Cole kissed my cheek. It was a warm, unexpected gift. “Yes, so will we. Trust me. Because no one else gets you.”
I straightened my clothes and followed them downstairs and out the front door. The temperature had severely dropped while I’d been inside. Rylan’s eyes turned bear. Was it the cold or something else?
Weather seemed like it really played a huge factor in their lives
“I had to see for sure.” The shifter called Mark looked like an older gentleman to me, as if he were a top level Union employee. He had thick, gray hair and brown eyes. “I had to make sure you weren’t completely different from your father and this wasn’t some kind of a trick.”
I put my hand on Rylan’s back. I wasn’t even sure why, but it seemed like he might need me. I leaned into him, and some of his muscles unclenched.
Finn was very still. “I’ve been leading this world for thirty years. At any time you wanted to know me, to learn who I was, you could have come here. I haven’t been hiding. I am available to everyone.”
“A bear come seeking help?” Mark laughed. “You know we’d all rather die. No, seriously, you are a good leader. But one hundred years ago, your father advised me to hide my truth from the world. Last night, you threw that on its heel.”
The old man walked toward me, and a growl sounded in Rylan’s throat. Cole took a step back, placing himself more in front of me. Mark stopped, his gaze moving to Rylan. “You’re not quite one hundred yet. I forgot. You were the surprise. Your mother thought she couldn’t have any more when no one came for so long after Cole. Then there was you, Rylan. Your fathers were joyous. But you hardly knew them. Sixty years is not enough. Not when so many of them are spent battling the bear. I’ll give you some advice from an old man who knew the men who would have made you a man. In case your brothers haven’t told you: don’t posture. If you mean to fight me, then growl at me. Otherwise, don’t.”
Rylan’s smile was slow and menacing. I let go of his back. I knew that look. I’d seen it on the faces of men all over the galaxy. Aggression mixed with pissed off male. That meant someone was going to be in pain. I hoped it wasn’t me.
“If I meant to fight you, you would know. I’m young, but I’m deadly. And, Jessica, don’t be afraid. I’d never hurt you. Ever.”
Mark nodded. “You don’t need to hurt me. I’m an old mated man. I am not after your woman. Not to take her or hurt you. I’m here to help you.”
“Mated?” Finn called out. I noted he hadn’t interfered with Rylan. What would Finn, who was the leader, have done if Rylan had decided to actually attack Mark? There were a lot of dynamics going on here that I didn’t understand.
In fact, now that I looked where Finn stood, they had Mark covered on all sides. What did they think he was going to do to me? Scratch that, I could imagine what they thought. They were bears.
“That’s right, Commander.” Mark used a title for Finn I hadn’t heard before. “Mated. Eighty years ago, a woman appeared on our doorstep. She begged for help. At that point, she was even begging for death. Anything to not stay as she was. She’d been attacked and held captive by the Derby clan. They had hurt her for days and days.” He looked abruptly away. “To this day, the fact that she got away awes me. Although I shouldn’t be surprised. She has never ceased to awe me. We knew immediately she was our mate. We also knew she was human.”
Someone else had mated a human? I looked between them. Finn’s expression showed nothing of what he thought. “You came to my father to tell him, and he advised you to hide her. For eighty years?”
I shook my head. “Oh, I doubt it was eighty. I mean, I guess it could be. Was she sixteen when you met her? We don’t live that long.”
Finn jolted and then covered it. I wondered if anyone else noticed. Mark nodded his head. “We really need to talk. There are things that happen. . .Being mated to us, or maybe it’s our planet, or maybe it’s something else entirely—we’ve never had the means to find out—but she’s aging much more slowly. Not on the same timeline as us. But slower. She does seem to be coming to the end of her life now.”
Rylan squeezed my hand. “We don’t live past our mates, not very long anyway. When our mother was killed during a battle, our fathers followed quickly. They just couldn’t do without her.”
I swallowed through the choking sensation of grief that might bring me down again. “Then you shouldn’t mate me.”
