by T. S. Joyce
Everly froze as the man stared at the bite mark on her shoulder blade with something akin to fury in his expression.
She tried to cover it up as tears stung her eyes. The plan had been to hide that mistake until the day she died, but now this man had witnessed her seizure and her scar. She was pretty sure today couldn’t get any worse.
He zipped her dress up slowly, then leaned over her lap and opened the glove compartment. A trio of yellow notepads sat in there with a new box of pens. He pulled out what he wanted and slammed the glove box closed. The sound of a pen scratching on paper filled the pickup.
Who claimed you? he wrote.
She shook her head and frowned, baffled. “What does that mean?”
With an impatient sigh, he scribbled, Who bit you?
That little gem she was taking to her grave. There was only so much mortification she could handle in one day, so she shook her head defiantly. “That’s none of your business.”
A muscle twitched under the man’s eye. Gray Back or Boarlander?
Everly rubbed her face, then clenched her fists in her lap. “I don’t know what that question means. Look, thank you for helping me in the restaurant, but I think I need to go home. I don’t feel very well.” And it was clear as a creek she’d gotten herself trapped in the cab of a truck with a nut job.
But when the man turned on his ride and straightened it out, he didn’t head back for town. Instead, he headed farther into the mountains and past logging signs that warned tourists away. And now, she was getting really nervous she’d found herself in a spot she didn’t need to be in with a man she didn’t really know. Again.
“What’s your name?” she asked, hoping to start a conversation that would remind him she was a person so he wouldn’t serial-kill her.
He didn’t answer, of course. Instead, he turned on a classic rock station and didn’t look over at her once. And when he pulled under a sign that read Boarland Mobile Park, he didn’t offer any explanation.
She turned, utterly baffled on why he’d brought her to a trailer park in the middle of the wilderness. “What are we doing here?”
The man gave her a narrow-eyed, impatient look and stopped his truck in front of the first trailer. He got out and flung the door closed.
“Seriously! Why did you bring me here?” she called.
He scribbled something onto the yellow notepad and slammed it against the window.
In dark, angry pen strokes, he’d written, I’m taking you home.
Chapter Three
Brighton couldn’t remember being this pissed off at anyone, other than that fuckwad, Reynolds. Even Denison didn’t get under his skin like this, and he was his pain-in-the-ass twin brother. No, Everly Moore definitely took the prize for riling him up.
All she had to do was answer his question about who’d claimed her. She’d guarded her answer like some damned dragon protecting treasure. What did he care who’d bit her? He just needed to know who to take her back to and who needed a verbal beat down for allowing a dangerous shifter in town—unescorted. Whoever her maker was had put Brighton and all of his people in danger by allowing her out into the world with no control over her animal.
He stormed the tiny trailer with the office sign hanging lopsided over the mold-riddled door. Harrison was alpha here, and if Brighton was lucky, he’d have an answer on where he needed to dump Everly. As far as alphas went, Harrison wasn’t bad. Hell, he’d had a drink with him on a couple of occasions with Denison and Tagan. He was really hoping Everly belonged here with the Boarlanders and not with the Gray Backs. Those idiots were less savory in general.
He banged on the door, then stood back. And when no one immediately answered, he banged again. Boarlanders trickled from their trailers, one by one, and silently watched him glare daggers at the alpha’s house.
Rustling sounded from inside, and Brighton crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the porch railing.
Harrison opened the door, squinting into the sunlight like he’d been sleeping. “Brighton? What are you doing here, man?”
Brighton jerked his chin toward the truck where Everly was staring at them with her mouth hanging open.
“Who’s she?” Harrison asked, rubbing his dark eyes sleepily, then running his fingers through his sandy-blond hair in a half-assed attempt to straighten it.
Brighton scribbled across the pad of paper, Please tell me she’s one of your claims.
Harrison read the note, and his eyebrows shot up. “She’s a bear?” He looked back at the tiny woman in the truck and shook his head. “She ain’t one of ours. My boys aren’t ready for mates. None of their bears are interested right now, and I laid down orders last year to run potential claims by me first.”
