by Lisa Ladew
Willow stared at the text for a long time before carefully crafting a reply. I’m with my angel. Don’t wait up. I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can, but for now, we’ve got a lot going on. I’m safe. I love you.
Gently, Willow muted the text conversation and put the phone back in her pocket. She didn’t have any energy to devote to her mother just then. She was already approaching overload.
The sun had dropped behind the horizon. Willow’s bedtime was approaching, but she felt not remotely tired. Too much was going on. Her every purpose in life was culminating, and from here on out, she would be different than she was before.
She stared ahead at the road they were driving on for a long time, her thoughts twisting. As they left and threaded their way through back roads, she decided she was going to start asking her questions. There were a lot of them.
“I want to know what’s going on,” she said quietly.
“Right,” Bruin said, his voice even, his tone saying it was time.
She jumped right in. “Why do Rogue’s sisters think of me as their sister? Even Ella, the one we just met. Why is Ella hiding the fact that she’s also currently in labor from everyone in that room? She’s hiding something else, too, but she guarded it so fiercely I didn’t pry. Are you telepathic? What exactly does it mean when you think of yourself as a bear and as your friends as wolves? Why is Conri so conflicted about how he feels about you, his brother-his twin! Why do you care so much about the tattoo on your shoulder? Who told you that you were a bad person and why do you believe them? Why was that guy planning on killing those babies, and why was everyone going to let him? Even you? What does normal mean? Is he still going to kill them?” She sputtered to a stop, then asked her last question, the one that took all. “How do I fit in?”
Bruin took a deep breath in through his nose, then slowed and took a steep right into a hidden driveway that was sloped downward. He pulled in behind a practical sedan and a lump of blackened metal that once had been a truck, and parked, then hopped out. She let him come around to get her this time. He was building up his answers and his courage to tell her the absolute truth, and she was glad.
He opened her door, put his hand on her left leg, and swung her body around so she was facing out, her head in line with his. He kissed her chastely. Sweetly.
Then he stepped backward, kicked off his boots into the grass, and… changed.
His bulk and his brawn expanded through the chest and the shoulders, and hair erupted from his body the same color as what he had on his face and head. He grew a foot, two feet, and his hands turned to paws with… with monster-sized claws made for gouging and tearing. His clothes ripped from his body with a Velcro sound, falling in pieces to the grass.
Willow yelped and shot her hands to her mouth, scrambling backward in the truck, pushing with her feet along the bench seat, until her back hit the driver’s side door. She’d expected this, or something like this, and yet, she couldn’t handle it. The bear was massive. He pawed once in the air as his transformation completed itself, then he snuffled and cocked his head in a very Bruin-like way, and dropped onto all fours.
He was coming toward the truck! Fear gripped her, making her tremble and drool. She didn’t want to be afraid, but she could not make herself not be. A bear!
The bear rammed the open passenger door with its head, slamming it shut, then it sat down in the grass rather like a human would. It picked up the boots Bruin had kicked off delicately, awkwardly, but very deliberately, and lined them on their soles, toes touching with the driveway, in the manner anyone would when they first took off their shoes when entering the house.
Willow closed her mouth by pushing up on her jaw with her palm, then she wiped her face once, twice. Her mind would not process this. Would not accept what she was seeing.
She breathed hard, in and out, her chest expanding forcefully, her mind rebelling monstrously. Bear. Bear. Bear. Bear. The bear didn’t even look at her. It scratched its leg, then stretched its neck, then curled its top lip and snuffled again like it was scenting the air. Little by little, she quieted. Her thundering heart returned to normal. The frantic pace of her thoughts slowed and calmed.
