Except now he had Bethany and the baby.
“Babe? Who’s the email from? It’s not more hate mail, is it?”
Ever since Bethany started up their underground werebear-human matchmaking site, UrsaLove.com, they’d been getting threatening emails from weres all over the world. Some of them had even tracked down their phone number, making crank calls at all hours and doing everything they could to make their lives miserable.
“It's from a Veronica Muir. She heard about us and apparently is interested in a human male."
"Read it to me while I finish shaving.”
"Dear Max and Bethany," Bethany raised her voice so he could hear her. "You're probably very aware that the whole werebear world is in an uproar (haha!) over your relationship. You're rather famous, you know. I wish I could say this is a good thing, but I'm sure you've heard plenty from those who disapprove.
"Anyway, that's not why I'm writing. I've found myself in a situation and I can't ask anyone I know for advice. It dawned on me today that maybe you could offer some insight, if you don't mind.”
There was a pause before Bethany continued, her voice suddenly tight.
"Six years ago, my husband was accidentally shot by a hunter when he was in bear form. I was days away from giving birth to the twins at the time. My clan here in Kodiak, Alaska has been incredibly supportive through all of it and I'm finally back on my feet. Now that the boys are old enough, I'm interested in possibly finding a new mate.
“I decided to give online dating a try for a couple of reasons. First, it’s been so long since I’ve been on a date that I thought it would be an easy way to get my feet wet. But more importantly, I’m worried that another bear might not be able to accept my sons. They’re my priority and I won’t risk their safety and happiness for my romantic life.”
Bethany paused again. “What does she mean, Max? Why would dating another werebear be an issue for her kids?”
Max patted his face dry and padded into the bedroom. He’d told her about his keen sense of smell but he didn’t think she fully understood that he could read every emotion she had before she even knew she was having it. Like right now, he could smell her confusion mixed with a tinge of anxiety.
He snuggled up against her, leaning back on the headboard of the bed and pulling her back so she rested against his chest. She felt so good, so solid...like home.
“In the wild, male bears will often, um, dispose of cubs so they can mate with the mother.” At her gasp of shock, he quickly continued. “That doesn’t happen with werebears, really. But males can sometimes have a difficult time accepting another male’s offspring. And those who haven’t learned to fully control their inner bears...well, they’re punished by their clan in a pretty severe way.”
Bethany was silent, processing the information. Whenever they had one of these little lessons on bear culture, he anxiously waited for her to sit up and say ‘Enough! This is too much!’ But her inner strength, the part of her he loved the most, won out and she’d been nothing but accepting, even though there were some shocking differences between their communities.
She cleared her throat and continued reading. “The problem is, now I’ve fallen in love with a human. I wrote a big, long paragraph gushing about him just now, but zorched it. I sounded like a crushing schoolgirl! Anyway, as you can imagine, my clan up here in the wilds of Alaska is small and very conservative. Most are opposed to crossbreeding, and the Brotherhood is gaining a serious foothold here. If I tell them about Jess, my kids and I will be shunned, if not worse. I don’t know what to do. Any advice you can give me would be great. Veronica.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then Bethany gently pulled free from his arms, laid the laptop on the bed and walked into the bathroom without a word. The scent of her tears came to him quickly, tearing him up inside. He didn’t have to ask why she was crying, and it didn’t take any of his heightened senses to figure it out — except maybe common sense.
Besides the health of the baby, Bethany’s biggest concern was his status in the clan. “What if they shun you, or whatever it’s called?” she asked one day, her moist blue eyes gazing up at him in the most endearing way.
“They won’t. But even if they did, then we move in with one of your three overprotective brothers and I integrate into human society,” he replied as casually as possible. “It’s been done before. No biggie.”
But Bethany was too smart to believe it wouldn’t be a big-ass deal. Losing contact with everyone he’d ever known would be devastating for him. He couldn’t imagine never being able to see Chet, who’d become a second father to him after his dad was murdered. Not to mention all of his life-long friends.
