by Joyce, T. S.
They would come back. Any minute now, those monsters would come back to finish her off. How could they not? Even she, with her dull human senses, could smell the thick scent of blood flowing from her leg.
Minutes stretched on and felt like an eternity as she sat there, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. The woods were quiet now. Not a bird chirped, and from here, she couldn’t even hear the water from the river. With violently shaking hands, she reached over and grabbed a thick branch that had fallen from the tree. She stood on one wobbly leg and stripped the extra twigs until it was just one baseball bat-sized club. She’d played two years of softball in high school, and dammit, if she was going out like this, she was going out swinging for her life.
“Elyse,” Ian said from behind her, scaring a scream and a swing from her.
With a loud crack, he caught the club before it hit him in the face. Then he yanked it out of her hand and hugged her so tightly to his chest, she couldn’t breathe.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he chanted. “She’s gone, and she’s not coming back. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
Frightened sobs filled her throat, and tears blurred her vision. “What happened to you? I saw—” Elyse shook her head hard to try and sort out what she’d witnessed. “You were breaking, and I was alone!”
“You weren’t alone. I had you. I just needed you to buy us some time.”
“You had me?” Fury blasted through her veins. “You told me to run from a fucking furious grizzly bear and then you passed out on the river bank!” She shoved away from him. “And why the hell are you naked?”
“Shhh,” he warned, eyebrows arched high as he scanned the woods.
“Don’t you dare shhh me. Answer me, Ian. What happened back there?”
“I’m the bear.” He straightened his spine and glared down at her, daring her to look away. “I’m the bear that protected you.”
“Fuck off, Ian.”
“Scars across the ribcage. Torn ear.” He pulled his own ear in front of her and jammed his finger at a healed gash that had taken a small notch out of it. “Dark brown bear who pulled that grizzly off you. Why would a wild bear do that, Elyse? Why would he protect you if you weren’t…”
Horrified, she asked, “If I weren’t what?”
“Why would a male grizzly protect anything that wasn’t his? You want to know why I haven’t kept a woman? Why my eyes turned brown when I kissed you yesterday? You want to know why that growl rattles my chest when you affect me? Because I’m a fucking bear shifter, Elyse.” He turned and gave her his back, which would’ve pissed her off right now if it weren’t for the long, seeping claw mark down it. He gave her a sad stare over his shoulder. “I told you. Brown bear country doesn’t scare me. I belong with the monsters. Always have.”
Panic clogged her throat as everything clicked into place. Of course he was a monster. That’s why a man who looked like him wasn’t already married and running a home of his own. A tear trekked a warm stream down her cheek. “You’re a bear?”
Ian looked sick and swallowed hard. “A bear and a man.”
“I think I’m going to…” Elyse blinked hard as the forest began a slow spin around them. “Ian. I think…I’m going…to…”
Legs giving out from under her, the ground came at her face fast, but she didn’t hit. Ian caught her, of course, but when she moved her lips to thank the bear-man, nothing came out.
And the spinning world went dark.
Chapter Thirteen
The sound of the steady beeping of a machine woke Elyse from a deep sleep. She cracked her eyes open, squinting against the light as her vision blurred and focused, blurred and focused on the man pacing outside the large window of her room. Ian.
She knew this place. She was in the medical center in Galena.
“She’s my wife,” Ian said. “Look at that ring on her finger. I gave it to her. I’m the one who brought her in here, and I don’t want her waking up alone.”
“Sir, calm down. No one here knows you, but we all know Elyse,” Dr. Vega said, pointing into her room.
“Ian?” Elyse whispered, throat dry as a desert.
“See?” Ian said. “She just asked for me.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Ian,” she said, louder.
Ian gave Dr. Vega a go-to-hell glare and threw open the door, then rushed to her bedside as the doctor and one of his nurses followed.
“Hey,” Ian whispered. “I’m here.”
