by Chloe Cole
He bent low and picked up a flat stone at his feet, sending it skipping over the water.
How the hell was he going to move on? Forgetting her was a task for a man far stronger than him. He'd tried. Jesus knew, he'd tried. He drank himself into a stupor for those first few days until he didn't know if it was day or night. But he knew Mina, even in those darkest hours. Awake or in sleep, she was at the root of the pain that was constant like a toothache that never ceased.
He was so fucked.
With his new shifter senses, he scented Etienne before he heard the dragon's footsteps crunch on the gravel in front of the lake.
"Well?" said Dan.
"It took some doing, but I secured the lease."
"Good.”
He was surprised that Etienne had wanted this property, especially after he and Taya had explained that shifters tried to avoid government involvement. But it did make sense to keep prying eyes away from the carnage of the base. There would be just too many questions raised with the destruction of the hatch and the skylights. They needed time to get it all fixed and for some rainy days to rid the area of blood and the acrid stench.
"Did you do the final sweep of the ridge?" Etienne asked.
Dan tipped his head in a curt nod. "All clear."
"Good."
During this last week he and Etienne spent time cleaning up the bodies of their attackers, laying them to rest in caves they found on the western side of the lake. They sealed the caves with the remainder of the C-4 Etienne brought.
It had been dirty work. Those that felt Etienne's wrath were totally destroyed, but those charred from the Molotov cocktails Taya threw at them were plain gruesome. Others, they’d had to recover from the tiger pits and snap noose traps.
But that job was done, and today Dan had checked to make sure that none of their tripwires or homemade mines were still intact to snare or injure hapless animals or humans who found their way to this godforsaken place.
Dan stared at the ruined landscape past the reservoir. There was so much work to do here. This whole area needed to be replanted with trees as well as the landscape behind him, which was a third of the wide ridge.
"I might keep this place for a long while," said Etienne. "You never know when a place to hole up away from prying eyes might be necessary. But I’ll need to upgrade the security. The perimeter of the base, the gate and, of course, the bunker."
"Good idea," said Dan his eyes trained on the landscape.
"I'll need a caretaker, someone who can handle those upgrades, and oversee the repairs of a military bunker. Do you know anyone like that?"
Dan squinted at the dragon shifter, head cocked. "Why don’t you guys stay here and do it?"
"I'll visit. But I've got an investment empire to run. I have to be a little closer to civilization, and Taya would hate it. She’d go stir crazy here before long. Plus, she’d miss our friend Willa, a wolf shifter who lives on the same mountain as we do with her mate Drake. No, I can’t do it, but I have to hire someone I trust."
Dan suddenly picked up on Etienne's not so subtle hints as the dragon’s golden eyes drilled into his. "Are you offering me a job?"
Etienne shrugged.
"You’d do well to get used to your new reality, learn how to be a bear, maybe lay low for a while. It’s not like you can go back to your old job."
That much he knew.
"I already sent in my resignation with a recommendation for Deputy Ripley. She can handle the job fine. I was probably keeping it from her anyway." And maybe with him gone, she could focus on finding a man who deserved her, too.
"You'll be missed there, I guarantee it."
"Why do you say that?"
Etienne’s face went uncharacteristically solemn. "You’re a good man, and a great leader. They were lucky to have you."
Dan rolled this around in his head. It was a nice sentiment, especially coming from his sometime-nemesis, but he didn't feel the truth of it. He so utterly failed to keep Mina safe that last night they were together he felt like half a man. Who would want someone like that around?
"I’d have to get my dog."
"I can have her brought here, as well as your belongings."
Dan liked that idea. Suzie Q would love the run of a place like this. Morning walks around the lake for her and lots of hard manual labor that would hopefully exhaust him so thoroughly that he could get a few hours sleep and a break from the knowledge that the woman he loved didn’t want him.
God, he’d been so relieved when Etienne had told him Rene had taken her, and even more so when the elder dragon had called to say she was healing from her wounds. But when she refused to talk to him on the phone, he’d known it was a bittersweet victory.