Mark gave me a small smile. “You don’t know because your brain doesn’t work the way that ours do, it doesn’t interpret scents you can’t consciously identify. But, it has taken you. The mating. You just have to trust it. They can feel it. So can you. Do you want to leave? My Stella kept begging to get off the planet or to die, and then it sort of shifted. A softening to it.”
I put my hand over my mouth to keep from snapping out something awful. That’s what I did when I was scared. Whatever this hormone or scent or something was having the same effect on me that it was having on them? What in the ever-loving hell was going on here?
Cole smirked. “You like how we smell too.” He put out his hand. “Come on, let’s go.”
Rylan let me go and stepped back. Finn moved around him. “Enough on this porch. You have things to say that I want to listen to. Inside. Rylan, you’re with me.”
Cole tugged me against him, walking much too slowly for his long legs but clearly wanting to keep pace with me. I shivered. The cold air hit me as my mind started to return to the present and less out of whatever that was.
“You’re cold?” He sounded so genuinely surprised I had to check his face to make sure he wasn’t joking. He didn’t seem to be. “We don’t feel the cold all that acutely when we’re walking around. It just makes us tired, much more exhausted than we would otherwise be.”
He pulled off his shirt, and suddenly, Cole was bare chested. My mouth went dry. He was sculpted like he’d been made by an artist to look that way. Rylan had been, too, now that I thought about it. I’d been able to see his muscles through the tight shirt he’d worn to bed. I’d just been distracted by other alert parts of his anatomy.
“You’re going to be freezing.”
He shook his head. “I won’t even notice.” He held out his shirt. “Put it over yours. It’ll be twice the warmth. Please.”
It really was very sweet. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
I took the offering from him and pulled it over my head. The garment was huge on me, but he was right, I was warmer. “Cole, we have a lot of things to talk about. We don’t know each other at all, and maybe that’s normal for you guys. You just sort it out with your mate, but I have to understand some things and really express to you that I have some important. . .issues.”
He nodded. “Like what?”
I made myself stand straight. “War? Can you explain that, please?”
“About every ten years it happens. As far as leadership, a male from our clan is usually in charge. But sometimes we lose. Sometimes the Derby clan—the one that had Mark’s wife—leads. Or a group like them. They tend to be hard-core traditionalists. They don’t want humans here. They pretty much want us to negate all but the most basic technology. Like we should all be living in caves. Somehow, there is a portion of the population that always supports that crap.” He looked away and then finally back to me. “They will come for us. It’s okay. They’ve tried before.”
My ears rang. “Cole, before I go any further, I have to tell you that I lash out and yell when I’m frightened or angry. I don’t know any other way to respond. I’m trying not to right now. Here in the woods where you are shirtless and sweet.”
Half of his mouth went up in a smile. “Okay. You yell. That’s okay. No one has ever died from being yelled at. I don’t think.”
Some of the ringing stopped. Not all of it, but some. “The three of you are going to battle in a war? The three of you against all those people? Because of me?”
“No.” He tugged me to him in a hug. “The three of us and
thousands more. They have their supporters. We have ours. The people love Finn. They loved my father. Well, one of them. We had four fathers. We don’t know which one actually fathered us. It never mattered. Father. Uncle. It’s all family here. My one dad was in charge. He was pragmatic but kind.”
Cole’s skin smelled like springtime. It should feel awkward being on his bare skin, but it didn’t. Maybe it was that getting addicted to their scent or mating thing. I didn’t care. “I don’t get the feeling Finn is pragmatic.”
“No, he’s optimistic, and he just wants everyone to do the right thing. That’s something all three of us have in common. They’ll come for us, challenge him, we’ll win. Don’t fret.”
I raised my eyes to look in his. “Didn’t your mother die in a battle?”
Sadness moved through his gaze. “She did. Very unexpectedly. It was. . .awful. There are always casualties. No one saw that coming. We won’t let anything happen to you. There were lessons to learn. We are different now.”