She’d known. She really had. She’d known from the first time she’d seen bear in his mind that he was… whatever he was, but she hadn’t been able to believe herself. Her mind called up the image of the tattooed guy near Shay’s bedside who’d seen the babies in her belly as horned monsters. Willow could believe he could turn into a wolf, that guy, with his shrewd, narrow eyes and the quiet, coiled strength in his body, even while it was relaxed. Mac, too. Plenty of the others, too. What about the women? Was Rogue a wolf? Willow shook her head. No, Rogue was whatever she, Willow, was. Not a wolf. Not a bear. A human, and part… angel.
The reality of the situation slammed into Willow like a tackle and she yelped, then covered her mouth, still watching the massive bear on the grass. He flopped over onto his back and rolled like a dog might, then tore at the clover with his claws. Willow laughed in spite of herself. Huge he might be, bear he might be, capable of extreme violence in awful circumstances-he might be that also, but he was still her Bruin.
Willow dropped her hands to her lap, then opened the door she was pressed up against. She put one foot on the ground, then the other, then slammed the door behind her, removing any means of quick escape. She minced along the front of the truck, then took a deep breath, and strode instead, straight to the bear. She stopped only when she was well within his reach, forcing herself to get close. He pushed himself into that goofy human sitting position again, his head much taller than hers.
She held her breath until he stilled, then forced herself to relax. “They really are my sisters,” she breathed.
The bear-Bruin, nodded once.
“The angel, he is their father, too.”
Bruin cocked his massive head to the side, like a smart dog will do when its confused. Willow reached out with a trembling hand, running light fingers over its brown fur. Coarse. Thick. beautiful. The big bear shuddered and its eyes slipped closed.
“There really is a demon, isn’t there?”
Bruin’s entire countenance changed. He heaved himself to his feet and turned in a circle, head high, nose quivering. Then he turned back around to face Willow. He nodded once. Definitively.
“Can you talk to me telepathically?” she said.
He did that inquisitive dog look again, and a thought-form appeared around his head. But it was the laser beam thought-form, and it took off from him and shot to her. She felt it come. Clear speech in her head. Let me try.
She smiled and clapped her hands together. “I can hear you!” She stared hard at him and spoke out loud. “Let me try, now.” But she didn’t need to see his head shake to know it hadn’t worked. She’d created a thought-form like he’d done, a kind of packet to send to him, but she couldn’t figure out how to get it to detach from her and shoot to him. “I can’t do it.”
He waved a ham-sized paw. We’ll practice.
She stared at him, then circled around him, lightly running a finger over his front legs and broad back and fur-covered belly. His thought-forms were all caught in his fur, staying close to his body, and when she stirred one up with her finger, she could feel it, grab it, sense it. “I can read you easier like this.” She bit her lip, thinking. “Your thought-forms are different than when you are-ah, when you are human. Like this they are simpler, with less emotion attached to them. I can get more pure thought.”
Bruin held his paws wide. Take what you want, Willow. Anything I have to give is yours, including my thoughts, emotions, desires, my body, and my life.
Willow shivered. His plain and open declarations always did her in. Even in this form, she could feel his love for her shining out at her. Especially in this form. It felt so good and big and solid, like it would always be there, like nothing could disrupt it.
She circled him, letting his thoughts flow to her. Examining them. Doing her best to be open
to everything that disrupted her world view, both her world view as a human, and her world view as someone expecting an angel to come for her.
Chapter 24
Willow stepped gingerly over the funny welcome mat into Bruin’s home, looking around curiously. Bruin had shifted-she’d learned that was the word for what he did when he changed from a human to a bear, or back-then led her inside. She’d turned her back when he did both, so she’d only seen a bit of the back side of him naked. That broad expanse of back and masculine ass had made her eager for more, though. She played with her new perception of him as a man who could change into a massive bear, and thought she was ok with it. It was even a bit sexy. Sexier every time she thought of it.
He’d gone down a short hallway and disappeared into a room.