The fact that she was determined to have their child be fully immersed in werebear culture would make the thought of this Veronica woman and her children being cast out of their clan unbearable. As sad as she was for this woman, she was also afraid for him and their cub.
More than anything, Max wanted to go wrap his arms around her, kiss away her tears and tell her everything would be okay. Only one thing was stopping him: He wouldn’t lie to her.
Chapter 3
“So this is where my bitches be at.” Kimmy shuffled into Bethany’s kitchen through the sliding glass door, her hair a rat’s nest and her make-up smeared. She slumped down next to Paul at the table and picked up his coffee mug. “What’s this, coffee? No Bloody Marys?”
“Um, skank? Put down my elixir of life and go back to that rock you just crawled out from under. And brush your teeth while you’re there.” He waved his hand in front of his face and squinched his nose at her.
Bethany smiled at her friends’ banter. It would sound awful to an outsider but she knew it passed as affection for these two. She still wanted to pinch herself that Chet had agreed to let them both move into her half of the duplex after she moved in with Max, considering how badly he’d always wanted her to move out.
When they broke the news to him that they were moving in together, Max had suggested Bethany’s best friends as potential tenants. Chet was so upset that his plan to keep them apart had failed that he just threw up his hands and said, “Do whatever you want. You’re going to anyway.”
Since Max’s place was decorated so beautifully with an eclectic mix of items found during his travels all over the world, Bethany left most of her stuff for Paul and Kimmy to use. They’d both been living with multiple roommates — in Paul’s case, three — so the situation worked out perfectly. Bethany wouldn’t have to find new homes for all her furniture, and her friends had a nice, fully furnished apartment of their own right next door.
Not that having them so close was always a good thing — like the time a drunk Kimmy forgot which apartment was hers and stumbled in while Bethany was straddling Max on the couch — but for the most part, their proximity was a comfort to her. Especially since the harassment started and her family lived across the country.
She got up and poured Kimmy her own cup, tipping in two packets of sweetener, just how she liked it. “Here you go, Sleeping Beauty. Maybe this will help you wake up. What time did you get in, anyway?”
Kimmy eyed her darkly. “What are you, my mom?” She grabbed the cup and took a sip, moaning with pleasure. “Aaaah.”
“Slut didn’t drag her used-up ass home till five, if you can believe it,” Paul said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t you think she’s a little long in the tooth to be pulling all-nighters?”
“I’m sitting right here, dickpig. If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.”
“Doing so might actually make my eyes bleed, but thanks for the offer.”
“All right, enough, you two,” Bethany interjected. “Kimmy, drink your coffee. Paul, lay off.”
“Fine,” Paul huffed as he pushed back from the table and moved over to a wall hanging. It was a small frame high up on the wall, probably higher than a piece of art should be. He stood on his tiptoes to get a better look.
“B, what’s this?”
“W
hat’s it look like?”
“Well, from here it looks kinda like...bullets?”
“Shell casings, actually, but yes.”
Kimmy got up to join him. She flicked a glance back at Bethany, who sat there sipping her peppermint tea. “They look like silver or something.”
“You got it.”
The pair looked at each other. Paul finally shrugged and asked the question Bethany was waiting for. “I’ll bite. Why are there two silver bullets...excuse me, shell casings framed on your wall?”
She’d already told them about Max — though it took a shifting demonstration from the man himself to fully convince them — and was grateful that they didn’t freak out too much. Kimmy went on a bender for about three days but came back and gave Max a big hug. Paul had been more reserved but was coming around. He’d always been very protective of his best girl, Bethany.
“They came from the bullets that killed Max’s parents.”
They slowly turned to face her. “Holy shit,” breathed Kimmy. “They were murdered?”
“Max thinks so,” she nodded, pushing around a coffee ground that was stuck to the side of her mug. “But he also says that hunting accidents happen every year, where a werebear is in bear form and a human hunter kills it, assuming it was a real bear.”