“Cole,” I made myself keep talking, “there’s something else. I don’t like sex. I don’t know how any of this can work.”
I expected a strong reaction, but he stayed silent so long I wondered if he’d heard me. Maybe this was the thing that would finally make them see this wasn’t going to work.
“We don’t have sex before mating. We have no real. . .interest in it until then. Please believe me, I can’t speak for the other two, but I’m interested now. Um, I had heard that humans engage in intimacy outside of mating. But if you didn’t like it, then maybe we can figure out how to like it. Together. Even if that takes some time.”
Now it was my time to search for words. “Do you always say the perfect thing?”
He laughed. “No, most of the time I have no idea what the heck to say at all. I leave that to the other two.”
We didn’t move for a minute. That was okay. I was glad to just stand there with him.
Cole visited house after house, checking on the bears. Most of them had received whatever message Finn sent out the night before and knew I was human before I even arrived. They were glad to see Cole. One older female gave him a shirt, which I was both happy and distressed about. I liked looking at him half naked. What did that mean? Was I. . .interested?
I pushed away, wondering. There were too many people to meet, too many stares to ignore. No one was being downright hostile, and I supposed that would have to do. I tried to remember my manners.
On our way to the fifth stop, Cole abruptly quit moving. “We’re being trailed. Someone is following us. In their bear form. That’s aggressive. I suspect it’s. . .” he sniffed the air. “A man named Bronson. He lives in these woods because Finn allows it. Rylan and I would rather he vanish. We’ve simply not pushed the matter. I am going to deal with him. You.” He pointed left. “Walk straight in that direction for two minutes. You’ll find a cabin there. It belongs, funnily enough, to Bronson’s cousin. They’re clan, but they have little to do with each other. It’s a long story. Their family is about to die out. They never found mates. Easton used to be a carpenter. Go stay with him. He’ll be fine.”
I nodded. I wasn’t going to argue with Cole, not when he knew what he was doing. Even if what I wanted to do was stay glued to his side. The days I’d spent out here I’d had no idea I was being trailed or even looked for. I was lucky I wasn’t dead, dead, dead.
Why hadn’t they found their mates? I’d ask him later. Wasn’t it just always organic? Like I showed up or they smelled someone on the streets? Was there a main town on this planet? A city? How did it work?
I had to get answers. I hated not knowing things. It didn’t take me two minutes, probably because I was running. But I did arrive at the cabin and. . .
Something was wrong. I backed up two steps. I was alive because I trusted my instincts. They’d kept me alive so far. But why I was freaked out here, I couldn’t put my finger on instantly. Then it hit me. There was blood on the door. Why was there blood on the door of this wooden cabin?
A roar sounded to my side, and I whirled around to see the second biggest bear I’d ever been around staring at me. He wasn’t bigger than Rylan. I didn’t know if he’d be larger than Cole or Finn. I’d only seen Finn as a bear lying down. This one was on two feet, way too close for comfort, and apparently posturing. That was what Mark had called it.
But this didn’t look like posturing.
The bear was covered in blood, his light white and brown coat making it obvious. His face had been torn apart. I could only see half of it.
“Hello, Easton.” I hoped it was Easton. It was at least a good guess. “You’re hurt. I’m so sorry. I’m Jessica. I’m Cole’s mate. And Finn and Rylan. We came to check on you, and you’re obviously not okay.” How much could he understand? “Cole is coming. He can help you.”
The bear didn’t growl and instead made his way toward me, his head hanging forward in an unusual manner. I thought. Maybe. I mean how much did I know about this? It didn’t look like Rylan when he moved. Okay, this was bad. What did I know about bears? I rushed through the little I remembered in my head.
They were deadly. That was pretty much it. He might decide to eat me while I was still alive. I think I preferred the idea of being blown up.
I staggered backward. There were dominance things. Whoever was bigger was in charge. That wasn’t going to work out so well for me.
So I did just what I could think of doing. I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Help.”
It wasn’t brave, but I could be brave and dead or cowardly and alive. Maybe Cole would hear me. They had super sharp hearing, that was for sure.
