by Roxie Noir
Leah was playing with fire, and it had to stop, and she knew it.
“So?” rang a voice from the kitchen, shouting over the clatter of the dishes.
Leah stepped into the room to see Abigail, Rebecca and Emily all standing by the sink. The dishwasher was already running, but it never fit everything, so one sister was washing, one rinsing, and one drying.
Emily, on drying duty, just shrugged.
“He’s kind of old,” she said, noncommittally.
Even at twenty, she obviously knew better than to badmouth someone who might wind up her mate. That was the constant push-pull of being in the Yukon clan. On the one hand, they were expected to fall in love with their mates at first sight, recognize the other half of their soul in someone else.
On the other hand, their fathers usually arranged marriages with men they barely knew. No one ever asked if the women felt that spark or that pull, it was simply assumed that, since a man had been chosen for them, they did.
Leah was finding out what happened when the universe had other plans.
“Nathan’s not bad,” she said, stepping up to the counter. She began putting leftovers into the fridge.
“He isn’t a very good conversationalist,” said Emily. “Daddy kept asking him questions and he just looked like a deer in the headlights every time he had to answer.”
That’s because Daddy’s not normal, thought Leah, but she didn’t say it.
“He probably wasn’t prepared,” she said out loud.
“Then why come over here at all?” Emily said. Though the girl was shy in front of strangers, she was a firecracker with her sisters. Like right now.
“Beats me,” said Leah.
Stop defending him, she thought. What if they catch on?
“You guys want any more pie before I put it away?” she asked, sneaking a forkful herself.
Leah spent most of that night and the next day trying to tell herself that it had been nothing. Somehow, both she and Nathan had gotten the wrong idea, and sure, he’d touched her in the front yard, but that was it.
She probably wouldn’t even see him again until her wedding, and at that point, it didn’t even matter, right?
Ian was her partner, her husband-to-be and her soulmate, and that was that.
She just wished thinking that didn’t make her feel quite so awful.
At six on the dot, Ian’s SUV rumbled up their driveway to pick her up for their date. It was a little strange for a groom-to-be to only spend a little bit of time with his soon-to-be wife — in Yukon City, the two usually spent most of their time together for that week, chaperoned of course — but Ian seemed very busy with his import-export business.
Leah was waiting in the sitting room on one of the blue couches, trying not to be too nervous. She waited for him to come to the door, as was proper, and then opened it under her mother’s watchful eye.
Ian stepped inside and handed her a small bouquet of flowers. Carnations, not her favorite, but he’d learn what she liked, right?
“You look lovely,” he said perfunctorily, but Leah still blushed. She didn’t get many compliments, especially being the heaviest of four daughters.
“Thanks,” she said. “Would you like to come in?”
Most of Leah’s family was pretending to be busy in the nearby rooms, so she walked him through them and Ian shook hands with everyone. He remembered most of their names.
See, thought Leah, trying to warm herself to the man she was going to marry, he’s made an effort. You should appreciate that.
She was really, really trying.
Finally, Ian looked at his watch, then at Leah.
“Grab your sister, our reservation’s at seven,” he told her.
Leah blinked. “My sister?”
“Emily,” he said. “It’s a double date. We’re meeting Nathan there.”
Leah nearly broke into a grin, and her heart turned over in her chest. It was only years of training that let her keep the same facial expression.
“No one told me.”
She saw the muscles around his eyes tighten just the tiniest bit.
“Just get your sister and let’s go,” he said, the friendly joviality suddenly gone from his voice.
Leah felt something small and ice cold settle in the pit of her stomach, but she went to go find her little sister.
The drive to the restaurant was mostly silent.
11
Nathan
Nathan sat in the big corner booth nervously. He felt overdressed for the Applebee’s: since his only ‘nice’ clothes had been torn to shreds, he’d gone out shopping after work, finding himself another dress shirt and a nice-enough sport coat. He’d gotten lucky, since Fjord’s only real clothing store usually didn’t have a lot for the six-and-a-half-foot gentleman, but this time he’d found both things in one fell swoop.
He flipped the laminated menu back and forth in his hands, looking at the drinks. It was mostly a cavalcade of fruity cocktails or things that were really just milkshakes with a splash of rum, but he could really go for a whiskey on the rocks right now. The only problem was that he didn’t think the Yukon clan approved of drinking — after all, the betrothal party had been totally dry — and he didn’t want to upset the girls.
Nathan pulled his phone out of his pocket one more time. 6:57. They weren’t even late yet.
Maybe this was dumb, he thought for the thousandth time. It was probably insane at the very least to go on a date with the girl you couldn’t stop thinking about and her intended mate, using her little sister as an excuse.
It was the best thing he’d come up with, though, and not seeing her again just wasn’t an option. As much as he wanted to just climb into her window and sneak off with her, he didn’t really know what she thought about this yet.
Besides, if she wasn’t interested, there were a whole lot of grizzlies in that house and only one of him. Even though he was more than willing to fight every one of them and die for Leah if he had to, better to leave that plan as a last resort.
