by Zoe Chant
"I have a job back in St. Louis," Crystal said. "Mainly we're fixing the place up to sell."
But she sounded wistful as she said it. Cody and his bear both pricked up their ears.
"Awww, you're leaving?" Daisy said.
Tara gave Cody a very pointed look.
"Of course she's not leaving," Gannon said. "She's Cody's mate."
Cody stopped with a forkful of potato salad halfway to his mouth.
"Mate?" Crystal said.
It might have been possible to laugh it off as a figure of speech if everyone in the group hadn't stopped eating in one shared moment of paralysis. Tara winced, Gannon looked puzzled, and the other two girls just looked thoroughly confused.
Daisy was the first to break into a smile. "What? She's your mate? Congratulations! Why didn't you tell us?"
"Because," Cody said, glaring at Gannon, "it was a secret."
"Remind me not to tell you any of my secrets," Tara told Gannon.
The big man's face fell. "I'm good at keeping secrets," he muttered. "I just didn't know it was a secret."
Tara's expression immediately crumpled. "Gannon, I'm sorry. I was teasing you. I do that with Alec and Axl all the time. I forget that not everyone knows when I'm joking." She put an arm around him, pulling him into a sideways hug. He looked startled; people didn't hug him much.
Daisy hugged her mate from the other side. "We know you didn't mean any harm. But why is it a secret?"
"I have no idea what's happening," Crystal said plaintively. "I feel like the last person to understand the in-joke. Will someone tell me what's going on?"
"Wait a minute," Saffron said, looking at Cody with a frown. "If she doesn't know that, does she know about the, uh, the rest of it? Does she know about claiming?"
"Claiming?" Crystal said, her eyes wide.
Cody stood up quickly. Now that the cat had not just left the bag but hurtled out of it at supersonic speed, he needed to get this under control as fast as possible, before Crystal ended up jumping to some very unfortunate conclusions.
Idiot, his bear grumbled at him. Told you so.
I know! Trust me, I know!
"Crystal, can we talk for a minute?" he said, taking her hand.
At least she didn't pull away; she let him pull her to her feet. She looked confused, not angry.
"Back soon, folks!" Cody said over his shoulder, as he hustled Crystal away from the group and up the driveway. Behind him, he heard a hushed babble of conversation break out, and sighed. His every decision was going to be dissected in detail by the time he got back; he could tell.
"Sorry," he said, squeezing Crystal's hand.
"No need to apologize, I'm not mad." She sounded frustrated, though. "I just feel like there's an in-joke and nobody's explaining it to me. Look, I understand you don't want these people to know we're seeing each other, though obviously they've figured it out—"
"What?" he said in shock, and stopped walking, spinning her around to face him. "What on earth gave you the idea I didn't want them to know?"
Crystal stared back at him, looking equally baffled. "Well, for starters, you didn't introduce me to your hired man as a—a girlfriend or anything, just as the owner of the property. And I get that, I mean, we haven't talked about our relationship at all yet, and we both know I'm leaving soon, and I'm the one who got weird about being introduced to your family, so—" She took a deep breath and seemed to pull herself together. "So really, thinking of myself as your girlfriend is just—mmpphhh!"
Cody shut her up in the only way he could think of. He tangled his hands in her hair and kissed her with all the urgency of his desperate need to reassure her.
Oh, Crystal. You're so much more than just a girlfriend. You're my future, my heart, my soul, my everything.
Which she'd already know if you'd just tell her, his bear pointed out. She's not one of our herd of cattle, you know. Humans, for some reason, need to talk about things, and they get upset if you don't—
Yes, thank you, asshole, Cody retorted with the small part of his brain still capable of rational thought with Crystal's tongue in his mouth. Now shut up and let me kiss our mate.
9. Crystal
Crystal relaxed into Cody's kiss, sinking into the heat of the passion that his touch never failed to arouse in her.