“You were hurt, too,” she said, worry unfurling in her chest. “He’s hurt. Growly claws and babies, she was stealing our fish like a thrief. Thrief. Thief. Like a McCall.” Why was she slurring? “She hurt my…Ian.”
“No, baby, I’m okay,” Ian said. Something sparked in his eyes. A warning?
She poked his cheek. “Your eyes are brown.”
Ian leaned down and pressed his lips against her hand. “I’m okay, Elyse. Please.” His voice was barely audible in his plea.
Elyse blinked hard to clear her thoughts and murmured, “Sorry, I think I’m confused.”
“That’s the pain meds talking,” Dr. Vega said as he lifted the blanket from her leg. Her ankle was bandaged.
“Still clean,” Dr. Vega murmured to his nurse. “I think she’ll be okay to go home tonight if she can stay off it.” That last part was directed at Ian.
“Of course,” Ian said. “I’ll make sure she takes it easy.”
The fog was lifting from her mind by the second. “Is it bad?”
“No.”
“Yes,” Dr. Vega said at the same time. “You were attacked by a bear, Elyse. You’re lucky to be alive.”
Ian narrowed his eyes at the doctor, then dragged his dark brown gaze back to her. “Four cuts from the claw, only one was deep enough to require stitches.”
“Six stitches.” Dr. Vega grabbed her chart and gave her a significant look.
“I think I prefer my husband’s bedside manner to yours tonight, Dr. Vega. Thanks for saving the leg,” she said dryly.
Ian snorted, but covered it with a cough.
Dr. Vega narrowed his eyes at Ian and said, “She’s free to go. Do see that you take better precautions from bear attacks next time you go gallivanting off into the wilderness.”
Ian nodded once and gave him a little salute as the doctor ushered the nurse out and followed closely behind. After Elyse dressed in the cut-up jeans she’d been wearing earlier, the nurse came back with a wheelchair.
“Is that necessary?” She would limp, but the claw marks didn’t feel wheelchair-bad.
“Afraid so. Vega is in a mood tonight. We don’t get many bear attack survivors in here.” At least the nurse didn’t talk down to her, so Elyse smiled and acquiesced.
Ian wheeled her out front to where his truck was parked at an angle on the curb. The passenger side door was still hanging open, and their supplies had been thrown haphazardly in the back.
“The fish,” she gasped.
“I got them.”
“Of course you did.”
Ian helped her into the seat and shut the door gently beside her.
Jamming the key in the ignition, he said, “Just so you know, it only took me about two seconds to get those fish on a line to carry.”
“Wait, you carried all of our equipment, the fish, and me all the way to the plane?”
“At a dead sprint.”
Elyse scrubbed her hands over her face. “Is that part of the bear-man stuff?”
“Strength?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded.
“This is a lot to process, Ian.”
“Elyse, you should know I’ve never told anyone about my bear. Never. You’re the only one.”
“Are you afraid I’ll freak out and tell the world?”
“It’s crossed my mind,” he said carefully. “It’s not just me who would be hurt by the backlash.”
“Your brothers?”
He nodded again. “There are so few of us, there
isn’t safety in numbers. Do you understand?”
“Sooo, is this like a full-moon deal, or can you change into that thing whenever you want?”
“That thing,” he repeated softly.
“Sorry,” she said, eyes on his rigid profile.
“The moon has nothing to do with it, and neither does magic. It takes me a minute to Change, but I can do it when I want. Sometimes I do it when I don’t want to. It depends on if my bear is being reasonable or not.”
“Will you hurt me?”
“Never.” His voice had gone hard as steel. “My animal loves…” A long tapering growl sounded and Ian shook his head hard.
“Say it.”
He sighed a long exhalation. “My animal loves you as much as I do.”
“Because I’m your mate? You said that in the woods. You called me your noisy mate.”
Ian’s Adams apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Yes. Because you’re my mate.”
“Okay,” she whispered, dragging her gaze back to the dark woods that surrounded Ian’s truck now.
