“It’s okay. I’m not prying. Just tell me one thing: was it the best sex of your life?”
“Best and first, to tell the truth,” Paige said, going even redder. Darlene slapped her on the back.
“My goodness. Well, congratulations are in order. Well done, girl. I hope he’s a keeper!”
“I hope so too,” Paige said.
“You look different,” Bill said as she brought his second drink over. “Had your hair done or something?” She shook her head with a smile. But when she used the restroom later, she looked in the mirror as she washed her hands, and noticed that there was something different about her. Her eyes were bright and her face was glowing.
She kept turning over Axel’s words, about them getting a bar together. She liked that idea. Maybe in the meantime, she could get him put on the insurance for her truck, so he’d have more independence now he’d mostly recovered from his injuries.
Back in the bar, a man she hadn’t seen before beckoned her over. He was tall – almost as tall as Axel – and dark-haired, with sharp features and hard black eyes.
“Have you seen this man?” he demanded. He handed her a photo printed on a piece of paper. It was a little blurry, and the man was a quarter turned away from the camera, but it was Axel. No doubt about it. Her heartbeat sped up.
“No, I haven’t. Why are you looking for him?” she said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Is he dangerous?” The man looked at her very shrewdly.
“I can’t tell you that. Are you sure you haven’t seen him?”
“Sorry. No. I was just curious. I don’t know him.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Where are you from anyway?” she demanded.
“Special operations, ma’am.” He handed her a business card, which was totally blank except for a phone number printed right in the middle of it.
“If you do see him, please contact me right away. It’ll be in your own best interests.” He gave her a long, very hard stare, then turned and walked out of the bar. Paige’s hand was shaking as she pulled her mobile phone out of her back pocket. She raised it, snapped a photo of the man’s retreating back, then stuffed it back in her pocket. She had a bad feeling about him. Something inside her had felt like it wanted to turn tail and run the second it laid eyes on him.
“I’ll be back in a second,” she told Darlene and ran for the back stairs.
Axel greeted her with a big smile, which dropped as soon as he saw the expression on her face.
“What is it, baby?” She sat down and told him everything she could remember – exactly how the photo was composed, the tone of the man’s voice, how he walked, how he said he was from ‘special operations’. She showed him the photo and watched his eyes anxiously. But his expression remained blank.
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said. “But I’ll take some time to let it sink in.”
“He kind of gave me the creeps,” she admitted. He put his arms around her.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s not a big deal,” he said.
“I have to get back to work, but I’ll see you at lunch?”
“Sure thing, sweetheart.”
An hour later, Paige brought Axel’s BLT sandwich upstairs. But he wasn’t in the room. And he wasn’t in the bathroom either. The bed was neatly made, and in the middle of it was a note:
“My dearest hellcat,
Everything I said to you yesterday was true. I can’t believe we’ve known each other for such a short time, because my feelings for you are so strong. I shouldn’t have mated you yesterday though, and I regret that. But I couldn’t help myself. You are so beautiful and perfect in every way. That’s no excuse though. In another world, I would have no hesitation asking you to become my mate. The bear inside me keeps telling me that we’re mates, and I can feel it too.
However, as I’ve just discovered, being with you puts you in danger. I do recognize the face of the man who just spoke to you, and, unfortunately, my old life has come flooding back to me. I’m not a bad man, Paige, but I’m not someone that you could ever be involved with.
I ask that you remember me as I was in these days you knew me, which have been the happiest of my life. If my life had taken a different path, this was the person that I would choose to be – living a simple and happy life with my beautiful mate.
Instead, I must go now, and we will be unable to see each other again.
My love, always,
Your wild man, Axel.
Xxx
Paige hadn’t even finished reading the note before she ran to the window, pulled the curtain aside and looked anxiously outside. All she could see was a line of rundown buildings. She turned and hurtled out of the room and down the back stairs, then she raced up and down the sidewalk and finally around the parking lot like a crazy person. She sniffed hard, trying desperately to pick up his scent, but she didn’t have Axel’s enhanced faculties.
