by Elsa Jade
She laughed. “It’s just honey, Ben.”
“It’s love!”
They stared at each other, the Victorian’s one step between them but so far apart that even his bear’s swiping reach couldn’t haul her closer. Not if she didn’t want to reach back.
“It’s not love,” she said. “It’s just hot sex and boredom.”
Ouch. A thousand hornets, and no chance of sweetness at the end.
The bear shook off the ache. “You feel it too. Your sister didn’t know what it was when she fell for my cousin, but you do, and it scares you. When it’s waited as long as we have, the mating call strikes hard.”
She surged to her feet, the hiked-up black robe slithering down over her thighs with a silky hiss. Oops. If he thought a thousand hornets were bad, calling one angry Gin a coward would be the end of him.
He stayed seated, letting her look down at him. He’d cede the high ground to her if it gave her the courage to face this moment of truth.
With the evening sun behind her, her red hair flamed, but that fire was ice compared to the fury in her eyes. “It wasn’t ever a mating call,” she snarled. “It was a booty call, and you know it.”
He frowned. “That’s not so. It was never just that. From the first time I saw you—and that was before I climbed up in the oak and saw you naked—my bear warned me you could be the one for us.”
“Warned you?” Her laugh was as grating as dead juniper bark. “I was the one who deserved the warning. Isn’t there some shifter prohibition against lying? Or is that only amongst your own kind? Sure, lie to us mere humans since we can’t smell the difference anyway. You never should have promised forever when all along you knew you’d be leaving it all behind for your clan.”
He shook his head hard, the bear trying to knock some clarity into their noggin. “Our clan is scattered all across the Four Corners, but I’d never have to leave you—”
“When you are king, you will.”
The accusation hung in the silence of the blast-furnace air until the bear rumbled in unease at the conviction in her voice, but Ben could only blink at her. “I’m not…”
Even as he started his denial, the pieces came together in his mind, like when he was trying out a new recipe. “Thor said something to you, didn’t he?”
“He explained everything.”
“No, he didn’t,” Ben said grimly. “Not if this is what you walked away with.”
“So he’s not going to make you king of the bear clan?”
Ben opened his mouth to deny deny deny. But nothing came out. Because his bear couldn’t deny a command from the rex ursi. And more importantly, he couldn’t deny that his cousin and his clan needed help. But not by him becoming king!
Frustration choked him right when he needed to be most eloquent—never a bear’s strongest suit anyway. “Thor is in trouble,” he acknowledged. “And I’ll be there for him the same way you’d be there for your sisters, come hell or high water, even in this desert. But he can’t abdicate to me. I am not going to be rex ursi.” Ben forced a laugh, glancing away from her. “You called it already: I’m just a big, dumb, bro bear. Can you even see me as a king?”
The resulting silence after his question simmered like the hot summer mirages over the lonely highway into Angels Rest.
Shame burned in his face, but he looked up at her so she’d have to see that he was being honest with her.
But in her root-beer-brown eyes…
“Gin,” he breathed. “Really?”
She lifted her chin as she kept her gaze locked on his, the gesture both regal and vulnerable as her exposed throat throbbed when she swallowed hard. “I can see it,” she said, her voice husky. “I’m not some carnival fortune teller with a fake crystal ball, but yeah, I see it. You’d put your clan first. You’d do right by them, whatever the risk or the cost. You’re kind and giving and smart. And you’re strong enough to do it alone if that’s what being rex ursi means.”
The praise in her words if not her tone nearly flattened him.
Though he’d come to Angels Rest as a half-grown cub, still young enough to find his place in the Four Corners clan, he’d remained in some ways an outsider, from elsewhere—accepted, even liked, but always essentially lonesome. Standing beside Thor and Mac to redeem the clan under the watchful, wary eyes of the town’s shifters had all but erased that remaining distance.