It was such a vast relief that he wasn't ashamed of his relationship with her. She'd just assumed, when she drove up and he was acting so much cooler than usual—but no, there was something else. Something that was making him act strange; something he hadn't told her yet.
"So what's really wrong?" she asked, stroking her hand down his sweat-damp neck.
"C'mon." He curled his hand in hers. "Let's make sure we aren't going to have any interruptions."
They walked through the yard. The sounds of the creek and the voices of Cody's family had faded; now there was only birdsong.
"That's a robin!" Crystal said, cocking her head to the side. "I identified that one in the book yesterday."
Cody chuckled. "You're getting good at that."
They rounded the corner of the barn and he paused. She could have kicked herself. There were several plots of dirt where she'd been metal-detecting earlier and had dug up things which had turned out to be nails and, in one case, a silver button off a coat or dress. She'd forgotten to fill them back in.
"What are those for?" he asked, curious.
"We can talk about that later." With the barn between them and any chance of being observed or interrupted by his family, she turned him around and rested her hands at his waist, looking into his eyes. "You're here to answer my questions right now. What did she mean, claim?"
Cody sighed. "Yeah. So. I'm sorry for not talking about this earlier; I just couldn't figure out how to bring it up. How do you feel about ... shifters?"
"Shifters?" she asked, looking up into his face with his arms laced gently around her waist. "Why? Oh ..." Suddenly a bunch of different puzzle pieces snapped into place. "Are you a shifter?"
Cody dropped his gaze away from hers.
"Really? Oh my gosh! That's amazing!" She bounced on tiptoe and kissed him. "Really? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I'm starting to wonder myself," he murmured. His blue-gray eyes searched hers as if looking for condemnation, but found none. "You're okay with that?"
"I'm more than okay with it! Cody, my mom's a shifter. I didn't inherit the tendency, but I grew up knowing it might have been a possibility for me. I've just never gotten to be around any shifters other than Mom and her parents. She doesn't have a lot of close family, so I didn't grow up in the culture."
Cody broke into a slow grin, like the sun coming up. "I can't believe it. I never guessed. What's her animal type?"
"Garter snake. She doesn't shift much. She and my grandparents love to garden, though. They always say it's the shifter in them that makes them want to spend time outdoors, with grass and plants all around them, burrowing in the dirt."
Cody glanced over at the holes beside the barn. "Is that what you were doing there? Getting in touch with your shifter side?"
"No ... that's something else." Not wanting to open that can of worms quite yet, she led him around to the back of the barn where there was a pile of old fence rails they could sit on. "But tell me about it! What do you turn into? How many of your family are shifters? Wait—are all of them?"
"Of the ones you've met, just Saffron and Gannon. Oh, and Baz. We think Lexie probably is, but she hasn't shifted yet." He shook his head. "I can't believe I've been so worried and your family were shifters all along. Wow."
"So what are you all?"
"Bears," Cody said. "Most of us are bears. The only one who's not is Saffron. She's a fox."
Crystal's mouth dropped open. "You're a bear! Oh gosh. I want to see! Can I see?"
Cody hesitated, and then began to smile. "Why not? My bear agrees. He wants to meet you."
"He talks to you?"
Cody nodded. "My bear knew we were meant for each othe
r, you and I, from the moment we saw you."
We. It sounded so odd and yet so right. Her mother sometimes talked that way, too. "Well, tell him I want to meet him too," she said, and when he smiled brilliantly, she knew she'd said the right thing.
Cody hopped down off the fence rail and shed his clothes one piece at a time, baring the ruggedly gorgeous body she'd already come to love so much. This time he stripped out the tie holding his hair back in its ponytail, something he hadn't done before when they were making love, and it swung forward around his jaw and brushed across his shoulders.
Wow. Crystal had never realized that she had a thing for guys with longer hair—maybe she never had, before Cody—but she was definitely going to have to get him to let his hair down more often. Literally.
The boxers came off last, and he turned and strolled away from her, lean muscles rippling, out of the shadow of the barn into the sunlight of the fields. He turned around and grinned; she wondered if she was visibly drooling. The sun caught his hair and turned it the color of molten honey.
