“Saint.” Cobalt looked down at her, towering a good foot taller than her, just as Saint did.
Only when Saint tried to intimidate her like this, she didn’t feel afraid of him.
“You keep using his name, Holly,” Cobalt drawled, a calculating edge to his grey eyes as that shimmer of gold in them brightened. “You best friends with the bear who abducted you now?”
“No,” she bit out, maybe a little too quickly judging by how Ember’s eyes widened slightly. She shook her head. “I’m not… but he didn’t hurt me. Okay? He didn’t lay a finger on me. As soon as he cooled down, he realised his mistake. He was sorry about it. He’s sorry about everything he’s done wrong and maybe if you gave him the chance, he would apologise about it.”
“Oh, so he was the perfect gentleman?” Cobalt arched a blond eyebrow at her, ignoring Ember as she wrapped her hands around his arm, clutching it through his black cable-knit sweater, trying to make him back down. “He kidnapped you. He took you hostage to upset us all.”
Holly kept her mouth shut when words bubbled up, ones about the fact Saint hadn’t really meant to take her. He had wanted to take Ember. Telling Cobalt that would only push him off the rails.
“Cobalt.” There was black magic in Ember’s whisper, a spell that seemed to blunt the edge of Cobalt’s mood as he looked at his mate.
He sighed and backed off a step, and then another, giving Holly space.
When he was in line with Ember, he turned and raised his hands, framed her face and murmured throatily, “I just keep thinking about… What if he had taken you?”
Holly was relieved she hadn’t mentioned that had been Saint’s plan now.
Cobalt dipped his head and captured Ember’s lips, his kiss sweet at first, but as Ember tiptoed and pressed her hands to his chest, it turned passionate.
Feeling that the two of them weren’t going to stop anytime soon, Holly backed towards the door, surrendering to her growing need to be alone with her thoughts.
Ember cracked her eyes open and looked at her as she kissed Cobalt, worry in her gaze.
Holly shook her head and smiled. “I’m really tired. Just want to be alone for a bit.”
Ember looked as if she might try to convince her to stay in the cabin, but Cobalt growled against her mouth and pulled her closer, banding his arms around her curvy waist. Distracting her friend.
Holly hurried from the cabin, grimaced as the cold hit her. She rubbed her arms through her long-sleeved T-shirt, trying to keep the chill off them as she strode through the woods, her heightened vision making the path as clear as day to her. She didn’t slow until she reached Cobalt’s small territory. The snow had piled up in the clearing, but the storm had swept it away from the front of the raised L-shaped cabin.
She waded through the snow, legs growing colder and stiffer by the second. It was slow going, sapped her strength as she kept her gaze locked on the front of the cabin, her thoughts on getting inside and warmed up.
And being alone.
She had never needed to be alone more than she did at that moment.
Her feet were numb by the time she reached the steps. She kicked the snow off each wooden board, working her way up to the deck. When she reached it, she glanced out at the clearing and paused to take in how beautiful it was with the snow glittering in the slender moonlight and the stars sparkling above the mountains.
Only for some reason, it wasn’t as beautiful as it had been when she had admired the view before.
She looked off to her left, up the valley.
Towards Black Ridge.
A need to keep on walking, to go back to that place, flooded her but she forced herself to go inside instead. The air was chilly inside the cabin. She kicked snow off her boots and removed them, winced as her feet touched the icy floorboards and hurried to the fireplace on the right of the open-plan room.
She busied herself with making a fire, letting her mind empty as her hands went to work, purging everything the brothers had said about Saint and his kin, and how tense she had been when they had been crowding around her. Cobalt was bound to report everything she had said to Rath, and she only hoped it might go some way towards making her alpha see that Saint wasn’t a bad bear. He just had a bad tendency to let the bear in him take the reins when he was angry and made poor decisions while his more animal side was in control.
She slowly relaxed by degrees, and by the time she had lit the kindling and the first flame caught and began to spread, she was beginning to feel at ease again.
Holly pushed to her feet and wriggled her toes as they steadily warmed, stared at the flames dancing across the logs and lost herself a little in them. In the silence. It was bliss.
She pulled down a deep breath.
Smelled cedar and snow, and wanted to growl. She lifted the left side of her T-shirt, pressed the material to her nose and breathed deep of that earthy scent. Her eyes slipped shut, calm flowing through her to chase the chill from her skin and the ache from her heart.
Saint.
Tears lined her eyelashes as she saw him fighting, as she saw him take a bad hit and watched crimson roll down his side.
Holly opened her eyes, not wanting to relive that moment, and hurried from the fire, heading for the sleek, modern kitchen. She opened the cupboards, looking for hot chocolate.
And found Cobalt’s whiskey.
Well, it would certainly warm her up.
She grabbed it instead and a glass from another cupboard, and carried them to the grey couch that faced the fireplace. She sank into it, uncorked the bottle and poured herself a glass. Sniffed it and grimaced as her nose stung. She had never been one for drinking, but she had never been one for a lot of things before.
