by T. Massey
Rory Fletcher leaned casually behind the bar, polishing the same glass he had been toweling down when she came in. You could tell just by looking at him what side of the line Rory fell on: tall, broad-shouldered but not burly, and definitely not as grizzled as some of the other Grizzly Weres, there was still no mistaking the formidable strength of his bloodline. He wore a red flannel shirt; beneath her winter coat, Quinn wore one that matched his exactly. It had been his, once upon a time and several months ago, back when things had just been complicated between them and not Royally Fucking Complicated.
If he noticed her wearing it now, he didn't remark on it, and neither did she. The room was filled with sensitive snouts and readily-perked ears, and worse, maybe close to a metric ton of leashed ursine rage ready to burst the seams of civilian clothing with the slightest trigger. She had probably taken a stupid risk by wearing Rory's clothes out in public, but they had ceased to hold his scent—it had been that long. Quinn raised her eyes from the bar to look at him.
"Blackberry stout?" Rory asked casually.
"No thank you."
"Can't think of what else I might get you."
He was still polishing the same glass, Quinn noticed. Rory had been tending bar there for years, and she had seen him fly through a tub of dishes faster than his dishes flew through the air on a rowdy Friday night. She wondered what the cause for his special attention was now.
"Trail mix is fine," she said.
"Suit yourself."
Rory turned away from her to fill the order, but none of the tension was going out of Quinn's shoulders. She busied herself with shredding strips off a cocktail napkin; when she had exhausted that, she moved on to a drink coaster. Rory brought a dish back and settled in front of her.
She had prepared her words carefully, even rehearsed them on her way over, but she felt completely stupid now for even considering telling him at work. Rory was an attentive bartender, but he could never be anything but indifferent to her here. What made her think she could spring a pregnancy on him?
What made her think she could tell him at all?
She could hear shouting coming from the right side of the bar—the Grizzly's side—and turned to watch as two older male weres went nose-to-nose with brandished pool cues. For once, the fight wasn't between clans. She might have sighed in relief on a different day, but now Rory was moving off, letting himself out from behind the bar to settle the dispute. Quinn sat frozen for one moment more, before she sighed and slid off the stool, leaving a crumpled bill on the bar behind her. Her trail mix was untouched.
"Where you off to, Quinn?" A male from her own clan, Humbert Hilton, had just walked in; he removed his hat when he saw her, revealing a very ordinary bald patch, something she had never known any other were to suffer from. "Saw your pickup out front. Looks like you're headed for the hills!"
"I'm just going up to my family cabin for a bit to clear my head." She kept her eyes carefully trained away from the Grizzly side of the room.
"Got enough luggage there? Looks almost like you ain't coming back."
Instead of responding, Quinn just smiled tiredly. She walked out of the Great Bear Lodge without looking back.
It was a long drive up the mountain, and the air was thick with the threat of rain by the time she arrived. Quinn let herself down from the truck and breathed in deeply the sharp, crisp air, feeling momentarily light-headed from the altitude change. Moisture was already beginning to cling to her bare, bronzed legs, and she was glad for the jeans she had packed. It was going to be a long spring, but she was ready for it.
Of course she wasn't ready for it.
Quinn spent what remained of her day twisting taps on and off and airing out sheets. By the time the boiling black clouds had rolled in overhead, forcing her inside, the old cabin was starting to look lived-in. Quinn walked restlessly about the living area, treading on the faux bearskin rug probably more times than she needed to on her way to and from the kitchen. Her laptop sat powered off on the table. She was one Skype call away from letting her mother in Wyoming know that she was here. Someone would need to know where she was in the event that anything happened—but then the questions would begin, and she was afraid she didn't have any ready answers.
No amount of pacing could make her any less terrified.
But she had to do this alone. Who would help her deliver such a cub—half-black bear, half-grizzly? The women of her clan had been bearing their young in the woods alone for centuries. A Grizzly Were in her position wouldn't be so timid, so afraid. A Grizzly Were in her position would probably have never fallen for someone from a warring clan to begin with.