At last, he saw Ian walk in, say something to the hostess, then look over at Nathan. Leah and Emily trailed behind him, looking a little out of place in the bright, loud Applebee’s. They both wore simple clothes: a short-sleeve shirt and a khaki skirt that hit mid-calf.
He tried not to stare at Leah, but he couldn’t help it, not even with Ian watching. There was just something about the way she moved, the way her hips swayed even under her ugly skirt, that lit every nerve in his body on fire and made him feel like there was absolutely nothing else in the world.
Nathan had never wanted anything so badly in his life.
“Nathan,” said Ian, stepping up to him and offering a firm but quick handshake before slipping into the booth.
As he did, Nathan locked eyes with Leah for one second before she looked down at the floor, cutting him off.
Does she know I did this? He wondered.
Does she know it’s because I thought I’d lose my mind if I didn’t see her again?
“Hi,” said Emily.
Nathan took her hand, kissed it for lack of knowing what else to do, and let her into the booth first.
Then he got in himself, sitting directly across from Leah. He couldn’t have planned it better.
The four of them stared at their menus in total silence for a long time.
“You guys want to split some mozzarella sticks?” Nathan finally asked. “We could get an order of that and an order of wings, live a little.”
“Are they chicken wings?” asked Emily, her voice barely audible over the din of the restaurant.
“Right,” said Nathan.
Leah looked at him over the menu. He couldn’t see anything but her eyes, making her face inscrutable, but he thought she looked amused, or at the very least, hungry.
“I’ve never been to a place like this before,” said Emily, her voice still so breathy and young-sounding. Nathan wondered what everyone else here must think, seeing the two of them together. Did they think she was his
daughter?
“An Applebee’s?” asked Nathan.
“There’s only two restaurants in Yukon City,” Leah volunteered, still looking at the menu. “Grandma’s Biscuit Hut and a McDonald’s.” She lowered her menu and Nathan could finally see that she was smiling. “This is a big deal for us.”
“I’m glad I could show you ladies a good time,” Nathan said.
At last, he was beginning to feel a little like his old self, someone who could make conversation with someone of the opposite sex. Leah had clammed him up at first, shocked him into silence. Bamboozled was the best word he could think of, actually.
Just as he was thinking that this was going pretty well, he caught the tail end of an icy cold glare from Ian, still brooding over the menu caddy-corner to Nathan.
Nathan grit his teeth together and didn’t do anything. He knew that he could take Ian in a fight, but he also knew that Ian wouldn’t address his problems directly to Nathan — he’d address them to Leah, and from what Nathan had gathered about Leah, she’d been taught her whole life never fight back against her husband-to-be.
“You guys ready to order?” asked the brunette, human waitress who came over, giving Nathan a particular smile.
He sent a polite smile back, but quickly tried to place her. This Applebee’s was one of only a handful of places in town where you could get a drink. Had he taken this waitress home at some point? All the women’s faces tended to blend together.
All besides Leah’s, of course.
Nathan ordered the wings and mozzarella sticks, then a burger for himself. Emily quietly ordered the chicken tenders, and for half a second, Nathan had thought she was going to order from the kids’ menu.
Then it was Ian’s turn.
“I will have the T-Bone steak, sixteen ounce size, with a side of mashed potatoes,” he said, adopting an oddly formal tone with the waitress.
Thinking it was her turn, Leah spoke up.
“I’ll take the cheeseburger—“
“The lady will have the wild greens garden salad, dressing on the side, no croutons, and she’d like to add grilled chicken to that. Unsweetened iced tea for both.”
Leah’s mouth was still open and she closed it, quickly, turning three shades of red. She looked down at her menu, and just nodded silently when the waitress asked if that was what she actually wanted.
Nathan saw pure red again and he had to fight against the bright white heat of shifting. It took every last ounce of self-control he had not to shift right then and there and tear Ian limb from limb before the other man could do so much as stand up, but he knew he couldn’t. Not here, in the middle of this restaurant. Too many witnesses.
“She was going to order a burger,” he said to Ian, doing his best to keep his voice calm and level and not the growl he felt.
Ian fixed him with that same icy calm glare.
“My wife could stand to eat a salad,” he said.
Leah looked desperately away, across the restaurant, her face still bright red.
“She was going to order for herself,” Nathan said. His voice was beginning to lower, and despite himself, he could feel the shift starting in his core, his bear taking over no matter what he did.
How could that asshole command her around like that?
How could he not see her for what she was — the most beautiful, gorgeous, insanely attractive woman Nathan had ever laid eyes on? Just thinking about her eating a cheeseburger got him halfway erect.
“This is not your concern,” said Ian, with the same infuriating calmness, the same almost-smirk on his face, like he knew that he’d already won.
Nathan pushed his hands down on the table and began to stand, fury lacing its way through his system, whispering for him to shift and tear this asshole apart and damn the consequences. To his right, Emily looked on, even more wide-eyed then before.
He caught Leah’s eye, her face now just a deep pink.
She shook her head slightly, her eyes pleading.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I like salad.”
