by V. Vaughn
He inhaled deeply, wanting to pull away. But her small frame belied her strength. He could break her hold if he’d really wanted to, but after days without her touch, the hunger inside of him was too raw, too desperate to let him do it. He lost himself in the liquid depths of her inky eyes.
“The babe is yours, Chance. I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
His nostrils flared. Instinct warred with his own human nature. He’d been a reluctant participant of the ritual to begin with. Wild and carefree, he hadn’t wanted to be pinned down by a woman, even one as sexy as Bronwyn.
Then he’d touched her. She’d laughed for him, ran from him, until she’d turned and embraced his beast as her own.
He’d tasted the essence of the divine that lived within all Breed, inside of her, and he’d felt the rightness, the fullness of them. Everything had fallen into place for him then.
But a child? Now? So soon? He shook his head.
And she shook hers. Her grip was still just as strong. “No, I won’t let you pull away from me or walk away from this. I’m not asking you to raise this child, Chance, or even acknowledge it as your own.”
“Then what are you doing?” He ground out. When he glanced down, he was surprised to note she wasn’t actually holding onto him anymore. His hand was not only still on her stomach, but in a cradling, possessive form.
She slid her hands up the sides of his broad forearm, lightly rubbing the hairs there and made his body come alive from that one simple gesture. “I’m giving you the opportunity to know. Something few surrogates ever do.”
All his life, he’d lived in a bubble, content to keep to his kind and not travel too far outside the sphere of his own circle.
He knew of the crows to the south, of course. All grizzlies did. But he’d never given them anything but a passing thought, a cursory consideration that rarely intruded on their personal lives. What he knew of the crows was very little.
The males were sterile, which meant the females were required to mate outside their own when ready to nest. But the hookups meant nothing other than stealing the seed of a willing partner. Both parties would then separate and go about their lives, oblivious one to the other.
Crowding her space, he framed her belly with both his hands. She could have backed up if she’d wanted to, but she stood her ground, holding her head high as her eyes flashed with challenge.
Against his will, his lips curved in satisfaction. He loved her fire, loved that she didn’t back down from his challenge. No Breed was stupid enough to tangle with a grizzly if they weren’t also of the same species.
But she had. She’d come to him from the very beginning.
The life within her womb stirred, and he inhaled sharply.
She smiled and planted her hand over his. “The child senses your nearness.”
“Two weeks?” he asked, still flabbergasted by all of this.
He’d inherited the responsibility but never dreamed it could, or would, be a possibility. His dreams of a mate hadn’t extended far beyond the bedchambers. He’d thought of having her naked in his arms, having her between his thighs, being between her thighs, diving down on one another at the same time. Hell, he’d charted a million different scenarios as possibilities, except for this.
Never this.
A child had never been in the cards.
His brothers would know that. They would laugh at the thought that this had happened to him already. Chance Hawthorne was the ladies’ man, the love ‘em and leave ‘em guy, the one who couldn’t bother to be tied down to anything or anyone longer than the time it took to make them come.
His fingers shook.
She nodded. “We gestate quickly. One month is all we need.”
“Why?” he asked. Not that he’d cared when she’d let him take her in the field. If this had just been some random hookup, none of this would have meant anything to him. He would have left, and she would have left, knowing they had each had a great time, and that would have been the end of it.
If the female had wanted to raise his child without him as part of its life, he wouldn’t have cared. He would have wished them nothing but happiness.
But the thought of Bronwyn leaving him now, of not having the chance to see his newborn… the thought made him feel twitchy with the first stirrings of rage.
Her hands gently cupped his cheeks. “Because what we did was different. I sensed the mating call on you when you took me, Chance Hawthorne. Sensed it and craved it. Though I knew I shouldn’t have.”
He closed his eyes, remembering her crow trailing him for weeks, picking through his bins, making a constant pest of itself. And now he wondered if it had all been just to get his attention. “I will not let them take you away from me,” he said with a growl in his tone.
She shook her head. “Mother returns at any hour if she’s not back already. By morning, her soldiers will be scouring the woods for me.”
Panic clutched at his heart, and he drug her tightly to his side, laying his hands on her lower back as he cradled her to him.
“Then we should wed.” He said the words so quickly and without much forethought that even his own eyes widened in shock.
From single, to father, to almost wed in a single night. Holy shit.
Gods, his brothers would tease him mercilessly. He hardly knew her, or she him, but they were a fated match, a pair predestined by the spirits of his ancestors. Even though there was much confusion in all of this, he knew they had to be together. He had no choice in the matter.
No other woman would ever be enough for him now. She’d ruined him. His cock would never even rise for another. Bronwyn was literally it for him. The thought that he could only ever have sex with her for the rest of his life made him terrified of losing her, but it was more than that too.
The magick of bonding went beyond merely superficial. It was a soul-deep connection of knowing you’d found the other half of your whole. Bronwyn’s soul was as much his as his was now hers.
When she feared, he felt it. For two weeks, he’d felt her panic, her worry, and moodiness. It had made him crazed, almost to the point of violence, to get her back. Each day, he’d gone to her boundary, bringing in whatever treasures he could find: fish fresh from the streams, piles of twigs and tree stumps, stones, even some nuggets of gold he’d managed to fish out of the ponds in the mornings.
