by Selena Scott
Anton said nothing. Barely acknowledged the words. He felt something hot in his throat and swallowed past it. He merely raised his eyebrows.
“Okay, well, maybe that wasn’t a big deal to you,” Ivy continued, “but it was a big deal to me. I know how much you hate them. And to offer to go back…”
“Linc is tiny child. I am grown man. No question who should go,” Anton spat the words out. He was being rude, he knew, but there was no stopping it now. He was all twisted up.
“I’m not tiny! I’m five and almost six!” Linc squinched his face and bunched up his muscles the way Maxim had shown him how.
“You are tiny,” Anton waved his hand through the air dismissively. “And you will be until you are man.”
Linc took the opportunity to knock over the Wonder Woman figure that Anton had been playing with and the two of them grinned competitively at one another.
“See! Right there. That’s exactly it,” Ivy motioned between the two of them. “That’s why we want you to be Linc’s godfather.”
“What?” Anton’s stomach tightened.
Maxim leaned forward. “If anything happens to me or Ivy, we want you to take Linc. To raise him and take care of him.”
“But,” Anton started. He had a million ways to finish that sentence, but none of them could he say out loud. But I’m damaged. But I’m a monster. But I’m no good. He clapped his mouth closed.
“You’re a good man,” Ivy said, leaning forward and clasping his hand. “And we love you. And Linc would be lucky to have you for a parent. Hopefully, we don’t kick the bucket anytime soon and Linc can enjoy the benefits of having two parents and a godfather for a long time. But, yeah. We want you to sign the paperwork just in case.”
“Danil drew it up,” Maxim said, sliding a trifold and a pen across the deck table. “You can take time to think if you want.”
But Anton was already signing. He had to sign four different times and each time he felt something within himself change. Something softened.
Maxim had to love him, that was nothing new. They were brothers. But to have Ivy and Linc love him by choice. To have them choose him for their family. Well, he didn’t even know what to think about that.
“I go now,” Anton said gruffly. Standing up, he shoved the papers back toward them. “I come to see boy again tomorrow.” And then he was bounding off of Maxim’s back deck and disappearing into the woods.
“Well, for Anton, that was positively gushy,” Ivy remarked, shrugging her shoulders and polishing off her whiskey. They had one of their last summer weekends stretching out before them. And she imagined they’d spend it the way they’d spent the last few. Maxim resting and recovering, Linc playing the crap out of his new toys from Ilya and Katya. And Ivy living. Just living. Alongside her two men. Her family.
“Either I drag you two onto my lap or you come here.” Maxim’s voice snapped her out of her reverie.
Not wanting him to strain himself, and taking him at his word, Ivy scooped up Linc and arranged them over Maxim’s lap. His hands came around both of them.
“Two bears and a mermaid,” he murmured into her hair.
Ivy laughed, leaning back into his neck. “Who’d have thunk?”
“I did,” Maxim said. “Right from first second.”
Ivy turned to him, one eyebrow raised. “Oh, is that right? When you were,” she covered Linc’s ears, “picking me up in a bar? You thought ‘wife’?”
“Well,” he shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. “Maybe not first second. More like,” he added his hands over top of Ivy’s and covered Linc’s ears even more, “first time seeing you naked, I knew.”
Ivy threw her head back and laughed. Linc, sick of whatever grown-up thing they were talking about, wiggled his way down and sprawled himself in the grass, his little feet kicking through the air. They both watched him play with twin contentment in both their hearts.
“Thank you for teaching our son how to be a bear,” Ivy whispered, planting a kiss on Maxim’s lips.
“Thank you for letting him be my son, rusalka,” Maxim whispered back. He kissed her and tangled his hand in her mermaid hair. He leaned back, ignoring the healing ache in his back. Not on his back porch, with the late summer sun shining down and his family safe and sound.