“But...but don’t they, ya know, sort of morph back into their human form when they die?” Kimmy sat down across from her while Paul stood stock still, listening.
Bethany shook her head. “No, it’s not like that. It’s not like they’re humans who have a magic spell cast on them that allow them to shift. They’re really half-bear, half-human. So whatever form they’re in when they die, that’s the form their bodies stay in.”
Paul finally found his words. “So...these bears that are killed by hunters...”
She nodded somberly in response, understanding what he was asking. It made her sick to her stomach to think about.
“What?” Kimmy’s gaze bounced between them. She was a little slow on the uptake this morning...oops, afternoon.
Neither one of them said anything, just looked at her for a moment. Understanding flashed in her eyes and she blanched. “No! They eat them?!”
Bethany grimaced but nodded. “Or stuff them or whatever they do for trophies.”
“Is that what happened to Max’s parents?” Paul asked quietly.
She shrugged. “Dunno. Max doesn’t think it was an accident but he doesn’t like to talk about it. All I know is that those are the casings from the bullets that killed them.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Paul cleared his throat. “So when they die, they keep the form they’re in at that moment, but some of their senses cross over, right? I think you told me that they’re still sentient or whatever when they’re morphed, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. And when they’re human, they have, like, supersonic hearing. Like Bionic Woman hearing.”
“Whoa.” Kimmy glanced at Paul. “So can he, um, hear through walls and stuff?”
Bethany laughed as her friend turned a brilliant shade of crimson. “I’m sure he can. Why? What did you do in my old bed?”
“Nothing! Well, I mean, something but only that once. I didn’t even like it that much, I swear!”
Laughter filled the room as Bethany and Paul clutched their stomachs in glee, wondering just what the hell their adventurous friend had been doing, but really not wanting to know.
“Well, fuck you both. I’m gonna go shower.” Kimmy pushed back from the table and huffed her way out the door.
Paul caught his breath in time to shout, “Thank God!”
As their laughing fit died away, Bethany gathered up the empty cups and started washing them, grateful to have her friends so close.
“So how’s it going, B? Things calming down?”
She shrugged. “We’re still getting the occasional middle-of-the-night phone call, but not very many anymore. Max is meeting with his superiors right now, which is completely killing me with worry.”
“But I thought he’d already told them about you and the baby, and that they were fine with it.”
She chuckled bleakly. “I wouldn’t say they were ‘fine’ with it. They insisted on meeting me and educating me on werebear-human relations. It was actually pretty fascinating stuff. Did you know there are whole villages in Europe where humans not only know about weres but accept them as equals? There have even been a number of matings but they seem to be pretty rare. Plus they keep the secret from the outside world. It’s pretty cool.”
“And the baby?”
Bethany smiled and looked down at her ever-expanding bump. At the tail end of her final trimester, it wasn’t so much a bump as a mountain. And there’s still a month or so left to go, she thought, imagining that her nine-month belly would rival Mt. Everest in size.
She turned to Paul, leaning back against the counter and rubbing her tummy. “He’s doing great.” Or so says Dr. Graves, a niggling voice in the back of her mind whispered. Shut up, she told it.
“He?! I thought you weren’t going to find out the sex! Ohmigod, I have to call Charlotte—“ Paul gasped and slapped a hand across his mouth. “I’m so sorry, B. I totally forgot.”
At the mention of her former best friend’s name, the smile fell from her face, her heart was gripped with sadness — and she wasn’t going to lie, a tinge of anger. She turned back to the counter and started wiping it down with a rag so he wouldn’t see the tears forming.
“It’s fine, Paul. She couldn’t handle the truth about Max. Nothing I can do about it. At least she promised to keep our secret. For that I’m grateful.”
He sidled up next to her and rubbed her back gently. He knew perfectly well that it had a calming effect on her. Ever since she was a little kid, she found a hand on her back soothing. She took a deep breath and smiled at him, a single tear spilling down her cheek.
