by J. K Harper
"Sorry." He kept looking at her, though. "I'm just still amazed that I'm seeing you again."
"Me, too," she said, her tone soft. "It's like a dream. I often wondered what you were doing, what it would be like to see you again. I even imagined—"
She cut herself off so suddenly, eyes widening, that Grant stopped giggling to stare at his mother with a concerned little frown on his face. Shane glanced at the kid. "He really watches you. He's attuned to every single thing you do."
Tucking her hair behind her ear, Jessie nodded. "It's a survival mechanism. Babies depend on their mothers for safety. He definitely watches me all the time," she added with a small laugh. "I never had any idea how all-consuming taking care of another human being could be until I had him."
"Fuck, I wish I'd been there to help you do it. Dammit!” Shane winced. “Gonna teach him bad words before he's even old enough to talk." He looked down at Grant. "Some role model I'll be."
This time, Jessie snorted out an actual laugh. Shane glanced back up at her, surprised and happy to hear the sound. He remembered her laughter so well. It'd rippled through his mind time and again for months.
"Believe me,” Jessie said, still laughing, "this child has heard it all. His delicate little ears are well-accustomed to bad language by now. Don't worry, you won't make it worse."
Gently, Shane reached out his huge hand to touch Grant's cheek. He was ridiculously soft. Grant looked back at him, occasionally blinking his big eyes. Softly, Jessie said, "Smile at him. He'll smile back at you."
"Seriously?" Even as he said that, Shane smiled at the chubby little bundle of roly-polyness.
After second, Grant smiled back, dimples appearing on his face and his chin doubling as he grinned in delight at Shane.
"Wow," Shane breathed, staring at the child he'd somehow managed to make with the woman he'd only known for three days. "That's pretty cool."
Jessie laughed. The gentle tones of it rippled through the room, mingling with the Christmasy scent that suffused the whole place. The piney smells came from the tiny decorated tree she had sitting on the table shoved under the window. She seemed to really like the holiday.
"So.” Shane gently stroked Grant's cheek again before taking his hand away, leaning back on his arm so he could just observe the little boy as he reached down and began playing with the cuff of Shane's jeans. "His bear's been starting to come through, hasn't it?"
Jessie nodded. "Yeah. I knew it would start to happen, Livy told me all about it, but it still totally freaked me out. He had claws a couple of weeks ago. That's why I'm here now. I finally understood what she was trying to tell me.” She gave a resigned shrug with one shoulder. “I can't raise him on my own. Away from—his kind."
Silence held them before he decided to just out with it. "The thing is," he said, struggling to express the words without sounding like a complete jerk, "that's exactly what I'm afraid of. That I'll make things worse for Grant, and for you. Oh, don't worry," he added quickly as Jessie flicked a serious gaze at him. "I'm going to be in this kid's life. He needs a dad. I get that. He needs a hell of a good one, too."
"Because," Jessie said, watching him very carefully, "of what kind of a father yours was to you? Or rather, wasn't?"
Another very long silence, interrupted only by the sound of Grant blowing little spit bubbles with his mouth, already having distracted himself, held the two of them. Well, shit. He'd forgotten that he told Jessie about that. He'd opened up to her so much during those three days.
Because he trusted her. Which was what one did with a mate.
Feeling his brows lower, he answered, “Yeah. That bastard was no kind of father. Beating the hell out of me on a regular basis till I was big enough to fight back. Then leave home.” His voice came out shorter than he intended. Jessie caught it and looked away. Ah, hell. This was harder than he'd thought it would be. But his bear nudged and snarled at and prodded him to take action. He needed to man up.
"Anyway," he said, forcing himself to soften his voice. "So you've been learning a lot about bear shifter life since you got here."
She nodded uncertainly, clearly not getting where he was going with this.
"How much do you know about—bear shifter mates?"
He let the word just drop into her tiny little apartment. Let it hang in between them and the oblivious, cheerful little boy sitting between them still practicing blowing spit bubbles.