Only one had.
Quinn pushed her hair back in distress as she paced. The sky outside the living room window was dark; the first clap of thunder made her jump. She felt wired with nerves. She had imagined she heard a pounding at the front door.
The pounding came again, and this time there was no mistaking it. Perhaps someone had passed her plans along to her mother, and the older were had come speeding up from Cheyenne to find her. It was the only explanation—no one else in her town was familiar with the location enough to have followed her up here. Satisfied in her assumption, Quinn crossed to the landing.
She pulled the door open.
Chapter 2 – Conception
From an early age Quinn had been taught to hate the Grizzly Weres who shared their border town. The great bears had arrived decades ago, long before she was born, having been driven from their terrain in the Colorado Rockies by poachers—the real grizzlies went extinct in the region soon after. The Grizzly population that had moved—the ones who could shift—had settled in Quinn's town after countless bloody disputes with the founding were population. In the end, sheer size and strength had won out over the more peaceable, timid Black Weres, and the two clans had been forced into a tense state of cohabitation ever since.
This was the world Quinn had been born into—a world where brutal gang warfare was still waged in the back alleys and dark arcades of the blood-soaked Montana wilderness.
What decades of inherited hatred couldn't have prepared her for was Rory.
He was older than her; he had been tending bar when Quinn was still in high school, and let her sit at the bar doing homework late into the evenings when she didn't want to go home. Her parents had been divorcing then, and in the last year of their marriage she had come home to two black bears tussling on the front lawn more often than she had come home to the man and woman who raised her. Her crush on Rory Fletcher had developed naturally until she found herself falling desperately in love with him, despite the were never giving her any indication that he might reciprocate. Rory was safe, she had always surmised—not only was he older, but he belonged to another clan, an enemy clan, which made him untouchable. It made his friendlier gestures—his hair-tousles when they were alone together in the barroom, and other innocent flirtations—seem innocent, with no real danger of being acted upon.
As she got older, the flirtations stopped. She traded in summer dresses for bright flannels and tight cutoffs, the uniform of her town; while she remained the shy, bookish girl in spirit, she had transformed outwardly into a woman taller and more buxom than any mateable female in either tribe. Even as she was starting to attract unwanted attention, she felt Rory's affections shift away from her almost overnight. It wasn't fair.
It was her presence in the barroom that had sparked the fight that fateful evening. Rory was in an unusually talkative mood—he kept refilling her pint glass, teasing her all the while as she blushed at their unexpected return to form. After the third or fourth blackberry stout, Quinn was feeling good, real good. Her shoes were off, her long legs crossed beneath the bar and occasionally sliding against each other thoughtlessly. She had a book with her, of course, but she had retired it to the stool beside her, certain that it was a clear sign she didn't wish to be bothered by anyone on the patron side of the bar.
The man came from the right side of the barroom, s
hifting into the stool beside her, one thickly-muscled thigh pushing her book to the floor as if he hadn't even noticed its existence. Quinn had straightened immediately on her stool, but in the next instant, she was too petrified to bend to retrieve her fallen property. The were beside her hailed from the wrong side of the room. The were beside her was all Grizzly.
"Hey there, sweetheart," he slurred the endearment, making her skin crawl. "Me and the boys were just talking science over here." From across the room, she could hear several more Grizzlies who were piled into a booth snicker amongst themselves. "Biology, to be specific. See, I've noticed you in here a lot reading, and I figured this might be a subject that interests you. I'm talking hybridization, of course. It's something I'd be open to exploring with you, you know, in conversation. Or maybe…" The were lifted his hand; to her surprise, Quinn could feel her tank top strap lift with it. When had she let him get close enough to touch? "… we could take this conversation into the woods out back."