“He’s gone. He’s really gone,” she murmured. She trudged dejectedly upstairs and flung herself down on the bed. She pressed her face into his pillow, but it smelled of him. The delicious, masculine scent that she’d been smelling on his skin only an hour earlier.
“Why did I do that?” she wailed. “Why didn’t I keep my stupid mouth shut?” The little animal that had finally woken up inside her scratched and scrabbled at her insides. “Mate,” it kept repeating in a mewing voice. She burst into tears and sobbed and sobbed, until she was all cried out.
You did it because you cared about his safety, and the guy who came into the bar was as scary as hell, she reminded herself, some time later. I think I love him. As crazy as that sounds. Her mind flooded with memories of him – the times they’d spent together, the conversations they’d had, the way his lips quirked at the edges when he was amused by something she’d said, but didn’t want to show it. The incredible, unbelievable, spine-tingling way he kissed her, that made her feel like she never wanted to be kissed by anybody else again.
At last, she remembered that she needed to pull herself together and get back to work. But who is he anyway? she thought, getting to her feet and going over to the bathroom to fix her face. He said he’s not a bad man, ‘but not someone you could ever be involved with’. What does that mean? Is he telling the truth? Should I just forget that I ever met him?
“Good mate,” her little animal insisted, with increasing ferocity. Can your animal be wrong? Or does it just operate on its instincts, looking out for good breeding potential? She sighed. Probably the latter.
She went back to work, spending the afternoon avoiding catching Darlene’s eyes, since her manager had an unnerving ability to pick up on her emotions. And all day, her little wild cat prodded at her, and wouldn’t quit. She felt it twisting and turning and slinking around inside her. “Mate,” it kept saying over and over, like a domestic kitty demanding its food, only far more intensely and with much bigger, sharper claws.
“Quit it,” she murmured, when it got too much, feeling like she was going to get all ripped up on the insides by the time it was done.
At last, she gave in. My mini me is right, she conceded. I know Axel isn’t a bad man. I know it deep in my bones, and so does she. Even if there are things about his life that might make it difficult for us to be together, I’m ready to fight them. I’ve lived this lonely life with my mama all these years, and in those few days we’ve spent together, he’s shown me that life can be so much more. He’s my mate and whatever I have to do to find him again, I’m going to fight like hell to get him back! At that, her animal gave a long, drawn out purr, as if it had just pushed its nose into a bowl of cream.
10
A few hours earlier
He sat on the edge of his bed, bent forward, his head in his hands. His eyes were shut tight, but the photo that Paige had shown him seemed to be branded onto the inside of his eyelids. The image had only depicted the man’s retreating back, but it had been enough. The hairs on his for
earms had stood up and a cold chill had raced down his spine. The identity of the man was suddenly clear in his mind. It was Jonas. The most evil human that he’d ever had the misfortune of knowing. And then, a violent headache like a lightning bolt shot through his head, and the fog that had filled his mind for the past week lifted abruptly.
He lay down, his guts churning as his past rushed back to him like a tidal wave. His name wasn’t Axel, of course. It was Rockland, and he was part of an elite team of special agents who operated undercover, infiltrating dangerous criminal gangs in order to eventually bust them. He and his fellow agents lived in the shadows, only acknowledged by the highest echelons of government, and highly sought after, due to their superhuman senses and physical strength. He’d been working in a drug cartel, one of the biggest in the world, slowly gaining the trust of the bosses, and uncovering the international supply chains. It had been slow, painstaking work, and very dangerous, as they were a highly paranoid, drug-crazed bunch of humans, but he’d been making good progress. And then his supervisors had decided to introduce another agent to the cartel – a guy named Blake. He was younger, and not so experienced. In fact, Rockland disliked him on sight, sensing that he was untrustworthy.
