Blake, Her Bad Bear: A Paranormal Bad Boy Romance (10 page)

The black bear grunted, having been body-checked hard into a tree. Somehow he still had the nerve to stand up and shake it off. Blake was more winded than actually wounded and huffed heavily as he put himself between the shifter and his quarry again. The black bear’s look of antagonism had changed into one of desperation. Not only was he now confronting a full-blown grizzly, but what had supposedly been an easy task—getting rid of a pesky human—had now developed into a full-blown panic.
Who could inspire such fear in him that he’d be willing to go head to head with me?
Blake wondered, pawing the ground in irritation.

He detected the faint fragrance of the woman behind him, like a phantom of flowers.

The shifter roared again, and the black lips flexed back over his fangs as he charged again, this time with less determination. Blake met him head on, and felt claws rip into his shoulder. Barking in pain, he brought his own paws against the black bear’s head and heard the satisfying crush of skin and the scraping of his own long claws against plated bone underneath.

Both bears stood on their hind legs, wrestling, and Blake screamed again as he felt teeth puncture the forearm of one paw. More in rage than anything else, he swung heavily with his other clubbed paw and felt the impact smash like a hammer against the smaller shifter’s skull. There was a
whoof
of surprise, but the black bear had wound his grip around his elder tight enough that the concussive blow merely turned him into standing jelly. Dazed, his mouth hung slack and a pink tongue lolled. Blake hesitated, not wanting to kill the young fool.
Who are you?
he wanted to know.

It took less than a few seconds for the black bear to recover his senses and he bit again, but this time Blake was ready and brought his own jaw around the back of the shifter’s neck and bit down, not hard enough to snap his neck, but enough to taste blood. The black bear whined. He was injured, but refused to give up—a veritable David versus Goliath, except Blake as Goliath was reluctant enough as it was.

In a final effort, the black bear pushed away. His hind legs locked into the soft dirt and he sprang forward again with what strength he had left. There was no way he could possibly get past Blake, and the grizzly met him again head on, bringing both paws down like a mallet on top of his head. It was anti-climatic. The shifter grunted in defeat and dropped as a brick to the earth, his muzzled snuffling hard into the dust, and he let out a single raspy breath. Blake grunted and stood back, watching as the black bear’s golden eyes blinked in a tired gesture and very slowly his transformation back to a human shrunk him into a pale body.

Now Blake recognized the young one. He was also a novitiate, several years older than Gavin, but Damian himself had been grooming the young one as a general in the ranks of the tribe.
Tanis
. Now in his naked, sprawled human form, Blake could see that there were numerous deep cuts in his abdomen and chest and his head was thick with shimmering red. The wounds he’d incurred while in bear form had been more grievous than Blake had realized. Tanis had forced his hand—when he’d gotten injured he should have backed down. Swearing to himself, Blake felt a surge of nausea eat into his stomach and he allowed himself to return to human form as well.

The transformation back was simpler, more fluid. The heavy black shag of fur fell off of him like brown-black snow, coating the ground beneath him, and he stood up straight, shaking the rest off his naked back and thighs. Several deep, lateral cuts also crisscrossed his shoulder where Tanis had gotten in a few lucky strikes, and there was a numbness in his other arm where several deep teeth marks had gone deep into the muscle. He flinched it off as he walked forward and knelt by Tanis, turning him over.

The kid was still breathing, but barely. The wounds were too terminal.

“Goddamn it! Goddamn it,” Blake repeated, his voice a mixture of guilt and anger and irreconcilable sadness—it shouldn’t have come to this. Tanis looked up at his Beta and his eyes grew wider as a thin trail of blood dribbled from his lips.

“It’s you,” he murmured.

“It’s me,” Blake said. “Tanis… Oh, Tanis, what’s going on? Why?”

If Blake felt a certain measure of guilt, the look that crossed Tanis’ face far exceeded it. He closed his eyes for a moment, and a single tear welled at the edge.

“I’m-I’m sorry, it was… I don’t know what I was doing. I thought, for the Ursas. I thought I was doing it for everyone. But… but, it’s wrong. I knew it, the moment it happened, I knew it was wrong!”

“Tell me what happened,” Blake said soothingly.

More tears welled at Tanis’ eyes as he coughed. “It was my mission, he told me, he told me that it was to protect the tribe, that if I did it—I would be a general, I’d be protecting my brothers and sister,” he said, “the tenets. Loyalty.” Tanis held up his hand where the ancient script for the word was inscribed in ink across his knuckle.

