by T. S. Joyce
“The fuck?” His voice wrenched up an octave. “No, no, no, that’s not how it works. Bruiser’s mated and bonded. He’s Diem’s, and she’s his.”
“Mated? Drew, I don’t understand, and why are you mad? This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“It does!” He hooked his hands on his hips and glared at the bonfire. With a sigh, he dragged his attention back to her and lowered his voice. “It feels like it does. So…you’re Bruiser’s? Or Damon’s?”
“Drew,” Riley cradled her stomach in her hands and shook her head. “I’m not anyone’s. I only just met Damon today, right after you dropped me off. I’m here for Bruiser and Diem.”
Tagan let off an ear-splitting whistle from his front porch behind her and waved to those gathered around the bonfire. Bruiser gestured her up onto the porch with him and Diem, and Riley shot Drew one last confused frown before she stepped up beside them. He looked ill.
When the small crowd had settled in front of them, Bruiser cast them an emotional smile. “We have something we want to tell you all. Something we probably should’ve told you earlier, but with this stuff, everything is uncertain until the end. But…” He looked at Diem as she clasped Riley’s hand and squeezed it. “Diem and I are going to have a baby girl. Harper Keller will be joining us via this wonderful, selfless woman in a couple of weeks. We signed our contracts with her last year, and she’s been taking care of our Harper.”
The murmur of the crowd transitioned to a deafening volume as everyone charged the tiny porch. Bruiser was laughing as he tried to talk. “Careful with her. She’s carrying precious cargo.” His body shook as a tall man with blond hair clapped him on the back.
The same man turned to her and bowed. “My respect to the Vessel of the Dragon.”
“Kellen!” the dark-haired woman who’d been telling the story beside the fire exclaimed. “She’s human.”
“Skyler!” Brooke said with a hard shake of her head.
Riley stood frozen. She didn’t understand the dynamics here. She didn’t understand why they were calling her a human, or why the strange-talking man had called her “Vessel of the Dragon.” She shrank away from them until her hips bumped the porch railing.
“Give her space,” Drew gritted out.
“Why?” A man with chestnut, close-cropped hair rasped out, as if he had no voice at all. An angry red scar glistened against his neck.
“Brighton,” Drew said. “I swear to God I’ll rip your fucking face off if you don’t give her space.
“Is she yours?” Kellen asked. “Vessel of the Dragon and Mate of the Beast.”
“Kellen,” Tagan muttered, holding his hands out toward Drew in a calming gesture. “Kindly shut the fuck up. Drew, look at me. Look at me!”
A low snarl filled the air, and Riley stifled a scream when Drew lifted inhuman ice-colored eyes to Tagan.
“We’re backing off. Brighton, move away from her. Bruiser, you, too.”
Bruiser had placed himself in front of Riley and was now crouching slightly as the same feral sound rattled his throat. “I can’t,” he growled out.
“It’s not a request, Bruiser,” Tagan said calmly. “It’s an order. Let Drew get to her.”
“I. Can’t. That’s my baby in her.”
Drew shook his head slowly, and an empty smile curled up his lip. “No. Mine.” His voice was deep and gravelly—unrecognizable from the man Riley had talked to earlier.
Tagan said, “Drew. Bear. The baby is Bruiser’s.”
“My mate. My cub.”
Bruiser leapt across the porch just as Drew’s frame vibrated and shattered. An enormous grizzly bear blasted out of Drew, roaring so loud it rattled the ground beneath Riley’s feet. Bruiser wasn’t Bruiser anymore. He was fur and claws and glowing gold-green eyes as he clamped impossibly long canines into Drew-the-fucking-monster’s shoulder.
Riley screamed as the brawling animals smashed in the the porch, ripping the wooden decking from the trailer and making her lose her balance.
A strong hand clamped onto her arm and yanked her inside Tagan’s house. Brighton, Drew had called him.
A few others ran in behind them before he slammed the door closed.
