Bear in the Rough: Bear Shifter Romance (Broken Hill Bears Book 1) (12 page)

Eloise clung onto Freya’s hand as they entered what looked like a wild west saloon, complete with a vast amount of cowboy memorabilia. There were ten gallon hats and chaps hanging from the walls, while an entire wall was plastered with photos of rodeo shows. Western saddles were displayed on hay bales at the corners of the room. But Freya only saw all of these things in a flash, as her attention was quickly diverted by the sight of twenty or so huge men and a third as many women arranged on chairs in the middle of the room. Her breath caught in her throat. Every single one of them looked dangerous, and together they were terrifying. Lots of them had scars from flesh wounds, or injuries – cuts, gashes, black eyes and giant bruises – that were still healing.
Were they the first humans to be in the presence of bear-shifters, without being protected by glass and wire fences?
she wondered idly. As the shifters looked back at her, she identified a whole range of expressions, from anger, hostility to curiosity and hunger. It would’ve been almost comical if it wasn’t so intimidating.

“So here they are,” A very tall, powerfully built man said, springing to his feet. Freya recoiled at the sarcasm evident in his tone. He had cropped, golden brown eyes, and a hard, angular face. His eyes were narrow and pale blue, and there was something hard and unsettling in their expression. He had similar cuts and bruises to the other bears, but his neck was ringed in red gashes that made Freya feel a little queasy.

“Maximus!” Xander thundered. All three of them jumped, but the man merely bared his teeth in a grin that was almost feral. “I’ve warned you,” Xander continued, in a much lower voice.

“Relax, bro,” the man drawled. He moved very close to them, so they were obliged to tip their heads back to continue looking at him.

“The newest members of The Broken Hill Clan. I’m sure you’ll be very happy here,” he said, although his eyes seemed to be saying the opposite. “Maybe you’ve already seen us perform though?” Freya nodded uncertainly, while Marin and Eloise seemed to be frozen. “Oh. You haven’t?” His grin faded fast.

“They’re not big fans of fighting shows. But I did see Xander fight live just the other day,” Freya said quickly.

“Is that so?” he said, looking from one to the other. Freya’s legs were trembling, but she somehow held her ground. Seeming to grow bored of them, he suddenly walked away and melted into the background. Xander stepped forward, a frown creasing his ruggedly handsome face.

“Everyone, this is Freya, and, uh, Marin and Eloise,” he said, indicating each of them with a wave of his hand. “Please make them feel welcome.” There was a flood of ‘Hi’s’ and a few friendly waves. Against her will, Freya found herself waving back.
What am I doing?
she asked herself.
These shifters are the enemy. Every single one of them is colluding in keeping us captive.

“Come and sit down,” a guy with lively blue eyes called, patting to an empty seat beside him. Uncertainly, they walked over and two more seats were found and they all sat down. Freya was startled by the warmth in his eyes. He reminded her of the kind, sporty guys from high school, who were too sport-obsessed to realize that they were good looking.

“What are you all drinking?” another guy asked.

“Beers, I guess,” Freya said hesitantly, and moments later, three foaming mugs of beer were put in front of them.

“We brew our own beer here,” the first guy said. “So I hope you like it. Tell me if you don’t.” They sipped cautiously. It was delicious. Freya had a thing for craft beer, and it was maybe the best one she’d ever tasted. She looked up and was startled to see that the guy was watching her, waiting for her opinion.

“It’s delicious,” she said. “Nice and caramely.” He broke into a delighted grin.

“Caramely! Great!” he said. “Anyway, I’m Braxton.” He extended a huge, meaty paw.

“Freya,” she said, sliding her hand into his, and the girls followed suit.

“And I’m Ryker,” another guy said, sitting on Braxton’s left. Braxton had sparkling blue eyes, with little crinkles at the outer corners and a ready smile. His dark hair was cropped short at the sides and left a little longer on top, and he had a hint of a goatee. Ryker had soft brown eyes with thick lashes, messy brown hair that fell onto his forehead and a wide jaw with a cute dimple in his chin.

“As far as I’m concerned, y’all are very welcome here. It’s nice to have some diversity,” Ryker said. He bumped his full mug of beer against theirs, sloshing it over the edges. “Oops,” he said carelessly.

Little by little, most of the shifters came to greet them, with the exception of a few who stood around at the periphery, watching them with surly faces. Freya made a careful note of them, so she’d remember them later.

Most of the guys were very chatty, speaking to them as if they’d just happened past, instead of being kept there against their will. In another world, it would’ve been a fun situation. Marin and Eloise drank their beer fast, and Freya was glad to see that it had taken the edge off their fear. But she sipped hers very conservatively. She needed to stay clear-headed if her plan was going to have the best chance of success.