His one true mate would survive, and she’d even been given a limited pardon by the Council, but she wasn’t coming back to him.
"I don't know how long I'll stay."
"Stay as long as you want. You'll be helping me out until I find someone permanent."
Dan nodded. “Have you spoken to Mina again?” he asked, wanting to kick himself for the question. “Does she know about…?”
“No,” Etienne said, stuffing a hand into his jeans pocket with a sigh. “It’s not my story to tell. But, for the record, I think you’re being both foolish and stubborn for not telling her yourself. She’s going to find out eventually. There will be no hiding it soon. You’ll stink of bear even in your human form once you’ve shifted a few more times,” he said with a low laugh.
“She won’t ever be close enough to smell me, so I doubt that will be a problem.”
"What makes you say that?"
Dan gestured around them with a bitter laugh. "She's not here now, is she?"
“If she knew, maybe she’d come b--”
“Damn it, man, stop,” he bit out, jamming a frustrated hand through his hair. “I stuck my neck out for her, told her how I felt time and time again. I was willing to accept her for all that she is and all that she isn’t, and she shut me down. Over and over. That’s it for me. I’m not going to pressure her or try to entice her with my new party tricks. I’m still the same man I was, at the core of it. If I wasn’t enough for her then, I’m not now, and hoping that she will change her mind some day is only making it worse.”
Etienne pursed his lips and nodded. “All right. That’s the last we’ll speak of it. I do have some other news, though.”
“Yeah?” Dan asked, eyeing the other man warily.
“I found out some things about your family."
His family was dead. It took a second to realize that Etienne didn’t mean his adoptive parents, and a spark shot through him.
“My birth parents?”
"You were obviously as confused as we were about your latent shifter abilities, so I took the liberty of sending one of your coffee cups for DNA analysis. The Council is very eager to keep track of every shifter they can, so they rushed the work and guaranteed confidentiality."
Dan tried to digest that information as his friend continued.
"They keep an extensive database of known shifters. We know a line of bear shifters you come from currently lives in Oregon. I have a couple names if you want to track them down." Etienne shrugged. "They may welcome you, or they may not. But you can't know until you try."
Dan’s mind raced with this new information, but he felt nothing but intellectual curiosity.
"If the Council is so hot to keep track, why was I left on the church steps as an infant?"
"I looked into that as well. There was a report of a shifter from your line who had asked for permission to wed a human, who I’m guessing by the dates was your mother. Could be that once his request was denied, she didn’t know what else to do with you. Or could be that she was young and frightened and of course, unmarried. Could be that she found out your father was a shifter, and might have thought you were the devil’s spawn…cursed.” Etienne shrugged and shook his head slowly. “Humans fear what they don’t understand. I wouldn't judge her t
oo harshly, at least until I knew the whole story."
Etienne said “until” but it seemed unlikely that Dan would ever know the truth unless he reached out to his birth father’s family in Oregon. Maybe even his parents were still alive out there somewhere. But the way he was feeling right now, he’d never bother to find out. He didn’t want to be welcomed into any fold any more than he wanted to be rejected.
He just couldn’t work up the will to care about anything. Without Mina, he felt like a walking zombie. Going through the motions, walking and talking, but dead inside.
The two men stood in silence as the wind whipped up the smooth surface of the water until Etienne clapped his hand on Dan's shoulder.
"Come on inside. Taya cooked dinner."
"Taya cooked?" Etienne was as dominant in the kitchen as he was everywhere else, so that was new.
"She threw me out. Told me that she had skills too and wanted to prove it."
His stomach grumbled with hunger that seemed almost constant now with his new shifter metabolism, but he couldn't face it. Seeing the happy couple, listening to their banter laden with sexual innuendo. It was like being the third wheel on a couple's honeymoon and a painful reminder of what he’d never have. Watching them together was like pouring salt in an open wound.
