The night had passed pleasantly, and once the cubs were safe and silent in bed, Cody had taken Jessie out into the woods to shift. They didn’t go far, but it was still a giddy kind of joy to run around the forest with Jessie, the two of them in their bear forms. They’d splashed in the creek and rolled around in the mud. Finally, they’d both been so riled up, they’d shifted back into human form and fooled around. It was bold, even stupid maybe. But Jessie had climbed on top of Cody had guided him inside her and ridden him right there on the forest floor and Cody wasn’t sure they’d ascended to some other plane of existence.
My mate, he’d thought, as he looked up into her eyes.
He hated to go home alone again that night. He wanted her in his bed through the night.
Someday, he told himself. They just had to figure out how exactly. His plan was to eventually tell his brothers, once he could convince Jessie it was safe, and enlist Connor’s help. But he worried about it. He wasn’t sure where Connor would come down on Jessie having up and kidnapped a bunch of cubs from their sleuth, even if they were being abused. That night he’d tossed and turned in bed worrying about it.
The next day, the sleuth arrived.
Cody was the last to know. He was hidden away in the kitchen, at work on a complicated Beef Bourguignon, with a twist that he would not divulge. He was still worried, in general. But his good mood could not be crushed by what so far seemed like small anxieties. The kitchen staff was baffled by the way he practically danced around the kitchen, humming to himself, complimenting everyone on their good work.
Even when the sleuth arrived, he didn’t know what it was about. They did not announce their intentions.
It was Eric who blew into the kitchen, looking alarmed. Eric was usually the cool-headed brother among them. He was the concierge after all. It was his job to keep people happy and calm.
He didn’t look happy and calm now.
“Cody!” Eric said. He was breathless, as if he’d run straight to the kitchen at top speed. “Something’s up. Come with me.”
Cody frowned and took off the apron he often had tied around his waist in the kitchen, hanging it on a hook.
The moment he hit the lobby, he had a terrible feeling. It was dread and it felt like something icy under his skin that slithered up his arms and wrapped around his neck.
There was a crowd of bear shifters in the lobby. About a dozen of them were around his age or a little older. They smelled like rough woods bears. Or anyway that’s what Cody had heard them called before in this part of the country. Rough woods bears were less assimilated into human life. They lived in the woods most of the time and their sleuths were known to be brutally run. Cody wasn’t sure how he knew. It was the way their scents had a dark, musky smell that was a little less human than his own. Not that it was bad to live in the woods all the time. It seemed like a simpler life to him. But he wondered if this was the brutal kind he’d heard about before.
There were a few other bear shifters too and Cody immediately pegged them as elders. Elder bear shifters were part of the old guard of shifter society. They stepped into settle disagreements between sleuths if the disagreement was important enough. They were usually aged alphas. Cody’s grandfather had served as an elder when they were kids before he’d passed. But they weren’t around too much anymore. Bear shifter society wasn’t as institutional as it used to be with so many bears assimilated into human life. But it made sense, Cody supposed, that rough woods bears would have elders with them if there was a problem. Cody supposed that was better than them settling a problem through violence which was what he would have expected.
“What’s going on?” Cody said. The sleuth looked him up and down as he passed them, smiling tightly. Nothing about them gave Cody a good feeling, even if they were just guests. He had to think that whatever was up had something to do with the newcomers.
“Just come with me to Connor’s office,” Eric mumbled.
Cody followed him behind the front desk and down a short hallway where Eric knocked on Connor’s door. That alone was fairly unusual. Connor usually left his office door open and if it was closed, none of his brothers ever bothered to knock.
Connor was sitting behind his desk with a stress ball in one hand that he was rolling around between his massive fingers. Nathan sat backward in an antique chair, looking a lot more dour than usual.
“Connor... ” Cody looked between his three brothers. Everyone seemed on edge. “What the hell is going on?”
