation.

Yes, please…

I felt him shoot up into me, jets of his creamy seed filling me, making my burning, throbbing vagina cool like a soothing balm.

I felt it slopping out of me again as he churned up into me over and over.

I had no idea a man could cum this much.

I needed to taste that cum…

I looked into his eyes and felt a chill.

His eyes were still gold. They were still the eyes of his bear.

Fear spread up through me and my body stiffened, my sex tightening around him involuntarily.

He smiled, a feral baring of teeth.

“Don’t be afraid of us, little cat.”

Yeah, the US didn’t help to dissuade my fear. If anything it made me wish I was in my truck, driving away to anywhere.

Anywhere at all…

And then Maddox’s eyes turned brown again, and he smiled.

I wanted to ask if he knew what we’d been doing. How much of what happened had been his bear and not him?

But…

“You’ve about worn me out, little cat.”

Chapter 9

He cleaned me down there again, his fingers lingering as he washed his seed from my sex. His gentle touch was’ a balm, making what was sore and tired now feel healed and—amazingly enough—ready to go again.

He dried me off and led me into the bedroom. It was obviously the room he’d slept in, in his youth, for there were signs of a teenager, but from four or five years ago.

He lay down on the bed and pulled me in after him, positioning me up against him, litte spoon position, as he pulled the covers over us.

In moments I was enveloped in warmth—weres generate body heat like space heaters.

The feel of his muscular body against my backside was heavenly. My aches and pains melted like ice cream, and before I knew it I was falling deliriously right into sleep.

***

What seemed like hours later I woke up. Maddox hadn’t moved, still pressed up against my backside. I could feel his cock, still half-hard against my hip.

I slowly turned over until I was facing him. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was regular, so I was pretty sure he was asleep.

One more time…

I wanted all the memories of this, of him, as I could bear to carry.

I kissed my way down his torso, over his unbelievable chest, down his rippling abdominals, and then down to his now completely hard cock.

He sighed when I took him into my mouth, and as I flicked my tongue over the sensitive nerve endings, and sucked him deeper into my drooling mouth, he dug his hands into my hair, not pushing me down, but definitely urging me on.

I could feel myself getting wet, my sex was getting hot, and that just made me suck harder.

“You’re trying to kill me…”

Really?

I forced myself down on his prick all the more, making him gasp as his length snaked farther down my throat. I suddenly couldn’t breathe, so I was pretty sure I had him most of the way in.

“Fuck…” he growled, and I pulled up on him until his throbbing cock head was ready to pop out of my mouth, and I could swirl my tongue around it.

Down I went again until my air supply was cut off, and I felt his balls pulling up against my chin.

I reached down and took his beefy balls in hand, pulling at the bulging orbs in their velvety soft sack.

Maddox writhed, bucking his hips up, fucking my mouth.

I tasted the salt of his precum.

“I’m going to…”

I know…

It’s what I want…

To taste you…

And suddenly he came in my mouth.

I didn’t want to waste a drop, so I pushed him into the back of my throat and swallowed. It was wonderful, salty and sweet, and instantly addictive.

His hands bunched up in my hair as he slowly fucked my mouth. Oh god, how he smelled, a mix of sex and him and his animal.

Once he was finished, and his hand let go of my hair, I slowly pulled up off his still hard cock.

That was…

“Good lord, woman. That was amazing.”

Amazing was a good word to describe it.

My pussy throbbed as I looked at him, stretched out before me, sweat glistening on his skin, accentuating every muscle. And how beautiful his cock was, still hard, shiny from where I’d been sucking on it.

“Okay,” he said, reaching over and pulling me up atop him. “You look about ready to catch on fire.”

I gasped as he pushed his cock inside.

I just couldn’t get used to how big and hard he is… and that’s after he already came.

“You don’t have to—” I tried to say, but them he pulled out halfway and slammed back into me again.

“Sure I do.” His hand slid down my stomach and stopped only once he had his thumb rubbing against my clit.