And then he started to lean forward, but it wasn't human hands, but bear paws, that hit the recently clipped grass.
Crystal's breath snagged somewhere between her throat and chest.
She'd seen Mom shift, so she knew it was virtually instantaneous, but somehow the process looked different on a snake. She hadn't expected it to be so seamless or so effortless for something as large as a bear, but it was a fluid and instant transition. Now the hair that gleamed in the sunlight was a grizzly's fur; the rippling muscles were massive, moving smoothly beneath the bear's pelt as he raised his head and turned toward her. His fur was light brown with gold highlights, the same color as his hair in human form.
There was something a little hesitant about him, as if he wasn't sure how she would react.
Crystal walked forward, the recently mown grass crisp beneath her feet, and held out her hand. "You're beautiful," she said quietly. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
It was hard to appreciate how big he was from a distance; the closer she got, the more enormous he seemed. She didn't think ordinary bears ever got this big. She was on eye level with the shaggy hump of his shoulder.
But when he swung his massive head to look at her, and touched his nose to her hand, she could see that it was still Cody. The bear's eyes were brown, but she thought she could catch subtle hints of blue and gray. And perhaps more importantly, she knew him. She would know him anywhere, recognize him anywhere, in whatever shape.
"So beautiful," she whispered, and buried her hands in the long fur on either side of his face.
He shifted without warning, and suddenly, instead of holding the bear's face in her hands, she was cupping Cody's strong jawline, his stubble rough under her palms. He was very close and very naked; her heart sped up, especially when he put his arms around her and pulled her close.
"Your family's right on the other side of that barn, you know," Crystal pointed out, but she allowed him to sample her lips.
"They'll give us privacy," he murmured, nibbling at the corner of her mouth.
"Awfully sure of that, are you?"
"Anyway, shifters aren't as worried about being naked as humans are. We're naked whenever we shift, after all."
"Yes, but most of your in-laws are human, and somehow I don't think anyone's gonna be happy to come around the corner and find us making love in a field. And," she added, gasping as he nipped lightly at her neck, "that's what's gonna happen if you don't—oh!—get some clothes on."
She got a grip on herself and planted her hands on his firm, muscular chest, pushing him away. Cody grinned and resisted for a moment before allowing himself to be gently removed from her person. Hand in hand, they strolled back over to where he'd left his pile of clothing.
"I want a rain check on that lovemaking in the field," Cody said, reaching for his boxers.
A warm shiver went through Crystal's body at the memory of Cody laying her down in the grass, gently exploring her with hands and mouth ... "Yes," she said, drinking him in with her gaze as he leaned over, muscles flexing, to pick up his jeans. "Yes, definitely. Rain check. I hope this doesn't sound stupid, but ..." She trailed off.
Cody raised his rainwater eyes to hers as he buttoned his shirt. "Nothing you say could ever sound stupid to me."
"Don't put that to the test," she teased. "No, it's just that ... I've had boyfriends before. But nothing ever felt like this. You and I—it just feels so right and so perfect."
"You're my mate," Cody said. All the flirtatious playfulness dropped away as he stepped forward to take her in his arms, right there in the shadow of the barn. "Of course it feels right. You are right for me, right and perfect, more right than anyone else could ever be."
Crystal squirmed a little in his arms so she could look up at his face. His hands settled on her waist and she looped her arms lightly over his high, broad shoulders. "Gannon said something about that earlier. I thought it was just a figure of speech, but the way everyone else reacted ... That word has a special meaning for you, doesn't it?"
"All shifters have a fated mate," Cody said. "One person in all the world who's right for us."
"Like ... a soulmate, you mean?"
"Kind of. Your parents didn't tell you about fated mates?"
Crystal shook her head. "Maybe they didn't want to get my hopes up. I'm only half shifter, after all. They wouldn't have wanted me to spend my whole life hoping for a soulmate if there wasn't one out there for me."