“Honestly, your guess is as good as mine,” Connor said. He looked just as put together as usual, his dark hair slicked back, his full black beard trimmed carefully. He had taken off his jacket and he was wearing suspenders with his pin-striped shirt. “This sleuth just showed up about fifteen minutes ago and demanded a meeting with all four of us to be mediated by the elders. I don’t know any details, but one of them said something about missing cubs?” He nodded at Cody. “You have any idea what they’re talking about?”
Cody, as per usual, was not very good at lying. He couldn’t quite control what his face did when Connor asked him that question, or what his face had done when he’d mentioned “missing cubs.” He was pretty sure his eyes went wide and his mouth collapsed. Or maybe he flinched. He wasn’t even certain.
But Nathan hadn’t missed it. Connor and Eric were paying attention to each other. Eric seemed a little freaked out and that made sense. He would have been the first one to meet the bears of the intimidating sleuth hanging in the lobby. If it were just them, Cody wouldn’t be very worried. Some of them were big and intimidating sure, and there were a couple of very lethal and icy looking women in the mix. But Cody and his brothers had taken down scarier types. The real danger was that the sleuth might have larger numbers waiting somewhere to take them out. And worse, they had elders with them. That was like bringing cops.
Could they take the cubs away?
That was Cody’s only thought. He clenched his fists at his side. Nathan hadn’t missed that either.
“We don’t have a choice,” Connor said. “Not with elders. You try to fight elders and you can start a damn war or they could lock us up if they wanted. We have to respect their request for a meeting even if we don’t know what it’s about. I don’t like this. Whatever it is.”
Cody managed to say, “When is the meeting?”
“Tonight,” Connor said, rubbing his bearded chin as he stared off into the distance. “We’ll use one of the conference rooms.” He looked at Eric and then at Cody and Nathan. “And nobody has anything to tell me, huh?”
Cody didn’t. Not yet at least. For once, his first priority was not to his brothers. It was to his mate and his cubs.
My cubs...
They had only just entered his life but he would fight to the death for them. They were Jessie’s and his to protect and he would, even if it meant defying Connor until he figured out what to do next.
“Nothing I can think of.” The lie slipped out of his mouth, smooth as honey. Nathan raised an eyebrow.
Connor let them go, telling them to head to the Rosewood Conference Room on the west end of the lodge at six and until then, they should avoid the sleuth and the elders.
Cody felt like he was walking a dream. But as he passed the members of the sleuth in the lobby who looked him up and down as if they somehow knew, he felt a rage he’d known only once before pouring through him. Just a few months ago he’d defended Eric against a witch who had tried to kill him and the love he had for his brother had made him fight like he’d never fought before. That fight had nearly killed him. This urge to protect was just as strong, if not stronger. His mate was threatened. He’d spill whatever blood was necessary to keep her and the cubs safe.
“Cody!” He was halfway to the kitchen when Nathan came jogging up. He hadn’t realized he was walking with his head down, his mouth a tight line, his fists clenched at his sides. He jerked a little when Nathan threw an arm around him. “We gotta talk.”
“Not right now,”
Cody grumbled.
“Yes, right now.” Nathan was dragging him away from the kitchen and into one of the private dining rooms and Cody sighed, letting himself be pulled along. He should’ve figured Nathan wasn’t about to let any of this go.
Nathan shut the door behind them. The private dining room with its fine linen and candles set out on an antique table and romantic paintings of moonlit gardens on the walls made the whole thing seem rather comical.
“What’s going on Cody?” Nathan crossed his arms and glared at Cody as if he already knew everything. “I get it. You’re protecting this girl. But you gotta trust me, man. Let me help you before this blows up in your face.”
Cody narrowed his eyes. Nathan wasn’t wrong but he was always a little indignant about going to his brothers for help. “Alright. So this sleuth is most likely looking for six missing cubs. And they’re with Jessie.”