“You go ahead. I have to do one last walk around to check for traps. Be there in a few.”
He made that few stretch long enough that night had fallen and the pair were gone from the table by the time he walked in.
Though it hardly helped. By the time he'd eaten and got the dishes done, he could hear them having sex through the walls with that infernal super-hearing he hadn’t quite gotten the knack of tuning out yet. Morning couldn’t come quick enough.
He left his room, and headed back for the great outdoors, with half a mind to spend his night as he had the last few. Running the mountain in bear form to work off his energy. Unfortunately, he also had a mind to get rip-roaring drunk and, inconvenient as it was, bears had no finesse with a bottle or flask.
He opted for plan B, swinging by the mess hall to grab the bottle of Jack Daniels he’d picked up the day before when they’d gone into town for cleanup supplies. Then, he hotfooted it out to the lakeshore to crack open the bottle.
The night air was crisp and cool, which suited him just fine. Turned out all those feverish dreams and excessive body heat were just a precursor to his new core body temp, which felt somewhere in the neighborhood of ten thousand degrees Kelvin.
He threw back his head to take a swig of whiskey, and stared at the thin sliver of moon overhead.
Should he take Etienne's job offer? Or would staying here be just another gut-wrenching reminder of what he had and lost? Maybe it was time to move along. Get in touch with his Army buddies and see about what he could do for his country now. It was then, right as he'd been wondering if that was a good call or just an attempt at self-destruction, that he saw it.
A winged shape, nothing but a dark silhouette against the milky moon until it moved closer, dropping nearer and nearer to the shore.
His pulse rattled and then roared as it turned, mid-flight, and offered him a profile.
Mina. He would know that body anywhere.
She tucked her arms in tight just a hundred or so feet in the air and barrel-rolled down like a bullet, before letting her wings fan out to swoop her up and deposit her softy in front of him, boots sunk into the edge of the lake.
"Hey," she murmured, pursing her lips for a second as her gaze seemed to devour his every feature.
She'd gone. Taken away by a shifter who was a better protector than him. And she’d stayed gone this impossibly long week without a single word to him.
Now here she was, just three feet away, and he felt like his heart was going to explode out of his chest.
"What do you want, Mina?" he demanded, his voice guttural and low, giving evidence to what it cost him to speak.
Mina flinched like he'd taken a swing at her, but then nodded slowly. "I deserve that. But I needed to talk to you."
"Have you heard of this nifty device called a cell phone? Or how about email?"
He knew he was being an asshole, but she had no idea what seeing her was doing to him right now. After a week of near-constant mental agony, he'd finally gotten a reprieve with this semi-numbness, and he was fucking liking it a lot better than the latter. Sure, it stood to reason that once it passed, he'd be in worse shape than before, but damn her for dragging him back to the beginning, ripping the wound open anew.
And still, the hurt in her eyes at his words felt like a dagger to the heart.
He rubbed his temples and then blew out a sigh. "Look, I'm sorry." He broke off and tore his gaze away from her to stare at the blackened trees that stood like spears in the distance. "I can't have you coming around, Mina. I can't take it. If you’re here to tell me about the Council, Etienne filled me in and--"
"That's not why I'm here, Dan," she murmured, sounding almost as miserable as he felt. He felt a momentary, ugly twist of satisfaction at that, but it faded as quickly as it had come. This wasn't her fault. Not really. She couldn’t help how she felt--or didn’t feel--about him.
The memory of her breaking apart in his arms just a dozen yards from this very spot stoked his anger all over again.
"Then get to the point and go. The whiskey has my name written all over it, and it's not getting any younger," he bit out, gripping the bottle with one hand and sliding the other into his pocket in an effort to stop himself from running them through her silky hair one last time.
"Can we just go inside and talk?" she asked, her expression pleading. "I won't take up much of your time, but I've been flying for nearly twenty-four hours straight, and it's damn chilly in the upper atmosphere..."
