Bear the Burn (Fire Bears Book 2) (6 page)

With a growl, Dade scrubbed his face and sidled around her. He wasn’t having their first spat within filming distance of the crews behind them.

“You do. You think because I had a soft heart at the vet clinic and that you caught me on a bad day and saw me cry a couple of times that I’m some sniveling, pathetic weak…human!”

“No, you’re a bear shifter now.”

“Eaaah!” she screeched. “I didn’t ask for this, Dade.”

He shook his head, fuming as they crested a hill. The news crews disappeared behind them, and now all he could hear was the soft noise of their vans and the cars coming up the road.

“You’re walking too fast.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to coddle you.” His angry words whipped past his lips, but when he turned, she was even paler than when they’d left the car. “Dammit, I’m sorry,” he rushed out, gripping her under her elbows. He was emotional, and she threw him off-kilter every other minute, but the cold hard fact was she was still hurt and likely in shock from what she’d just learned.

“On the video, it seemed like you used me to come out to the public with what you are. Please tell me I’m not some springboard for your…people’s...agenda. Please tell me my life will be normal again.”

“My people are good, Quinn. They’re families and hard workers who are just trying to make it, like everyone else. You weren’t planned. I just couldn’t watch you suffer knowing I could make it easier.”

Her voice dipped to a ragged whisper as she leaned heavily on a tree. “This isn’t easier.”

“There wasn’t time to get the human onlookers out of the way before I bit you.” He held his hands out, pleading with her to try and understand. “I know I fucked up. Hell, I even knew it at the time, but I’d do it again. You were bad off. I didn’t know if your back was broken, and I thought surely you had internal bleeding, and your breathing was so shallow. I’ve been around death, Quinn. Lots of it. You were toeing the line, and I didn’t want to lose you before I even got to know you.”

She inhaled deeply and shook her head. “So Moira was right. You did save me.”

Dade shrugged. “Kind of.”

“No, there’s no kind of. You gave me the bear so I could live.”

“I ruined your life with the bear so you could live.”

Quinn looked defeated as she slunk down against the tree. She hissed as she brought her knees up to her chest.

Dade knelt in front of her and picked up a twig from the forest floor, snapped pine needles off it one by one. “I know I have no right to ask you now because you’re still figuring out the hell I shoved you into, but someday, when I’ve worked hard enough for it, I’m going to beg your forgiveness.”

“And someday,” she whispered through a tremulous smile, “I’m going to give it to you.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Quinn. I swear it. My body was made to keep yours safe. You don’t have to worry about any kind of danger, okay?”

She drew back, straightening her spine, as her delicate eyebrows arched. “No danger? Your neck, Dade. What happened to your neck?”

Dade bit back a curse as his mind revolted against the memories she scratched at. “One of the members of my Crew, Rory, was taken by a government agency that has been blackmailing me and my brothers into running missions for them. Tours and black ops shit. Stuff I’m not allowed to talk about. They put trackers in our necks, and we wore them for years thinking they were just monitoring our vitals, hormones, location, that kind of stuff. What we didn’t know is that the trackers were filled with acid and some agent that stopped the clotting of blood. It was a kill switch, and mine got pushed.”

“Dade,” she whispered. Her dove gray eyes were filled with horror when he dared to look at her.

“It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

“Lie.” Quinn looked down at her legs wrapped in bandages from her knees to her upper thighs. “Look. Now we match.”

He shook his head to ward off the heartache in her words. “You should’ve never been involved in this. I knew you weren’t strong enough for my world, and I followed you to your house, anyway. I should’ve let you keep your normal life.”

“I knew it.” She leaned her head back on the tree trunk, looking utterly drained. “I knew you thought I was weak. Well, I’m not. I’m soft-hearted, but I’ve been through worse than this.”

He’d been in the middle of shifting his weight onto his other leg but froze. “What do you mean?”

Her smile was the saddest he’d ever seen. “I was married once.”

“But not anymore?” The thought of her with anyone else felt like a hand clenching his heart.

“Jay served our country, like you. Only he didn’t come back to me. I buried my new husband and mourned his life cut short beside his mother, and for years, I didn’t let anyone touch my heart because the danger of losing anyone else was too big. And I survived all of that, so you see, I’m much stronger than you’ve given me credit for.”

A surge of pride filled him as he shuffled closer and pulled her against his chest. She felt so good and warm in his arms. His heart was drumming against his sternum, and she could likely feel how affected he was against her cheek, but so what? She should see him. All of him. If she could share something so painful with him, she could have it all—if she wanted. His brave Quinn was strong, and he’d been a fool not to see it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her hair. “I’m sorry he didn’t come back to you.”