“All six?” Nathan’s eyebrows shot up. “Cody, what the hell-”
“Their sleuth was abusing them!” Cody said, throwing up his hands. “They were starving and they’d been beaten. She found them trapped in a cave, the sleuth just kept them there all day. Rough woods bears, I guess. Jessie stumbled onto them one day. And she couldn’t just leave them like that so... she just kind of adopted them. They’re living in a cabin up in the mountains.”
“Adopted?” Nathan snorted. “You mean kidnapped?”
“Would you have done anything different?”
“Yeah, I would have called you guys and we would have kicked the sleuth’s asses and then adopted the kids.” Nathan shrugged, stroking his chin. “But if I were Jessie, no I probably wouldn’t have done anything different. Interesting woman you’ve found there.”
“I know.” Cody couldn’t help but beam. It made him proud to hear his brother talk about his mate that way. “She’s the one,” Cody said softly. “I felt it in my chest, like you said. She’s my mate.”
“You have to tell Connor.” Nathan clapped him on the back. “But I’ll leave that to you, bro. Just be careful. Elders are involved with this now. Could get seriously messy.”
Nathan left him and Cody sat down just to catch his breath. If it was time to fight, he was ready for it, and so was his bear.
16
Cody
Cody expected something more like a brawl than a meeting. But he couldn’t have been more wrong, apparently. Connor shook the hand of the sleuth’s alpha as everyone filed into the Rosewood Conference Room, one of the many rooms set aside for business meetings and events put on by guests. There was even coffee and tea ready for everyone on the table, as if they were about to discuss some quarterly projections rather than the fate of several bear cubs up in the woods.
The sleuth came from the Garner Forest, several towns away. It was a rough area from what Cody had heard. Apparently, he had been right in thinking these were rough woods bears. They kept mostly to themselves and lived as brutal bears except when they went down into the small town at the foot of their mountain to raise hell. The alpha was a bit taller and broader than Connor, but he was also much older, with a graying beard and a mass of curly grey hair. When he grinned at Connor as they shook hands, he bared his teeth in a disingenuous version of a grin. He was making the threat clear, albeit subtly.
Everyone sat down around the table and several members of the sleuth snickered and made cracks about the fancy napkins and fancy water pitcher. They were taking some little shots at the Strauss brothers’ way of life, being this assimilated into the human world. Cody didn’t mind that. But their entire attitude put him on edge. There was a woman around the alpha’s age sitting next to him with about the iciest pair of dark eyes he’d ever seen and they kept whispering to each other. Cody had a feeling that they were the only members of the sleuth who really needed to be there, along with the six elders from different sleuths around Colorado. The others were just to show some muscle in case a fight broke out.
Connor was quiet. He didn’t do any of that covert whispering, which Cody took as a sign of strength. He didn’t need to consult with his brothers, at least not in front of anyone. He was the alpha and that was all this sleuth needed to know.
It was one of the elders who spoke first.
“I want to thank the Strauss brothers for agreeing to meet with us today.” The elder stood up and pressed his hands to the table as he spoke. He was the oldest of all the others with wavy white hair that touched his shoulders and a thick white beard. He looked at each of the Strauss brothers as he spoke but he did not smile. “The Garner Forest sleuth contacted us recently about a grave very manner. Six of their young cubs went missing a few months ago. They range in age from two to twelve. They were abducted from their home. We know little except that we believe it was the work of a single shifter. The sleuth hired a tracker to search for their cubs and their kidnapper and he tracked the kidnapper here, to the Black Bear Lake Lodge. Meanwhile, he reports that the cubs are being held in an abandoned cabin up in the mountain.”
The elder stopped speaking as if to let all that information sink in. The Garner bears were sitting opposite the Strauss brothers at the table, and it did make Cody and his brothers seem like a paltry little group with just the four of them. It made Cody even more edgy than he already felt as he jogged his knee under the table, hoping he wasn’t giving anything away.