The End
Anton’s Mate
PROLOGUE
11 years ago
Autumn Jane Constance wiped tears from her eyes as she stumbled through the woods outside of Spokane. The crisp autumn air pinked her cheeks as she snuffled into her sleeve. Her mother, were she still alive, would have told her to buck up.
“AJ,” she would have said, “save the saltwater for the fishes.” And then she would have given her one of those patented too-hard hugs and gotten her a glass of water. Not a wildly patient woman, however AJ’s mom had been a really good one.
AJ couldn’t believe that it had been four whole weeks since she’d been gone. They’d wheeled out the hospice bed and gotten rid of all the monitors and the medicine in the cabinet. But AJ was still vaguely creeped out by her childhood home. She supposed it would always feel partly like a hospital to her now.
But she especially didn’t want to go home now. Today. The day her father had gotten back on the road. He was a trucker and every day without a load to haul was a day without a paycheck. Of course, AJ had been the one to insist that she’d be fine on her own. In a lot of ways, being on her own would be easier than muddling through the awkward silences that were inevitable with her father.
She just hadn’t anticipated the sick, tight curl in her stomach when she’d watched his rig pull away that morning.
Alone.
The word seemed to echo through her mind.
Not knowing what else to do, AJ did what she often did when she was overwhelmed or freaking out. She went for a walk in the woods that butted up to her little backyard. She’d wandered past her closest neighbors, a five minute walk, and saw that they were finally moving in the last of their stuff. She supposed she’d have to go over and introduce herself at some point. But not today. Not when she had snot coming out of her nose and the hiccups from crying for the past hour.
She’d bushwhacked straight up the mountain, cracking twigs as she went so she’d be able to track her way back. She’d never been quite this high up before. And certainly not on her own. But something about the mild danger of it, the unknown, gave her a little thrill that briefly overrode the gnawing grief in her gut.
AJ clambered up a little jutting outcropping and sat back, letting her feet dangle over the edge. She took a deep breath. Very deep. So deep it made her a little dizzy. She hadn’t known it was possible for a heart to ache quite this bad.
The fatigue of the hike up the mountain settled over her like a heavy blanket. The sun was still high in the sky. She could afford a little cat nap before she headed back down to her house. To her lonely, death-ridden little house. AJ pressed her head back into the moss behind her and squeezed her eyes shut. The leaves through the sun danced black patterns across her closed eyelids.
A twig snapped and had AJ’s eyes coming open, quickly scanning the trees around her. Something skittered up her spine and AJ suddenly had the very uneasy feeling that she wasn’t alone. That something was watching her. She sat right up now, scanning the trees and again seeing nothing. And then she heard it a second time. Another twig snap.
This time she realized that the sound was coming from above. Slowly, terrifyingly so, AJ lifted her eyes to the tree over top of her.
Her blood crystallized and seemed to stab her everywhere at once.
There was a mountain lion in the tree above her. Sandy colored, still as a painting, its tail flicked back and forth behind it. Fifteen feet up and staring at her like she was lunch. Which, she realized, she probably was.
AJ couldn’t help the scream that tore partially out of her throat, but it was her only concession to fear. Her hands scraped the ground behind her as she searched for anything to use as a weapon. She
hit pay dirt when she found a fallen branch, just small enough for her to lift.
She’d been raised out here, so she knew that she needed to move slowly. Put distance between them while never showing her back, and appear as large as she could. She just wished she wasn’t damn near two miles from anyone who could possibly help her.
Taking a deep breath, AJ rose, held the stick out in front of her and stepped back. The cat, balanced on a branch, fell into a crouch, its yellow eyes huge and unblinking.
That was not good. Oh God. It was getting ready to pounce. Knowing she was going to have to stand her ground and fight, AJ choked up on the branch as if it were a baseball bat.
The cat’s back legs bunched and coiled as it lifted off, sprang into the air in vivid, high-def, slow motion.
But it never made the 15-foot jump to AJ. That mountain lion was slammed sideways, straight out of the air, by something huge and brown and roaring.
