Chance
Copyright March, 2016 Selene Charles
Cover Art by Croco Frauke
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This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
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Published in 2016 by Selene Charles, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America
Chance: Bears of Kodiak
Three Brothers. One mating ritual. Equals one wild, sexy night...
Chance Hawthorne only knew one thing in life...mating wasn't for him. He might be forced to endure the bloody ritual, but that didn't mean he had any plans to settle down and make baby grizzlies.
Until the day he meets Bronwyn Crow and all bets are off. He wants more than just her body for one night of fun, he plans to make the woman his future, the only problem now is convincing her that she wants him too...
Chapter 1
“Get out of here, you filthy crow!” Chance Hawthorne tossed a jagged piece of timber at the beady-eyed crow that’d been making a pest of itself for the past two weeks. The splintered wood thunked off the corner of the tin roof, falling harmlessly to the forest floor.
That damn crow had been picking through his garbage cans, tearing open the bags, and scattering crap on the forest floor by his home. The scraps of litter might as well have been a dinner bell, signaling the vermin in the woods to come get whatever it considered to be valuable treasure. At the moment, Chance was more than just a little fed up with all of them.
Today, the crow had gone after a string of red yarn. The dangling thread looked more like a floppy, blood-soaked worm, clutched between the bird’s black beak.
The raven-hued feathers ruffled briefly, and in one smooth motion, the bird transferred the yarn from its mouth to its foot then screeched at Chance. Several times. Snapping its beak loudly, and hopping from foot to foot on the ledge of the roof, its beady little eyes looked almost angry. But that wasn’t possible… Birds had brains the size of walnuts. Besides, he hadn’t actually hit the thing.
It continued on, so loud and awkward-sounding, that all of Chance’s anger fizzled. That bird was sassing him.
“The hell?” He chuckled, dragging fingers through his unkempt, shoulder-length hair as he watched that miniature ball of fury hop back and forth on the roof, giving him a piece of its mind. Then swooping down, the bird picked up something in its beak and tossed it at him.
Its aim was unerringly accurate. The sharp sting of a pebble smacking into Chance’s cheek made him wince. “What the hell?”
He rubbed his cheek. That bird was insane. When it dipped its head again, as though to toss something else at him, he decided to get while the gettin’ was good.
Dodging the crow’s pebble attack, he glared hotly at the stupid animal. Something was mighty wrong with that bird.
Chance might have stood out there all day, amused despite the fact that crazy creature had it in for him, if his brother August hadn’t poked his head out the door, glaring at Chance with frosty blue eyes.
“Chance, hurry the hell up already,” he snapped before shutting the door behind him with a not-so-subtle slam.
Rolling his eyes, Chance muttered beneath his breath, not wanting to go back into that house just yet. He and his brothers were on week four of their self-imposed hibernation, a grueling but critical step they had to endure before the coming ritual.
He was restless as hell and tired of staring at the same four walls. Not to mention the fact that even during the best of times, grizzlies hardly acted like the teddy bears that fairy tales had made them out to be. Whining, swearing, and growling had been all they’d done these past few days. And yeah, no baths either. The cabin smelled like ten-day-old gym socks.
He wanted to go hunt and eat. Even that freaking bird was looking tasty right then. He could bag a few of those, pluck ‘em, roast ‘em over an open fire… hell, he would even eat them raw at this point.
Food was a driving force.
But it was forbidden at the moment. Blah, blah, blah… damn mating ceremony was so not worth the constant, gnawing ache in his belly.
The bird squawked loudly, holding its head high, as though it’d won some type of victory.
“Yeah, you wish,” Chance muttered. “Come back and steal my garbage again, next time you might just learn what’s for dinner.”
He realized he probably shouldn’t have said that the moment the crow dive-bombed, screeching loudly as it came at him like a kamikaze.
The front door opened again, and his dual-color-eyed brother Phoenix growled. Rather than just asking him to come inside like a normal person, his brother curled his fingers around Chance’s collar and dragged him inside instead. Phoenix slammed the door behind them.
A second later, Chance heard a loud thunk. His eyes grew wide as he stared through the tiny window to see the crow shaking its head, wobbling drunkenly away.
He laughed, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “I swear that damn thing was trying to kill me.”
Phoenix’s look of disgust said it all. Of the three of them, his oldest brother had the hottest temper. He was the real grizzly of the bunch.
August, who was normally the calm in the storm, had been a hot-headed bastard lately. Chance was pretty sure his brother’s mood had everything to do with the pretty siren he’d let slip away, but August was notoriously tight-lipped when it came to his personal life. All Chance knew was that the chilliest brother of the bunch made an enraged dragon look like a happy unicorn by comparison.