“Okay?”
“Well, I need time to wrap my head around everything, but okay. I don’t want you to leave because of this. I mean, I didn’t know animal people existed before, and it’s a lot, and I have horribly painful claw marks on my leg. And now I’m living with someone who can change into the biggest grizzly I’ve ever laid eyes on, or seen in text books or in a museum. I’m engaged to a bear. Man. A bear-man.” She inhaled sharply and bit her lip to stop her rambling.
“There’s more.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ian. What else could there possibly be?”
“You’re right. We should talk about it later once you’ve had some time to deal with what I am.”
“Well, spit it out now. Best to get it all out there at once.”
“I hibernate.”
Elyse cast him a prim look and said, “I’m sorry, what now?”
“Every October, I go to sleep, and I don’t wake up again until April.”
“Six months.”
“Yep.”
“You just sleep for half a year straight.”
“Yep.”
“That’s fantastic. Fantastic news for me.”
“You sound angry.”
“I’m pissed, Ian!” she exploded. “You timed it just right, didn’t you? You waited until I was head over heels in love with you before you told me this. I wanted a full-time husband! I wanted to have company in the winters so I wouldn’t live another as lonely as the last one. You’ll be asleep, and I’ll be by myself, fighting cabin fever alone. How is that fair?”
“It’s not,” he said quietly.
“Then why did you answer that ad, Ian?”
“Because I wanted you.” He let those words linger between them for a long time as they slowly bounced over the rough dirt road. “From the first time I saw you, I knew you were mine. And it didn’t matter how much I fought it or how selfish I knew I was being, you were it for me. I want to protect you and provide for you.” His voice cracked, and he slammed his head back against the rest. “Down to my bones, you feel like mine, and I hated what Cole did to you, and I wanted to do it better. I want to make you happy.”
“But only half of the year.”
“Do you think I want this? Do you? I’ve lived alone my whole life trying not to taint someone else’s with my bear shit, and I was happy to do it until you came along. And then there you were, so perfect and brave and so goddamn beautiful, and you were asking me to stay, and I couldn’t say no. There. There it is, Elyse. I’m weak, and I gave in to the idea that I could keep you. This right here is why I didn’t want to marry you until you saw what life with me would be like. I wanted you to know the real me before you went all in. I know it’s not fair what I’m asking. Six months of providing for you in the warm season, six months away. It’s not what I want for us. It’s not what I imagine a woman would be willing to put up with, but this is all I have to offer. Everything I have is yours. And I know it’s not enough. I know it. But I guess I was hoping if you came to care for me enough, you’d at least consider me.”
Tears were streaming her face now in uncontrolled rivers.
She’d almost had everything.
She’d been this close.
The silence was no longer easy, and neither one of them moved to turn on the radio. Instead, she allowed the weight between them fill the cab of his truck, and when Ian pulled to a stop in front of the cabin, Elyse couldn’t escape fast enough. Her leg hurt, but that didn’t stop her from hobbling into the house and into her room. She cried as she absorbed the thought of spending every winter alone. At the thought of losing him completely.
And tonight, just like the first night, Ian sat quietly in her bedroom doorway and waited for her tears to run out.
Chapter Fourteen
The new rooster was going at the morning sun with all he had, squawking and crowing the ugliest sound Elyse had ever heard. That wasn’t what had woken her up, though. It was the smell of bacon and the soft sounds of Ian moving around the house that had dragged her from sleep. The rooster was too late. Elyse was already sitting up in bed glaring at the sunny sunshine that was filtering through the bedroom window. If the sun had a dick, she would kick it.
After hobbling into the bathroom, she washed the horrors of yesterday’s misadventures from her skin, careful to avoid the bandage. She was still too chicken shit to look under it, but when Ian strode wordlessly into her bathroom as she was towel drying her damp hair, it was abundantly clear he didn’t suffer from the same cowardice.