AJ screamed outright now, as the cat went sprawling, claws extended and scraping for purchase across the forest floor. Without looking back, the mountain lion was a golden blur through the forest. Going. Going. Gone.
And then AJ was left standing there alone, next to a ten-foot-tall grizzly bear.
Frying pan.
Fire.
Dead faint.
AJ’s world went black as she fell toward the mossy ground. She’d never know that she didn’t crack her body on the rock behind her. That the giant, chuffing grizzly bear reached out with one tremendous paw and pillowed her head before she hit the ground.
All she knew is that 20 minutes later she woke up with her cheek pressed against the bare chest of the most beautiful man she’d ever seen in her life.
His skin was golden and lightly dusted with ash brown hair. His eyes were dark and hooded and seemed to be lined with pain. There was an intriguing shock of white over one ear, although he couldn’t be more than 20 or 25 years old. He was carrying her like a baby through the woods, one strong arm at her shoulders and the other under her knees. The bear was gone. She was safe. And for the first time since her mother had died, someone was holding her.
AJ’s eyes fell closed again, this time, with more peace than she’d had in weeks.
CHAPTER ONE
AJ sat up straight in her bed, her eyes half closed and her hair like a haystack all over the place. She was annoyed with herself for having that dream again. Her dream about the day she’d met Anton.
Well, really she’d met all the Malashoviks that day. Anton had brought her home to his family where they’d fed her, fixed her up, and explained as gently as they could, in their thick Belarusian accents, that Anton WAS the grizzly bear that had rescued her.
Never in her life would AJ have guessed that the new neighbors who had moved in were four Belarusian bear shifter brothers and their parents.
Yet. Here she was. More than a decade later and they were more of a family to her than her own relatives.
Her father had resurfaced this year. Hung up the keys to his rig and started spending a lot more time around Spokane. But even so, AJ considered Katya and Ilya Malashovik to be her parents.
Just as she considered the brothers, Maxim, Emin, Anton, and Danil to be her brothers. Well. Sort of. Maxim, Emin and Danil she had no problem thinking of as brothers. Anton, however, was a different story.
Yeah. Anton pretty much soaked her panties through just by being in the same room as her. Crass. But true. She had it bad for the man. And she had for the last decade.
Annoyed with herself at her line of thought, AJ yanked herself out of bed and toward the shower. She was gonna be late for classes at cosmetology school if she didn’t get a move on.
She had better things to think about than men who didn’t see her as a woman. Or who barely saw her at all. The way Anton did. As if she were just an annoying family friend that was often around too much. She didn’t need to dwell on him, no matter how she secretly felt on the inside. She had a life and school and friends and - oh crap! Her friends! Dora, Glory, and Ivy, AJ’s three best friends (and wives of three of the Malashovik boys) had told her they were coming over to have breakfast with her that morning.
AJ glanced at her wall clock. That meant she only had - eep! Ten minutes before they’d be there. Well, considering her shower took at least five minutes to warm up, it looked like AJ was gonna get a real nice jolt to the system.
Dora Katsaros stood in AJ’s living room, one ear cocked. “Okay, good. She just jumped in the shower, which means we have a few minutes to pow wow.” She raked a hand through her glossy, stylish haircut that she was currently growing out. It immediately flipped back into her eyes. She hated it.
“What’s this all about?” Ivy asked, flopping down on the couch as if she lived there. Her turquoise green hair fanned out around her as her standard V-neck and jeans strained around her audacious curves. She’d left her husband, Maxim, and their newly six-year-old son, Linc, at home just now. All to meet up before work for whatever mysterious thing Dora had planned. And Ivy wasn’t altogether thrilled about it. Sometimes after Linc got on the bus for school, she and Maxim had themselves a little nookie party. And missing out on that possibility wasn’t high on Ivy’s to-do list. But she loved Dora. Hell, she loved all these ladies. And if they called, she came.
