When he’d uttered her name in that deep voice of his, almighty Thor’s hammer would do less damage to her self-control. Another second and she may have done something unacceptable. Like tossing herself into his arms and feeling him up. God, he must really pity her.
Did it count if she rolled her eyes at her own actions? Could she have been any more obvious? She dug her toes into the firmly packed snow and hauled herself belly first over a freshly felled tree the size of a horse.
All she had to do was make it another couple of hours, pull off some highly evasive maneuvers, maybe a few Hail Mary’s and make like Mick Jaggar back to the lodge. Hell, screw that. She’d call from the airplane and have her stuff forwarded back to New York.
No. That wouldn’t work. That nosy Mr. Kravitz would rat her out and give anyone and everyone in town her address.
No. She could pick up more panties and bras. Losing her brand new laptop burned, though.
Aurora shoved aside her scattered thoughts and refocused on her task. Two hours had passed since the encounter and from the looks of it, no one had followed her.
“That’s a good sign, Starr.” Then why did she feel disheartened?
Eye on the prize and making good time, she scanned the horizon. Only another hundred yards or so.
Loose rocks shifted under Aurora’s weight and shook any remaining garbled thoughts away.
Focus.
One wrong move and she’d be in a bad way this high up. The so-called path she managed was more of a guideline that led to a secret lookout point tourists didn’t know about than a real path. No climbing harnesses needed, but it was still a long way over the side if you managed to piss off the wrong gods.
With agile fingers, she easily caught hold of the rock face and repositioned her footing before pushing another few steps on the narrow path. Her hand shot out in reflex. With gloved fingers, she found large crevices for leverage and hauled herself forward on the steady incline before it fell away to reveal vast open sky and a sea of snow-tipped treetops is various shades of misty white to deep, lumberjack green.
Puffy vapor billowed out with every heavy exhale.
“Starr’s Point.” Named after her father before she was born for discovering it.
Thanks to him, climbing was in her blood and truth be told, she missed the challenge more than she realized before now.
Looking over the vast forest spread out below, the white wonderland would soon be lush and vibrant with summer. Aurora couldn’t help but take a moment. She’d missed this. The peace and tranquility. Such a stark contrast to the constant chaos of the New York City streets.
Not many knew of the easy way around to the point. Or maybe they preferred the harder straight up and over approach. Which she normally did, but there were enough mountains to climb in her life at the moment—she didn’t need to literally add another.
Sharp winds cut around the jagged rockface and tore into the smallest of openings in her thick winter coat. She bent and tucked into the blustery weather. Hunkered close to the ground, she moved away from the ledge and closer to the medium-sized rocks that rimmed a section of blackened stone that normally served as a source of heat and cooking. As a young girl and through her teenage years her dad and mom had cooked several summertime meals here. Her favorite had been homegrown corn from Mrs. Wylde’s garden and her dad’s grilled fish. If she concentrated, she could still smell the lemon zest.
Tears welled along the rims of her eyes. Back then things had been simpler. Back before the attack stole her mother away and drove her father to bury himself in nothing but building an empire. His heart turned to solid stone that made the diamonds he mined look soft in comparison.
Her mother had loved the outdoors. With their log cabin and large expanse of property backed up to the west side of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge she would disappear for hours until one day she didn’t come back.
Desperate, her father had called in every law enforcement agency, but after forty-eight hours they’d failed to find her. It had been the elder of the Wylde Den that had found her body mauled by a rogue werebear.
A throaty roar echoed off the walls of the two mountains Starr Point settled between. As if her thoughts conjured a reverberating memory from the rocks themselves.
She stood, heart pounding against her sternum. Wild ideas of a werebear hunting her down overshadowed her thoughts for a split second. She had to stop letting her father’s fears be her own.
Another roar split the eerie silence. It had to be the rescue team out looking for the hikers.
To the right of where she stood, the ledge extended into the mountainside a few feet before tucking under an overhang that led to a small secluded den.
Apparently winter had hit hard this year. Layers of snow partially buried the entire path on her way up, and it plastered against the rocks in a way that a baker would ice a cake.
Ominous clouds draped across the once blue horizon. Fat flakes swirled in the air and caught in the loose strands of her ponytail. With deft fingers she popped the double-hooked clasps on her bag. She didn’t have long. Kneeling beside the pit, Aurora slipped her flashlight from her bag as she stood to make her way into the dark den.
“Why the hell did I have to make a promise to him?” She knew better, yet the plea his eyes held tore her heart out.
“Because you’re weak, Aurora Starr,” she quipped to her own question.
Weak because in that one moment all his past transgressions against her vanished in a poof and all she saw before her was a man desperate for one last moment with his daughter.
After hours of talking, he slipped away from her.
“So, here we are, now it’s your turn, Father.” Aurora tightened her grip on her satchel. “You promised answers for a peaceful resting place close to mom. The ball’s in your court.”
What answers he thought she needed to find still puzzled her. Whatever he wanted to tell her he’d insisted could only be found here.
Aurora pressed her hands to her face and inhaled a long steadying breath.
Holding the satchel that carried her father’s ashes, she leaned in. “Any time would be nice. Feel free to toss out a divine clue of what I should be looking for.”
