Catrina blinked. "I didn't realize that word had gotten around so quickly."
She glanced over at Brett and noticed that his blue eyes gleamed with amusement now. Small town, he mouthed silently.
"And I'm sure the wolf shifters will do just fine with a little instruction," she said, evading his question about having been a Beast Warrior.
She had already figured out that the bear shifters and the wolf shifters were at odds in this town, and she didn't want to fan the flames of whatever was going on between them.
"Catrina, this is Agmundr Ansvarrson, the owner of this restaurant," drawled Brett. "Everyone calls him Aggie."
"Welcome to Elysia, Catrina," Aggie said with a broad smile. He put the pizzas down on the table and stepped back. "Enjoy your lunch, and don't let Brett here get too fresh with you."
He turned to head back into the restaurant's kitchen. Brett shook his head.
"The downside of living in Elysia," he said ruefully. "The minute something interesting happens, everyone knows…faster than ever now with email and text messages." He grinned at her. "You realize that you're practically a celebrity right now?"
Catrina blinked. "Uh, why?"
Brett laughed "Because you're the only female Beast Warrior that any of the bear shifters have ever seen. Colonel Perry began recruiting women quite a while after we went into exile here."
That reminded Catrina of something she had been wondering about since arriving yesterday. As she lifted the first slice of steaming pizza from the serving plate, she asked, "How many people in town know about shifters?"
"Just their spouses and families, for the most part. A few others, on a 'need to know' basis," Brett answered, taking a slice as well. "About 1500 people live in Elysia year-round, and about half of those are descendants of the original bear shifters."
Catrina nodded. "Good to know. I just wanted to get a feel for how top-secret we were."
"It's a pretty open secret among the permanent residents, though the folks who aren't related to us by blood or marriage generally don't believe it and tend to think of the stories as tall tales from the time of the town's founding."
He lifted his piece of pizza and gave her a slow smile that did funny things to the pit of her stomach. "Bon appétit!"
They talked as they ate, both of them demolishing their pizzas with shifter hunger.
Catrina discovered that conversation with Brett was both entertaining and far-ranging. Like her, he had traveled all of the world while he was still working for WSS. A couple of his anecdotes made her wonder how old he really was.
All of which confirmed her initial impression of her new sponsor as smart, funny, and drop-dead gorgeous—a very yummy cowboy, indeed. It was a dangerous combination.
But as they spoke, she felt the weight of what they weren't discussing.
She had been unable to stop thinking about him all day. About how much she had enjoyed what he had started to do—until she realized it wasn't just a dirty dream.
She was on the verge of asking him about it when Brett sat back, took a long swallow of his beer, and said, "Let's talk about what happened this morning."
Catrina's appetite vanished instantly. She let her piece of pizza drop to her plate as a rush of heat swept up her neck and over her face.
"I'm so sorry about that—I still haven't figured out how it happened—" she began.
Brett waved aside her stammering attempt at apology.
"Now that I've had a chance to think about what's been going on, I have a theory."
Catrina stared at him in surprise. "About the sleepwalking?"
"That's part of it." He sighed and shook his head wryly. "What do you know about fated mates?"
Chapter 8– Warned
"Fated whats?" Catrina asked incredulously. "You mean, like in the fairy tales I heard when I was a kid?"
She remembered those stories about long-ago shifters in faraway places who braved mortal danger and countless obstacles to unite with their fated mates. Sometimes the stories had a happy ending, as with Tekuane, the jaguar shifter who had braved the terrors of the Underworld to fetch his fated mate back to the land of the living.
But more often, the fated pair in the stories died tragically, separated by cruel circumstances, neither able to live without the other.
Brett nodded.
"And you actually believe fated mates are for real?"
"I do," Brett said quietly. "I've known a few couples in my time. I just didn't think it would ever happen to me."
"Wait," Catrina said, feeling like the conversation had just taken a left turn into the deeply weird. "If you think they're real…does that think you mean that whole, uh, thing, which happened this morning, happened because we're…uh…" She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
Yummy Cowboy was her fated mate? A bear?
"No, that's crazy," she finished firmly.
It was crazy, thinking some old fairy tale was at work here in the modern world. Catrina had never been superstitious. She didn't believe in fairies or aliens or astrology.
But somehow, Brett's words resonated inside her like a deeper truth.
It couldn't be true. It just couldn't.
"Crazier than being able to turn into a jaguar…or a bear, at will?" Brett asked dryly. "Believe me, there are a lot of crazy things in this world, and I've seen my fair share of them." He shook his head. "I've been doing a lot of thinking about this. And Hal thinks—"
"You told Hal that I tried to molest you in your sleep?" she interrupted and felt her face go hot with humiliation.
"It was more than that, and you know it," Brett said sternly. "Catrina, think! Have you ever known anyone be able to sneak up on a sleeping shifter without using drugs or knockout gas?"
She shook her head, still grappling with the theory he'd presented.
"But I’m a jaguar…and you're a bear! Even if what you're saying is true, it's still impossible!
He shrugged and took another long drink from his beer, draining the glass. "And yet, here we are. What are we going to do about it?"
Catrina echoed his shrug. "Hell if I know! How about…nothing?"