Dread thumped painfully in Brighton’s chest. That was bad news. Can you make sure?
“Boys,” Harrison called to the seven shifters gathering around the porch. “Answer me one at a time. Did you claim that girl?”
A short, stout man in his mid-thirties shook his head and answered, “No.”
A tall, muscled, Viking-looking shifter followed immediately. “No.”
Five more negative answers and not a single false note in any of their voices. Shee-yit. If she was a Gray Back, no wonder she was fucked up.
Thanks, Brighton wrote, then nodded respectfully to the alpha before stepping down the porch stairs.
“Hey, Brighton?” Harrison called after him.
Brighton paused and turned, waited.
“Look, I’ve talked to Jake, and he said his crew is doing the same thing as mine. Their bears aren’t looking for mates, except for one. Matt Barns. You know him?”
Brighton nodded and hoped to God Everly wasn’t Matt’s claim. He had been a powerful ally to have in the battle at the landing a few months back, but the cagey shifter wasn’t overly nice to women. Brighton and Denison had pounded his face up a few times at Sammy’s bar for pushing women too far, too fast. If Everly was his, no wonder she hadn’t wanted to tell Brighton who made her.
“Look, you want my advice?” Harrison asked. “If you ain’t a hundred percent sure she’s Matt’s mate, I wouldn’t go parading her in front of the Gray Backs. You don’t want them knowing there is an available female bear in the territory, if you catch my drift.”
Oh, Brighton caught that drift just fine. She’d have every bear in that Gray Back camp vying for a skinny dip in her pants. They’d be relentless. A lady bear was able to handle rougher bedroom antics than a fragile human.
He nodded his head in silent thanks, then strode back to the truck.
The Boarlanders were a hardworking cutter crew who chopped down the lumber on the new job sites the Ashe crew was ordered to clear. They were nice guys for the most part, though extremely competitive. Perhaps Brighton had made a misstep coming in, guns blazing, ready to dump Everly onto them. Already, the Viking shifter had taken a couple of steps toward the truck as Brighton reversed. Even if their bears weren’t ready to settle down and commit to a mate, that didn’t mean they didn’t like sex.
“Why are they looking at me like that?” Everly’s voice trembled from the passenger’s seat.
Her hands were clenched in her lap, and the bitter scent of fear wafted from her skin. It tore at him, so he rested his hand over the thin fabric of her dress and squeezed her thigh. Heat flooded into his fingertips, and he yanked his hand away. Everly gasped, as if she’d felt it, too.
Brighton looked down at his hand, half-expecting it to be red where his fingers had touched her. When nothing was amiss, he turned the truck around and headed back down the single lane dirt road, determined not to look at her again until he figured out what to do next.
Whoever Everly Moore was, she was affecting his snarling bear like a drug.
And for the life of him, Brighton couldn’t figure out if that was a good thing or a very, very bad thing.
****
Everly was terrified. Those men back there had shifted their attention to her immediately,
and their eyes—they weren’t right. They looked hungry in ways that made her skin crawl.
Back on the main road, the man, Brighton, the blond-haired guy at the trailer park had called him, pulled the truck to the side of the road. He breathed deeply, shoulders lifting, and stared out the front window as the steering wheel made a pathetic creaking sound under his choke-hold grip.
When he looked back at her, his eyes looked different, too. Lighter than before, but perhaps it was a trick of the saturated afternoon sunlight bouncing off the hood of his truck and against his face.
He mouthed something and gestured to her shoulder blade, but she didn’t catch it. She hadn’t been paying enough attention to his lips with his eyes holding her frozen.
I need to know who bit you, he mouthed again.
Heat flooded her cheeks, and she sank back against the cool window. Slowly, she shook her head. “I can’t.”
Can you tell me who didn’t bite you?
“What do you mean?”
Was it Matt Barns?