“I know, I know,” Blake urged, feeling the life drain out of the young one, and biting back on his own disgust at what he’d done. “Tell me… what happened?”

“It was Ogre,” Tanis said, coughing again, and blood flecked his lips. “He told me that I had to kill Ogre, because he’d betrayed us. I didn’t—I didn’t think… but I obeyed. It was easy, Ogre didn’t see it coming. I thought it would be different. But I only felt sick… Oh god, Blake, what did I do?”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Blake said, lifting the youngster’s head into his hands. “Who told you to do it?”

Tanis closed his eyes again, opening his mouth in an expression of pain. His hands had gone white, and his wounds were still bleeding profusely. A dark pool had already formed under him, and his pale flesh was now coated in the dark sticky substance which refused to dry in the humid climate. “It was, it was Connor,” Tanis replied, barely a whisper. “What… did I do?”

They were the last words Tanis spoke.

The muscles in his neck went slack and turned slightly in Blake’s hands. Gently, he lowered the shifter back onto the forest floor and stood up, his lips already muttering on instinct a small prayer for the lost soul of the boy. Blake’s arms shivered, his body coated in grime and dirt and blood that was a mingling of his own and Tanis’. But it wasn’t the cold that caused him to shiver. It was rage, unadulterated, unfixed. His jaw bit down so hard that it was a vice, and his eyes became as cold as untempered steel as he touched his heart above the tattoo representation of a bear paw and he finished the prayer.

“You will be avenged, brother,” he murmured, more as a vow to himself than as a statement of fact. “Blood by blood, you will be avenged.”

He turned away from the corpse and stumbled back several footsteps, and was surprised by the presence of the woman who was limping behind him, her eyes now not full of terror so much as wonder. He had forgotten about her temporarily, entirely, and now found himself face-to-face with a young looking waif with black hair. And a face that he had seen once before. A face that had now witnessed not only a mortal struggle between two shifters, but their transformation as well.

A face that had lingered in his memory ever since he’d seen it two weeks ago, and who had never failed to invade his memory.

“Lily,” he murmured, half in a stupor.

CHAPTER FIVE

It had all happened too fast for her to process. The roar had signaled her attention first, and when she’d turned there was only a black blur. Somehow she had dived to one side, but rolled her ankle in the process. Then the other bear had crashed into the clearing. She could still smell the rust of blood—the young man who now laid on his side where the black bear had been was still and white, pale as open wood. The other man, the one who had been a grizzly, looked down at her and said her name.

The contrast between Blake and the grizzly was so wide it took her brain several loops to finally recognize the handsome stolid jaw, the shaven head where a darkly golden brim of hair was growing back, and those shale grey eyes. But what gave him away were the tattoos—how could she forget those cobalt symbols running across his bare, hairy chest, down his arms to his elbows? Even now, though, it must have just been the flood of endorphins combined with fear, they seemed to move about his body, animated of their own volition.

“Lily,” he murmured, saying her name again.

She stammered, and scooted back several more feet, wincing at the pain as her ankle dragged. Blake didn’t make any move toward her, but he looked concerned. Lily noticed that he was coated in blood, and there were deep lacerations down his arm and she thought she glimpsed something white. It made her sick to think about, but Blake looked unaffected.

“Y-you, what?” she stammered, her voice trembling. It was all too much.

“Just relax,” he said, holding out his hand. Blood had runneled down his fingers and dripped on the ferns. He made a helpless and comical gesture. “Listen, Lily… I… what are you doing here?”

“W-what am
I
doing here? What are
you
doing here? What the fuck is going on?!”

She was becoming hysterical, but she couldn’t help it. Moments ago, she’d been inches from getting decapitated by a rogue bear’s paw. Now she was face-to-face with a naked lover, the father of her unborn child.

He kneeled down and cocked his head. “There are things, about me, about my tribe, things about Beaver Creek that you don’t know—that no one knows. We try to keep it that way.” He sighed, his face fatigued from the fight and from his wounds, but he still put on a strong face. “I’m not what I seem.”

“No shit!” Lily stammered, and stopped as she backed up against a fallen log. Blake took another step toward her, this time limping. He looked like hell, a war zone.

“I’m what you might call a shifter. Something that is both bear and human,” he tried to explain. “Please, don’t be afraid. You’re injured.”

“So are you.”

He noticed his wounds and shrugged. “Had… worse,” he replied. “Listen, we can’t stay here. It may have alerted the cops, they’re not from here. It’s too dangerous. Please, let me help you.” Reluctantly she took his hand and was hoisted up. Her ankle was definitely swollen, but it didn’t look broken. Still, he hissed as she put weight on it. “Here, get on,” he murmured, and she let out a gasp as she was literally slung onto his back. She fought weakly at him, more out of the fact that she was now straddling a half-naked man, but his grip was resolute. “Hang on,” he breathed, and took off at a run.