Shiiit…

He kept pounding up into me, harder, faster, his thumb strumming my clit with brutal efficiency.

“How?” I gasped as I started to feel my orgasm building.

He rammed up into me, pushing me up off the mattress so I was suspended in mid-air for a moment, his hard prick as far up in me as was possible

“It’s a gift,” he said, breathlessly, leaning up and kissing me, his mouth demanding on mine.

Hell of a good gift.

Between his cock up inside me, his thumb roughing up my clit, and his lips feasting on mine, my orgasm welled up inside me and before I could even take a breath…

Boom!

I swear there was an earthquake in that bedroom. I swear I blew into a million itty bitty pieces all over the place.

But as I fell forward against Maddox, I knew none of that had happened.

Maddox had happened.

Chapter 10

It was 3 am when I woke again.

This time I wasn’t hungering for more of Maddox.

I was missing home.

And somehow, I just knew I needed to go back.

I was needed.

I just knew it.

And I also knew I wasn’t ready for the man sleeping in the bed beside me.

Mating mark or no, I was not ready to be anyone’s mate.

Inside I was a mess.

My grandmother had just died.

And I was so out of it I’d taken off on my family when they’d needed me the most, just so I could drive away from my problems.

I couldn’t even think of how much I’d hurt mom, Roxy, and Billy.

Gram had been our rock.

I borrowed a pair of ridiculously too large sweat pants and a t-shirt, then went and bandaged over where Maddox had bit me.

It was already healing, but I still didn’t want to have to see it in the rearview mirror all the way home.

I scribbled something on a notepad I found and left it on the kitchen table, then snuck out the kitchen door, out the back and through the woods until I was at my truck again.

Nonna was waiting for me.

“Taking off so soon, little medicine woman?”

I pulled a pair of sneakers out of my duffle bag. I’d never tried to drive barefoot.

“I need to get back home.”

“This could be your home.” The way she said it, so simple… it almost sounded true.

I shook my head, letting my hair spill over to hide my face from her. I was starting to cry, and I needed to get away from her—and him—before I completely fell apart.

“I already have a home. That hasn’t changed. And they need me.”

She looked up into the moon above—a rather bright half moon. “You’re right. They do need you. But so does Maddox.”

Oh, you bitch.

“I think I’ve helped him plenty.”

But truth be told, I didn’t want to leave him.

Ever…

I sat up and looked the old woman in the eye.

“I’m not ready for him.”

Her urgent gaze softened and she looked away.

“He’s not ready for me either, is he?”

She chuckled. “Might take a few years… might be next week. But he will be ready for you. Men are like that.”

It was my turn to laugh.

“How pathetic am I when I’m getting love life advice from a ghost.”

She put her finger to her nose and gave me a knowing look good enough to have been one of my Gram’s.

“My advice has been sought after for decades, little medicine woman. And I’m more than just a ghost, or has it escaped your notice.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what I’ve noticed. What I do know is I’m tired and confused… and I’ve got a long drive ahead of me, so let’s just…” I stared at her, beseechingly.

She rolled her eyes and walked over to the side of the road, away from my truck.

“Fine, go. Become what you need to.”

“Oh, great, now you’re riddling me like Gram…” Like Gram used to.

“I’m not giving up, though. You’ll be seeing me.” She looked in the direction of her house, meaningfully. “And him. Bears mate for life.”

That, I hate to admit, made an excited quiver erupt inside me.

I wanted to see Maddox again so very badly.

I blinked and Nonna was gone.

I was standing there on the side of the road, only my Chevy as my companion.

“That’s a hell of a thing,” I said to the wind, and to Nonna. I was sure, even if I couldn’t see her, she was around still.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing dead people.”

I hopped up into my truck, slammed the door and started the engine.

A minute later I was rolling along at a good clip, the road wet with newly fallen rain, and the Grayslake sign glowing in my headlights as I passed it on the way out of town.

I almost stopped.

I slowed down as I passed the sign, half-expecting Nonna or Maddox to be standing there, but the sign stood alone. So I hit the gas and started home.