“I don’t understand,” Riley whispered in horror and denial, but everything was clicking quietly into place. Tagan just addressed Drew as Bear. Kellen had called her human. She’d watched the news with the rest of the world when bear shifters had come out to the public in Breckenridge. Oh, she was beginning to see just what camp of people she’d found herself immersed in. The Ashe Crew were bear shifters.
“I think you do,” Brighton rasped out, his voice barely a whisper. He winced as if the words had hurt to push out of his throat.
Riley looked from him to the door where the roaring of the bears filled her head. When Harper squirmed, she cradled her belly, then dragged her gaze to Diem. “He called Harper his cub.”
“I’m so sorry,” Diem said thickly. “I wanted to tell you, to be up front in the contract, but we were advised by our lawyer not to. We haven’t come out to the public. And then I met you, and you were so nice, and you’ve been through so much—”
“What does that mean?” she snapped, wiping the back of her hand against her damp cheeks and standing rigid.
“I mean I know. Bruiser and my father and I know.”
“You know? You know!” Riley looked around at the questioning faces around her in disbelief, then out at the brawl she could see through the bent blinds in the front picture window. There were more bears fighting now. Bears! “Why did you choose me to be your surrogate then? There had to be a billion better candidates out there.”
“Because,” Diem said around a sob, “It was my choice. I saw your profile, saw how hard you’d worked to become one, and you felt right. I’ve had it hard, too.” Her voice softened, and she looked around the room. “We all have. It didn’t feel right to choose someone who was perfect on paper. I wanted someone with fight in them. And besides that, I knew what you were after.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“Redemption.”
Riley shook her head slowly, unable to hold anyone’s gaze anymore. “So you think you know everything, and yet I know nothing about any of you. Is Harper a bear to?”
“Riley,” Diem said, warning in her tone. “Ask that question in a few days when you’ve gotten to know us first.”
“Is she a bear?” Riley yelled.
Diem’s delicate nostrils flared slightly as she inhaled a deep breath. “She might be a bear, and she might be something else.”
Riley arched her eyebrows, waiting.
Diem lifted her chin. “If we’re lucky, she’ll be a dragon, like me.”
Chapter Eight
Riley guffawed at what Diem had just said. “A dragon. A dragon? Like a flying, fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding dragon?” She put her hands protectively in front of her belly and backed up until her back hit a wall.
“Probably not a fire-breather,” Brighton rasped out. “Diem doesn’t have the fire like Damon does.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding hysterically in a very bobble-head like fashion. “That’s great. Damon’s a dragon, too. I’m surrounded by bears and friggin’ dragons. Anything else?”
Skyler lifted her hand hesitantly, like a child in kindergarten. “Falcon.”
A screech of utter frustration and disbelief scratched up Riley’s throat. “I think I need some time alone.”
Brooke, who’d been silently watching from the kitchen table until now, stood. “The fight sounds like it’s over. I’ll take you to ten-ten.”
“Okay.” Why was she still nodding like a lunatic? “Is that some sort of dungeon?”
Brooke’s eyes were so sad. “No. It’s a trailer like this one. It’s also where most of the women here started to get to know this place.”
Sounded like a dungeon to her.
Cradling her belly, Riley followed Brooke outside. She searched for the bears who’d been fighting a m
inute ago, but all she could see were large, lumbering shadowy figures headed for the woods beside the trailer park.
Brooke’s little boy was asleep in the woman’s arms, sucking his thumb.
“Will Harper hurt me?” Riley blurted out suddenly.
“No. She won’t have her first shift until she is at least a year old. You’ll deliver a little baby girl who looks and smells and acts just like every other baby girl. You know,” she said, waiting for Riley to catch up. “I used to be human, too. And when I found out bear shifters existed, I was upset. I was shocked and angry at being Turned, and I felt all of those confusing emotions you’re going through right now.”
Brooke led her across the street and up a set of dilapidated stairs to a cream-colored trailer with green shutters. It was ancient looking, and the paint was peeling around the door frame. Even the number 1010 was hanging sideways by a lone, rusty nail.
