by Hattie Hunt
“Have any of you heard who it was? It couldn’t have been the porcupine. No way he moved in that fast.”
Bones growled, low and dangerous. His quills pushed forward, covering Mason’s skin in bumps but not quite breaking through. Mason closed his eyes and drew in a long breath. He had hoped it would cool the fire. Instead, the flames raged.
Evan was looking at Mason again, eyes glowing red with his spirit animal. “Jordan said it was him. Pricked her right out of doing her duties. If she’d rather fuck a porcupine, good riddance. I’m not putting my dick where that’s been. Not even wasted.”
The group laughed and clinked their glasses together.
Evan took a long pull of his beer. “Okay, maybe wasted.”
The jar in Mason’s hands shattered, slicing his hands and burning the cuts with alcohol. Then he was at their table before he realized he had moved. “Fuck you.” He punched Evan square in the face, shifting on the follow through.
Bones skittered across the floor, feet struggling to gain purchase as their quills rose on end, doubling their size. They turned back to the table just in time to see it fly across the room as three bears stood up in the middle of the bar. He didn’t know which one was which. They were all huge, Bones maybe matching the size of one beastly head with his quills extended. Crested porcupines weren’t small. But Bones had quills. Sharp fucking quills.
The porcupine hissed, snapping his jaw in warning. One of the bears approached, Mason guessed probably the one he had punched in the face. Bones sidestepped, the height of the quills aimed at the approaching bear. Then another bear came up behind them. It roared, and Bones spun around. He couldn’t guard all sides at once. He just had to pick the most threatening one. But there were three of them.
A voiced yelled somewhere across the bar, but no one looked. Not a single bear or the outnumbered porcupine. Bones shot to the side, quills flared to the closest bear. He made contact and the bear yelped in pain, rearing back. The other two advanced. Wary, but pissed.
Bones backed up, a bear flanking him on either side. He had nowhere to go.
His hind end bumped into the old jukebox and the music skipped. Bones hissed at the sound, and the largest of the bears swiped at him with a paw the size of a Frisbee. Bones managed to twist around so the bear hit him on the haunches. He felt a bone crack. His bone. The porcupine screeched, backing harder against the jukebox as the quilled bear snarled through drooling lips. The quills hadn’t been enough to deter him.
Mason pushed against Bones. They needed to get out of there, or they were going to be dust. Quills could be removed from flesh. Squashed porcupine would be a lot harder to scrape up off the floor and put back together. More voices yelled from across the room.
This time, the bears looked up.
Mason pushed against Bones once more, and he backed down with a growl. The little shit had no desire to give up the fight. If only they could get the last bear lit up with quills. Bones registered the thought and leapt forward, back leg giving out. He slid across the floor, coming to a stop between the legs of the last grizzly who had risen onto hind legs. It was panting, head turning back and forth to the crowd that had gathered across the room and the porcupine at his feet.
Bones flipped around in a whirl, swiping his quilled tail into the bear’s ankle. The beast dropped down onto all fours over the top of them, and Mason thought they were dead. In a last-ditch effort, Bones kicked up his hind end, squealing with pain but landing a hundred quills into the bear’s underside. It roared.
Mason’s ears rang, the grizzly’s sharp cry echoing around the room. And then something pushed against him. Not from the outside but from within his mind. All sound in the room cut off except for one word.
“Enough.”
The bear standing over Mason and Bones took a step back, shifting down to a man. The one Mason had punched in the face. His nose was bleeding and he had quills sticking out of his stomach and his ankle.
Bones limped backwards, not responding to Mason’s call to shift. He was protecting them. Protecting Mason. They looked around, searching for the source of the voice that had called back the bears. That they had felt in their mind.
A blonde man stepped up to them, shoulders bulked up and covered in hair. He looked like half a gorilla, only with blonde hair instead of black.
Bones hissed.
“I said, enough.” The man’s voice resonated between their ears, commanding and powerful.