“I’ve never heard of him.”
Brighton waited with his dark eyebrows arched high.
“No. It wasn’t him. Why is the stupid mark so important to you?” Because it was sure as sugar flakes mortifying to her, and she definitely didn’t want to keep talking about it every five minutes.
Brighton’s shoulders fell, and he leaned his head back against the seat, chin up as he narrowed his eyes and stared above the truck at the branches that bent and swayed under the will of the wind.
He rolled his head toward her again, and this time he didn’t look so severe. Instead, his eyes had cooled, and he looked resigned. Slowly, he mouthed, Where do you live?
“Twelve twenty-three Rochester Avenue, apartment B. Back down in Saratoga.” For now. The eviction notice her landlord had left on her front door this morning was about to ruin her life even more than it already was.
Brighton nodded and turned the music back up, apparently dismissing any further discussion, and proceeded to ignore her the entire way down the winding mountain roads and switchbacks, all the way to the curb in front of her apartment building.
“Great,” she said, feeling awkward. “Well, it was nice to meet you, I think.” She hesitated at the strange sensation of saying goodbye to someone who had made her feel steady for the first time in months, then slid from the truck and made her way toward her front door, pulling her keys from her satchel as she went.
The engine cut off, and the sound of a slamming door and crunching boot steps in the gravel behind her was loud against her new, and annoying, sensitive ears. Six months of hearing every little cricket chirp and cat meow two blocks over. If the seizures didn’t drive her to insanity, her forever tingling eardrums would.
She turned her suspicious gaze on Brighton as he followed her to the front door. “No need to walk me. I’m perfectly safe now.”
He muscled past her, plucking the keys from her grip, then unlocked the door to apartment B and barged into her house. What in the hell did he think he was doing?
She followed him in as red anger blasted through her veins. “Brighton!”
He turned and canted his head as a curious smile took his lips. She was stunned into silence at how that little smirk transformed his face. Without the anger, he was quite handsome. His nostrils flared, and he made his way down the hallway and to her bedroom.
“Look, I think you got the wrong idea,” she said, following directly. “I’m not inviting you to sleep with me. Not that you aren’t an attractive man and all with your brooding silence and nice arms…and your pecs and incredibly defined abs. But beards aren’t my thing.”
Brighton spun in the door frame of her room, humor quirking his lips. He stroked his beard thoughtfully as his gaze dipped to her lips. Then he turned and headed straight for her dresser. And when he reached that, he yanked open the top drawer and began pulling out her panties—her panties!— as if they were BFFs.
“What are you doing?” she screeched, shoving them back in the drawer.
Irritatingly, he pulled them back out again and stacked them on her bed.
Shocked and embarrassed, she sat on them to hide the mortifying mixture of cotton hipsters and lacy see-throughs. Hooking his hands on his hips, he frowned at her as she sat on the pile as if she was trying to hatch an egg.
Fine, he mouthed. Then you do it.
“Do what?”
Pack.
“Pack for where?”
You can’t stay here. His lips formed the words slowly, deliberately. Not like this and not alone. You’ll come home with me.
“Come home with you,” she repeated. He’d lost his damned mind. Or perhaps he didn’t have it to begin with. “I’m absolutely not coming home with you. You just took me into the wilderness and paraded me in front of a bunch of hungry-looking mountain men who probably haven’t seen a girl in years, and now you want me to come home with you? That isn’t what normal people say yes to Brighton.”
Brighton made a single click sound behind his teeth, then pulled a notebook and pen from his back pocket. You wanted to eat by me today. Why?
“It wasn’t to sleep with you or chase some common-law marriage with you or anything like that, if that’s what you think.”
Brighton silently scoffed. I have no interest in any kind of marriage to you. I’m offering to help you. I don’t want you at my house any more than you want to be there.
“Then why are you asking me?” Her voice was pitching higher, but damn it all, he was pissing her off. Not only that, but now he was making her feel completely undesirable with his smirk that said he didn’t even find her remotely attractive. She’d already had her fill of low self-esteem, thanks to the last man she gave that kind of power to.