On the other hand, Chance was the baby, and as a result, the most reckless of the bunch. Chance did what he wanted, when he wanted, and how he wanted… usually.
He eyed Phoenix with a snarl. His brother was cracking his knuckles and looking as though he wanted to make mincemeat of Chance’s pretty face.
Holding up his hands in an “I surrender” pose, Chance sighed. “Dude, chill, okay. I was just trying to get rid of that—”
“Not important now,” August said, swiping his hand through the air like a blade.
Phoenix was still looking at Chance as if he were a prime slab of raw meat with a whiskey chaser on the side.
Chance rolled his eyes. “Who wants mates anyway? We can drive into town and find some willing—”
“Shut the hell up,” August growled, rubbing his nose furiously. “If I don’t get a say in this, you don’t get a say in this. Now just sit down, shut up, and deal.”
“What the hell’s happened to you, August? You’re acting like a whiny bitch baby.”
Chance was sort o
f worried about his brother, but he was angry too. None of them really wanted to go through the stupid, archaic ritual anymore than the other.
“What August is trying and badly failing to say,” Phoenix said with a derisive roll of his eyes, “is that instinct is ritual that goes back to the dawn of the Breed era, and it’s an unbreakable tradition.”
Phoenix, who was never known for being a calm bear even at the best of times, must have also noticed August’s foul mood because that had sounded almost intelligent.
“And how we’ll teach our cubs. Yeah, yeah, blah. I got it.” Chance made a talking motion with his hand. “Whatever. Let’s just get on with this already. I’m tired and hungry.”
Standing to his feet and looking like a weary bear, August rolled his shoulders and shook his head. Chance swore he could practically peel the exasperation off his brother. August took life way too seriously sometimes.
“Let’s just get this shit over with,” August snapped. Again. Opening the door with a loud bang, he walked out without even a fare-thee-well.
“Well, then.” Chance pointed at the door through which August had left. “What the eff is going on with him?”
Phoenix rolled his eyes. “Wish I knew. Whatever it is, I just hope finding his mate will set him to rights ‘cause I can’t deal with his crap anymore.”
Getting their mates, while temporarily fun to scratch an itch with, was very low on Chance’s list of priorities. One woman was much like the next. He was happy as long as they were hot, had big jubilees for him to palm, and could drink him under the table. He didn’t exactly figure on ever getting saddled down with anyone, much less one someone.
Phoenix and August, though, were acting as if the mating ritual was life or death.
And Chance loved his brothers, grudgingly at times, but loved them nonetheless. So he would clamp his lips shut so they could just get this nightmare over with already. He had places to be that night… namely getting his drink on while downing some hot wings. That damn bird had made him want chicken.
“All right, fine.” He nodded. “I give. Let’s just do this already.”
“You got the scaffolding set up?” Phoenix asked.
Chance gave a thumbs up then yanked off his shirt. Phoenix proceeded to do the same thing.
All his life, Chance had heard the stories handed down through his clan for generations. The legends spoke of the vision quest each male would be forced to endure just to find his mystical mate with a vajayjay so magical that it would make the male slobber all over himself to get his hands on it.
At least, that’s the way he’d always viewed it. He thought it was just a bunch of hogwash.
Of course, up until the day his ma and pa had been taken out by a hunter’s rifle, he remembered them being mostly happy.
He wasn’t sure though. They’d died when he was just barely out of his cub years. He mostly knew about them based on the memories August and Phoenix shared. So maybe his parents had been the exception and not the rule.
Grizzlies weren’t pack animals, not true grizzlies anyway. Shifters were a little bit like their distant cousins in the sense that no grizzly liked to stray outside of their own little sphere of family.
So he’d never really been around others of his kind to see whether or not the stories of the magical hoo-ha were true, but Chance didn’t figure it mattered much. If it wasn’t true, no harm no foul. He would just go find himself a willing partner to warm his bed for the night. If it were true, he would go and scratch his itch and call it a day.
Clapping his hands, he went to the door. “Last one there’s a rotten egg.” He grinned good-naturedly when his brother groaned.
Phoenix reached for three sets of gleaming steel hooks sitting on the dinner table and carefully tossed them over one shoulder. “Only you could say that, knowing what’s to come.”
“Meh.” Chance swung the door open. “It’ll heal.” Then he turned and trotted out the door, keeping a wary eye out for the crow that he could still smell lingering around. The thing smelled like mussels, acorns, and… flowers?
He shook his head. Why was he smelling flowers? Maybe that rock the bird had thrown at his head had done a little damage after all.
He sniffed again and blinked rapidly as an overwhelming scent of flowers filled his lungs. “Huh,” he grunted.
Phoenix, who was just to the side of him, lifted a brow in question.
“Nothing,” Chance answered with a hard shake of his head, taking breaths only when he absolutely needed to. That smell was far too distracting.