Flashlight in hand, she entered the den. Shafts of light lanced down in crisscross patterns through the slots cutting through the cavern’s ceiling. Mother Nature had created a few sunroofs and the added light helped her see. Standing in the mouth of the cave, Aurora bounced the light from side to side. Small crates were stacked along the far wall covered in what looked like a tarp. People, probably the teenagers of Claw Ridge, still visited the point. But not for a few months at least judging from the tattered, worn material.
She pushed into the small opening that led deeper into the cavern, passed the initial wide chamber and into a place the cold wind couldn’t follow.
In a few steps she kneeled by the crates and thumbed through the contents. Nothing stood out.
If she wanted to make it down before the sun dipped to the horizon for the night she had to hurry. Heat juiced her blood and she returned to the entrance. He’d said she’d find it here, that all she had to do was look hard enough. Only, she wished she knew what it was. Frustration tore a gargled scream from her throat.
“Why can’t you ever just tell the truth? Why! Why the riddles and games?” She kneeled in the growing amount of snow, placing the bag by her knee.
“Perfect! This was such a terrible idea.” She pounded a fist into the snow and let the horror and anger of coming all the way out here for nothing feed the drive behind her force. He fostered such a soul-deep hatred for the shifters, why the hell would he send her back into the heart of their territory? Maybe the medicines had messed with his mind? Maybe she needed meds.
She’d come a long way and risked more than her neck to play some kind of game.
Anger forced her to her feet in a rush, and she stormed to the ledge. She had to be the biggest fool. With jerky movements she gathered her b
ag. Thunder pounded against the earth. “What the heck is that?” Crouched low she scanned the horizon. Since when did thunder come from the ground?
Aurora turned a one-eighty as fear gripped her in its ironclad fist. Her throat closed the second a startled scream worked its way up her windpipe.
Her head jerked around and she froze in place. “BEAR!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Adam’s cock throbbed in time with the beat of the rotor blades. He clenched his fists around the cyclic and leveled out Betty for decent, trying really hard to quell the urge to belt out a soul-cleansing roar. Or punch someone, mainly his nosy little brother. “Man, I don’t know if you have the best timing or the worst.”
“Probably all a matter of perspective.” Everett’s retort crackled over their closed coms system. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
Red tinted his vision. That perpetual nothing ever bothers me stupid, little smirk was parked on his brother’s face just to taunt him. He knew damn well it irritated the hell out of him on normal days. Today, it down right made him see red.
“How could I? And why the hell did you do that?” Only in the last fifteen minutes of their flight did the turbulence level out enough for him to nail his brother with a glare that could melt polar ice caps. He needed more time to formulate a plan to tell her that her father had reached out to him a few days ago. Her being here meant the man he once hated had passed.
Being thrown together with Aurora before he could get a handle on the scrambled emotional mess he called a brain sat like a pound of rocks in his gut.
“What?” Paying attention to Betty’s controls, Adam maneuvered the chopper between the sea of pines and touched down in the designated spot big enough to accommodate the size of their bird.
Perfect every time.
Back to glaring at Everett, Adam flicked the dial on the radio to call in their position. “Home base, this is Big Bear, we’ve landed and are on site. Base One will be in contact. Have paramedics on standby.”
“Copy that, Big Bear. We’ll be here. And guys, be careful up there. This looks bad.” Their kid sister’s ominous warning of the approaching storm took a little air out of his sails.
Base One was just the beginning and they had a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. From here they had to hike around the base of Claw Ridge to reach where the climbers were last seen by the patrolling rescue crew with boots already on the ground.
“Playing coy doesn’t suit a grizzly, Ev. You know damn well the more time I spend with her the worse off we all are.”
“Look, you told me yourself you were expecting her. You don’t get answers by keeping people at a distance. Mating season or not. From what you say, her father called you for the favor and not the other way around. The least you’re owed, hell we’re all owed, are some answers.”
“It’s not just about that.” Damn. If shit would just stop happening, he could figure out what the hell he wanted to say to her that didn’t start with I wanna fuck you until we both can’t go anymore. Those things required finesse, more than what he had available at the moment.
“I love Aurora like a kid sis, but you, brother, need to face your mating season head-on or it’ll take you down. Try ignoring that.”
He shot a glare at his brother.
“Yeah, I can see it written all over your face and the heat. It’s already started, hasn’t it?”
“How would you know?”
“I have eyeballs.”
“Let’s see what you’ll do when it comes for you.”
“Nah, that ain’t happening. But back to you. Don’t think I haven’t seen you wallow around in your own self-doubt for the last week solid.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“And that’s not counting the last five-plus years,” his brother plowed on.
In unison they performed their routine systems check and powered down Betty.
“Hey guys, so when did Aurora get back?”
Adam froze. What the hell? He bared his teeth and gave a long drawn-out growl as he flicked the coms off back to home base. Now his sister and the whole of fucking headquarters knew his business and all Everett could do was grin like a silly cub.
“You did that on purpose.”
“I needed backup.”