“Sit,” he grunted, jerking his chin toward the edge of the bathtub.
He looked in as foul a mood as she was, and she wasn’t up for a row this morning, so she waited an extra two seconds just to let him know he wasn’t the boss of her, then sat daintily on the edge of the plastic ledge of the tub.
Ian knelt on the floor and lifted her foot onto his thigh, then removed the bandage from her leg as if he’d done so a million times. Gentle and efficient were his hands until, at last, the damage was exposed. Huh. She leaned forward and squinted. It wasn’t that bad. Sure, it would probably leave four thin scars that would silver over time, but even the worst one was sewed tightly closed, and there wasn’t even any redness or swelling around it.
“I thought it would be much worse,” she admitted.
Ian didn’t answer as he poured some kind of cleaning solution over her cuts and, mother fluffer, it felt like he’d poured boiling water onto her injuries. She gritted her teeth, refusing to make a noise. Quick as a whip, he had fresh bandages firmly in place and strode out of the room.
“Are you going to give me the silent treatment forever?” she called.
“Nope.”
His boot prints echoed through the house as he made his way to and out the front door.
She narrowed her eyes at where he’d disappeared, then stood and dressed herself. The echo of the ax blasting into wood on the chopping block was loud. Much louder than the noise she made when she was chopping wood, but one look out the window explained why. It took her several strokes to get through a log. For Ian, it took one.
An overkill breakfast was on the counter in the kitchen, piled high on a plate and covered with a cloth napkin. It was cold, but good, and she ate every bite of it before washing her dish.
At the pump outside, she began to fill the bucket for the chickens’ water dispensers, but Ian, with a saddle slung over his shoulder, jammed a finger at her and said, “I already did it. You’re supposed to stay off your feet.”
“What are you doing with my saddle?”
“Cleaning it. You have a fine saddle with horse shit splattered on it.”
“Oh.”
Grumpily, she sat on the rocking chair on the porch and watched him work with her arms crossed over her chest. She wasn’t used to sitting around.
The man was a sight to behold, though. He’d chopped nearly a cord of wood while she’d readied for the day and ate
breakfast, and the woodpile was looking much healthier, plus he had several logs lined up to chop later. He must’ve hauled them up with the four-wheeler this morning. He watered and fed the horses, milked the goat, and washed off a dark-stained table he’d apparently used to clean their fish sometime in the night if the dried scales were anything to go by. Out of curiosity, she hobbled around the house to the freezer and, sure enough, the bottom was covered in two layers of fish filets, neatly labeled and individually wrapped. Damn, it was good to see some meat in there.
When she came back, Ian was nowhere to be seen in the yard, but the telltale sound of tinkering echoed from the barn, so she hobbled closer and sat on an old rope swing tied to a tree in the yard. From here, she could see inside the double doors. Ian was working on the opened front of the broken-down snow machine. And from the pan of grease in the yard beside the generator, he’d been working on that this morning as well. Handy bear. She cracked an accidental smile at her little, silent joke.
Cocking her head, she tried to put the massive bear she’d seen yesterday to Ian’s human form. Okay, so he was a bear-man. Or…a werebear? He changed into an animal when the feeling struck, and thankfully, he’d done it yesterday to save her. She’d be a lot worse off than a swatted leg if he hadn’t been there. Undoubtedly, this place would be safer with him around. But spending winters without him would be brutal.
Perhaps she was thinking about this all wrong. She did love him. It seemed so strange to have that thought this soon, but there had been this instant connection between them. He cared about her enough to tell her what he was when he hadn’t told anyone his secret before. Winters would be hellish, but at least she would get half the year. It came down to just warm-weather months with the man she was falling in love with, or cutting him loose and hoping to find a man who was less than Ian. And the more she thought about it, the more she considered that, for the rest of her life, this decision could cause her pain and regret. Who could compare to him? No one she’d ever met. If she cut her heart off from him and moved on, the most she could hope for was a relationship with a man half as good.