She was amazed at his speed. Even injured and carrying her, his strength was incomparable, and he practically sprinted through the forest floor, his breath a solid rhythm that pushed heavily at his chest. She wrapped her arms around his muscular torso tighter to keep from getting shaken off, and felt herself unconsciously aroused.

“Wh-where are we going? What happened to that man?”

“He was my brother,” Blake replied grimly, and would say no more. “There’s much to explain.”

“Does it have to do with the murder?” she asked blatantly.

The word
murder
struck him hard and he skidded to a stop, and Lily let out a gasp as she gripped him even tighter. “How do you know about that?” he asked over his shoulder. The forest around them had gotten darker, seemingly as if anticipating the bad news.

“I… I was coming here, Beaver Creek, I mean… I’m… I’m a reporter,” she confessed. “My assignment was to come here and investigate. That’s, that’s why I was in the woods. I was hoping to find a clue to… well, to whatever was going on. But then—”

Blake nodded as if perceiving the rest of the story and took off a run again. “We’ll try to make it to the road, if we can,” he stumbled briefly, and at the speed they were traveling Lily gasped again and her glasses nearly fell from her face. Her ankle was throbbing now, and it didn’t help when Blake tried to right himself to keep from falling. He grunted, and she realized that his wounds were more grievous than he’d let on. “We have to make it to the road.”

“You’re hurt, you can’t,” Lily stuttered. They were in the middle of the woods. Where did he expect to go? The physical stress of carrying her and trying to run, as well, was taking its toll, and she knew it was only a matter before he exhausted himself—he truly was something extra-human. He knew no limits, including his own. “Wait, go back. We can reach my car. Please, Blake…”

He snuffed, more bear-like in his mannerisms, but silently veered left. She couldn’t tell if he was actually going in the right direction, but several minutes passed and she saw a clearing up ahead in the forest. Her Camry was right where she parked it. Somehow, Blake had managed to find it.
He is truly a bear,
she realized,
he must have smelled it out, by my scent.

By the time they reached the car, he heaved, panting like an Olympic athlete as he supported himself against the passenger door. Lily hopped off. Her ankle was still swollen, but the pain was numb now. She could still hobble, and quickly opened the back door for Blake. Now that they’d stopped, he looked even more haggard and his eyes were closed.
He nearly ran himself to death trying to get me out of the woods
, she mused.

“Get in, please,” she murmured, helping him in. Her hands moved over his steely muscles, and she felt the whipcord of his forearms shift under her fingers, nearly tectonic. He grunted, but his body was slick with sweat and grime and blood and he offered little protest as he nearly fell across the backseat and was silent. Only the rise and fall of his chest and the ample curves of his toned buttocks indicated any life from him.

What have you gotten yourself into Lily?
She bit her lip and looked up and down the empty country road. No one was there, but she couldn’t help but feel somehow unnerved, as if she’d stumbled upon something taboo. Of course she had. She’d suddenly seen the existence of creatures that could only be described in terms of fantasy.

Still hobbling, she made her way to the other side of the car and fell into the driver’s seat. Her hands were shaking as she reached into her coat, pulled the keys out and plugged them into the ignition. Her foot slammed on the gas and the Camry peeled out, heading not back toward Beaver Creek, but further down the road. Fighting through the pain in her ankle and the shock of truth that had been unclothed in front of her, she brushed tears out of her eyes, not knowing where she was going, only that to return to the town now would get both her and Blake in the sort of trouble you only got into once, and rarely got out of once you were in the middle of it.

Her hands clenched white on the steering wheel, she allowed herself to look up into the rear view mirror, just once. The shifter was still unconscious on his side and breathing steadily, but his face was contorted in pain and a kind of suffering she couldn’t put her finger on, but that frightened her all the same.

What the hell have you gotten yourself into?
she wondered.

*

The last thing that Blake could recall as his eyelids very slowly opened and he took in the sight of a wooden roof and sunlight drifting in between the slats, was reaching the road. Lily had managed to usher him into the back, but after that, it was all a blank slate. He groaned and tried to sit up, and then found that there was a sheet across his waist and that he was lying on a low mattress. His arm still ached, like it was full of sand, hard to move, and he discovered a white medical dressing across his shoulder.

