by Maia Starr
Looking around, he almost forgot he was in his own home, but once his racing mind began to settle, it all came back to him. It was afternoon already, and just a few hours ago he’d had the most exhilarating sex in his life. Tiffany…her name was like a drug, making him stiffen in his seat on the bed and straighten as he realized she wasn’t laying next to him. Maybe she’d gotten up to head to the bathroom? Or to get some fresh air? Or maybe…
She was gone. The thought struck him like a bullet, ripping through the images he’d had of their future. Honestly, the idea of her having left didn’t surprise him. What had it been, not even a full day yet, and he was expecting things of her? That was insane of him.
But if Tiffany had left already, wouldn’t his inner bear be going nuts right now? Clutching at his chest, Kyle waited for the next moment of insanity to hit him like a wave, like it had in the past. Yet it never came, and as Kyle waited, his eyes widened. Wafts of bacon and eggs began to enter his room, under the crack of his door. Breakfast was being made in his kitchen, and there was only one person who would’ve been around to cook right then. Smiling, Kyle threw off the sheets and rose slowly, his bones aching from the pain of the dream, and his mind whirling at the meaning behind Tiffany’s decision to stay. He was certain she could have fled from his house at any time while he was sleeping. Kyle couldn’t help it sometimes; his sleep was just too heavy for most people to be able to wake him up.
If Tiffany had stayed, that meant she was willing to, and wanted to, and actually valued the deal he had made with her. She’d stay for a few days and see if her feelings changed, and he was confident she’d fall for him. All he needed was her trust in him to grow exponentially.
Or maybe she just wanted answers, of which Kyle thought he’d finally be happy to oblige her with. The memories of Alexander’s death were unsurprisingly painful, yet he couldn’t just keep those memories for himself forever. He knew that.
Pulling on fresh clothes, Kyle smelled himself, realized he still maintained a steady scent of alcohol, and shook his head at the realization. He would bathe later, but first, he wanted to see Tiffany.
Walking out into the hallway, Kyle was struck by a beautiful song coming from the kitchen below. The voice was Tiffany’s, carrying throughout the house as she quietly sang. It was mesmerizing. Tiffany could sing? He could imagine her singing to him every night, or every morning, the sound calming the more feral parts of him. With every step he took down the stairs, his certainty of Tiffany being the mate for him became more concrete. With every step, his body trembled at the prospect of that future, of his life becoming something he’d actually love.
He stopped at the bottom of the steps and peered into the kitchen, spying Tiffany at the stove, her back to him. She was still singing, though almost absentmindedly now as she cooked a fresh batch of scrambled eggs. Kyle’s chest thumped with desire as he looked her up and down, the curve of her hips and sway of her gorgeous brown hair making him gulp. He stayed like that until Tiffany turned around on a whim, catching his gaze and turning off her singing voice as she stared at him in surprise.
“You know, you’re a lot quieter than you look,” Tiffany said as he sauntered into the kitchen, her eyes never leaving his. “Want some eggs?”
“Since when do you sing?” he asked, pulling out a chair from the meager table in the middle of his kitchen.
Tiffany shrugged. “For as long as I can remember. I just do it for fun though. I didn’t realize you could hear...I wasn’t singing that loud. Did I wake you up?”
Kyle shook his head. “That’s probably my shifter hearing for you. We’ve got awesome hearing, so you know. And no, I woke up from a bad dream, but I’d rather have woken up to your singing instead.”
Tiffany frowned. “What kind of dream?”
“A nightmare, really, Tiff.”
“Nightmare, huh…” Tiffany placed a plate of eggs and bacon in front of him, returning to the stove to slide the rest onto a plate for herself. She was quiet as she walked back over and wouldn’t look at him as she sat down. Kyle was already halfway through his meal when she finally spoke again.
“Do your nightmares revolve around Emily?”
He nearly choked on his eggs, hitting his chest with a fist as he struggled to swallow the eggs. When he finally did, he sucked in a deep breath and stared at Tiffany, who now glowered at him while hunched over her food; she seemed to sink in her chair. With her fork in her thin hand, she stabbed and played with the eggs and bacon.