Brooke walked straight through a tiny living room to a narrow hallway to a bedroom. Paintings of a man’s face were scattered in one of the corners.
“I know it doesn’t look like much, but I wanted to show you where I started healing from an attack by a mugger that left me shaken to my core. These paintings are mine, and this used to be a studio for me. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but it’s something big from the way Diem was talking. You don’t have to tell anyone about it unless you want to, and we won’t push you, but know this.” Brooke turned to Riley with wide, serious eyes. “Here, you’re safe.”
“But Drew and Bruiser—”
“Were being bullheaded men, but they’d never hurt you. I think Drew is having a problem with his bear. He’s grown protective of you in a way I’ve never seen him be toward anyone. He shouldn’t have challenged Bruiser like that, and you shouldn’t have found out what he is like this, but be patient with him. He’s a little lost right now.”
“He called me his mate,” Riley whispered. A trill of hope and confusion surged through her just saying that. Even at his scariest, he hadn’t been focused on her. He’d been focused on protecting her from Brighton getting too close when she’d panicked.
“Yeah,” Brooke murmured. “There’s that. Which is why he is probably getting protective of that baby you’re carrying. You just came in here and shook everything up, didn’t you?” Brooke winked and bumped her shoulder against Riley’s, then walked out of the room. “There’s clean sheets on the bed and towels in the cabinet in the bathroom.”
“Thank you,” Riley said on a breath, swaying under the weight of all the new information.
It was a lot. Too much for one person to shoulder at once, perhaps. She’d known bear shifters existed, but it was a completely different thing to watch the man she was crushing on turn into a damned giant grizzly.
First Seamus, the monster, and then Drew, a different kind of monster. She was a wreck with men.
Arms and legs feeling like lead, she shuffled numbly across the living room, through the tiny eat-in kitchen with its white-washed cabinets, faux-wood countertops, and a giant dead spider near the sink, then into the master bedroom.
The space was much larger than she’d anticipated. Cheap laminate wood flooring ran the length of the room under a queen-size bed with two antique sconces on either side of the headboard. She tried to imagine Brooke as anything but the strong woman she seemed to be now, but failed. She just couldn’t fathom her in this place, painting those pictures of that man with the cruel twist to his lips—her attacker.
Desperate for something familiar, she pulled a pair of fluffy towels from the stark white cabinet above an old washer and dryer in the bathroom. She undressed slowly as the tap water transitioned from frigid to boiling hot. Inside the old swamp mud-colored bathtub, she hunched forward under the hot jets of water and locked her elbows against the cheap plastic side of the shower. Disguised as tiny drops of moisture streaming down her cheeks, fear and anger left her body.
She should’ve been told she was carrying a shifter. She couldn’t think of Harper as a dragon or a bear yet, but Diem should’ve made the choice up to her whether she carried a shifter child or not. Their existence wasn’t this huge secret like it used to be. The Breck Crew were the faces of the shifter movement. They’d been accepted and, in some ways, celebrated over the last eighteen months since they’d come out to the public.
But what if Diem had told her? Would it have mattered after a few days of letting it sink in? It didn’t really change the letter she’d read from Diem and Bruiser that had outlined their struggle to have a child. Diem couldn’t carry for medical reasons.
It wouldn’t have changed her reasons for choosing to do this either. She’d applied to agencies that matched surrogates with parents, but she hadn’t fit the requirements. She hadn’t given birth before and was unproven as a viable womb. She was single and coming off a public traumatic event that had been highly publicized and would be on file with any agency. She’d hired her own lawyer, who searched for couples who were willing to deal with the uncertainty of Riley’s life. Diem and Bruiser had been the only ones to answer. If she’d known they were shifters, trying for a child that would someday be like them, would it really have mattered?
Perhaps it would have for a few days or a week, but Riley was pro-shifter. She’d even voted they shouldn’t have to register publicly like the government wanted them to. The vote had swung the other way, and they were supposed to register, but not many of them had. The Ashe Crew definitely hadn’t.