When she looked around inside, the first thing she saw was a telescope pointed out a sliding glass door at the back of the house. She walked over to it, then pressed her body against the door, gazing in the direction the telescope was pointed at. It was dark, almost midnight she thought, and she couldn’t see anything but the lights of the city beyond, but she knew in the morning she would see the bluff, and her beehives. It made her smile to know he’d been watching her from afar. It made her feel safe, like he’d always been protecting her.
She turned slowly, taking in Bruin’s house, the pictures on the wall, and the neat-as-a-pin kitchen. Would she still be here in the morning to look back out this door? She decided right then that she would be. She nodded to herself. If he would have her, she would be.
She strolled to the far wall as Bruin came back in the room, dressed again. She wanted to point to the pictures and ask, “Are any of these guys the BOGI?” She’d seen the word, just that way in Bruin’s mind, but she wasn’t quite sure what it meant. Someone who was close to him. Someone he hadn’t met but would look up to when he knew who it was. She recognized Conri on the wall, and noted the resemblance in the other three men that told her they were also brothers to Bruin and Conri.
Before she could say a word, Bruin came up behind her, wrapping her body into his with his long arms. She didn’t need to be an empath to feel the relief rolling off his body in waves. There was a desperation to him, too, though, like he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing, but he also couldn’t help himself. She turned in his arms, wanting to reassure him. They weren’t doing anything they shouldn’t be. In fact, if she had read his thoughts correctly, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing, and the sooner they ended up sleeping together, the better for the fight against the demon. Cane. Kane. Something.
She had babies to make, and the fact that she’d been told so her entire life made it easier to accept. So it was with a bear, and not an angel-so what? She was still in it to win it and do her part.
Willow stood on tiptoes and cupped Bruin’s cheek. “Kiss me,” she whispered to him. He did, catching her lips with his, pulling her to him with a thick purr that vibrated his chest against hers. Hot, thick longing shot through her, making her ache for him. How lucky was she that her… mate, Bruin would have said, so mate it was, how lucky was she that her mate was a man she would have picked for herself if given the chance. At that moment, she believed it all, wanted it all, gave herself over to her destiny. Surrendered.
She curled her fingers around the back of Bruin’s neck, urging him to her. She played with his mouth, using her own tongue and lips to tease him to what she hoped was a foregone conclusion. He held her close, and he kissed her and kissed her and so thoroughly kissed her that she again felt like she had in the place called Helltopia, just before he’d set her off like a firecracker: hot, wet, and primed to explode with just a touch.
“Your bedroom, Bruin, I want to go to it.”
He picked her up smoothly, wrapping her thighs around his middle and supporting her under her ass as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him. He moved with her, smoothly, surely, then his body dropped slightly as he made his way down stairs. She held on to him as he took her to where he would take her.
Down into cool stillness, then to the left, then placing her gently on her feet next to a pristine bed. She couldn’t see much about the room because it was dark, but enough moonlight flooded in the basement window to tell her it was a bedroom with no pictures on the wall and carpet under her feet. She pulled Bruin back down to her, then edged both of them onto the bed, sweet anticipation making her pant.
Bam! The bed collapsed on its supports and crashed to the floor. Willow threw her arms out in shock, staring at Bruin in the bit of moonlight on his face. He looked as freaked as she felt.
She giggled. “We broke your bed.”
He shook his head. “Not my bed.”
She giggled harder. “Is this your room?”
He nodded.
She peered at him, then sat up. “Do you sleep on the floor or something?”
Bruin licked his lips and looked toward the closet door, then back at her, indecision in his being. Then he strode to the door and opened it, showing her the unbelievably soft looking bed beyond.
It must have held a hundred blankets piled on top of each other and twice as many pillows. They were stuffed in there and smashed flat from being slept on. The closet was a decent-sized walk-in. Big enough for several people to stand in, and the size of it made the bed look cozy, but grand.
She walked to it, touching the top blanket tentatively. You sleep in here?”
Bruin nodded. “It feels right.”
Willow looked at him sharply, realizing for the first time how much the man-Bruin acted on the bear-Bruin’s instincts. Everything had to feel right for him.