“How do you know about Emily?” Kyle asked. Emily? Where did she hear that name? Did Emily show up her while I was out cold on the bed and talk to Tiffany? If she did, I wonder what she told Tiffany...nothing I could say would repair what Emily might have told her.
Tiffany was quiet, unwilling to speak. So Kyle sighed. “I bet you want the truth, huh? I probably should have told you earlier, I suppose.”
“Yes, you should have. It’s what I’ve been asking for, isn’t it?”
Kyle gazed at her, his smile growing bit by bit as he watched her, while her scowl deepened. Tiffany truly was a hard nut to crack...but he wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Alright,” he said. “I guess I should start at the beginning.”
Tiffany, now straightening, looked him full on, her beautiful hazel eyes filling his vision.
So Kyle started his story.
Chapter Twenty
Tiffany
“It all started one year ago,” Kyle began, as he scraped together the remaining bits of food on his plate. “I was still just any old bear shifter in the Woodland Bear Clan, living my life the way I wanted to. I was friends with the alpha at the time, a guy whose name was Alexander.”
It was incredible how confident Kyle seemed as he spoke, yet how, with that confidence, a flurry of emotion edged his tone. It was as if the words were weighted by some hidden truth that he struggled to bring to the surface. Her annoyance at his murmuring of the name Emily subsided momentarily, and then surged back the more he went on.
“Alexander was great, the best friend a shifter could ask for. He was strong, capable, social: the perfect leader for our clan. One night, during a party that was thrown for someone’s birthday, he said he had wanted to talk to me about something.” Here Kyle chuckled quietly. “More like he wanted to vent to me about pretty much everything. There was a lot of pressure on the guy, more than I feel like I’ll ever truly know. But I was drunk then, ready to quietly listen to whatever he had to say. I’m sure that’s where my alcoholism came from, especially knowing what happened next.”
He glanced away, out a nearby window, and his dark eyes didn’t seem so dark or intimidating any more. A familiar bitter sadness was present, drawing her in again. Tiffany struggled just as hard as Kyle was to stay focused.
“While we were out in the forest, away from the party, Alexander was talking to me. Eventually, I passed out from the amount of beer I drank, and right as I did, we heard wolves howling in the distance. The next thing I knew, Alexander was rolling me along the ground, probably because I so was damn heavy, and he hid me under some hollowed-out log and covered me with moss, to mask my scent I think, though I didn’t find any of this out until it was too late. Apparently, I passed out again, and the next time I woke up, Emily was standing over me.”
Tiffany flinched, though Kyle didn’t seem to notice. Emily...so she finally makes an appearance. She wondered what his lover must have felt, rolling him over as a drunk. Was Tiffany his rebound then? A year later, he finally decided to grab a new woman, and that woman just happened to be the new woman arriving in town. She wanted to slap Kyle, to make that slap sting. But she held her feelings in check for the time being. Let him finish explaining, at least.
“Emily was, at first, scared for me. Or at least I thought she was scared. She began screaming at me before I could fully comprehend what had happened. As it turned out, Alexander had been found a mile away from me...dead. He was mauled from head to toe, and it was the consensus that it
was the work of some wolf shifters that had wandered into our territory. My testimony about hearing some wolves howling added to that, and I had, and still have, a fuzzy image of a wolf shifter’s face.” He paused, the moment sinking in for both him and Tiffany.
His best friend dead? No wonder Kyle had a drinking problem.
“Emily blamed me for her husband’s death. I—”
“Husband?” Tiffany accidentally blurted out, catching herself by throwing a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. Oh no, no, no, he said Emily’s husband, didn’t he?
Kyle, blinking, gazed curiously at her. “So you didn’t talk to Emily then?” he asked, cocking his head. “When you mentioned Emily, I thought she had maybe come by and said some...unsavory things about me. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she did, though.”