It didn’t take long before Blake slipped up. He got caught wandering away from the gang territory on his way to a dead drop, with no explanation for where he was going. And the next thing Rockland knew, he was being attacked by a dozen vicious men, brandishing tire irons and baseball bats. Blake must have given him up to save his own skin, he realized.
But that was almost two weeks ago, days before Paige found him. The gang must’ve tried to kill him, and thought they’d succeeded. But somehow, they’d failed. He must’ve gone into a hibernation-like state, lying in the forest until he’d recovered enough to find the forest road – and Paige. At the thought of her, his heart bloomed with warmth. She’d saved him. She’d told him that no-one ever drove down that road apart from her. If she hadn’t picked him up, he most likely wouldn’t have made it. And now the gang had somehow figured out that he wasn’t dead, and they’d come looking for him. Another chill tumbled down his spine. If he stayed here any longer, he’d put Paige in serious danger. He had to go.
He took a minute to write her a message which he hoped would communicate how he felt about her, but explain why they couldn’t be together ever again. And then he ran.
He bolted away from the bar, desperate to put as much distance between it and him and possible. Before long, he was in the forest. And 500 yards in, something started to happen to his body. His skin burned as if it was being pricked by a thousand needles, the bones in his face, then his torso, then his limbs cracked, and his healing ribs screamed in agony. His clothes became unbearably tight, and before he had time to rip them off, his animal burst out of him, and he was standing on his back legs, a huge black bear. Before he could stop it, his bear gave a wild roar that echoed through the forest, making a flock of birds take flight. My bear’s back. We’re united once again, he told himself, and glowed with satisfaction. How did we come apart? Even with his mind completely gone, he couldn’t believe that the two halves of himself had been so violently separated that he’d forgotten that he was a bear at all. He dropped onto all fours and stretched each of his limbs, digging his sharp claws into the forest floor. He yawned, flexing his huge jaws, then he stretched his spine right out. His ribs no longer hurt. He’d already been healing very fast because he was a shifter, but he suspected that shifting into his bear form would complete the healing process. At last he felt at one, in tune with himself, and his bear let out a long rumble, happy to be out. It lifted its long snout into the air and gave a deep sniff, and his senses, already so much stronger than a human’s, were magnified another three or four times. He noticed that there were scraps of fabric all around him. He sniffed them quizzically, then let out a snort. They were his clothes – or used to be – and he’d completely shredded them by shifting. Well, he wouldn’t be shifting back into his human form any time soon. But he couldn’t leave them lying around. In just a few swipes of his claws, he’d dug a hole a yard deep, and he gathered up all the scraps and dumped them in there, before piling the earth back in.
Now, he needed to hunt. Paige had fed him well, but he needed to eat several kilograms of meat every day to keep his bear nourished and functioning at peak condition.
As he raced after rabbits and opossums, his sinews and muscles stretching out and his body luxuriating in all the open space after being kept in such a small room for days, he began to formulate a plan.
First, he thought, as he captured a rabbit and snapped his neck, he needed to take out Blake. He didn’t even need to try to make contact with his agency and seek permission. Blake had committed one of the ultimate sins. You never give up your partner, under any circumstances. He devoured the rabbit in a couple of bites, then took off after a hare. It hardly knew what was coming before he caught up with it and dispatched it with his claws. Second, he was going to take out every single one of those morons who’d tried to kill him. His mind was crystal clear now. He remembered where they lived – an hour’s drive away. They would’ve driven him to the forest after beating him senseless, and dropped him there at random. That was the kind of thing they did.
Then he’d return to the agency, complete a debrief, and most likely be stationed elsewhere.
His appetite now satisfied, he oriented himself in the direction of Parnassus, where the gang was based. He’d spent the last few days poring over a map of the US, repeating the names of all the nearby towns, trying to force his brain to remember something. He had the gift of a virtually photographic memory, and the layout of the entire state was saved in his brain. Reminding himself that he needed to head northwest, he took off at an easy lope.