A few seconds later, they arrived at the clearing Chance had worked on all day the day before. The scaffold was little more than several solid pieces of wood, hammered together to create a supported platform ten feet off the ground. A two-by-four sheet of wood was set up beneath it as a step for them to stand on.
Three thick sets of rope dangled over the platform. All three were set up with rigs so that all the brothers would need to do was lock the steel hooks in place, which Phoenix was already doing. Chance smelled August around, but his cranky brother was hiding somewhere at the moment.
Whatever. Not his business.
Chance stared up at the sky, watching as the dark clouds that’d been rolling in from a distance drew closer and closer. He could smell the rain in the wind.
Based on the thick black color of the clouds, he was sure they were about to experience a downpour to beat all.
“I guess suggesting we build a fire is out of the question?” Chance asked with a grin.
Snapping the final hook in place, Phoenix nodded. “Yeah, I’d say so, little brother. What’s the matter, little bit of rain make you scared?” he taunted with a wicked smile. “Want a hug to make it better?” He opened his arms, stepping toward Chance as though he meant to do it.
“Ha!” Chance snorted. “You wish. Look, little bit of rain, I still look sexy as hell. You, on the other hand, I’d hate to see the look in your female’s eyes when she gets a load of you and—”
“Stop, both of you.” August held up his hand, appearing as if by magick. Serious as ever. “There is no time to waste. The energy has begun to roll in.”
When he said it, Chance finally felt it. The raw prickling power of that ancient earth magick crawled up from the soil beneath his boots. His skin tingled as the energy rolled over his flesh like an electrical wave.
Even his heart rate, which had been nice and calm a moment before, now began to thump harder in his chest. Frowning, Chance rubbed at himself. This was magick, the likes of which he’d never experienced before.
Wetting his lips, he nodded to his brothers, serious for the first time in a long time.
As one, they stepped onto the two-by-four and grabbed their hooks. Chance knew this was going to hurt like a son of a gun, but he could no more control the sudden desire to do this anymore than he could the weather.
He’d been gripped by a power far more ancient than most anything out there: instinct.
Without waiting for instructions from his brothers, he took the hooks, and in one swift movement, sank the needle-sharp tips deep beneath the muscle of his chest. Instantly, he felt the wet heat of his blood wind in crimson rivulets down his chest.
Phoenix was the first to step off their small ledge, a move that forced him to stand on the tips of his toes so as not to dangle haphazardly off the ground.
August went next, then Chance took the plunge.
The pain of that hook stretching deep beneath his flesh was excruciating bliss. Fire ripped through his bones, but that earth magick filled the pain with its primal dominance. Not a sound escaped his lips as he closed his eyes and lost himself to the voices of his ancestors.
Chanting, colors, and smells flooded his head and his senses, so that he was lost to the chaos of music that surrounded him. Images scrolled by his mind’s eye in a wave, discordant strands of color forming into shapes he did not know. With each second that passed, his heart beat harder and faster.
He didn
’t know if minutes had passed or hours. Time had ceased to mean anything. Chance no longer felt the tear of the hooks in his flesh or the ground beneath his feet. He was deaf to the clang of lightning crashing all around, and numb to the burning scent of ozone and sap.
Then as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. His eyes snapped open. He knew what he had to do.
With a growl, he slid the hooks out of his chest, barely phased by the additional stretch and tear. Cold rain washed away the blood. With another growl that sounded more like a shout, he dropped to all fours, transforming in an instant from man to bear.
As a mighty grizzly, he had claws as long as a man’s fingers and thighs as powerful and strong as an ironwood tree. This time when he roared, the ground trembled, and the scent of wildflowers filled his head.
Casting a quick glance up at the platform, he noticed both his brothers had already left, gone to find the thing they needed most.
And now he knew… he needed it too.
With a violent snort, he moved, tracking the scent to wherever it led. If it took him off a ledge, he would follow even there. It didn’t matter. The urge to find her rode him hard.
The scent of deer, rabbits, snakes, and berries all vied for his attention, but he was a missile, locked in on his target. Nothing and no one could lure him away from her siren’s call.
Bushes quaked in his wake, destroyed from his obdurate march. Chance didn’t walk around anything. He plowed straight through whatever came through his path.
He needed to find her. He needed to find her now.
Now.
Now!
He stopped. The breeze gusted strongly from the east, and her scent washed over him like a lover’s caress. Sun-kissed petals dripped with morning dew.
Shaking his massive head, he ran for her.
Each step brought her closer and closer to him until… he crashed through a thicket of brambles and weeds and spied the stupid little crow, hidden beneath a fallen log. That dangling string of red yarn was still trapped in its mouth.
Chance: Mating Fever (Bears of Kodiak Book 1) Page 1