A rapid succession of emotions raced across Jessie's face. Confusion, then a flicker of understanding. For a long, breathless moment, he saw something else that whipped over to his own heart like a shimmering cord between them.
Pure, unadulterated hope and excitement, mingled with a rush of joy. Quickly covered by a carefully blank face.
Like she needed to hide her hope.
"You mean, like Elodie and Oberon Walker? The Calhouns, or," and she rattled off a couple other names of mated shifters who lived here.
He nodded. "Yes. Like that. You understand what it means?"
"I think so?" She spoke slowly. "It's two shifters who are meant to be together. Like a soulmate thing, like humans have. Uh, human people. I mean, just people.” She flushed deep red, which oddly made her even cuter. “Something like that?"
Shane nodded, feeling abruptly weary as a long-ago image of his own mother and father fighting bitterly and angrily flashed through his head. "Yes. Like that."
Her gaze softened. “Not everyone gets to have that, I take it.”
Shane took a deep breath. Now or never. “No,” he said, keeping his gaze firmly on hers. “But some do. Some are lucky. Like us.”
Jessie looked at him, her expression still cautious. Shane huffed out a breath, frustrated with his inability to properly explain. He tried again.
"Jessie, what I mean is that you and I are mates. You're my mate. We're bound together." Something flickered in her eyes. "I never thought it could happen to me. I thought I was broken. Thought I was too much of an asshole—aw, shit. Dammit," he muttered savagely, looking down at Grant.
Jessie shook her head, ignoring his language. "Bound to each other? Like, you mean, forever?"
"Yes. That's exactly what I mean."
A long silence spun between them, broken only by Grant's occasional noise as he rediscovered the interest of playing with his toes. Jessie's face was once again that proverbial open book, but emotions zipped across it so fast Shane wasn't sure what exactly she thought.
Finally, though, she simply said very softly, “Forever? Are you sure? Because that doesn't happen.”
Her voice was so small, so filled with pain, that Shane saw red. He wanted to kill whoever had made her feel this way. Even as the rage fell over him, though, he knew where her sadness came from. Their hours of soulful conversation back in that hotel room had stayed etched on his brain. Every single secret they'd shared with one another.
“Your family, right?” He just barely kept the growl out of his words. “I remember, Jessie. They left you to raise yourself.”
Her voice was low when she answered. “Yeah. When I was barely into my teens. Do you think we can do better by this little boy?” She stroked the back of Grant's head with such fierce tenderness that it wrenched at Shane's heart again. Before he could respond, she added, “And you don't have to include me in it. We're mates, or whatever. But I just want you to be there for him. Me—that's not important.”
The red haze dropped over his mind again. She really, truly didn't believe that he could want her. That she was his mate.
Shane's bear roared through him. Possessiveness and confusion whirled around. Battling himself and his bear, he closed his eyes for a long moment, knowing they'd likely be a simmering gold with the proximity of his incensed animal. He wasn't handling this well. He didn't want to scare her again.
Not really sure what would come out, he opened his mouth and heard himself say, "I want you to come up to the lodge. My cabin's up there. Bring Grant. It's his home, Jessie. The place that will feel most comf
ortable to him in the world, even more so than down here in town. I want to try to do this right. I promise," he added in a soft voice that nevertheless held tremendous conviction, "I won't freak out again. I won't leave again. I mean it, Jessie."
Jessie looked down at their son. A few dark golden strands of hair fell into her face as she slowly nodded. "Okay," she said softly. One of her hands stroked mindless circles on Grant's back. "I'm on the work schedule for the next two days, then I have a few days off. I can bring him up there then? We can—you can—we'll see how things go.”
Despite her agreement, he didn't feel as elated as he should have. He'd done it again, going off half cocked and blurting out to his beautiful, sweet, very human Jessie that she was his mate. Expecting her to just trust in it based on the concept of shifter mates that she didn't really understand.