Bones pulled back with a growl and Mason shifted forward. He tried to put weight on his left foot and stumbled back. Fuck. Ignoring the blonde man, Mason looked at Evan. He didn’t think a man could look any more pathetic. It gave him a fleeting moment of satisfaction.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Who was this guy?
Evan stepped forward, pointing at Mason. “The porcupine attacked us, Jordan.”
Jordan. Of. Fucking. Course.
Jordan looked at Mason, eyebrows raised.
“I might have tripped and punched him in the face on the way down.” Mason was in no mood to be nice.
Bones chuckled.
Mason shrugged. The room was blurry. He looked around for his glasses. They were probably somewhere by the table the assholes had been sitting at. Except, the table had been toppled and kicked across the room as the bears shifted around it. Ignoring Jordan, who was still staring at him with incredulity, Mason crossed the bar. His keys were also missing. And his wallet.
“Mason.”
He rolled his eyes.
“You don’t get to just walk away from this.” Jordan stepped towards him.
“It was just a bar fight. Everyone is fine. I’m leaving. Everyone can go back to doing whatever.” Mason spotted the shreds of fabric that used to be his pants. He crouched down, studying the pile and realizing belatedly that he was completely naked. And he didn’t have a spare change of clothes.
“And what if a mundane had walked in the door?”
The guy was really going to lecture him over this? What about the other three? “They would have called the cops. Rampaging bears. Got in through a back door. There are signs everywhere that say Troutdale has a bear problem. It wouldn’t be that far of a stretch.”
A blurred reflection caught his eye a few steps away. His glasses. Mason hope they hadn’t broken. His spares were behind on his prescription. A pair of feet crossed his vision, and Jordan picked up the glasses, handing them to Mason before he turned to the three quill laden men.
“Evan. Frank. Pete. You three help Toot clean up this mess. And leave a good tip.” Jordan looked back at Mason. “There is a stack of sweats in the men’s bathroom. Pick a pair. Then I will walk you out.”
“I don’t need an escort.” Mason adjusted his glasses. They weren’t broken, but one of the ear wires had bent and they sat lopsided on his nose.
Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “I will walk you out.”
Great.
The stack of sweats in the bathroom had obviously been picked up during a clearance sale. Yellow. Orange. Brown. All in extra-large. There was one pair of gray on the bottom of the stack in extra-extra-large. Mason grabbed them. He could cinch them to his hips; he couldn’t change the color of the rest of them. Still, he was pretty sure he could have fit two of himself in them.
When he emerged, Toot and Jordan were standing by the back door. Mason didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. Toot seemed like an alright guy, but Mason had been the one that trashed his bar.
“How’s your leg?”
“What?”
“You’re walking with a limp.” Toot whipped a bar towel over his shoulder.
Was he? Mason couldn’t feel it. “I’ll be fine. Sorry, Toot. Let me know what I owe you for any damages. Okay?”
Toot reached out a hand to Mason and they shook. “They had it coming.”
So Toot, at least, was on Mason’s side. That was something. “Still doesn’t excuse it, but thank you.”
A phone rang behind th
e bar counter and Toot disappeared with a nod. Mason pointed at the door with a sweeping motion to Jordan. “After you.”
Mason felt like he was being walked to the principal’s office, somehow always the one to get pegged with the fault in whatever happened. Not that he wasn’t at fault for attacking three bears in the middle of a bar, but he had done it out of…what? Honor? Chivalry? The simple need to hit something?
“Picking a fight with a bunch of bears isn’t the smartest thing for a newcomer to do around here,” Jordan said, leaning against the back wall of the building, arms crossed.
Mason’s gaze shot to Jordan. The other man. Ha. “I would like to assume you’d have done the same thing.” Would he? He couldn’t decide if it would be better or worse.
“And how do you figure that?”
“They were slandering Emma.”
A blank mask fell over Jordan’s face. “You’re messing with things you don’t understand.”