Or maybe not so much erased it as resigned him to the necessity of all three of them sacrificing themselves to earn the community’s trust again. But then Mac had claimed Brandy, rightly putting his mate and the mother of his cub first and foremost, and Thor had confessed that his bear was too close to turning rogue to still guide the clan’s journey to redemption. With one cousin pursuing his future and the other cousin lost to the past, that left only Ben to see to the clan’s present.
He slumped back, wrapping one arm around the porch post. Strong enough? Apparently not. “Thor is wrong. The leader of the clan can’t be alone.”
“But he’s not wrong about you being the next rex ursi.”
Ben shook his head, half negation, half shock. “You say I’m strong enough, but Thor’s beast isn’t just king bear by name. Rex ursi is in the blood.”
“And you’re his cousin, so you have the blood too.”
His bear rumbled a note of caution, but he had to explain. He’d never lied to her, and he wasn’t going to start now. “It’s not just inborn. Like the bonding bite between mates, the blood I’m talking about is spilled in the king bite.”
She took a step down, putting her troubled gaze more on a level with his. “But he’s… I really think he is a beast. And you’d fight him?”
“No!” Under his inadvertent grip, the wood of the porch post creaked. “I don’t want to fight him. For the good of the clan, I won’t fight him.”
“I’ve seen him,” she said somberly. “For the good of your clan, you might have to.”
By the great bear, she was the perfect bear mate: tough, steadfast, bitey when necessary. Winning a fight with a rex ursi meant nothing if it meant losing her.
Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet, careful to put his boots on the ground so that when he straightened he was off the porch and one step below her. One hand on the stair rail, as if to hold himself there, he turned to face her. He was still taller than her—for all her ferocity, she was female and lacked his height and muscle—but he’d give her what he could.
Hell, he’d give her everything if she’d just ask.
“Gin Wick,” he said softly. “With no bite, no fight at all, you’re in my blood already. It’s true that I shouldn’t have promised you forever—no one can promise that—but I’ll give you now, my touch, my heart. All I ask”—he took a breath—“and I know it’s a lot, is that you take this risk with me. Will you?”
The frozen expression on her face was too much, even for his bear’s strength, and he sank to one knee. The heat of the cobblestone burned through denim, but as he held out his hand to her, palm up, he knew his skin would be icy with fear.
Or not fear, but the sinking inevitability that he already knew her answer.
She looked at his hand like he was holding out a rattler, and her gaze tracking up to his raked him sharper than teeth. “Ben,” she whispered. And somehow the gentleness in her voice was worse than if she’d screamed at him. “Whether you are king bear or bachelor bear, it won’t change who you really are. A good man. Some lady—some lady bear—will be lucky to have you.” Her lashes dropped for a heartbeat before she met his gaze again steadily. “But it won’t be me.”
Her rejection, more inexorable for its serenity, crept over him with the inescapable chill of an advancing glacier. “But the mating call is never wrong.” The confusion and yearning in his own voice almost made him sick. “The beast knows. The magic knows.” He glared at her. “Dammit, Gin. You feel it too.”
Her cheek flexed as she bit back some words he probably deserved. “Whatever my feelings are, or what my subcon
scious says, or what my beast believes, it doesn’t control me. The shadow path is what I’ve chosen, not…” She waved one hand vaguely. “Not this place or any of this.”
“Not me.” He couldn’t hold back the bitterness. “Because I’m not enough.”
She shook her head. “Because I’m free to decide what I want. Even if it’s not what everyone else—everything else—thinks I should want.”
Why, considering he was rejecting a kingdom, would he dare disagree with her? Of course the choice was always hers. And yet the hunger in his blood demanded he keep fighting to claim his mate. “I think you’ve chosen the shadow way because the dark lets you hide.” The bitterness of his accusation shocked him but too late to wrestle back the words. “So you don’t have to see everything you could have if you’d just reach for it.”
She stiffened but didn’t fight back, as much as he wanted her to. “Still my choice,” she noted.