She tried to push down the sudden, vivid memory of how much she had enjoyed feeling his hard body pressed against her as his hand crept up under her T-shirt…
He gave her an odd, intense look. "It's not just going to go away, you know. Our beasts have chosen each other, and they're going to be using every dirty trick in the book from here on out to get us together."
Catrina looked at the big hand curled around his half-empty glass of beer and remembered it cupping her breast. She swallowed hard and looked away.
"So your answer is no?"
Catrina made a point of glancing up at the big clock, shaped like a pizza pie, which hung on the wall behind the bar.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully.
"Brett, I've known you for exactly twenty-four hours. I'm not ready to commit to anything, much less some crazy fairy tale."
"So you're telling me that you never act on impulse?" He was teasing her now, she was sure of it.
She smiled sweetly at him. "In my career, I've learned that mission success is directly related to mission preparation. So, no, I don't act on impulse, I gather information and use that to put together a plan. Then I execute the plan…successfully."
"So," he drawled, a smile playing around his lips, "what you're telling me is that you need to conduct reconnaissance on me? Figure out if I'll make a good mate?"
She shook her head wryly. "Maybe. What I definitely need is some time. A lot has happened since yesterday."
"Got that right." He sat back, his intense blue glaze never leaving hers. "Okay, Catrina. This how I see this going. If you want to continue to stay at my house, you have to be open to the possibility that we might be living the fairy tale," his mouth quirked in an ironic grin, "and deal with the consequences as they come."
She parted her lips, ready to protest. Before she could speak, Br
ett continued.
"However, if you've already made up your mind that this isn't what you want, then I'll talk to Rafe about letting you room at his place." He took a deep breath."It would be…wiser not to live under the same roof."
Catrina knew Shannon would love to have her stay over at her house. And it would be the sensible thing to do.
But Catrina's jaguar rebelled violently at the thought, and Catrina felt the prickling of an impending, involuntary shift run over her skin like goose bumps.
You evil blackmailing beast, behave! she thought sternly, but it didn't help.
Her jaguar did not want to leave Brett's house and made it clear that there would be trouble—big trouble—if Catrina defied her beast's wishes.
In all of her adult life, Catrina had never lost control of her beast or shifted involuntarily unless she was badly injured or unconscious.
To find herself teetering on the edge like this when she was wide-awake, uninjured, and rested frightened her more than she was willing to admit.
"So you don't trust me not to molest you again?" she asked, trying to keep her tone light while she figured out the best course of action.
Brett grinned at her, and the Yummy Cowboy was back in full, panty-melting force.
"Hell, no, now that I know what's going on, I'd welcome it," he said warmly. Then he sobered. "But only if you're willing. Now that you know what's going on, you need to decide what you want to do about it."
Catrina ate another slice of the lukewarm pizza and finished her own beer before replying. Her thoughts were in turmoil, and so were her emotions.
Only one thing was clear.
"I—don't want to move out," she confessed at last.
At her words, her jaguar finally settled down, and the prickling sensation of impending shift faded away.
Brett's grin lit up his face, and warmth blossomed in the pit of Catrina's belly.
"But I'm not committing to anything else, not yet," she warned him.
"Okay. Fair enough," he said and smiled again.
I am in such deep shit, she thought, but somehow the thought excited rather than scared her.
* * *
After lunch, Brett left in his truck, heading out to do his afternoon chores before he lost daylight.
Catrina, driving her Subaru, made a brief stop at his house to drop off her purchases before heading off to the training ground where Hal had evaluated her yesterday.
Then she waited for the wolf shifters to arrive. She really hoped that Leif and Svein weren't going to be her first students.
Her worries turned out to be for nothing. No one ever showed, though she waited a long time.
Had there been a mix-up with the dates and times? Maybe they weren't expecting the lessons to begin until tomorrow?
But when they left the pizzeria, Brett had phoned Erik Redclaw to let him know that they were about to drive back out to the Grizzly Peak Ranch. So what was going on?
After a nearly an hour of pacing and looking down the ranch's gravel road to see if anyone was approaching, Catrina got tired of waiting.
Rooting around in the storage shed, she found a box stocked with a gun cleaning kit, including solvent to help remove lead and powder fouling, some gun oil, a bore brush, a small but very bright LED flashlight, a cleaning rod, patches, and a Ziploc bag filled with clean cotton swabs.
Then, one by one, she fetched the guns out of the gun safe in the storage shed, disassembled each of them, and cleaned them before reassembling them.
She felt a headache gathering behind her eyes as she tried to remember the first time she had done this.
She knew it had been during boot camp, but she couldn't remember any specific details, and that made her angry at Colonel Perry all over again.
She strained her memory and came up with a vague impression of standing at a long table, surrounded by other recruits in uniform. She could almost picture her instructor as he paced between the tables, monitoring his students' progress…
Almost, but not quite. She felt the press of elusive memories fluttering around her like a cloud of butterflies, there but just out of reach. It was frustrating, but it gave her a tiny ray of hope that perhaps her memories weren't really gone forever, just blocked off somehow.