All of it was meant to let her know he would be a good provider for her. She only needed to trust him, believe in him, and she would never have to worry another day in her life.
But where he had no choice, Bronwyn did.
She could choose to leave him. Yes, they were fated, and surely she felt that connection as strongly as he did.
But bird Breed rarely, if ever, married for love. They were practical and rarely prone to letting matters of the heart dictate their future path.
The females were responsible for the rearing and training of their chicks. The males were hardly involved except in the defense of their borders. They were loveless matches. The males often ran off and whored around, and the women stayed back, kept house, and raised the offspring.
He was desperate for her to escape that fate.
“Marrying you would mean nothing to my dame. Our courts do not recognize any marriage outside of our own.” She said it softly, clutching his fingers tightly in her hands.
His jaw set. “I will not hand you back, Bron—”
She shushed him with a finger to his lips and shook her head gently. “And I don’t want to. I’ve wanted to know you for ages, Chance Hawthorne.” A smile graced her petal-soft lips as she held up her hand so he could see it.
He snorted when he spotted that damned piece of red string around her ring finger. “I thought you meant to kill me that day.”
She laughed, and the sound of bells filled his soul. “I did, you bastard. You bruised my damned wrist. And I might have come back to pour salt in your eyes the next day if you hadn’t tracked me down and given me the best sex of my life.”
Pride swelled through his chest. He hadn’t forgotten their one day together either. Wetting his lips, he spread his legs wide. His stance was territorial and claiming as he feathered his fingers up her naked back. “Did I now? Well, then… how about we do that ag—”
She rolled her eyes. “You bears only ever have one thing on the brain, don’t you? Sex. And more sex.”
He snorted. “Food’s in there too. But yes, mostly sex. Lots of sex,” he said with a shivery tenor in his words.
She trembled, just as he’d hoped she would.
“Cheeky bastard.” She giggled then swatted at his shoulder. “Do try to stay focused, bear. We have a problem on our hands that needs fixing. After that, sex. Deal?”
His brows rose. Sex? Oh yes, he could focus as long as that was his prize. He’d never slept with a pregnant woman before. How different could it be, really? But then he glimpsed at her breasts and saw how they’d become much more plump than he’d remembered them being, and it was all he could do not to toss her down on the bed and ravish her, problems be damned.
A corner of her lips rose, and her dark eyes twinkled when the cock he could no longer control bumped her hard in the hip.
“Hm. I see I maybe have you for the next five minutes so I’ll make this quick. There’s only one way to ensure my family would no longer fight to take me back.”
She was talking, and he was trying like hell to pay attention. But the skin of her throat right where the hollow met her shoulders drew him like a moth to a flame. He planted greedy little nibbles along her collarbone, sucking and licking as he went.
She sighed, and her long, black nails sank into his biceps, hard, making him wince from the wicked pleasure of pain and lust.
She smelled of the forest and skies and of new life. Her scent was addictive. It had been before, but now she was marked by him, filled by him.
“Mine,” he rumbled, losing himself to the madness of that instinct. He was worse than a teenage boy reading his first Playboy.
Bronwyn’s laughter inched through his veins like fire. “Okay, maybe less than a minute. Will you pay attention, caveman?” Her fingers dug into his chin as she jerked his face up. Delight sparked through her glittering eyes. “Do you see me?”
He frowned grumpily. He wanted to taste her some more. “Yes,” he ground out. “But make this quick. I’ve a need to claim you again, woman, to dip my tongue between your thighs and well… you know how much bears love honey.”
“Good gods,” she squeaked then shook her head. She sounded surprised by his candor.
“What’s the matter, little bird? Not used to hearing a man talk dirty to you?”
She wet her delectable lips with the tip of her bright pink tongue. “No. Rolo never said anything like that to me,” she whispered gravely.
“That’s because he’s not me,” he growled. “And he’ll never have you. Know you as I will, I’ll kill him first.”
The threat clung to his words in a deep rasp. The bear and man vied inside him for dominance. The bear was straight up winning. The last thing his bear wanted to do was talk about stupid stuff like Rinki, or Ronko, or whatever the hell his name was.
“He’s gay, Chance. And he’s my best friend. So be nice,” she warned with a stern set of her lips.
Immediately, the fire in him cooled. “Well then, I like him better already.” He grinned cockily. “Now, where were we?” He reached for her just as she stepped outside of the circle of his arms.
She smacked his hands away and wagged a finger beneath his nose. “Give me a minute before you go all growly, sex fiend on me, caveman. Good gods.”
She harrumphed as though she were irritated, but he knew she wasn’t. He could see it in the flush of her skin and the brightness in her eyes. She was just as turned on by him as he was by her. The woman had it bad.
But what could he say? He was damn fine-looking. A total catch, really. He chuckled.
Then she gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was thinking, and she was not amused, and could he please focus.
“Wow, this mating bond is strong,” she said in awe, her eyes widening as she clutched her chest.
He frowned. “You heard that?”