Way to go, dumbass, he snarled to himself. His bear snarled in response. Shane shoved the brute down as best as he could. What he wanted to do more than anything right now was grab Jessie and kiss her sweet lips until he couldn't think anymore. But somehow he managed to hang onto the last tiny pieces of sanity and dignity he possessed. So instead of making things worse, he just nodded.
"Okay. It's a date."
Jessie smiled at him. “A date,” she said softly, nodding back at him.
But the nervous silence between them made his bear roar in frustration and worry. Silently, he vowed to himself to make it work when she came up there. He had to prove to her that they were true mates. That he wanted her, and only her. And that he would be there for both of them, always. “Okay,” he echoed, hearing the seriousness in his voice. “It's a date. A real one, Jessie.”
Looking at her face as he said that, he put every ounce of conviction he had into his voice. A date with his mate. The most important date of his entire life. He would make sure it was perfect.
6
Jessie caught her breath as she rounded the final snowy curve and the property of the Silvertip Lodge opened up in front of her. Despite the threatening storm that had turned the sky dark gray, the place was absolutely gorgeous. She'd thought Deep Hollow was a winter wonderland. A snow-covered fairytale of charming mountain life. It was, but the Silvertip Lodge was like the most fantastical dream come true. The huge stone and wood building nestled against the rising flank of the mountain, looking like something straight out of those glossy magazines about fancy homes. Despite its immense grandeur and beauty, however, it still seemed incredibly inviting. Welcoming and warm rather than off-putting and haughty.
As she drove in, she passed several small cabins set well back from the road with a cleared driveway leading up to each one. Smoke gently spiraled out from the chimneys of a few of them. Shane had said several shifters lived here, but there were also quite a few guest cabins, all of which were actually full for the holidays.
The road from town up to the lodge should've been hairy and scary, and she supposed it was during a bad storm, but it had been immaculately groomed and easy for her to drive up in the truck she had borrowed from Livy. She'd had it in four low the whole way up, of course, but Livy assured her she would make it with no problems. And if for any reason she did get stuck, they would come down and get her shortly. She even had cell service, she noted as she glanced down at her phone. Amazing. They really planned for every contingency.
In the back seat, Grant made funny little half snuffling, half giggling noises. He'd been doing it the entire twenty minute drive up. Jessie glanced at him in the rearview mirror. Although he couldn't see out the window from within the depths of his car seat, his head was turned toward it. He looked up at the trees and stormy sky as they drove, seeming fascinated.
"We'll be spending a lot of time up here, little man," she said to him. He glanced toward the front seat, his chubby little face breaking into a grin at the sound of her voice. Then he immediately looked back toward the window. It was as if he knew he was getting closer to his daddy's home, the heart of which Shane had told her was one hundred percent shifter land.
Silvertip Lodge, as it turned out, was open only to shifters. The website was hidden from human eyes, being password protected and only findable on shifter forums and other shifter-only sites. Although people talked about it in town, and the casual human visitor to Deep Hollow might hear of it, or see a lodge brochure at one of the many town businesses, they would only be told that it was a private community.
Despite her own nerves at seeing Shane, at the craziness of what he'd said to her the other day about being mates, Jessie couldn't help a smile of excitement as she drove into what was practically a secret kingdom. This was the life her son was going to know about. Surrounded by his own kind, all different kinds of shifters in fact, and always feeling free to be himself. The thought made her incredibly happy.
Taking a quick look at the directions Shane had scrawled on a piece of paper for her, she started counting driveways after she passed a huge, stately barn, which she was told held snowmobiles and snowshoes and cross-country skis rather than animals. Apparently, horses and other livestock were perfectly manageable by many shifters. But not all of them, and since the ones who came to the Lodge weren't exactly screened for their horse whispering abilities, it was deemed safer for everyone involved if there no animals on the property.
Except, of course, the shifters themselves.
At the third road past the barn, she turned left. The road twisted and turned through the trees, bending around a few times before it ended in a little turnaround in front of the most freaking adorable cabin she'd ever seen. The sharply angled roof was billowed over with snow. A large stone chimney hugged its side, curls of grayish white smoke puffing out of it. Large wooden beams held up the roof over the porch. A large window ran the length of the porch. It was the picture of a perfect little mountain cabin.