Glory, a stunning redhead, damn near six feet tall, and just starting to show, cupped her pregnant belly and slid gratefully into the armchair. None of them had any problem making themselves comfortable at AJ’s house.
Katya and Ilya’s house, the parents of the Malashovik boys, was just a five-minute walk from AJ’s. But it was a very male-dominated space. The brothers took control of that area. AJ’s house was very much the ladies’ headquarters. And over the last year they’d made good use out of it.
“Well, to put it bluntly,” Dora began as she popped the cap off an orange juice and took a giant swig, “I’m sick and tired of dancing around this whole AJ/Anton thing.”
“Wow,” Ivy said, raising her eyebrows. “That is blunt. And kind of not our business.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dora waved one hand in the air. “I figure they made it our business by mooning over one another for so long. Anybody can see how they feel about each other.”
“Um,” Glory squeaked, notably pink in the cheeks. “I’m pretty sure they are just friends.” She spoke mechanically, as if repeating something she’d memorized.
“Glory, baby,” Dora said. “We all know that you and Anton are really good friends, even before you were brother and sister-in-law. I’m sure he’s probably confided some deep dark secret about his feelings for AJ. And I don’t wanna make you betray that confidence. But, seriously.” She put her booted feet up on the coffee table. “I think it’s our duty as AJ’s friends to just give it a little nudge.”
“I think ‘duty’ might be a heavy choice of words,” Ivy said, reaching over for Dora’s orange juice. “But she does seem pretty miserable without him.”
Glory pressed her lips together. She really didn’t want to tell anybody’s secrets. She knew how important it was to keep them. Well. Not personally, because she didn’t really have any secrets to keep. A tiger shifter herself, she’d been raised in the wild. So human traits, like lying or keeping secrets, didn’t come naturally at all. All she knew was that when Anton had told her how he felt about AJ, he’d seemed so sad. And so certain he’d never be able to have her. And she really didn’t want him to be so sad anymore.
“What do you mean by ‘nudge’?” Glory eventually asked, twirling some of her coppery hair around one of her fingers.
“Now we’re talking!” Dora scrubbed her hands together. “I don’t think we do anything too intense. Nothing that would really expose their feelings for one another or anything like that. I think we just…”
The women huddled together, speaking quietly. Which was exactly how AJ found them five minutes later when she stepped out of her bathroom, cinching her bathrobe around her waist.
“Um. Hi, guys.”
All three of them jumped, as if they were caught gambling on a street corner. Okay, that was kind of weird, AJ thought. Almost as weird as the three blinding grins her friends were shoving her way.
“What’s going on?” AJ asked, sliding around them and picking up one of the bagels they’d brought for breakfast.
“Nothing!” Dora’s voice was suspiciously bright. “We were just talking about you. And, uh, a thought we had.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Ivy leaned back on the couch. “We were thinking about that dude, Mark.”
“Mark?”
“The guy you mentioned from school? The one who works in the cafeteria? Who you think is really cute?” Glory prodded her.
“Oh,” AJ said, shaking her head to clear it. Random. “Why were you talking about him?”
“We think you should ask him out today,” Dora said, dropping her words down like a bag of rocks.
“I - you - what?” AJ was shocked. As close as they all were, they never really meddled in one another’s love lives. Well, that could be because the three of them were all happily married to Malashovik boys and their love lives needed zero meddling.
“Look, AJ, we’re not trying to be too pushy,” Glory started, which was true. Except for Dora, of course, who loved being pushy. “But you’ve seemed really sad lately. And we just thought that maybe we could pick an outfit for you and doll you up with some makeup and that it might be fun to go on a date after class.”
“Well,” AJ pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I guess I can’t really think of a reason to say no.” Not one she could say out loud anyways. She could never tell them that she didn’t date because she was devastatingly in love with their brother-in-law. They would all be so shocked and uncomfortable. It might really hurt her relationship with them. And she would never risk that.
All three of them lit up so fast at her agreement that AJ was actually glad she’d said yes. They were so stoked.