Still reeling from his wounds and from exhaustion, the one thing that obsessed him now was thirst and he turned on one side. The mattress was flat on the floor, and as his eyes adjusted, he saw now that it was a ramshackle cabin, well worn by age and the wood blackened by the constant penetration of weather. But it was dry, at least. He hissed and gripped his forearm again.
The shifter, Tanis,
he remembered suddenly.

He hadn’t meant to kill the boy. Tanis had driven him to it. Then he remembered Lily. It was all hazy, but he remembered her telling him she was a reporter looking for clues. He rubbed his face just as the sound of the wooden door creaked open and suddenly she was standing across from him, her eyes wide and tentative. She still regarded him like he was a dog—a creature that you couldn’t know for sure would let you close or bite out rabidly at your hand.

“Y-you’re awake,” she said, amazed. “Your wounds, I tried to bind them—I don’t have a lot of experience, but I did my best to clean them. I was worried you had a fever, but… I don’t know, I figured if I took you a hospital, then maybe—”

“You did well,” he said, patting the bandages and managing a wry smile. The blood and grime from the fight was gone from his skin, and he made the deduction that she’d washed him, as well. Unabashed, he sat up and put his hands on his knees, the sheet still pulled up to his waist. “It’s a good weave, couldn’t have done better myself. As for the fever, well, most shifters run a high temperature anyway. It’s normal.”

“I don’t think anything about you is normal,” she replied.

He gave a comical shrug. “You might be right about that.”

“You should be dead,” Lily pointed out and then, remembering she had a water bottle in her hand, approached him and set it by his side before taking a step back. “I don’t have a lot of supplies—there’s a candy bar or two in the glove box I think, but I found a creek nearby. You should rehydrate, I think.”

He took it gratefully and it was like a salve going down his throat. The sharp coldness of the clear glacial water run off was heavenly, and it dribbled down his chin and across his chest. “I should be dead , perhaps,” he said, “it might still come to that. Something else about our kind, we heal well. Give me another day and I should be able to walk.”

More out of curiosity and wonder, Lily took a step toward him and sat down at the foot of the mattress, eyeing him like some exotic animal. He didn’t mind—he owed her that at least.

“The other one,” she said weakly, “the other bear—you said he was your brother.”

The water suddenly tasted metallic in his mouth and Blake shut it and set it on the wooden slatted floor. “In a way, he was. He was part of my tribe, part of the gang,” he replied. “I suppose I should come clean with you about everything. At least until we can get you out of here. The fact of the matter is, our gang has been divided since the death of our Alpha—our leader. Normally, I should have taken the new position, but our tribe is divided.”

It was all new and overwhelming to her, but Lily merely nodded, encouraging him to continue. “So the one that was murdered…”

“He was also part of our gang,” Blake replied. “You actually met him—the bloke that was harassing you that night, at Jack’s. His name was Ogre. He deserved a lot, but not to die. And not at the hands of one of our own.”

“I don’t understand.”

Blake sighed. “You’re a reporter, right?” He grinned. “Guess you like to sniff out things like this—probably part of your personality, to gather information. Well, not that it makes a difference now, but I think someone else is trying to take control of the gang. And they’re willing to pick off members in order to get that position—and, I’m guessing, implicate me in the process. I’m the next in line.”

“Then, then why not just kill you?” she asked bluntly. She knew nothing about the politics of the shifters, but Blake could see in those wide luscious eyes, magnified by the lenses of her glasses, that she understood the dynamics of power, at least.

“Good question,” he said, positioning his back against the wall. He still felt weak, but it was more the sort of fatigue that came from staying in bed too long—he longed to stretch his legs. “My guess is that it would be too obvious. The one behind this, I think at least… his name is Connor, the son of the last Alpha. He needs the support of the Ursas, and like I said, we’re still divided. Picking me off would be tantamount to a confession of crime. No, this way he can lure support away from my claim.”

“Geezus,” Lily said, hunching her shoulders, exasperated.

Blake shrugged again and coughed. “Well, one thing at a time.” He motioned to her ankle. “Where are we—and how’s that ankle of yours?”

“No idea on the first count,” she looked around the single room of the cabin. It was definitely old, probably a century at least, and had long ago been abandoned. One of the windows was broken and the others were smudged and nearly opaque with dust. A smell of old wood permeated everything. “I knew that going back to Beaver Creek wouldn’t be a good idea—besides, I wouldn’t have known how to explain a naked, blood-covered unconscious man in my backseat if I got stopped. I just… I just drove. I saw this place out in a field. It took nearly half an hour of dragging you to get you here. As for my ankle, it’s sore but usable, thanks.”