All at once Tiffany smiled, her fears washed away in an instant. There was still a barrier in her heart, but her trust in him had grown immensely. “No, you murmured her name in your sleep...that’s why, when I heard you say her name, I thought she must have been your lover or something.”
Kyle bellowed out a laugh that shook the kitchen, his hand coming down to slap the table in reaction, the plates and utensils clinking as they jittered on the table. “Wait, you thought she was my lover? I’m not that big of an asshole, Tiff.”
“It doesn’t seem like you’re an asshole at all,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose and chuckling herself. “Proceed, then.”
Kyle’s smile seemed genuine as he spoke, though it did continue to falter at times. “Afterwards, Emily stopped letting me see her and her kids. I made a silent promise to look over Alexander’s loved ones, and I began to drink myself to sleep every day. We went a year without an alpha, until recently I became the new alpha with a duel. I won the title, but I didn’t truly feel like an alpha just yet. Emily still won’t accept me until I prove it to her that I measure up to her husband’s legacy. I promised to find the wolf shifters that killed Alexander, but first I needed to find my mate…” He glanced at her again, his smile broadening. “And that’s where I am now, sitting across from her, putting to rest her jealousy.”
“Jealousy?” Tiffany said, laughing and running her hand through her hair. “It’s not jealousy! Not yet, anyway.”
“Not yet, she says.”
Tiffany burned bright red again, so she turned her head and pressed her hands to her cheeks in an effort to hide. She kept glancing between Kyle and the window, her embarrassment growing with every look. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Because it’s adorable when you pout.”
“I’m not pouting!”
“Okay, okay, you aren’t pouting.”
Tiffany’s heart began to flutter inside. She hadn’t felt that fluttering in a long time, not since her first love, she thought. With every teasing word, her smile grew, and so did his. Their first genuine smile together told Tiffany that Kyle wasn’t with her just for the sex, as insanely awesome as their sex was. He wasn’t just some mindless bear either, which relieved her, but a man genuinely wanted her to understand. When was the last time she had fallen in love like that? Was it actually love? Tiffany didn’t know for sure, but what she did know was that Kyle wasn’t even close to being what she thought he was.
“So,” Kyle said. “About that deal of ours—”
“I’ll go steady with you,” Tiffany said, rising from the table to put her dish in the sink.
Kyle blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Go steady with me, and I’ll consider dating you for the time being.”
“You’re my mate,” Kyle said as if that fact of his would suddenly make her lose her sense.
“So?” Tiffany said. “You’ll still be with me, but there’s...look, I can’t fully trust you just yet. The whole shifter thing, and the fact that I was kidnapped, it still bugs me. I’m about to accept you as the man I’ve been looking all my life.”
Slowly nodding, Kyle rose from his seat. “Okay, that’s fine. But let me try this first.”
Before she could protest, Kyle was in her space, pressing his lips to hers. Her mind nearly turned to jelly again as another wild sensation ran through her. His kiss was amazing, his lips so strong yet gentle that Tiffany wondered if she were in the middle of a dream. When he released her, he gazed into her eyes again, this time his dark eyes making her shudder.
“Well?” he asked.
Licking her lips, Tiffany turned away from him. “Not bad, I have to say.”
Chuckling, Kyle stepped back. “So what now?”
Thinking, Tiffany turned back to him. “You get me back to Salem is what. I still have to work at Herbert’s, and so far, it hasn’t been long enough for my boss to think something has happened to me. I’d rather not just suddenly disappear for good when I’ve only just arrived in Salem.”
“Alright, then whenever you’re ready, lead the way.”
“Gladly.”
With that, Tiffany and Kyle left his house, with Tiffany content for the time being. She still didn’t fully trust him just yet, but time could change that, couldn’t it? At least, she hoped it would.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dax
Minutes after Kyle and Tiffany had left his home in the Woodland Bear Clan territory, a dark wolf slinked into the open. Standing, huffing in front of Kyle’s house, Dax licked his lips and sucked in a fresh bout of air. Lifting his snout, he smelled the scent he had been looking for ever since he sold Tiffany off to the alpha of the Woodland Bear Clan. The scent was thick and musty, strong, a sign of strength. Kyle’s.