I ran. I didn’t turn around, so doing it backward was awkward and difficult. The thing was I didn’t think I should turn my back on a wild, angry, injured animal. The bear had difficulty running, but what it lacked in speed because of its injuries, it certainly made up for in strength and determination. All he had to do was charge. His gaze was on the ground, clearly following my tracks, and I was pretty sure that bears could climb really well.
What in the hell was I going to do?
A growl louder than I’d ever heard, really it was more of a roar, sounded in the air, followed by two more in the distance. What was that? Were the bears from the woods coming? Were they all going to get me? Was this all some elaborate joke? My mates sent me out here to watch me run for my life? No, I dismissed that thought. That was my insecurity talking in my mind when it had no place during this type of crisis.
A huge brown grizzly threw itself in front of me before it rounded on Easton. This wasn’t Rylan. The fur was slightly darker. It had to be Cole. He advanced on the other bear. I had never seen bears fight before. I had no idea it would be so silent. But just because it was quiet didn’t mean it wasn’t gruesome and awful. I backed up significantly, right into another bear. Rylan.
“Hi.” My voice shook, but when the giant bear picked me up, I climbed onto his back without fear. In fact, I buried my face into fur.
A low growl stopped everyone from moving. Finn in his bear form, with an older bear behind him, made his way to the scene. Cole stepped away just in time for Finn to deliver the killing blow to Easton.
Just like that, it was done. The only thing I could hear was my own heart in my ears. I pushed my head down on Rylan. I was just going to stay like this until I could think again.
5
I stared at the water someone set down in front of me and tried to pull myself together. A bear had almost killed me.
Finn came into my view, sitting on the coffee table and ducking his head down until he caught my gaze. I blinked. Did he need something? In the time since I’d arrived, I’d been nothing but trouble to them.
“I’m always an incredible hassle to have around. This time I was on a path I didn’t intend to stray from. Sometimes, shiny objects distracted me, but when I got onto Goldie, I swore that I would work my hardest, do everything right, and then get my brother out of jail. Then I’d find a quiet terrafo
rmed planet somewhere where I could keep to myself and cause no trouble.”
Finn scrunched up his face, and across the room, Rylan made a bear noise I couldn’t decipher. He hadn’t shifted back yet. I wasn’t sure where Cole was, and Mark had left. I thought. Distantly, I’d been listening to things people said.
“You’re talking about the ship you were in when the wolves shot you? Goldie. That was her name. That’s right.” He took my hand in his. “You had a scare. That’s for sure. Did you see how his head sort of bobbed the wrong way? That was an indication of neurological trouble. The way Cole easily took him down and I killed him? That meant Easton was all but dead before I ever got there. Unfortunately, he could still have hurt you. Or worse.” A frown formed between his eyes. “Someone hurt him. Cole is determining whom. That’s why he wasn’t okay. He was already pretty much gone. The quiet Easton I grew up knowing would never have harmed you.”
I put my hand on his knee. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course.” He shook his head. “Why?”
“You had to kill him because I’m a weak human on a planet of very big bears.”
Finn leaned forward. “You’re my mate.”
“Was that supposed to explain why you’re, of course, okay? Killing is hard. Period.”
He took my hand in his. “Not when it comes to protecting what’s mine.” A growl across the room made him smile. “Ours.” He looked over my shoulder. “Go run it off until the bear leaves. Or shift back.”
Rylan made a noise that must have been a harrumph and walked toward the back door. He pushed on the handle, and it opened. Then he sort of slumped off into the woods. Finn rolled his eyes. “Two more years and he’ll shift when he wants to and not shift when he doesn’t.”
He got up and went to close the door.
I took a sip of the water. “Did you get what you wanted from Mark?”
Saying his name made me stop and think. Was his name really Mark? Was Finn really Finn? Our translator devices made us understand each other. What did they hear when I said Jessica? They were probably not Finn and Mark. They were something in their own language.
Planet Bear Page 5