He almost said no. But who was he kidding? The second she turned away, he would've called her back. Because he was sickly, madly, crazily in love with her, and if he could have another minute with her, he'd take it, the cost be damned.
She was here. He'd seen her. He could smell her hair on the night breeze. The fine details of her face, the husky timbre of her voice, it was all as fresh as wet paint in his mind again. The damage was done. No point in chasing her out now.
"Whatever," he muttered, and turned on his heel to make his way back to the bunker.
By the time they got inside, he'd managed to collect himself some and find his manners, but it wasn't easy.
"You want a drink?"
She nodded and stood silently near the door while he walked to the kitchen where he snatched a mug and poured her a good shot of the Jack Daniels.
"Come sit down," he said, jerking his head toward the mess hall table.
"Thanks."
"I hope you like Tennessee whisky. Jack has been keeping me company."
Mina cocked an eye at him. "Sure, me and Jack go a long ways back."
She took the seat across from him and they sat in silence for a while, both contemplating their drinks.
"I screwed up, Dan," she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear her.
"What do you mean?" he asked, suddenly feeling every second of his thirty-plus years.
"I mean, I made a terrible mistake, and I'm hoping you can help me rectify it."
Part of him wanted to laugh out loud. Hadn't he given more than his pound of flesh already? But the other part? The bigger part that loved her like he'd never loved anyone before didn't hesitate.
"What do you need?"
She picked up her glass and threw back the shot before setting it back down on the table with a click. "I need you to be with me. Like that night in the woods."
He stared at her in stunned silence. She was here for a fuck? He knew she was tough, but damn. That was ice cold.
"Christ, Mina. Can you see how cruel that is? You're supposed to be an empath. A veritable fucking superhero of other peoples’ emotions and you can't see what that would do to me to sleep with you and have to watch you walk away again?"
Eve
n as he spoke though, his blood began to heat at the memory of her mouth against his. Of the way her silky skin felt sliding over his. Of the way her body shuddered and quaked when she came. And then he was standing, and closing the short distance between them.
She opened her mouth to speak as he stood and rounded the table. He gripped her shoulders and jerked her to her feet.
"Dan, I--"
He dipped his head, crushing his mouth to hers, the bitter-sweetness of having her in his arms again enough to bring him low.
"Is this what you want?" he groaned against her soft, sweet lips as his hands trailed from her shoulders down her waist to her hips where they settled with a squeeze. "Is this what you came for?" He slid his mouth over her cheek to nip at her earlobe before sending biting kisses down the sensitive side of her neck.
Her breath came in soft gasps as she clutched at his chest.
"No."
Her voice was shaky but firm and she shoved him hard enough that he jerked back to stare down at her flushed face. "No. I mean, yes, but...” She wet her lips and then met his gaze with a solemn one of her own. “I’m here because I love you. And I don’t care how much time we have together, or what I have to suffer when we part. I want to be with you if you’ll have me."
The room seemed to dip and sway as the words swirled around him like a riddle, his brain locking on the only ones that mattered.
She loved him.
Her heart was beating so loud, even Dan with his human ears could surely hear it, but he just stood there in silence, like a statue.
She’d hoped for the best, and prepared for rejection, with a plan to wear him down somehow, some way, eventually.
But this? This…nothing? Was scaring the shit out of her.
“Dan?”
“Yes.”
“Did you hear what I said?” she asked, her stomach curling in on itself as the words poured out in a desperate rush. “I was wrong. I admit it and I know I hurt you but I promise, if you forgive me, I’ll never hurt you like that again.” Hot tears filled her eyes and she cursed under her breath. No. She would not be one of those women who cried when things didn’t go her way. She was a warrior. She would stand up and fight. “If you need time, take it. If you need space, I’ll go.” She clutched a handful of his soft t-shirt in her hand before jerking his head down so they were eye to eye. “But life is short, and we’re meant to be together. I can feel it deep in my soul. So don’t take too long.”