So he wouldn’t have. At least now Mason knew where Jordan stood. “I understand things just fine. Look. Just get whatever—” Mason waved a hand at Jordan dismissively, “you have to do over with, so I can go home.”
The blankness on Jordan’s face morphed. Eyes narrowed, lips thin over clenched teeth. “Just because you’re part of this community doesn’t mean you are part of it. You can’t just walk in here and start changing things.”
What they hell had he changed? Mason went to work. Taught kids. Went home. Mostly. “As far as I know, I have been minding my own business just fine.”
“That is where you are wrong. You got involved with the Elliots. You are in over your head.”
Mason bristled, and Bones crept forward, ready for another fight. “Involved with the Elliots or involved with Emma?”
Jordan went taut. So, Emma. Great. He apparently hadn’t heard the news. Mason wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.
“Look, Mason.” Jordan ran a hand through his messy blonde hair. He looked like a fucking Ken doll. “I don’t want there to be issues here, okay? Things are a little…tense. And we need our alpha. She is strong, but only when she isn’t distracted.”
“Well you don’t have to worry about it anymore.” The words were out before he could stop them, and Mason winced, though he wasn’t sure if it was because of the pain in his ankle as he shifted his wait. It was starting to throb. He needed to get off it.
Jordan cocked his head to the side but didn’t comment. He studied Mason for a moment and then his body relaxed. “Don’t take it too hard. You were only a rebound anyway.”
A flash of anger shot through Mason, and he clenched his fists, grabbing at the bellowing folds of the sweat pants to keep from hitting Jordan. Bones pulled back and Mason paused. He closed his eyes in a long blink. Relax. Take a beat.
He loosened his grip on the sweatpants. “Are we done here?”
Jordan nodded. Mason couldn’t read the expression on his face, and he wasn’t going to sit there and try to figure it out. He fished the keys out of the knee-deep pocket in the sweats. Each step he took towards his car sent a rush of pain up his leg. He had barely noticed it until then. Was it the adrenaline? The drink? Both?
Mason paused as he unlocked his car door. Was he still feeling the drink? He hadn’t had that much. All he could feel was the pain in his ankle. He glanced back at the bar. Jordan was still watching him. Had it been any other day, Mason would have just walked home. He was probably fine, but he never risked it. But, there was no way he was walking home then. He could barely stand.
The drive only took five minutes. Mason went straight into the house and to the freezer, not even bothering to strip out of the sweatpants. Now that he was home, he didn’t give a shit. Mason found a bag of frozen corn, picked up his phone off the counter and dropped onto the couch. Pulling a cushion off the other side, he propped his ankle on top of it on the coffee table. It had swollen up to the size of a small melon. Perfect. He dropped the bag of corn onto it and fell back into the couch. Where did a shifter even go to get an injury looked at? Even if it was broken, he would still only take a day to heal. Not that he had ever broken a bone to be able to judge.
Mason picked up his phone. The light was blinking. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know why. Even if he already knew.
With a deep breath, he swiped open the screen. There were three missed calls and six messages. All from Emma. Ignoring the voicemails, he opened the message screen.
The first one was from over an hour ago. I’m sorry. The response to his last message to her.
Sorry. Sure.
He scrolled to the next.
Mason answer your phone.
What happened?
Jordan said there was a fight at the bar.
Mason? Please answer me. Is everything okay?
The phone vibrated as another message came in. I’m coming over.
To do what? Rub salt in his wounds? Mason sucked in a deep breath, and then started typing.
Don’t bother. I’m fine. The rebound got what was coming.
30
Emma stared at the message on her screen. Mason’s words ripped through her, shredding the protective walls she had spent the day building after she had first messaged him. What the hell had happened? Not only could she not picture Mason in a bar fight, never once had she considered him a rebound. And the fact that he would think that—well. She was pissed. Not at him, but at herself. She broke up with him by text. Well, “broke up.” They weren’t technically dating.