Like feeling attracted to someone.
Wanting someone.
Holly shuffled into a more comfortable position on the couch and tucked her feet beside her. She stared at the fire as she nursed the glass of whiskey, sipping it, and then sighed as she clutched it to her chest. Her thoughts turned to Saint again. She was sure she should be glad to be home with her pride, but she missed the brute.
She worried about him.
For the first time in her life, she had found a male who had awoken feelings in her, needs that had been strong.
Were still strong.
She mulled over everything the brothers had said about him, trying to see in him what they did and weighing it against what she knew herself.
What she felt.
Was she like those people who fell for their captors, because they had grown accustomed to them and had been shown glimmers of kindness by them?
Saint had been kind to her at times, but she hadn’t exactly been held by him long enough to grow accustomed to him at all or view him through rose-tinted glasses. He had his rough edges, could be savage just as the brothers had painted him.
Holly sipped the whiskey again, enjoying the burn.
Thought about her time with Saint.
Right back to when he had grabbed her in the woods.
She could have escaped him then if she had shifted. Some part of her was deeply aware of that. Why hadn’t she? She frowned as she remembered why. She hadn’t wanted to shift. Something about Saint had made her not want to fight him.
Something about him had made her feel other things too.
Wicked things.
And things that had been frightening at the time.
Like an uncontrollable need to dominate him.
And a powerful desire to protect him.
That need had been unmistakable when the brothers had attacked him, when she had seen him desperately fighting them and had felt sure he had been afraid of losing her. A need had run through her.
A need to shift and defend him.
Holly poured another glass of whiskey and thought about how the brothers acted around their females. How Ember acted around Cobalt.
She swallowed it in one gulp as something dawned on her.
There was one reason she might
be feeling possessive and protective of Saint.
The big gruff bear might be her fated mate.
Holly set the glass down and stood.
She needed to know for sure.
Chapter 14
Holly left at daybreak, refreshed from a night of fitful sleep and slightly worse for wear from a few too many whiskeys. The coffee she had downed had done nothing to wake her up, had only made her more jittery, so on edge that she hadn’t been able to eat anything.
It had been a fight to convince herself to wait for dawn before heading to Black Ridge, a trial that had taken its toll on her, had allowed horrific images of Saint bleeding out to sear themselves on her mind and fear to make a home for itself in her heart. There was no purging it now, not without seeing him.
She glanced off to her right as she hurried from the cabin, a war erupting inside her. She didn’t have time to talk to the brothers, and knew in her heart that if she did try to speak with them things wouldn’t go the way she wanted. They wouldn’t understand. They were hellbent on hating Saint and his kin, would only try to persuade her to remain at the Creek.
Worse, there was a chance they would stop her.
Holly tugged her purple woollen hat down and burrowed into her scarf as she hurried from the deck, her heart pounding at the thought of what she was about to do. Ember would be worried about her, and the brothers would probably be mad at her if they discovered she was gone, but she had to go.
She needed to know Saint was all right.
Needed to know if he was her fated mate.
She would be quick, would get to Black Ridge and back again before anyone realised she was gone.
The recent snowfall tried to make that impossible, was up to her thighs in front of Cobalt’s cabin. Holly waded through it, forced to head down the clearing slightly to reach shallower snow and then bank left, towards the woods. The snow crunched beneath her boots as she sank into it with each step and chilled her legs through her black salopettes. She focused on reaching Saint, trying to ignore how cold she was already, keeping her eyes locked on her destination.
A breeze chased around her and she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to keep the chill off. Her dark green jumper offered some protection from the weather, but she began to miss her coat more and more with every stride she took across the open ground.
The towering pines and spruces offered shelter from the snow as she reached them, made it easier for her to walk as she wove through the sea of their broad trunks and even kept some of the chill from her skin as they provided protection against the wind.
The nerves she had been fighting since waking this morning began to break free of their tethers, rose again with each step that brought her closer to Black Ridge. The trek through the forest seemed to take forever, but she remained on the animal track, following it down into deep pits filled with twigs and bracken, and up the high rises on the other side. Her senses placed the river to her right and she tracked it around the sweeping bend that separated Cougar Creek from Black Ridge.
Just as she was beginning to feel that she had taken the wrong turn somewhere, voices cut through the still air.
She instantly recognised them.
“What’s wrong with him?” Knox’s voice rang clearly across the snow and she hurried to the edge of the woods and sheltered behind a tree so he wouldn’t spot her. His black woollen hat had been pulled low over his blue eyes, but she easily recognised him as he stood at the bottom of the steps that led up to Saint’s cabin.
While he and his brother looked the same, there was a cruel twist to Knox’s lips, a darkness about him that Lowe didn’t possess.
“I don’t know.” Lowe shoved fingers through his ash-blond hair as he stepped out onto the deck of Saint’s cabin. He sighed. “It’s like he’s just given up or something. He shifted back last night and I want to take that as a good sign, but…”
That didn’t sound good.