It didn’t take Rockland long to catch up with Blake. The other bear was hanging with a bunch of drug runners, laughing and joking with them as if he was having the time of his life. The guy who was never popular enough at high school, Rockland thought, with a snort of disgust. He circled the group carefully. They would all be armed with pistols. He needed to get Blake on his own, catch him unawares. He lay down and waited.
From time to time, the guys got up to fetch more beers or take a piss behind a nearby tree. At last, it was Blake’s turn. He wandered over to a tree, whistling. Rockland positioned himself three trees further back, on a branch ten feet up. As Blake approached, already tugging at his zipper, Rockland gave a soft growl. Blake’s head jerked around, his brow furrowed in suspicion. Rockland repeated the sound, and Blake strode over to the tree. When he got close enough, Rockland made his move, dropping out of the tree and landing on his back. As he fell, he clamped his huge jaws around Blake’s throat, preventing him from making a sound. Then, with his claws, he slashed at his pants, dislodging his gun from his waistband.
“Rockland! But you’re supposed to be –?” Blake gasped. At that, Rockland shifted. He’d intended to put Blake down as quickly as possible, but he couldn’t let him go without speaking to him, without letting him admit his wrongdoing. Blake was fast, pushing Rockland away from him while he was temporarily paralyzed by his shift. But Rockland was faster. Drawing his fist back, he landed a punch in his ex-colleague’s face that instantly bloodied his nose.
“You’re a disgrace, Blake. A disgrace to the agency, and to all the shifters of the world,” he snarled. “You’re a traitor!”
“I’m sorry. I was – they put me on the spot. What was I supposed to do?”
“You were supposed to be brave, to be honorable. To follow protocol and uphold the code of the agency. You know they tried to kill me. It was only thanks to my bear strength that I survived.” With another sound of disgust, he released him and pushed him away.
Blake had the good sense to shift, and Rockland followed him, and they launched themselves at each other.
Blake was a tough opponent, and Rockland was still a little hampered by his still-healing injuries, but little by little, Rockland got
the upper hand, his fury lending him extra strength. At last, he delivered the final blow, putting an end to the life of his ex-partner and betrayer with a vicious swipe from his razor-sharp claws. As Blake’s life blood flowed out of him, Rockland saw regret and shame in his eyes before they glazed over.
After that, Rockland took out every single one of the gang members who’d tried to kill him, one by one, including Jonas, who was the right hand of the gang leader. He waited in the forest patiently, luring them, taking them far away from their companions, before killing them swiftly and efficiently. They were all armed, but they were no match for a bear – especially a bear who could climb trees, and make his powerful body move silently through the forest when he needed to.
When he was done, he cleaned up the entire scene, not leaving any loose ends. He went inside the gang’s quarters and was surprised to discover that his possessions were still there. They’d been divided up between each of the gang members, of course, but he shifted, dressed and gathered them up into a holdall. Then he went through the buildings, checking that no signs of his presence had been left behind. When the ringleaders of the gang turned up to investigate why they hadn’t had any contact with their lackeys for a while, they’d most likely assume they’d all been kidnapped.
He climbed into one of the gang’s trucks – a flashy black pimp wagon with blacked-out windows – and started the ignition. But then he paused and took a moment. He’d done what he needed to do. The imminent danger to his life was over, and, more importantly, no-one would be sniffing around Paige’s bar, putting her in danger again. Paige. Just the sound of her name in his mind filled his veins with excitement and euphoria. He knew that she was a tough cookie. But they could never be together. For the rest of his life, he’d keep her safe in his heart as a perfect, happy memory, but that was all she could ever be to him. His life was too dangerous for him to be able to share it with her. He was always moving around the country, always working deep undercover, through carefully chosen and constructed identities. It wasn’t a life he could share with someone unless they were part of his cover – and for that, they’ll have to be highly trained. Like all of the guys in the special operations unit, he was destined to be single. Meanwhile, his bear roared and rumbled and complained. All it knew was that he’d found his mate.
Lost To The Bear (BBW Bear Shifter Romance) Page 6