With a groan, Emma pulled at the pony tail hanging over her shoulder. Jordan hadn’t messaged her back yet either. When he first messaged her about the fight, she immediately asked for details. To which he still hadn’t responded.
Freaking men.
She was sitting on the couch in the Elliot house, a stack of papers piled around her. Notes. Records. The Elliots weren’t great at keeping notes of meetings and clan goings on… probably because they were bears. But, Emma was doing her best to catch up. She needed to know what Cheryl had been doing during the last few months as alpha. Not that she had plans to follow in her mother’s footsteps, but she had to start somewhere. She should just be talking to Jordan, but he had gone MIA after the meeting. He had been holding down the fort while she was off gallivanting through meadows chasing butterflies.
Emma stared down at the message from Mason again. She wanted to respond. She had no idea what to say. How to make him understand. This was only temporary. She just had to get a hold on the clan stuff. Whatever that stuff was.
Someone knocked on the door.
Emma shot off the couch scattering everything in her lap to the floor. Mason. It had to be Mason. She flung the door open, apologies and explanations already formed on her lips.
Emma couldn’t stop the disappointment from cascading down her features. Jordan. At least he didn’t look like he had been part of the fight at the bar.
“You didn’t message me back.” She tried to keep her voice even, but it came out higher than it should have.
Jordan raised an eyebrow to the door, which Emma was blocking. She jerked back and stepped aside.
“I was on my way here. Figured it would be easier to talk.” He dropped down on one of the leather couches.
Emma didn’t sit. “What happened at the bar?”
Jordan actually chuckled. “A porcupine tried to take on three bears single handed.”
“He what?”
“Didn’t come out of it too bad, all things considered.”
“Details. Tell me everything. Is he okay?” Emma pulled the band out of her hair and resituated it for something to do with her hands. It was bad enough her voice was giving everything away.
“He managed to quill all three bears before I was able to break it up. I think he probably took a swipe to the hip or ankle. He was limping when we went outside.”
“Did you tell him to go to Snow? He needs to get it looked at.”
“Emma. Relax.” Jordan leaned forward onto his knees. “And woul
d you please sit down?”
She didn’t want to sit down. She wanted to shift and run and break down Mason’s door.
“Sit down.”
Emma’s eyes shot up.
His voice resonated within her. Strong.
Mal jerked forward, teeth bared.
What the hell?
That had been his will. It hadn’t felt like Cheryl’s.
She was…free. According to Chuck…she could be free now if she wanted.
Jordan seemed to realize what had happened and heat rose in his cheeks. He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Jordan?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t ask for this, you know. None of it.” When he looked up, his eyes glowed blue, bear spirit showing through.
Emma stumbled back. Shock. Disbelief. Since when was he an alpha?
Mal? How did we miss this?
It is new. We didn’t miss anything.
“When?”
“The first time I had to defend you to the clan after everything with Cheryl. Booker just…he was there. Stronger.” He had stopped looking at her again.
Emma’s thoughts couldn’t keep up. The first time he what? Jordan was an alpha?
“Jordan, I—” She didn’t know what. He hadn’t defended her yesterday. He had sat there while the clan berated her. Was this why? Because they had already started adapting to his alpha spirit.
Emma sat down next to him on the couch, taking his hands into hers. “I’m sorry. For not being here. For dragging you into all of this.”
“You didn’t drag me into anything.”
She didn’t see it that way, but she let the comment slide. They had grown up together. He had been adopted into her family, by her mother.
“I wish things could have been different.”
Jordan’s eyes focused on their hands, wound together the way they had so many times in the past.
“Wishing isn’t going to change anything.” He rubbed a thumb along her wrist.
Emma stared at the movement. “What do they say? Don’t dwell on the past, right?” She shrugged.
“I do miss it.” He looked up. The glow in his eyes had dissipated, but she could still sense Booker near the surface. “The way we used to be.”