Her heart started at a pace again, the urge to break cover and hurry to Saint making her jerk forwards, past the shelter of the tree that had been her hiding spot.
Knox immediately whipped to face her.
Busted.
Rather than turning tail and running back to the Creek, she stepped out from the trees and marched through the snow, mustering her courage as she closed the distance between her and the twin bears. When she reached the spot where Saint had fought the cougars, she kept her gaze fixed on Lowe, didn’t want to look at the crimson patch of snow where Saint had gone down.
Lowe dropped off the deck to join his brother, remained close on Knox’s heels as he stormed towards her.
“What the hell do you want?” Knox growled, the aggression that rolled off him rousing her own, making her want to bare her fangs at him and show him that she wasn’t going to be cowed by him.
She wasn’t afraid of him.
“I think I left my coat.” She shot for breezy with a dash of sarcasm. When she glanced at the cabin beyond them though, her bravado faltered. She reached out with her senses, seeking Saint, and fear swept through her. Fear for him. It sobered her, had her voice dropping and losing its bite as she focused on him. “I came to see Saint.”
“Come to finish him off?” Knox moved into the path of her gaze and she did growl at him now.
“No,” she bit out, anger blazing through her, quickening her blood as she faced him, as the need to fight that she had felt yesterday when Saint had been battling the cougars rose again, making her want to lash out at Knox and Lowe. “I just need to know if he’s all right.”
Lowe scowled at her and stepped aside, coming to stand beside his twin as he folded his arms across his chest, forming a wall with Knox. She growled again as she took a step forwards, aiming to go around him, and both males countered her, making it clear they weren’t going to let her past.
She ignored Knox and looked at Lowe, sure he would be more reasonable than his twin. It took all of her will, but she wrestled the urge to fight into submission, calmed her instincts and gentled her tone, keeping the bite from it.
“Please. I just want to know he’s okay.”
Lowe’s blue eyes softened slightly, a flicker of worry shining in them as his brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to speak.
Knox beat him to it. “The state of our alpha is none of your concern, cougar.”
She looked between Lowe and Knox, and her heart grew heavier as she realised that convincing them to tell her how Saint was doing wasn’t just going to be difficult—it was going to be impossible.
Knox had convinced Lowe not to help her the night Saint had taken her, and he was going to do all in his power to stop his brother from helping her now. She couldn’t blame him. He was only doing his job as a member of the pride, protecting his alpha and keeping him safe.
“I know you’re just trying to protect him,” she whispered as fear and the need to see Saint got the better of her, merged within her to make her ache as it birthed despair that drowned out her anger, pushed her rage to the back of her mind and had hope leaching from her. “I just need to see him. If you won’t let me see him, then at least tell me he’s all right. I heard you. You said there’s something wrong with him.”
And her mind was running wild, conjuring images of him dying.
She couldn’t take it.
Lowe’s handsome face softened further. Knox’s remained hard and unyielding.
Holly sighed.
Convincing them was going to take more than she really wanted to admit, but if it meant she got to see Saint and see that he was going to be all right, then she would put it out there.
“I swear, I don’t want to hurt him.” She looked them both in the eye, let her guard drop and let them see that she was telling the truth, and how miserable she was—how afraid she was for Saint. She thought about him, thought about her time with him and what he had said to her, and tried those words on for size, and they felt right. “I don’t think I could hurt him.”
She really didn’t.
<
br /> The thought of hurting Saint turned her stomach. The thought of him being hurt utterly destroyed her. She frowned as she realised something. She already had hurt him. When she had talked of his strength, when she had called him weak, she had only said those things to make the brothers leave him alone. She had done it to save Saint.
But it had hurt him.
She had seen it in his eyes.
“Bullshit,” Knox snarled.
Lowe grabbed his arm when he went to step towards her, fire blazing in his blue eyes.
“Give her a chance.” Lowe looked at his brother. “We’re not getting through to Saint, but she might.”
Worry twisted her stomach into knots again. “What’s wrong with him?”
Knox gruffly shoved his hands into the pockets of his heavy black winter coat. “His wounds are healing but he refuses to wake.”
“Maybe it’s just the winter—”
Knox cut her off. “This isn’t that. This is something else. Lowe thinks he’s given up.”
“Given up?” She looked at Lowe, those knots pulling tighter, making her queasy.
Because she had the feeling she was responsible for his condition.
Lowe nodded, his shoulders relaxing as he looked behind him at the cabin and then back at her. “I found him in the snow. I think he was there for hours. It was getting late by the time I came across him. I got him inside and patched him up. He shifted back and I thought maybe he would wake, but he won’t.”
Fear grew stronger inside her with each word he spoke, something crystallising as she replayed the fight between him and the cougars.
Stolen by her Bear (Black Ridge Bears Shifter Romance Series Book 1) Page 12