If only he were like Mac, who had won his mate before she knew what was happening. Or like Thor’s rogue who would just take what he wanted. But he was just Ben, big dumb baking bro bear Ben. Doomed to be a bachelor forever.
Forever. The bear wanted to roar in fury at the word. “I can change my shape, but I don’t suppose I can change your mind.”
“You can’t, and you shouldn’t even want to.”
With a grimace, he rose, towering over her. “I guess I’m not a good guy after all.”
He took a step back, fighting the mating urge, battling the magic that he knew was her touch and her laughter. The bear raged against him, but he held it, as silent and cold and remote as winter. It was harder than fighting any rogue rex ursi. Especially when he didn’t want to be strong enough. He wanted to give in to the beast.
But whatever big dumb part of him had thought it could win a prickly shadow witch held stubbornly to hope with longer, crueler claws than any grizzly’s. And he knew it would never let him go.
Never. The shadow side of forever.
He backed another step away. “Good luck with your anti-love spell,” he choked out. “Maybe you can save some for me.”
“Ben,” she murmured. “Don’t.”
“You can just call me,” he went on pathetically. “Cell coverage is terrible in Angels Rest, of course, but the mating bond won’t let me off the hook.”
Even though she was letting him go, the way she’d learned long before he met her, slipping away like a shadow. He couldn’t even blame her, because he understood.
And because he loved her, he turned and walked away.
Chapter 12
The moonless night matched her mood perfectly.
In the quietest hour in the spellatorium in the basement of the old Victorian, she assembled the ingredients of her spell. She’d done her research, made copious notes—immaculately footnoted and cross-referenced—of her preliminary findings, decided on a final formula and technique, and was ready to take this last step. She just needed to imbue the potion with the power—the magic—of all the work she’d put into this moment.
Aaaaaaany minute now…
Dammit, she was not hiding down here in the spellatorium. It had just taken her most of a long, lonely week to weave the pieces together the way she wanted.
This was exactly what she wanted.
She stared down at the circle of black velvet stitched with runes in silver thread. Aligned to the power of the runes, she laid her chosen crystal with metallic occlusion, a mineral salt infused with rare essential oils, and a potpourri of relevant herbs (a few of which she’d included only because she knew the circle elders would approve). One of the white ghostberries—the rest she’d incorporated into the potpourri—gleamed like a little bone on the black. Thor had been correct about the power in the small berry echoing the effects of the opium poppy, sure to be a potent addition to her potion once she completed the activation spell. She threaded a silver cord through the outer hem of the velvet circle and drew it tight.
Yeah, the sum total of everything she’d said she wanted could be bound up in what amounted to a fuzzy trash bag.
As she swept up the rest of her tools from the altar—athame blade, mortar and pestle, Gypsy’s purest, mini travel cauldron, etc.—into a large hatbox, her gaze skittered over the diablo rose floating in the crystal phial where she’d preserved it.
She’d added her notes and a sketch of the rose to her grimoire, which she’d present to the circle during her ordination ceremony. But just looking at its lush, tiny petals, still glowing white and scarlet, had told her from the start that it was totally wrong for an anti-love spell.
Why had she even asked for it when just looking at it was a love spell of sorts?
Just a breath of its fragrance reminded her of Ben.
With a muttered curse—not one with actual power—she twisted away from the rose on the altar and headed upstairs. Tonight was the dark of the moon. She had to trigger the spell and supercharge the potion tonight or wait another month. Nuh-uh, no way, she couldn’t hide in the spellatorium that long, avoiding Ben, avoiding her nosy sisters who wanted to know if she was avoiding Ben. If she had to, she’d hijack the VW and hunt down her aunt and the rest of the circle to force her ordination.
That actually seemed like a shadow witch thing to do.
Or a cranky bear thing.
She fled up the stairs as if that bear was chasing her.
But when she sneaked out the front door, she stumbled right over another one.
Mac—who’d been lounging against the porch rail—sidestepped out of her way, grabbing her elbow to stop her from tripping down the stairs. “Whoa there. Slow down, missy.”