“This tracker,” Connor said. “They’d tracked the kidnapper here to the lodge. Is this a guest then? We would certainly turn them over to you-”
“Eh... ” Cody made a small noise of discontent and clamped his mouth shut again, clenching his fists. He saw twelve pairs of eyes immediately on him and he stared down at his hands in his lap. He should bide his time first. See how this shook out. But he wished he could psychically tell Connor that he should be asking more questions. His brothers looked at him and he shook his head. “Nothing.”
“The perpetrator of this heinous crime,” the elder said, narrowing his eyes, “is not a guest. She is on your staff. According to the tracker, she’s a maid and her name is Jessie.”
Cody’s entire face felt hot. It was taking every bit of self-control not to speak up and set the record straight. He tried to catch Connor’s eye again but Connor was watching the elder, squinting as if trying to read his mind. Connor also knew that Cody had a flirtation going with a maid. He couldn’t remember if Connor knew which one. But then Connor glanced at him and Cody read his expression leery. He knew Cody had something to do with this. He didn’t look angry. Just wary. That was a good sign, Cody supposed.
Cody spoke up, unable to help himself anymore and said, “Are you sure they were kidnapped?”
He was actually proud of himself for speaking so calmly while inside, his bear wanted to break out and rip out the sleuths’ throats.
“What?” The female bear shifter sitting next to the alpha had a voice as cold sounding as she looked. It was crips and low and her icy gaze was trained on Cody. “What do you mean, are we sure?”
“Are you sure they didn’t... run away?” Cody said. He was trying very hard to look like he knew nothing and direly wishing he had, at some point, learned to lie. “Was there any sign that they were hurt or taken against will? How were they taken, by the way?” He shifted around his seat. It was all he could do to keep his voice steady. “From their homes? From their beds?”
“We live in the woods,” the alpha said, scowling at Cody. “We don’t require human accommodations. The children were taken from a cave.”
Cody couldn’t take it anymore. He jumped to his feet and said, “The children were being abused! They were half-starving and Jessie rescued them because she wasn’t about to leave them there to be mistreated by a brutal sleuth!”
“How dare you!” The woman shifter was on her feet, grimacing at Cody, her eyes wide. If she could have shot lasers from his eyes, Cody thought she would have. He could practically feel her holding her bear back.
Bring it on, he thought. He wanted nothing more than the opportunity to fight the bastar
ds.
“What proof do you have?” That was one of the elders, looking back and forth between them and seeing perfectly calm. “What proof do you have of this abuse? And if that is true, why wouldn’t this Jessie approach one of us elders to mediate-”
“What good are you!” Cody practically exploded. It was stupid probably. That elder was potentially on his side, but he was talking nonsense and Cody could only take so much. “Nobody even listens to elders anymore, you barely exist! There was a gangster shifter named Rawley pillaging sleuths all over the Southwest and where were the elders then?”
“This is unacceptable!” Another elder had risen to his feet.
Everyone started yelling.
“EVERYONE, BE QUIET!” Connor’s voice thundered in the room. Cody noticed the other alpha’s scowl. He obviously hated Connor showing his strength. But when Connor stood, he seemed to loom larger than everyone else and Cody could feel how the others were intimidated.
He got away with it somehow. Connor said, “I think we should take an extended break and reconvene in a few hours. New information has come to light and I would like to speak with my brother before this goes any further.”
The sleuth put up a fuss but the elders were able to make them agree to break. Cody had to think the elder stuff was all window dressing. The sleuth was looking for a fight. It was the only reason they could possibly have for bringing so many people.
Everyone started filing out of the room again and Connor raised an eyebrow at Cody and said, “You and me in my office. Right the hell now.”
17
Cody
Cody didn’t much like how he felt like he was being sent to the principal’s office but he followed Connor to his office where his brother sat on his desk and nodded at Cody, demanding he spill the beans.
But ten minutes later, Connor was smiling.
“You went grocery shopping?” Connor said wryly. “You made them spaghetti?” He shook his head and chuckled. “Wow, I didn’t know you had it in you. Look at you, the proud papa.”
Cody (Strauss Bear Shifter Brothers 0f Colorado Book 3) Page 9