She was thinking again, turning over possibilities, when she tuned back into the conversation and discovered that the shifters were asking Marin and Eloise what kind of cabin they wanted built for themselves, while the girls struggled to reply. There seemed something perverse about planning your own jail cell, yet the enthusiasm of the guys was infectious. They clearly couldn’t wait to start building the cabins.

“Ladies, I’d like to introduce my younger brother,” Xander’s voice rumbled from behind her. Freya turned around. “This is Rocco.” She was looking into a pair of blue-green eyes that were a similar shape to Xander’s, but whereas Xander’s had the seriousness of great responsibility, Rocco’s sparkled with mischief. He also had the same colored hair, but his was messy and tangled. He also had a goatee, and a dazzling collection of tattoos covering his arms and chest, creeping all the way up to his neck.

“Hey,” he said in a cool, carefree tone. “I hope you ladies will be happy here. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Sure,” Freya found herself saying. This was starting to feel like the first day at every dumb office job she’d ever done, where you had to greet everyone and be friendly and smiley and make out that you were excited to be joining the team, and all you could think about was how much you wanted to get the hell out of there.

Rocco sat down with them and chatted for a while, telling them about the new Harley he’d just bought, before drifting off again.

A little while later, Xander returned.

“I was planning on taking you on a tour of the territory, so you know where everything is, but you look like you’re all having fun here,” he said.

“No, let’s go,” Freya said immediately.

“I’m not sure your friends will enjoy it,” he said, softly enough that only she could hear him. She glanced at them and agreed. They looked very comfortable chatting to Braxton and Ryker.

“Maybe another time, then,” she said.

“You can come by yourself, and I’ll show them another time.”

“No, I can’t leave them.”

“They’ll be safe here, I promise. Braxton and Ryker will look after them.”

“No, it’s fine. We’ll go another day.” Vertical lines of frustration appeared between his eyebrows.

“Freya, listen,” he said, very softly. “We’re not uncontrollable animals. What you saw at the wrestling match, that was theater. We fight for real. But mainly because we hate the Black Paw Ridge clan so much. But the rest of it – all the roaring and showing off – is an invention to entertain the audience. Yes, the organizers are terrified of us and make us fight in cages. But they don’t need to. They could get rid of all that bulletproof glass and electric wiring, and they’d be perfectly safe. When I tell you that Braxton and Ryker are good guys, please believe me.” Freya glanced at Marin and Eloise doubtfully, not wanting to be separated, but her instincts told her that this might be the best opportunity she’d get. 

“Okay,” she said at last. She got up and went to speak to the other two. They seemed in good spirits, chatting away as if they were at a party. Freya supposed that they needed the distraction – they deserved to forget for a little while that they were in a prison.

“I don’t want to leave you guys, but Xander wants to show me something that might be important later. I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry about me.”

“Be careful,” Marin said, and they returned to their conversations. Freya made sure that her secret weapon was still in her pocket where she’d put it that morning, and followed Xander as he walked away from the bar.

As Xander led Freya into the forest, a bolt of adrenaline hit her at the thought of being alone with him. She was having a hard time hating him as much as she should. From the moment she saw him that morning, her nerves had been sensitized. He was so ridiculously sexy. So huge and overbearing and muscular, with those sexy scars marking his arms. And the deep, rumbling pitch of his voice seemed to go right through her. She found herself wishing that he was a normal guy, that she’d met in her local bar back home, instead of being her captor.

“I can carry you on my back, if you like?” Xander offered as the trees became more dense. She shuddered inwardly at the thought of climbing onto the back of bear, having it move beneath her. She shuddered even more at the thought of seeing him naked before he shifted.

“No, I’m good thanks,” she said, more curtly than she’d intended.

“Just as well, as it would limit our communication somewhat,” he said, good-naturedly.

“Do you bears communicate when you’re in your bear form?” she asked, aware that she needed to make conversation to encourage him to relax.

“Yup. We communicate verbally, through all kinds of sounds. You’ll get used to them in time. Although, we usually shift when we need to discuss something important.”

“Does that mean that you spend a lot of time as bears when you’re in your territory?”

“About half and half, I guess. It depends, really.”

Freya was silent for a while, thinking just how freaky that would be. At last, they came to the edge of the forest, from where a rock face jutted right up, into the sky.

This is the southernmost point of our territory, marked by the edge of the hill. In fact, that’s where our clan gets its name – Broken Hill.”

“Why is that?” Freya asked, shading her eyes from the sun as she tried to look up to the top of the hill. 