"Get your paws off her, Crenshaw." The stool directly on Quinn's left was now occupied—it was Humbert, red-eyed and listing. He had been at his drink longer than she had that night. "Before I rip them off," he added with a grunt.
"I'd like to see you try it, you old asshole."
In the aftermath, Quinn couldn't help but wonder if the Grizzly had approached her all along with the intention of starting a fight. She didn't like feeling like a pawn in the town's wargames, just like she was certain Crenshaw didn't appreciate the hand that reached across her the next instant and raked four angry gouges in his ruddy face. She half-slipped, half-fell out of her barstool in the next instant, as Crenshaw lunged after Bert with a roar; she was surprised to find a pair of waiting arms beneath her. She staggered into Rory, pinning her fists against his chest.
"Come on." His words came rapidly. "I'm taking you home."
"You can't take me home!" Quinn insisted, even as he hauled her unprotestingly towards the exit.
"You'd rather stay here?" Rory asked, just as a glass flew through the air and shattered against the wall beside them. The room was filled with enraged roars; through her spinning vision, Quinn was fairly certain she could see a few shirts splitting open as the two sides of the bar converged. She hoped no human was visiting town that night.
"My book," she said pathetically. She wasn't sure what her priorities were supposed to be in that moment.
"It'll be fine. Come on."
The next thing she knew, they were in the cab of his pickup and headed back into town. They didn't speak a single word to each other, until Rory turned off suddenly onto an abandoned stretch of road. He pulled to the side and powered down the engine. Quinn turned to him in confusion, but he had both hands gripping the steering wheel, his eyes trained forward into the darkness.
"What will you do?" she asked. "They'll tear the bar down without you there."
"I already called the sheriff. They'll be fine. We get a night like this almost every other month."
"I didn't know that."
"I made sure you were never around when it happened. And it's never concerned you before."
Quinn's face went red with embarrassment. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Don't." Rory's voice sounded brittle. "I'm sorry. I should have discouraged you from coming a long time ago. That must have been traumatic for you—having a Grizzly act like that in front of half your clan… having him put his hands on you…"
"I didn't want his hands on me," Quinn conceded quietly. "I wanted yours. I've always wanted yours, Rory. Ever since I can remember."
Rory continued to stare straight ahead into the darkness, his expression unreadable. Quinn wondered if he was taking his time to process her words, or if he had always known. "I've wanted you," she insisted drunkenly.
"We all want things," Rory replied in a tense whisper. "You think I don't want things? Of course I do. But sometimes it's better to keep wanting, Quinn."
"How do you know it's better?" she demanded.
"I guess it's because I don't know any different." Rory turned to her in the darkness, and it was then, only then, that Quinn finally realized there wasn't a bar between them. There wasn't anything between them.
She slid her seatbelt off and moved across the cab into Rory's lap. His hands came off the steering wheel, but not to protest the move—quite the contrary, in the next instant he had pulled her all the way to him, one arm tightening around her back, the other hand threading through her hair as he yanked her in for a shattering first kiss. Quinn tightened her thighs around his waist as heaved them both upward, his hands pulling at her clothes frantically; she reached behind her back to undo the clasp of her bra, letting the material slip from her breasts, pushing her aching chest against him as Rory let out a groan. One of his hands, or possibly the arch of her foot, accidentally found a side lever, and the seat collapsed backward with them atop it. His hands roved downward, delving beneath the waistband of her shorts, gliding them off her hips along with her underwear.
Quinn laved at his mouth, tasting every inch of him. She wondered if she tasted like blackberries—wondered, in her own spinning mind, if he would ever taste the dark fruit again without thinking of her. She undid the front of his pants and freed him, pulling away with a gasp as his length sprung readily into her hand. It was in that dazed moment that she couldn't believe she was there, with Rory—but they were gripped by a fever, a frenetic energy, and there was no time to second guess or even think about consequences. Quinn climbed him, gripping the back of his neck as she kissed him, just as Rory's broad hands pushed her down onto him.