Turning to stare up at the house that was the alpha bear’s, Dax grinned and strode towards it, his stride creeping and near silent. The smell that filled his nostrils was Kyle’s to be sure, yet it smelled like the alpha was away from his home. Another scent mingled with Kyle’s the closer he got to the front door, a smell he recognized immediately. Tiffany. Man, Dax had been searching for her scent without rest, his wolf calling out every other minute her to arrive back in Dax’s embrace...not that she would ever accept his embrace willingly. That was what made the hunt for her exciting, though; Dax liked the struggle.
But like Kyle’s, her scent was diminished somewhat as it led off from the front door to a nearby dirt path in the forest. For a moment, Dax’s wolf growled ferociously at the revelation neither of his targets was at home, like he had expected. The bear was supposed to take his sweet time breaking Tiffany in, making her trust him and the like. They were supposed to be here, in the Woodland Bear Clan territory. Dax wouldn’t have risked a venture in if he’d known neither were there.
Moments later, three more wolves appeared, loping out from the trees surrounding the house, each silently panting like the dogs they were. Dax gave them each a momentary glance before shifting into his human form, his frown making the others hesitate to step forward.
It wasn’t until Dax strode to the front door of Kyle’s home that the others followed suit and shifted. While they walked up to him, Dax placed a hand against the front door, looking at the footsteps in the dirt leading from the door.
“Are they here?” one shifter asked.
“Are they here? Are you really asking me that?” Dax said, turning his attention back to the dirt trail that led off into the woods. “How about trying to use your nose for once, yeah?” The shifter blinked and lifted his head slightly to sniff the air, making Dax roll his eyes. “Did the others leave Tiffany’s car parked in her driveway?”
A second shifter answered while the first crossed his arms as his nose led him to walk off and towards the dirt trail slowly. “Yeah, we had two guys leave it there. Makes it look like she’s home, but it took a while for us to get there.”
“Like I care how long it took you...and you didn’t find her or that disgusting bear there?”
“No…”
Dax grunted, his inner wolf thumping against its cage inside. It had been a while since Dax had felt like he did now, where his insanity and fera
lness wanted to take over. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he would soon end up in the same boat as Kyle. And Tiffany’s my ticket out of that situation, whether she wants me or not. Not that Dax wouldn’t have gone after her in the first place. Tiffany was like a work of art, a one-of-a-kind sculpture that only the richest could buy, or the best of thieves could steal. Kyle had his money...while Dax had his gift of taking things that weren’t his.
Well, it didn’t quite matter what his reasons were for snatching Tiffany for a second time. He wanted her, and that was that. Nobody got in the way of Dax, not even a new alpha male. Not even a bear will be able to stop me, especially with my pack at my side.
If Kyle and Tiffany weren’t exactly where he expected them to be, then so be it. Dax was patient so long as the two didn’t decide to simply leave Salem altogether and move to a different part of Montana.
Yet the anxiety overtook Dax at that moment, and when he growled, he took a step back, readied his foot, and kicked in the front door so hard the hinges shattered. The front door was sent flying backwards, splinters flying off to splatter a living room and staircase beyond. The powerful outburst made the rest of his pack jerk back, each careful to be out of range of his grasp. With energy rippling through Dax, he sighed and shook his head, walking inside. “Terribly chipped door anyways. I just did Kyle a favor.”
Like dogs following their master, two shifters followed. The third had yet to return.
Everywhere within the house, Dax could smell Tiffany. On the couch, her presence was strong, and same with the kitchen, where she no doubt was last before leaving with Kyle, and same with what only Dax could assume was Kyle’s bedroom. Her scent was practically embedded into the ruffled bed sheets, and it sent Dax over the edge once again as he stood in the doorway, his eyes wild with desire. His body tingled with the sensations of her touch from the first time he’d kidnapped her, and the images heated his blood, causing him to dash forward and tear into the bed.