The short autumn afternoon was beginning to fade to twilight when she finished with the last gun, and she was getting hungry again. Whatever being turned into a shapeshifter had done to her, she had noticed early on that it had really revved her metabolism.
It was late enough that she knew no one was coming today. Either the wolf shifters had blown off Hal's request, or she'd misunderstood the timing somehow.
But then Catrina heard the crunch of gravel and the sound of a car engine approaching. She turned around eagerly, hoping it was Brett's truck, but she didn't recognize the late-model red Toyota 4Runner that pulled up along the fence.
A tall man with bright copper hair and a wiry copper beard climbed out of the SUV. He was dressed in a cowboy hat, jeans, and a flannel shirt, but he wore the gold torc of a Beast Warrior commander around his neck.
As he approached, she saw that the ends of the torc had been fashioned into two snarling wolves' heads.
His features were narrow and fine-boned, with high cheekbones, freckled skin, and bright blue eyes fringed with sandy lashes. He looked around at the training ground, his lips tight with displeasure between the bushy tangle of beard and mustache as he scented the air.
"Let me guess," he said in lightly accented English. "None of my men showed up to learn from you?"
"Captain Erik Redclaw, I presume?" she asked warily.
He nodded.
"Yeah, no one showed up for the training," Catrina confirmed. "Was there a problem?"
"More of a protest, I think," Redclaw said. "I don't know what Hal and his henchmen have been telling you, but we wolf shifters are very unhappy here in this place."
"I get the sense that there's some conflict between your men and the bear shifters," Catrina said, still cautious. "Is that because you were trapped here?"
Redclaw laughed bitterly. "In a way, yes. We all wish to return home, to our old jobs, where we were valued and respected. And it does not help that despite agreeing to consider us his allies, Hal Sigurdsson has treated us like servants rather than equals and fellow warriors. This, my men cannot forgive. It is difficult for proud warriors to live here on sufferance."
"Look, I've only been here a day," Catrina said, as diplomatically as she could, "but what I've heard is that your men don't really want to fit in here."
And boycotting mandatory training sessions isn't helping, she thought but did not say.
Redclaw began shaking his head as she spoke.
"No, no, no," he told her. "You have been told about the symptoms, but not the disease. The bear shifters think they can use you, so they are courting you with sweet words and generous hospitality."
She felt a shock of alarm at his words. "You mean I shouldn't trust them?"
Any of them? Even Brett?
She could see Redclaw thinking and choosing his words very carefully. "Hal Sigurdsson has kept to his word, but no more," he said grudgingly. "I am saying only that since you are newly arrived here, you should watch your back. Be careful, and choose your friends wisely."
Well, so far, Brett's been a better friend to me than your guys Leif and Svein, she thought but did not say.
It was a small town, after all, and she was pretty sure that Redclaw knew all about what had happened outside Rafe's house last night.
She said only, "Thanks for stopping by. I'm willing to keep an open mind, but I'd really like it if some of your men showed up for training tomorrow. I promise to treat them fairly, and besides, it's really boring out here all by myself."
"I shall see what I can do," Redclaw said gravely.
He turned to go, then stopped and turned back, as if remembering something that had slipped his mind. "By the way, Ms. Hunter, did you enjoy your dinner with Dr. Joyce last ni
ght?"
He knows. The thought shot through her, and her eyes widened.
She saw the look of satisfaction on Redclaw's face, and she knew she had betrayed herself. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Chapter 9 – Desired
No funny stuff tonight, Catrina warned her jaguar as she slid into her bed that night.
Her clothes were hanging in the closet and folded in the chest of drawers, and she was wearing her comfy flannel pajamas. Her regular brands of toothpaste, soap, and shampoo were in the bathroom, and their faint, familiar scents helped make this room feel something like home.
As she snuggled down into her pillow and closed her eyes, Catrina couldn't help musing on the bombshell Brett had dropped on her at lunchtime.
Fated mates, huh? It was crazy to believe from a sensible point of view…but his theory explained the intense attraction she had felt toward him since they met yesterday.
She knew she should be more worried about Erik Redclaw's next move, but without knowing more about the situation here in Elysia with Wolf Team, she couldn't guess how he might use what he had learned about her.
I'll deal with it when it comes up, she decided.
And fell asleep in blissful solitude under the thick down comforter.
She awoke surrounded by Brett's scent, the sound of his soft chuckle filling her ears.
"Oh no!" she exclaimed, sitting up in his bed. "Not again!"
I hate you, she told her jaguar and received a silent feline shrug.
"I told you our beasts were going to play dirty," Brett remarked.
He looked up at her, his muscled arms folded behind his head. She noticed he was shirtless under his comforter and wondered if he had decided sleep naked again tonight.
He added with a wicked smile. "But I can't say I'm too upset."
"I am so sorry," Catrina said, feeling uncharacteristically flustered. "I didn't mean to wake you up…what time is it, anyway?"
"Not too late," he said. "I'd just dozed off myself."
She glanced at the new digital clock radio he had purchased while she was shopping for toiletries, and noticed only an hour or so had passed since she'd fallen asleep.
Hunter: A Werebear + BBW Paranormal Romance (Beast Warriors Book 2) Page 11