Everett may have a point, but like hell he’d feed his brother’s ego. “That’s low, wait until I tell mom. What kind of brother brings in the little sis for back up?”
“A smart one, that’s who!” Everett reached across and gave him a slap on the shoulder that sent his grizzly into ass-kicking mode. Adam unstrapped himself from the cockpit and launched himself from the door. It was that or risk throwing a left hook into the other man’s jaw.
He swiveled his gaze as his brother crossed the front of the chopper shaking his head, wearing that damn smirk. He took long strides, the snow slowing him down, when a raven-haired woman popped her head out of the tent twenty yards up the small incline to another naturally leveled area. She flashed a sweet smile and his brother froze as if caught in a spell. Well, I’ll be damned. He knew that look. Not on his brother, but he recognized smitten when he saw it. Every piece of that particular puzzle snapped into place, but one. How did he not know about this before now?
“Never my ass.”
Ignoring his jab, Everett’s face lit up with an animated expression he’d never witnessed before. Interesting.
Thunder rumbled an eerie warning and caught his attention. Eyes locked on the skyline, he swore under his breath. The fucking weatherman had it all wrong again, but any veteran of Alaska could tell the second the weather turned for the worse. It didn’t make any sense. Why would anyone be out here with a storm this size rolling in?
Experience had everyone making double time to find the lost hikers and get them off the mountainside in time enough to hunker down back at the headquarters of Wylde Excursions. Or that was the plan if the missing hikers were still living.
Blood rushed in his ears. Aurora was going to be the death of him. Icy wind whipped around the edges of the tent and smacked him in the face. She served as a lethal combination to his grizzly and he needed to focus. Until now, he never cursed his shifter genes. Not when she was yanked out of his life because of what he was and not when her father used his money to bury their family business before uprooting. But today, for one split second he couldn’t help but think about the what ifs of their shared past.
One thing he hadn’t counted on the second their eyes connected was his bear claiming her as their mate. He figured he had another month before he had to deal with that particular side of his nature. Time enough to deal with her, as he’d promised her father. She’d be long gone before his season kicked in and he could go through with not finding a mate.
Adam groaned and strode forward, sinking to his knees in soft snow until he reached the tent. There had been at least a foot of the sugary powder covering already loosely packed snow from the way his foot sank in with little resistance.
A recipe for disaster. They set patrol up for this very reason. Whoever let these fools back here to hike should be arrested. When they returned to town, he’d have a few details to nail down, but he had an idea of who the hikers were and if his inside info panned out, the town of Claw Ridge was on the verge of a big shift. Not to mention what would happen to Wylde Excursions. But first, he needed to fact check.
Sharp stings pierced the cavity of his chest and shot straight to his heart. Adam clutched at the searing burn. Heat of the mating season slowly seeped into his veins like an IV drip with each thump of his heart. He didn’t know how long he had before all hell broke loose, but he needed to make sure he wasn’t anywhere near her when it happened. When the heat of his grizzly took over, any rational thinking shifted to pure adrenaline-infused instinct. His human and bear mind shifted together with a single goal: find and claim their mate.
A mating always involved hours of sweaty sex and intense orgasms. Hours alone with Aurora...
; All these layers. He pulled at his collar. God, they were suffocating him. A flush of sweat broke out over his entire body, dragging a wave of chills in its wake.
Sharp, talon-like claws tore at the thin gauzy layer of membrane that separated him from his bear. His animal stretched, pawed to be freed.
Adam felt the urge to turn around and seek out the little green-eyed temptress just to prove to himself he could resist the instinct hardwired into his brain.
The thrill of the hunt gunned his adrenaline. He wouldn’t have to look far. She’d strolled back into his life and served herself up on a silver platter complete with the sweetest damn face he’d ever seen.
Jealousy never occurred to him. Maybe he never felt strongly enough for a woman, but when he caught that lowlife Brax making a move, his world zeroed in on making a kill. Only by the skin of his own hide did he manage not to pulverize the fucking misplaced ice bear where he stood.
They’d done him a favor accepting him into their den. Grizzlies and ice bears didn’t mix. Tempers flared and usually kept the species apart, but the Elder felt obligated to help a fellow otherworldly in need. He didn’t share the sentiment. Only the thought of seeing any kind of fear on Aurora’s face had kept him in check. Repeating history wouldn’t do him any favors.
Adam felt his control slip a sliver. He’d risk getting close to her one more time for another hit of her alluring, cock-teasing scent.
Adam braced his thick-soled boots deeper into the snow for a better grip just in time to take a gust of wind brutal enough to lift him a few inches if he were any less of a man.
Son of a bitch.
His back teeth ground together when his grizzly shivered.
He stepped into the makeshift home base and all eyes locked on him. “How bad is it, Chief?” He shook hands with the leader of the Mountain Rescue who also doubled as the Firehouse Chief. In a town this small almost everyone doubled up on something.
Topography maps covered the table between them. “The avalanche took place in this section of the mountain.”
His fears were slowly becoming a reality. The west sector bordered Aurora’s father’s land and stretched into no mans land along the base of the mountain. No outsider would know that, though.
Bear His Mark: Wylde Den One (Alaskan Den Men Book 1) Page 3