"Oh, wow." But Jessie's exclamation didn't come because of how darling the cabin was. No, she gasped as she slowed the truck to stop and killed the engine because Shane was waiting for her on the porch.
Half naked Shane, that is.
He stood there wearing nothing but a pair of tan-colored work jeans. They clung to his muscled thighs, practically molded there. His feet were bare, as was the rest of him from the waist up. And holy freaking moly, his naked chest was a thing of beauty. Muscles rippled across it in a mesmerizing display of what was his pretty much perfect masculine physique.
Jessie's brain showed the first signs of actually melting.
It wasn't like she'd forgotten how freaking hot he was. Of course not. She'd dreamed about him every single night since Grant was conceived. But to see him standing there in front of her, for real, took her breath away even as it sent hot sizzles zipping throughout her entire body. Mr. sexy lumberjack mountain bear shifter god of the forest indeed. It was almost as if she could feel his desire leaping across the space of the little yard from where he stood on the porch, his expression serious, to where she sat frozen in the seat of the truck.
The spell broke when Grant emitted one of his screechy little demands. He wanted out. Right now. Taking a deep breath to get control of herself, because wow, were her hormones hammering at her right now, Jessie exited the truck and practically fell to the ground because the thing was lifted so darn high.
"Glad you got here before the storm." Shane's voice rumbled deep into the heavy, storm-threatening air. He came down the wooden steps and walked across the snowy yard, barefoot.
"Your feet—" Jessie began. Shane flashed a smile at her, making all her girl parts sit up to attention. Despite knowing that forever wasn't real, couldn't be real, her ovaries suddenly clamored that making more babies with him was a great idea.
"Bear shifter," he reminded her, his grin getting a little bigger. His eyes slipped past her to Grant in the backseat. "He'll be doing the same thing once his first shift comes."
Flustered by her female reaction to him, Jessie opened the door to the backseat of the truck and got Grant out. Impulsively, she suddenly thrust him out to Sh
ane. "Here. Will you carry him in? I'll grab our stuff."
Shane's arms automatically came out for Grant, his smile dissolving into first surprise, then pleasure.
As soon as Grant was safe in Shane's hands, Jessie took a step away so he couldn't hand the boy back. But he didn't seem to want to. He held Grant away from him at arm's length, little boy and big man both locking eyes with one another for a long moment. The smile came back onto Shane's face just as it did onto Grant's. Jessie caught her breath again. Not only were their eyes the same, so were their smiles. He pulled his son in close, holding him awkwardly but safely in his arms.
She went around to the other side of the truck to grab her little overnight bag and the three other bags that held Grant's mountain of stuff.
"Can I help you carry something else?" Shane asked, though he was engrossed in Grant's fascinated pulling of his beard. Damn, he was the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen. Despite her own doubts, she couldn't help but notice the tingly pulses her lady parts gave each time she looked at him.
Jessie shook her head even though he couldn't see her. "No. You have the most important thing. I've got the rest of it."
"Yeah." Absolute awe tinged Shane's voice.
She couldn't control her own smile as they all walked towards the little cabin and inside. Carefully, making sure Shane couldn't see her, although he was so caught up in Grant he probably wouldn't notice anyway, she lightly pinched the inside of her skin on one wrist. Just in case she was dreaming, she wanted to make sure would wake up now and not be disappointed.
The pinch hurt. This was all real. Daring to let her smile get bigger, she walked up the stairs and into Shane's cabin.
The inside was manly yet adorable at the same time. Rough-hewn logs made up the walls and ceiling. A smooth wooden floor was clean, covered only by a few pieces of simple yet very well-made furniture. To the right of the front door, a huge window offered up a view of the snowy field outside and the darkening forest beyond. Jessie sighed with delight. “This is so cozy. Better than life on the road?” she added shyly, nibbling on her upper lip as she glanced at him.