Crimson was creeping up Brighton’s neck as he glared her down. He shook his head as his pen scratched away at the paper, stabbing holes in a couple of places. You can’t stay here. Not like you are. It isn’t safe for you or anyone else.
She clenched her fists and stifled a shriek that was clawing its way up the back of her throat.
The anger fell from Brighton’s face as his eyes roved over her arms and neck. He shook his head and made a calming gesture with his hands, palms facing her. No, no, no, he mouthed, but she wouldn’t be settled down now. He was being ridiculous and pig-headed and—
Queasiness stabbed through her middle a split second before her body froze up on her. Helplessly, she dropped to the floor. She stared at the white ceiling fan, spinning lazily above where she had left it on all day. The sea foam green walls closed in on her by inches as her stomach lurched like she was falling from the top of a roller coaster. And just as her head was about to hit the Berber carpet, he was there. Brighton. Just like he had been before, with the same worried moue to his lips. With the same concerned frown as he cradled her head against his thighs. His muscles were tense and made a terrible pillow, but right now, all she knew was pain. Lightning bolts zinged up her spine, but she was unable to arch her back to relieve the burning sensation. She couldn’t draw breath, and her teeth clamped down until her jaw felt like red, hot agony.
She was going to suffocate. She was going to die right here in Brighton’s arms.
Her lungs burned for oxygen as the outer edges of her vision collapsed inward, growing dimmer until all she could see were Brighton’s eyes. They were the color of melted metal, churning like ocean waves as he gritted his teeth and searched her face. Hallucinations. Another symptom to add to the list.
But even with those demon eyes, he looked like he cared, and if she had to go, at least she wasn’t alone. At least she was with someone who would feel sad after she was gone.
Chapter Four
The smell of fresh, homemade rolls and butter woke Everly up. Her Sunday school teacher had once told her there was no hunger in heaven, so Everly knew she hadn’t keeled over just yet. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was exposed rafter beams above her. She was in a small cabin and stretched acr
oss the only couch in the living room. A stone fireplace nestled crackling flames, which seemed to be the only light in the place besides a lantern that sat on a small dining room table. It illuminated a plate of steaming food.
She sat up and pushed the green and blue plaid blanket Brighton must’ve covered her with off her lap. Movement in the shadows by the fireplace drew her gaze. Brighton stood from a crouching position. She could only make out his outline and his eyes, which were reflecting strangely in the soft glow from the hearth. Silently, he approached, then offered an oversize, calloused hand.
It felt dangerous to touch him with his eyes all bright like that. He kicked up something about her instincts she’d never felt before. Safe one moment, at risk the next. He waited, staring steadily at her, so she had no choice but to touch him. She slid her palm against his. Tendrils of numbing warmth traveled from her fingertips to her wrist, settling whatever hunch had told her to be wary.
He pulled her up surprisingly easily, as if her weight was no more than air. Then he placed his hand on her lower back and guided her to the kitchen table. She thought he would sit and eat with her, but instead, he backed away and leaned his hips against the woodgrain countertop in his small kitchen. He crossed an arm over his middle and bit his thumbnail as she placed a napkin in her lap.
“Did you cook all this?” she asked, staring at the steak, cubed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and a smaller plate with two rolls, sopping with melted butter.
He nodded once.
“Well, color me impressed.”
Shoving off the counter, he reached for a cabinet and pulled out a glass. When it was full of water, he set it in front of her and pulled the notepad out of his back pocket.
You’re too skinny.
She frowned in disapproval. “Rude.”
He sat in the chair next to her and scribbled away. Something is wrong with you, but you don’t smell sick.
“Also rude to comment on people’s smells. And I know something is wrong with me. I lost my dad-gummed job waiting tables because of the stupid seizures. And now they come faster and faster, but when I took the medicine my doctor gave me, it only made me sicker.”