Chapter 11

Two years later…

Maddox

Drilling for natural gas is… well, it’s a hard, long, dirty job. And for the last six months I’d been on a crew in North Carolina, staying at a boarding house in Ashland. Usually I went out into the woods twice a week and let my bear out.

I’d always been afraid of letting my bear loose, but ever since that night, with Stormy, my bear and I have had an understanding of sorts. I let him out from time to time, and he stopped trying to tear his way out of me.

Even when things get hairy in my life, and stressful, he lets me handle it.

Running into other shifters is rare, but when it does happen my bear gazes through my eyes and the shifters usually leave me alone.

A lone bear is nothing most shifters want to mess with.

Today I showered at the site and pulled on some clean clothes. I’d worked an early shift, which was fine with me, but then I’m always restless afterward.

I paid my rent—always early.

I picked up some extra sweats, jeans, underwear, and t-shirts at Walmart—a werebear/fracking miner can never have enough expendable clothing.

I picked up a cart full of snack food and lunchmeat. Werebears eat like pigs.

I gassed up my truck, a sleek red Silverado I’d paid off earlier this year.

This took only a couple hours out of what was left of my night.

Maybe I could stay in town, go to a movie, grab a pizza…

But none of that seemed to appeal to me.

I was more than restless tonight.

I was thinking about Stormy.

Shiiit… I didn’t even know the woman’s last name.

I didn’t know where she was from. Nothing.

All I had was that letter she’d left me, folded up in my billfold.

Maddox,

I’m not ready for this, for you… for us. I’m too messed up, and so are you.

But… someday, when you’re ready, I hope I will be too.

Stormy

It still smelled of her, barely. The woman was all kinds of hot, and brave and good.

But would it have killed her to leave me an address?

A phone number?

Her last name?

I gave up killing time. Maybe once I was home I’d find something to occupy my time.

I got what I wished for.

It was raining when I pulled up to the boarding house.

Nonna was waiting for me when I got out of the truck.

She sat on the rain-slicked steps, prim and proper as always, not a hair out of place in her gray bun… and not a drop of rain on her.

Death had its benefits, I guess.

“So,” she’d said, popping a mint in her mouth, “You ready to go find your mate?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but I realized right then and there that my bear was healed. Had been for a while.

And he and I both wanted just one thing now.

Stormy…

“Fucking right I am,” I’d said.

“Language, Maddox,” Nonna had chortled.

I packed my few belongings, packed up my truck and got behind the wheel.

“Which way?” I asked her.

“West, dear boy. Your mate is due west.”

West.

“That’s good for me,” I said.

As long as I was headed toward Stormy.

My Stormy…

***End***

Want more of Stormy and Maddox? Their HEA? Check out Claimed Bear: Ferro Mountains Book 1. Out now!

And Risen Bear: Ferro Mountains Book 2

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Also by Alice Bello

Better Off Dead: A Lucy Hart, Deathdealer Novel

Not Dead Yet: A Lucy Hart, Deathdealer Novel

Dead and Buried: A Lucy Hart, Deathdealer Novel (TBA)

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Andromeda’s Knight (TBA)

Hope Breaks

Hope Entangles

Hope Rises

Bette’s Turn

Raphael’s Way (TBA)

Broken Bear: Grayslake, More than Mated

Claimed Bear, Book 1: Ferro Mountains

Risen Bear, Book 2: Ferro Mountains

Found Bear: Grayslake, More than Mated (TBA)

Hate Him (Book 1)

Hate Him (Book 2)

Hate Him (Book 3) (TBA)

Lance’s Choice (TBA)

Want Him: Prequel to Hate Him

Girl Rush: A Novel (TBA)

Un-Dateable: A Novel

About Me:

Let me introduce myself. I'm forty-four, and a proud indie author.  I write New Adult, Contemporary and Paranormal Romance. I love sexy alpha males, brooding and sparkly vampires, and I love, love, love pizza… chocolate and bomb pops.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11