He shrugged and leaned against the door, pulling her close to him and speaking softly. “After my nan died, and my ma, my little brothers wouldn’t sleep for days. They would only cry, and if they drifted off for a few minutes, they would startle awake at the end of the sleep cycle, crying for Ma, for milk, for hugs. Dad was a complete mess, as were all our uncles. We were left to fend for ourselves, forgotten in the grief and outrage of a species. The males of the family were particularly hard on me-” he glanced at her, deep in her eyes, asking if she understood why that was and she nodded. She’d picked enough of it out of his mind to know he’d been blamed for something he couldn’t have done, but that it didn’t matter. If enough people thought that about you for long enough, and if you were just a little cub when it started, you forgot to believe in yourself, you remembered what the others remembered, even if it hadn’t happened that way.
He nodded back, then kept talking. “Sometimes they would come and snatch me away from Conri and the little ones who we were comforting as best we could. It didn’t matter what time of the day or night it was, they would snatch me into another room and shake me and demand to know how I knew what I did, threaten to skin me if I didn’t tell them why I hadn’t tried harder to make them see.” He shuddered and she hugged him, trying to lend that young him strength. He cleared his throat. “It was hard on me, but harder on the little cubs, and it got to the point where none of us were sleeping at all. Until Conri got the idea to move all our mattresses into the smallest bedroom, all the blankets and pillows, too. When it was done, the entire floor was mattresses and we all burrowed in that one big bed with all the blankets and pillows in the house. The little ones finally slept.”
Willow ran one hand over Bruin’s back. “They both died on the same day,” she said softly.
His voice was choked with emotion. “They all did. Every single one of them. Aunts, nans, moms, sisters, cousins, nieces. I don’t know how we lived through it.”
Willow hugged him tighter, mentally pulling at the grief entwined in his thought-form. She could help with strong emotions, get them moving out of a person, pain too, sometimes. The only trick was not catching them inside her, but instead funneling them somewhere. Somewhere else.
It seemed to help. He quieted, and so did his thought-form. But the BOGI was still there, flashing at the forefront of his mind like a
slick neon sign. He would tell her when he was ready.
She held him tightly, her need momentarily cooled by his thick emotions. Distraction was what he needed right now. “Do you want to hear what the angel, my father, told my mom?”
Bruin tightened his hold on her, but didn’t speak. She closed her eyes and recalled the angel’s speech, then repeated it out loud.
“Our daughter will be a queen among the barren. She will save them with her touch, her love, and her special connection with the barren who will lead them. She will save, he will lead, and all will be right in the end. This I foresee.”
Bruin grasped her upper arms so tightly it hurt and she cried out. He let go immediately, shaking his hands and apologizing. He touched her again, more gently.
She said it again, softly, then shook her head. “It’s not barren, is it?”
“Bearen,” Bruin said, his voice far away. “B-e-a-r-e-n.”
She frowned. “Why does that make you so sad?”
“Because,” he said. “It means you don’t belong to me. There is a great leader who will soon be revealed to the bearen. He’s known only as the Bear of Great Insight and because of him, we are all restored.” He rubbed the back of his left shoulder absently while he spoke. “You’re his, Willow.”
Willow poked him. “If I’m anyone’s, I’m yours.”
He shook his head sadly, a thought-form of remorse twisting around his shoulders.
Willow grabbed his chin, unable to stomach his thoughts or his feelings. “Stop it,” she hissed at him. “I’m going to lay this out for you plainly, Bruin. I’m in, I’m all in on this demon-fighting, baby-making stuff. But I get to decide who I belong to, and it is not some guy I’ve never met. Right now, I’m yours, all yours.” Too late, she realized her mistake. Those two words, right now. Because that could change, couldn’t it.
He was shaking his head, but his voice was still hopeful. “Rogue thinks I’m the BOGI.”