Then reality came crashing back to Nathan and he remembered where he was, what he was doing. This wasn’t the deep woods, this was polite human society.
He sat back down and glared at Ian, breathing hard.
12
Leah
Please don’t cause a scene, Leah thought. Please, please don’t draw any more attention to me.
It was bad enough that Ian — her future husband and soulmate, she automatically reminded herself — had decided she was getting a salad instead of a cheeseburger, as if one meal would magically make her skinny or something.
Her family ate at a restaurant once a year, and the rest of the time, things like cheeseburgers and fries were rare — most of her meals were chickens from their farm or veggies that she’d harvested. The Whitehorses weren’t poor, since there always seemed to be money when her father wanted it, but the rest of the family had to scrimp and save.
At last, Nathan sat, and relief flooded through Leah. The whole situation with him and Ian was quickly getting out of hand, she could tell, but she had absolutely no idea what to do about it. She hardly even knew any men that she wasn’t related to, and now there were two of them, fighting over her.
One of them she was going to marry, and the other she thought about almost constantly. At night, she prayed to hear his motorcycle coming up the driveway, even as she knew that she could never, ever disobey her father so seriously as to actually go off with Nathan.
Ian was going to be her mate, and that was that. She needed to stop having this schoolgirl crush on the other shifter.
It would help, though, if he didn’t keep showing up in her life.
After Nathan’s little moment, they sat in silence for what felt like an eon, though Leah knew it was probably about thirty seconds, Nathan practically growling and baring his teeth at Ian. She stared at her hands and picked at her cuticles, pretending that no one else in the restaurant had noticed.
Finally, the silence was too much and she had to say something.
“You ride a motorcycle?” she asked. It was the first thing she could think of, and she’d do nearly anything to break the tension.
Nathan’s eyes moved back to her, and it looked like he relaxed, visibly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Best way to get around, hands down.”
“I’ve never ridden a motorcycle,” said Leah. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
Nathan shrugged. “I guess,” he said. “But driving in a car is dangerous, flying on a plane is dangerous. You might even get E. coli tonight from your salad and die.”
He still seemed tense, something in the way he held his shoulders and neck, speaking to the table at first until, at the end of his sentence, his eyes flicked up to Leah. Then his body seemed to relax a little into itself, the simple, tiny motion releasing something deep inside Leah that responded to every movement he seemed to make.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks for that,” she said. “Now I’ll really enjoy my dinner.”
Nathan looked guilty, but there was a sparkle of something in his eye.
He was having fun, Leah realized.
“Sorry,” he said, a hint of a smile making its way onto his face.
“Maybe I’ll enjoy my danger salad a little more now,” she said. Leah leaned her elbows on the table, moving her body forward just barely. She felt like Nathan was a magnet, pulling her toward himself, even with Ian right next to her.
“You could be one of those inspirational posters,” Nathan said dryly. “Eat every salad like it’s your last.”
Leah licked her lips and moved her knife with one finger, just barely, tilting her head to one side.
“Tell me about Fjords,” she said.
She glanced at Ian for a half a second, not wanting him to feel left out of the conversation, but she felt caught up in the moment, tiny as it was.
She was pretty sure she was flirting with Nathan, and worse, she was pretty sure that she was having a g
reat time doing it. Leah didn’t think she’d ever flirted with anyone before. After all, she rarely met men that weren’t somehow connected to her family.
Ian’s chest puffed up, and he sat up straighter, lacing his fingers together on the table in front of him. Emily, who’d been quiet as a church mouse this entire time, scooted back in her seat just a little, as if expecting him to explode.
“Fjords was founded about a hundred and fifty years ago by Thomas Rowland, my sixth great grandfather, the North Star clan’s first alpha,” Ian said, pompously.
Nathan raised his eyebrows, and Leah glanced over at him. She had to do her best not to giggle, and she didn’t even know why — because Ian was being such a weirdo?
Because it just felt good to be near Nathan?
Ian didn’t seem to notice any of this.
“Under him, Fjords was a small settlement. It soon attracted humans who had come to Alaska and the Yukon for the gold rush and who elected to stay in the area. For many years, it had a strong fishing industry, led mostly by the North Star clan.” He cleared his throat and looked around the table.
Leah desperately hoped that her face was composed and wifely. She felt anything but.
“The clan has always had a hand in the affairs of the town, usually running things. The humans do not officially know what we are, but most have some sort of informal knowledge.”
Informal knowledge? Leah thought to herself.
She didn’t dare look over at Nathan for fear that she’d burst into giggles at her fiancé.
Ian frowned, just a little, but he went on.
“We prize independence and a wild spirit over almost all else,” he went on, looking straight at Leah. “We are traditionalists, and believe in bear sovereignty. We frown on intermarriage as well as those who would deny or run away from their ursine heritage.”
She bit her lip, sensing that this might turn into a lecture of some sort. She still couldn’t look over at Nathan, even though she wanted to make sure she wasn’t the only one who found this a little odd,
Leah glanced over at her little sister, still sitting ramrod straight in the chair, a very faint crease between her eyebrows.