“It’s an unusual rock formation. It may be that a meteorite hit this spot a long, long time ago, because it’s kind of bowl-shaped, and a ragged kind of rim rises above it on all sides, a little like a mountain that’s caved in in the center – hence, Broken Hill.”

“It’s like a boiled egg with the middle scooped out,” Freya said, gazing at the faintly sinister-looking jagged edges of the hilltop, and she laughed along with him, taking herself by surprise.

“I’ve never heard it described like that before,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you more of the territory.”

After another half hour of walking, they came to what from a distance looked like a seam in the rock face, but close up was revealed to be a narrow path, barely wide enough to get a truck though. It was guided by four clan members – large, unsmiling shifters. Xander introduced her to them.

“This is the only road route in and out of the territory,” he said. She tried to remember whether she’d come that way yesterday.
No, they’d been brought in through dense forest
. There must be other non-road routes too, she decided. It was a dirt path, but she thought she could see the beginning of a sealed road winding away in the distance. She stored the image in her memory, along with everything else she’d seen.

They kept walking, keeping the rock face on their right.

“You must like nature?” he asked after a while.

“Because I was hiking, you mean?” she said. He nodded.

“I’ve never been a nature buff. I mean, I can’t name many of the plants and animals we came across.”

“Where were you all hiking?” he asked, in a tone of great curiosity.

“From Mexico to Canada,” she said. He couldn’t have looked more shocked.

“All that way?”

“Yup,” she replied with a ridiculous glow of pride in them all. Then she gave a bitter laugh. “Well, Marin and I were. You know what’s funny? Poor Eloise had already decided to quit the hike the morning before your friends abducted us. But we persuaded her to come with us till we got to the next town. And now I feel as guilty as all hell. If I hadn’t done that, she would be free now, instead of trapped here in the mountains.”

He flinched at her words. He was silent for a while, and when he spoke again, his voice was laden with regret.

“Looks like my boys ruined a few plans.”

“They did.”

“Why were you all doing the hike?” She looked at him sideways, wondering how much to share with him.
What the hell,
she decided at last. He might as well hear the details of how much he’d ruined.

“Marin was doing it because her grandmother had done it years ago, so it was kind of a tribute to her. Eloise was doing it because she’s getting over a divorce and her life sucks and she wanted to do something she could be proud of. And we’re all proud of her for having got as far as she did. The hike was actually my idea though. I was doing it because I was born in Washington, but my mom moved us to Southern California after my dad disappeared one day when I was nine years old. I never really got over it. I always had this stupid idea that he’d come back one day. But I never went back to my hometown after we left. For some reason it felt like a bad omen. Then I found out about this trail that stretches the whole length of the USA, and I decided to walk home, on my own terms.”

A stunned silence followed her words. She sensed that he wanted to apologize again, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

“I lost my own father recently,” he said at last. “He was the Alpha of this clan. When he knew he was dying, he called me back from where I was working overseas, and told me that he wanted me to become the next Alpha. I’ve always suspected it would happen one day, but it was still a shock for me. And then he died, and since then, it has been difficult with my brother, and the rest of the clan. The honor of being Alpha usually falls to the eldest son, and there are many traditionalists in the clan, who think that’s how things should remain. It hasn’t been an easy few weeks at all.” Now it was her turn to be stunned into silence. There was such thoughtfulness in his voice that it touched her heart. Once again, she wished that things were very different.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said, thinking,
I can give him that one thing. It’s not costing me anything.

“Thanks,” he replied, a hint of gratitude in his voice. She began to appreciate what a complex character this huge hunk of a man was.

“What were you doing overseas?” He paused, as if considering whether he should answer.

“I was in the military.”

“You don’t mean the regular, human military?” He nodded.

“I’m a highly-trained engineer. When I’d finished my studies, I wanted to work, to exercise what I’d learned. My father supported me, and suggested the military, as it was so physical that it would be easier for me to hide my bear nature.”

They’d come to what looked like a narrow path up into the rock face.

“Where does that path go?” she asked.

“To a spot where you can see the entire territory. I go there sometimes when I need some space away from the world.” She looked at him sideways, recognizing a character as self-reliant as her own.

“Do you think we could go up there now?” she asked. He looked surprised but pleased. 

“Sure. It’s a bit of a scramble though.”

“I don’t mind.”

It was actually easier than she’d expected, and she congratulated herself on her fitness as she followed him up, her hiking boots gripping the slippery surface of the rocks. From time to time, he paused and offered his hand to help her over the difficult bits. She accepted it, conscious of its warmth and the way it enveloped her own.
What would it be like to be the girlfriend of this huge man?
she wondered again.
To be protected and held by him?