“So it’s a boy?” His voice was gentle as he tried to divert her thoughts.
Her blonde ponytail swished against her back as she shook her head. “Dunno. I’ve decided to alternate pronouns because I can’t stand calling my baby ‘it’.”
“Ah. Very smart.”
Bethany continued to awkwardly clean the already-clean counter as Paul stood there stroking her back. “Well, sweetie, I’m going to see what my clinically horny roommate is up to. I’ll talk to you later.”
She tilted her head to accept his cheek kiss but didn’t watch him leave. The moment the back door slid home, a solitary sob wracked her body. A few more tears trickled down her cheeks, but she swallowed her despair over losing her best friend. She’d grieved long enough. These were happy times and, though she’d welcome her friend back with open arms, she had to move on.
With a lighter heart than just a moment before, Bethany made her way to the living room — sticking her tongue out at the scowling African mask in the hall as she walked by — and eased herself onto the couch. She found this was the most comfortable spot for her to sit, though getting up was a bitch.
Setting her laptop on top of a flat pillow that was perched atop her belly, she brought up a search engine. She had yet to respond to Veronica’s email because she wasn’t sure what to say.
“My first client and I can’t even help her,” she mumbled as she typed in ‘Werebears Alaska’.
The first dozen pages were filled with results about video games and shifter romance books, but deep into her search, she found an ancient blog post ridiculing a pseudo-scientific paper that claimed werebears were real. The post didn’t name the author of the paper — the blogger probably didn’t want to risk getting sued — but it did mention that they found it in the dusty stacks of “a major Washington state university.”
Bethany searched for ‘washington state university’ and clicked the most obvious link. It took nearly an hour of digging on various sites and pages, but she eventually found a listing of all the theses presented by Ph.D. candidates for the past 40 years or so. A search for the word �
�werebear’ yielded no results, but eventually she found a paper titled The Existence and Effects of Mammalian Lycanthropes Throughout Ancient and Modern History by Theodore Scantling, Ph.D.c , written in 1989.
“Yes!” she hissed to herself when she discovered it had been scanned and uploaded to the university’s servers. For $5, she was able to download it to her computer, all 300 pages of it.
Her foot tapped an impatient rhythm on the Turkish carpet as she waited for the document to download and open. This was the first possibly-legitimate item she’d found on the existence of werebears, and she’d spent a fair amount of time looking over the past several months.
From the moment she started reading the treatise, her eyes started drooping from boredom. This guy is dry as toast, she thought as she skimmed page after page of boring hypothesis.
“Lycanthropes have played a small but vital role in the history of global societies for millennia. Every European culture claims the existence of such creatures, which include a variety of apex predator species, most notably those belonging to the families Canidae, Felidae and Ursidae.”
Geez, what a snore-fest, she thought as she clicked through looking for something interesting. When she reached the section titled ‘Lycanthropes in Modern Culture’, she slowed down. The writing was as dry as ever, but the author made a compelling case for the existence of werewolves, werecats and especially werebears. He even claimed to have witnessed one shifting in his youth.
An hour had passed by the time she reached the last page. “Though the scientific community might scoff, the evidence is clear and irrefutable: Lycanthropes exist and have infiltrated every culture in the world.”
The sound of Max’s keys in the lock drew Bethany’s gaze. She couldn’t help herself. Every time he entered a room, her pulse beat just a little faster. And every time, he gave her the smile he was giving her now. Beaming and warm, with a touch of devilry thrown in for good measure.
“Hey, babe...and baby,” he said, leaning down to kiss her forehead and then her belly. She buried her fingers into his thick dark hair while he murmured a greeting to his cub in his clan’s native tongue. She was picking up a word here and there, but it was a difficult language and she had little hope of ever becoming fluent.
Crazy About Curves: 10 Luscious Reads Page 104