But how much did that change how she felt about the little baby doing summersaults in her stomach? Riley looked down at her belly and sighed. Not a damned bit.
“I’m sorry,” Drew said in a muffled voice from the other side of the shower curtain.
Riley jumped and covered herself with a teeny washrag. It didn’t hide much.
She stuck her head around the curtain, careful to keep the ends tucked to cover her soppy wet and naked body. “What are you doing in here?” Her voice was shrill, but one look at Drew had her swallowing a string of curses down.
He sat on the closed lid of the toilet, head in his hands, every muscle tensed as if he were in pain. A giant claw mark ran the length of his ribcage and tapered off just above the jeans that clung to his hips. When he looked up at her, his eyes weren’t that wild color anymore. They were a soft blue and filled with regret.
Riley eased back into the shower so she didn’t have to see the pain on his face. “You were out of control out there,” she murmured, squirting an entire miniature bottle of shampoo into her hand.
“I know.”
“My last boyfriend was an overprotective, jealous asshole who stifled me. I don’t want that again.”
“Nor do you deserve that.”
Closing her eyes, she scrubbed the fruity smelling wash into her short tresses. “Well, make your apologies then.”
“The person I am today isn’t the man I want to be. That overprotective asshole you saw out there isn’t me. Not normally. And I bet your ex told you that, too, because that’s what men like him do. They manipulate. They’re masters of it.”
Riley stopped scrubbing and frowned at the putrid color of the shower wall. “How do you know that?”
“Because my dad was like that to my mom. I swore I’d never end up like him, but over the last two months, that’s exactly where I landed. I’m sorry. You met my worst self.”
“The baby—the cub—she’s not yours, Drew. You know that, right? She’s Bruiser and Diem’s.”
Drew waited a beat of silence before he said, “I know. I don’t know why my animal went crazy like that. I’ve never had a problem being around Wyatt, and I don’t have some wish for a cub of my own. I just…”
“Your instincts kicked in? Because of me?”
“Yeah. Something like that. Listen, I grabbed your duffle bag from Bruiser’s truck and asked Diem what you’ve been craving, and she told me orange juice with crushed ice. The icemaker doesn’t work in here, so I brought you a bucket of it from my place and s
ome OJ.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m going to go. I’m sorry.”
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” she blurted out, sticking her head back out the crack between the shower wall and the curtain.
Drew ducked back in the room. The smile on his lips was slow and only lifted one corner of his mouth, but it counted. Riley’s heartrate raced. “I like when you smile. You should do it more often.”
Drew arched his eyebrow and dipped his chin. “Keep giving me almost-peeks at those big old titties of yours, and I’ll smile all you want.”
Riley laughed and opened the curtain wide enough to splash him with water.
His laugh was deep and sexy as he pretended to look through the bigger space she’d created.
“Do you want to see my tummy?” she asked suddenly.
Heat flushed her cheeks, but he banished her embarrassment when the smile dipped from his lips and he nodded solemnly. “I do.”
“I haven’t shown anyone.”
The smile returned just slightly. “Good.” Approaching slowly, he reached for the curtain with his outstretched fingertips, then pulled it back.
With a squeak, she closed her eyes and stood ramrod straight, fists clenched at her sides. She’d never been this bold, but the need to show him all of her was something primal. She needed him to see her this way. The urge called to her from a place she’d forgotten existed. “Say something.”
“Fuck it all, woman. You’re beautiful.”
She pursed her lips and exhaled shakily. When she opened her eyes, Drew was staring at her swollen breasts.
Nervously, she laughed. “My boobs are finally big, so it’s only right I should show them to someone before they go away.”
“They’ll go away?”
“Mmm hmm. Within a few weeks of having Harper. Look, I know you didn’t mean to show me your bear like that earlier, but I don’t mind. I mean, I did at first, and I’m still a little shocked that I’ve met real life bear shifters, but… I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s okay that you’re different.”
“Yeah?” His eyes met hers, trapped her in the hopefulness of his gaze.