Twenty minutes later, they were at the summit.

“Wow,” she breathed. The rim of the hill was too low to offer a view over the surrounding mountains, but the view into the territory was incredible. Now she understood how vast the territory actually was, how the land lay.

“There’s a spot over here where I usually sit.” He pointed to a large, flat area, topped with gravelly sand and surrounded by small rocks and an overhanging tree.

“It’s pretty.” She followed him over to it and they sat down side by side, admiring the view. It was now late afternoon, and the sun was like a caress, rather than a laser beam. They were maybe a meter apart, but she was acutely aware of him; of the warmth of his skin, his masculine, outdoorsy scent, and of the lips that had kissed her so recently.

“Did you feel like you’d be more whole when you’d finished the hike?” he said, breaking through a silence.

“Yes. I hoped it would help me to fix whatever was missing inside myself. I’ve always been very self-reliant and distrustful of people. I always think that as soon as I get close to somebody, they’re going to leave me. This was all about me taking control.”

“You’re an incredibly strong woman, Freya. I had no idea humans could be so resilient.” She gave a bitter laugh.

“For all the good it’s done me.” She needed to change the subject, fast. “Do you think the clan will one day be cool with you being the leader, even though you’re not the oldest son?” Xander gazed out at the view, and she saw his jaw tighten.

“To start with, my brother, Maximus, is very unhappy, as he feels that the title is rightfully his. That’s why I told you to be careful around him. He’s spent all of his life working very hard toward being the Alpha. I was away for five years, during which time he was forging relationships and working hard to make the clan proud. He has many supporters who were full of anger to see me take over. He’s now hurting and bitter and that has always made him likely to lash out.” He blew out a long breath. “Ironically, I think that’s part of the reason why my father didn’t want him to be Alpha. The clan also doesn’t trust me. They don’t see me as one of them. I proved at the fight you watched that I’m tough enough to be Alpha, but winning hearts and minds is a different matter.”

“Sounds like you’ve had a lot to cope with?” she offered.

“I have. Being a soldier was simple. I got up when I was told to get up, ate, washed, exercised and fought when I was told to. It was hard, but it was simple. Since I’ve been back, I’ve felt like anything could happen, at any time. The commotion in the clan is tiring, and it is also distracting me from spending more time thinking about the future of the clan, and looking for ways to develop it. And I’m still grieving for my father. Which makes every single thing so much harder to deal with.” He looked so stricken that she was moved to sympathy for him. She reached out and laid her hand lightly on his arm. He turned his head toward her, his eyes like glowing coals. She had no sense that either of them had moved, but suddenly, they were kissing. His mouth was more tender than before, his lips full and sensuous, and the sensation of them caressing hers shot a direct connection with her clit. She suppressed a moan as the tip of his tongue slid out and flickered between her lips.

And then she pulled away.
No
. This was wrong. Very wrong. He might be suffering, and he might be the sexiest man alive, but he was still holding her against her will. Every moment she wasted was a lost opportunity.

“I’m sorry,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I need to pee.” His eyes were still soft.

“Over there, behind the tree,” he said. She followed the direction he was pointing, picking her way among some jagged rocks.

It was a perfect spot. She couldn’t see him at all from where she was standing, and the sun was still high enough in the sky. As she reached for the object in her pocket, a wave of regret hit her.

There had been a strong connection between them just now. It was as if the reality of the situation didn’t matter in the moment, and they were just two people, becoming very close to each other. And when she’d done what she was planning to do, things would never be the same again. In fact, she had no idea what was going to happen. The possible consequences terrified her, but all she knew was that she couldn’t sit back and do nothing. She had more than herself to think about.

She opened the clasp of the compact mirror in her hand and held it up to the sun. She opened it wide and snapped it shut again. “Dot,” she muttered. She did the same thing twice more. Then she opened it wide and left it open for a little longer, before snapping it shut. “Dash,” she muttered, and repeated twice. Finally, she opened and closed it fast again. “Dot –” she muttered, but the word was drowned out by a fearsome roar. She dropped the mirror and it clattered down the hill, and she screamed as two huge hands grabbed her roughly by the upper arms and spun her around.

“What the hell were you doing?” Xander bellowed. His face was a picture of rage, his eyes shooting firebrands into her soul.

“No-nothing!” she stammered.

“It didn’t look like nothing. What were you doing with that mirror?” His face was changing, becoming broader and more feral looking. She realized in horror that he was close to shifting.

“I was just getting something out of my eye.”

“Don’t lie to me, Freya!” His grip on her arm was overpowering and she whimpered in pain. “You were signaling an SOS, weren’t you?” She sucked her lips in and met his furious stare with defiance.