Clutching the hatbox to her chest, she managed to not smack him with it. She was so so sick of bears telling her what to do.
And why did she suddenly sound like the angsty tween who’d dyed all her clothes black after one of their mother’s increasingly rare check-in phone calls?
“Hey, Gin.” Brandy peeked around the column. “I’m sorry, did we wake you? I thought we were being quiet out here.”
Erk. Gin wrinkled her nose. She was not going to ask what they might’ve been doing loudly. “I was downstairs. But I’m…” And now she was sounding like the angsty teen who’d defiantly announced she was pursuing the shadow path. “I just needed some fresh air.”
Though Brandy stayed far away from magic, she glanced askance at Gin’s hatbox. “Fresh air for all your stuff too?”
Gin dredged up a grin. “Oh, you know it starts to smell funky down there.” When her sister drew a breath as if she might ask more questions, Gin continued, “So now you can be as loud as you want, at least until I get back.”
“We could keep you company,” Mac said, straightening. “If you want.”
Gin lifted one eyebrow. “Why, Macmahon Montero, that’s what you do for my sister.”
“And for you,” he said in that oh so earnest way that made him perfect for Brandy and Aster. “Since you’re practically family now.”
She gritted her teeth. “As I’ve already told Rita and Bry more than a few times, Ben and I are not—”
Brandy cleared her throat. “He means because we set a date. For the wedding.”
Gin clacked her teeth shut for a moment then smiled for real. “Oh, that’s good. No, that’s great. I’m so happy for you two.” She hugged her sister then pulled Mac in too. “Now I don’t have to plot with Aster how to trap you two in the attic until you fall in love or whatever.”
Brandy giggled, but Mac only nodded. “We could do the attic thing anyway,” he said.
Gin lightly punched his shoulder, moving him back a step. “You just keep her happy forever, yeah?”
“He does,” Brandy said.
“I will,” Mac replied, the promise echoing in the depths of his voice.
The low note seemed to reverberate in Gin’s hollow chest, and since the two had eyes only for each other, she slipped around them down the stairs.
“You’ll be my maid of honor, right?” Bran
dy called after her. “With Ree, of course.”
“Of course.” Gin waved at her. “Any time.”
She escaped under the spreading branches of the oak and down the cobblestones to the bus, its yellow paint turned silvery in the nighttime. She should stay and hear all the details of the upcoming happy day, but she just…couldn’t. Because the dark would only last so long.
The drive up to Mesa Diablo seemed easier this time. Maybe because she’d done it once already so she knew the way. Maybe because she knew she’d never be doing it again.
She found the path to the huckleberry field and threaded through the brushy maze toward the creek. Though she’d always been comfortable in the night, without the shifter king leading the way this time, the darkness felt…more attentive, as if there were eyes she couldn’t see, considering her incursion, weighing its response.
“I want no trouble,” she murmured. “Your magic and mine have no quarrel.”
She hoped the powers that occupied the mesa agreed because the boost of sourcing her spell from the latent energies here should prove impressive. Enough so that even her aunt’s traditionalist circle would approve her ordination with flying colors.
Everything she’d said she wanted.
The pale gleam of ghostberries guided her deeper toward the heart of the mesa, away from the quiet babble of the water. Even through the thick soles of her favorite combat boots (she wasn’t going to make the mistake of wearing flipflops to a bear fight again) the preternatural thrum of power sank into her veins, making her nerves twitch like they wanted to dance around in the starlight.
“Save it for the potion,” she muttered. “We’re not here to dance.” Although Ben would’ve probably two-stepped with her…
Great, now she sounded like an angsty adult questioning all her life’s choices.
In a small clearing between the ghostberries, she knelt and laid out the tools from her hatbox. The night seemed to press closer, a hot weight smothering the back of her neck, like something breathing. Something curious, she thought, not threatening. Hopefully. Maybe it would’ve been nice to have a bear shifter at her back.