She nodded. “Yes. I also heard you congratulating yourself on being such a fine catch. Pa-leeze.” She snorted. “I do believe it’s the other way around, Neanderthal. Now, on to business.”
He laughed. “I love your fire.”
Sticking out her tongue at him, she nodded as if to say, “of course you do.”
They had been reunited barely three hours, and he already knew one thing: he could never, ever be without this woman again.
Her shoulders sagged a little. “Aw, teddy, you think the sweetest things.”
He frowned. She was clearly reading his thoughts, but so far, he couldn’t read any of hers.
She laughed, but said nothing to that. “Okay, I do believe I promised you sex and a solution to our problem. You ready to hear it yet?” she asked smartly.
“What do you think, woman?”
Snickering, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I’ll make this quick. I must give birth to a cub and not a chick.”
He frowned. Chance didn’t know much when it came to women and babies and all that nonsense.
She cleared her throat, tossing him an exasperated look.
“Well, it’s true.” He shrugged. Since she could hear his thoughts anyway, he might as well just say it. “How exactly do you do that? I thought only if I had sex with a female grizzly could we get a cub.”
She tapped her foot almost angrily. “Hm.”
He grinned as he felt a warm blast of her rage rake against his flesh when she thought of him lying with another. Finally, he was starting to feel her mind, and he reveled in the simple beauty of it. It was pure, pristine, polished, and like a breath of cool, wintery air.
“Because of the fact that our men are sterile, unlike many other species of Breed, we can choose which form we wish to pass on to our offspring. But we can only choose once. If I give birth to a chick the first time, all subsequent offspring would also be chicks. I’ll be forever tied to my lands and my people.”
His jaw slowly dropped as his heart raced. “But if you choose a cub—”
“Then they would have no choice but to release me from among them, severing my ties to the Blackfoot Clan forever.”
Yanking her to his chest, he hugged her with a fierceness that left her breathless. “You’re brilliant, Bronwyn. How do you do that?”
All seriousness, she grabbed his hands and squeezed tightly. “You have to keep me safe from them for the next two weeks, and you have to make sure that the temperatures stay above eighty. If you can do that, Chance, then we can be together forever.”
Then come hell or high water, that’s exactly what he would do.
6
Chance
They’d lain together that night, cradled in each other’s arms, not talking, hardly moving, and not even daring to breathe too deeply.
The woods had been thick with the Queen’s guards. He’d heard their quiet chatter and rush of wings, the disturbed brush as they’d once come within mere feet of Bronwyn and him.
The crows weren’t permitted to walk on his lands without Phoenix’s express permission. Phoenix, being the eldest, had to declare them free to pass.
Phoenix, however, wasn’t around. In fact, neither was August. Chance hadn’t seen hide nor hair of either of his brothers since the ritual began. But the land space and airspace were two separate matters entirely. While the grizzlies controlled their lands, they held no sway over the air—a fact the crows had ruthlessly exploited.
But so long as they remained hidden, nothing could come of it… not until Phoenix returned, and Bron’s mother declared war on them. Then his brothers would cut his effing balls off for bringing that kind of heat down on them.
Meh. Tomatoes, tomahtoes. If this situation had befallen either August or Phoenix, he was sure t
hey would be in the same predicament.
A little voice nagged at the back of his mind, saying that wasn’t entirely true because his brothers tended to be much smarter about thinking before acting than he was.
Bronwyn’s gentle warmth flowed over him, calming him despite his growing fears and false bravado. He gave her a grateful smile, squeezing her tighter.
“We’ll be all right as long as we don’t leave,” he whispered, and she nodded.
If there was one thing a grizzly knew how to do well, it was build a den.
When in bear form, he could camouflage his scent. Grizzly Breed fur had a natural repellence to it, which helped conceal him during a hunt. Now, it provided a crucial role in concealing them.
Bronwyn had rubbed her naked body along the length of him, covering herself in his scent so that she too would be disguised from her sisters.
They had only separated after several hours had passed, and he’d determined their best chance to move without being seen was by using what little darkness remained to help conceal them.
Chance shifted and helped pick twigs and brambles out of her hair. He gently massaged her lower back with his free hand as she groaned miserably.
This was not at all what he’d hoped to do for her once he’d gotten her free of the nest.
“I will take care of you, my little bird. I promise.”
Her smile was as bright as always, but it was also shaded with exhaustion. Dark circles rimmed the bottoms of her eyes. “I know you will.”
Grabbing her hands, he kissed the tops of them. One good thing had come from her cuddling into him all night—his body heat had remained a steady and toasty ninety degrees Fahrenheit.
Spring in Alaska was different from spring in other parts of the world. The overnight temperatures dipped to a chilly forty degrees. At least her cheeks were pinkened again.
“Where to now?” she asked.
“My cabin,” he said resolutely.
She frowned. “Where your brothers live?”
He shook his head, still rubbing his thumb along the backs of her petal-soft hands. “We only stayed together during the pre-mating ritual. The cabin will be ours for now. But I’m sure if they were there, they’d hand me over for the hassle. Your family would have found me and strung me out to dry for this.”