The sheer size of him was almost too intense for Quinn to take, but his groan of pleasure provoked something in her, and she eased back onto him with only a fleeting wince. Rory threw his head back beneath her, his flannel shirt open, his face tensed as another groan ripped from him. Quinn let her own head fall back as she settled on his stomach. She had never felt so full, so right. Her head was swimming, and all she could smell in the tight cabin were their scents commingling; she could see Rory's mouth, always so quick to tease her with words, constrained against a pleasure so sweet it felt like agony. Her lips moved against throat, and his expression loosened until he was moaning her name. Her own cries of passion mounted as his hands seized her waist and he bucked up into her, rolling them both towards a long-awaited release.
It was Rory Fletcher that filled her every thought when she came atop him with a cry. It had always been Rory Fletcher.
Chapter 3 – Induction
It was Rory Fletcher standing on the porch of the cabin.
Quinn slammed the door hard enough to splinter the wood, but a hand twice as large as her own shot out to catch it at the last second. That didn't stop her from continuing to exert pressure; she screwed her face up in concentration, panicked eyes darting from his face to the whitening fingers burrowing into the woodgrain.
"Should you really be exerting yourself with a cub on the way?" Rory asked through clenched teeth. The fight went out of her in an instant, and Quinn relented; the door flew open, banging against the side of the house. Rory stepped past the entry before she had a chance to change her mind, and she let him, locking her arms over her stomach insecurely.
"How did you know?" she asked breathlessly. Standing in the foyer, the father of her child didn't resemble her image of a father at all: his impossibly broad shoulders filled out his Carhartt, and his wranglers, darkened with rainwater, clung to his powerful calves. He was trailing mud in on his work boots. Quinn's temper wanted to flare at this intrusion, but as her eyes moved up to his face, she felt a very different fire lick its way through her. Rainwater dripped from Rory's hair, arcing down his chin in sweep after sensuous sweep… she was beginning to feel thirsty just looking at him.
"Well, you're starting to show, for one." Quinn's arms tightened around her frame in response. "And you've never, ever left my establishment without getting a drink. Even if it was only a water. Even if one side was clawing at the other."
>
"I mean, how did you know where I… where we were?" she pressed. Rory shrugged, before reaching up to unzip his coat.
"How about grabbing Dad a towel?" he asked. At that, Quinn's temper really did ignite.
"While you're oh-so-cleverly tracking things down, why don't you go and track down your own? You don't seem to have a problem making yourself right at home!" she snapped. "And who said anything about you being the father?" She thought she had him there, and raised her chin in triumph.
In the instant, the man burst out laughing. It wasn't a laugh she had ever heard before, and the sound surprised her—he threw his head back and his shoulders shook, even as Quinn's face burned in humiliation.
"You think I wouldn't know it if you had been with someone else, Quinn? Ah." Rory raised a hand to wipe what she hoped was residual rainwater from beneath his eyes. If he was shedding mirthful tears at her expense, she was going to shift and rip his throat out right there. "You're too funny."
"Good!" Quinn snatched a filthy dish rag out of the sink and flung it at him; Rory caught it easily out of the air. "Maybe our child will inherit at least one redeemable quality! Maybe then she'll actually stand a chance in this world!"
"She?" The mean-spirited look dissolved from Rory's face to be replaced by an expression of wonder. Quinn watched the change overcome him, and felt a tremor in her own heart as well. She turned to look out the window at the storm raging in the darkness, feeling as if it could never match the storm raging inside of her.
"Did you walk here?" She asked her own question instead of giving him a reply. There was no car parked in the driveway. That's why I didn't hear you come up, she thought.
"My pickup broke down about a mile back." Rory seemed to not know what to do with the square of cloth he had been given. He stretched it between his fingers, peering at it, before raising it to towel dry his sopping hair. Quinn turned to brush past him, snatching the rag away again as she went.