"Makes sense." Cody brushed her hair off her neck. As his fingers stroked across the sensitive skin, she shivered in pleasure. "There's one more thing you probably don't know about. You said your mother was the shifter in the family, right? Did she have a scar on her neck?"
"She doesn't, but my grandmother does."
"It's called a claiming mark. Not all shifter clans do it, but most do. It makes the mate bond take hold. Once you've claimed your mate, the bond is permanent and can never be broken."
"It already feels permanent," she murmured, gazing up into his eyes.
"I know, but ... once we take that step, we can never be anywhere but at each other's side. We won't want to be."
She already didn't want to be.
But then the practical side of her personality clamored quietly in the back of her head, reminding her of St. Louis, of her job and parents and friends and life.
Once she made this choice, her future would be set. Her future would be Cody, always and forever.
And she could see already that taking him away from Pinerock County would be unfair. No more time than they'd spent together, she could see how his life was here, in the same way hers was there. Only more so, because she didn't have any strong ties to Missouri in the same way that he was tied to this place. Like many children of farm families, his roots went very deep in the land.
But so do mine. This is where I come from too.
Before she came here, she couldn't have imagined living somewhere that didn't have any decent coffee shops or big bookstores, no nightclubs or concerts, not even reliable cell phone service. The idea of spending two weeks in Pinerock County had made her nervous. She'd thought there was a good chance she would get desperately bored, pack up her metal detector, and head back to the city within a week.
The thing was, though ... she wasn't bored. She actually liked it here. She was starting to learn the names of some of the birds and flowers. The startling thought struck her that maybe, just maybe, she could be happy here—
"There you two are!"
Tara and Daisy came around the corner of the barn, Tara carrying Lexie. Saffron wasn't far behind, and Gannon brought up the rear.
Crystal had to laugh. Leaning close, she whispered to Cody, "So they're gonna give us privacy, right?"
"Hey, I've been wrong before," he whispered back sheepishly.
"We would've just been getting to the good part right about now ..."
This sent both of them into quiet hysterics
. Saffron rolled her eyes at them with a smile and set down Baz so he could investigate a butterfly that had landed on the side of the barn. "Care to share the joke?"
"No," Cody said, wiping his eyes. "No, I love you guys, but we really, really do not care to share."
Daisy, with slightly more tact, said, "We're sorry to bother you. It's just that—"
"I wanted to say I'm sorry," Gannon rumbled. "For blurting it out. I didn't know."
"Me too," Saffron said. "None of us knew."
"You have nothing to apologize for." Crystal hesitated, but she reminded herself that these women were part of Cody's family, part of his clan—and that meant in some way, they were part of her family now, too. She went forward and pulled Saffron into a somewhat awkward hug.
Saffron hugged her back enthusiastically. Then Tara pulled her into another hug, and Daisy piled on.
Once Crystal managed to extract herself, she looked up at Gannon—big intimidating mountain of a man—and gave him a tentative hug as well. He patted her back awkwardly.
Looking around, she saw Cody watching with a look of adoration, and she knew she'd done exactly the right thing.
His family meant a lot to him, and having her get along with them meant the world.
Saffron, meanwhile, had gone to scoop up Baz, who had wandered off to play in the piles of dirt from Crystal's earlier digging expeditions. "Gopher problems?" she asked. "You know, we can probably help with that."
"It's not gophers," Crystal said. "It was ... uh ... me."
"You needed some holes dug, you should've said," Cody said with a grin. "I could've helped. These aren't good fence holes, though. They're too close together."
"They're not fence holes." Crystal paused and took a deep breath. She felt as if she was poised on the edge of a precipice.
But ... why not? She'd wanted to keep her grandfather's secret because she didn't want to risk rumors getting around town and bringing hordes of treasure seekers descending on the family homestead.
But she trusted Cody's family not to spread it around. And they might be able to help her. Between all of them, it was possible someone had heard a rumor that might narrow down what she was looking for.