A soft sob left her lips, and she clutched onto his shirt and buried her face against his chest. “It’s why I asked if you were still on active duty. I swore I’d learned my lesson, and now I’m choosing you. Army, black ops, secret missions, scars all over you that say you’ve paid for this life in blood, and I’m picking you despite it all. It’s not your fault I’m here, Dade. I saw the video. Saw how raw your face looked as you were telling that paramedic I was yours. I know you were trying to help me. I’d planned on living a quiet life and clinging to my past with Jay, and you came and shook everything up. I’ll be stronger.”

“You are strong,” he said thickly, heart in his throat. “I won’t coddle you if you don’t want. I have these stupid instincts to take care of you, and I will if you’ll let me. But I swear I’ll try to let you find your own way through this mess. You’ll have to be patient with me, though. I haven’t done this before.”

“Done what?” she asked, sniffling and easing back. Her soft eyes were innocent as she asked him what this was between them.

“Felt this way about a woman. You’ve been married, and I can tell you loved Jay very much. You’re my first, though, and I have all of these feelings and instincts keeping me off balance. I want to do every single thing for you and make you comfortable, but I can tell that is going to bother you. I’ll figure it out, but it’ll be easiest if you just tell me when I’m being a dumbass.”

She snorted a laugh. “I’m not the best with cursing. Do you want me to use those actual words?”

“Yes,” he said, relieved she could joke at a time like this. “Just say, Dade Leland Keller, you, sir, are being a dumbass.”

“Leland?”

“It’s a family name. All the Keller brothers’ middle names are Leland.”

“Oh,” she mused. “Okay. Dade Leland Keller, you were a super dumbass the other day when you threw gravel on me while I was walking home with a flat tire.”

“But not when I bit you?”

Quinn brushed her auburn waves behind her ears and studied him. “No. I understand why you did. I don’t like it, but I get why you made that choice. Saving me isn’t something I have to forgive you for. The rocks in my face though…”

A smile stretched Dade’s face. “I’m sorry I did that. And I really liked the bacon you made me. Bears love bacon.”

Quinn giggled a tinkling sound that filled his middle with warmth. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh, and it drew him back. He stroked a lock of her deep red hair that had fallen across her shoulder. “I like that.”

“What?”

“I like that you can laugh even when the shit is hitting the fan.”

“Well, I like that your muscles are big, and that you got all protective back there when those reporters got too rough.”

“Mmm,” he rumbled. “I like this game. Okay, I like the way your eyes have green in the middle of the gray, and I also like to think I’m the only one who’s noticed that before.”

“I like your scars. I think they make you look like a badass.”

“I like your scars because they
make you
a badass.”

Quinn was trying to hide a smile now, and her expression was so freaking cute he sat down and surrounded her with his long legs just to be closer to her.

“I like in the video when you took a bullet to guard my body when I was turning into…you know.”

“Say it.”

She pursed her lips and lifted her chin. “A bear.”

“I like that your bear has the same color fur as your hair.”

“Oooh, you like redheads, do you?”

“And freckles.”

“Oh, geez,” she said, blushing from her neck to her hairline. “Okay, I feel better now, and we should probably get back to the car. We can continue this game when there isn’t someone taking pictures from a few trees away.” She waved to the paparazzi.

He’d heard him approach, but they weren’t doing anything that would make Cody freak out if he saw it on the evening news tonight. Plus, he’d been having too much fun telling her the things he liked about her to care overly much. He had the distinct feeling this was going to be a part of life until the humans got used to the existence of shifters.

“Okay, I’m not supposed to coddle you, right?”

“Right.”

Standing, he dusted the seat of his jeans until he’d loosed all the dried pine needles. “Fine, I won’t even help you up.”

“Dade!”

“Just kidding. Here.”

She grinned, slid her palms against his, and warm tendrils reached up his arms where she touched him. He pulled gently, and then helped her back down the wooded hill toward the SUV.

Still pale and shaky, she followed slowly, but her determination to be strong and do it on her own only made him like her more.

Ten minutes alone with her, and he’d already learned so much. No more imagining what she was like. She was a bear shifter now, and even though she had no clue what it meant, she was his claim. Quinn didn’t know it yet, and he was determined to take this slow and give her time, but she was it for him.

No matter what came their way now, he was going to make sure she was safe, and that Quinn knew she was cared for.

Quinn couldn’t quit sneaking little glances at Dade as he drove them away from her house. Was she scared of what was happening? Heck yeah. But everything seemed less overwhelming when he was around.

The man spoke with such confidence and seemed to know exactly how to handle every situation that came their way. He could’ve told her to buck up in the car earlier and pipe down until they got somewhere far away from the news crews, but she had been on the verge of something big. Her insides had been burning, and her blood had hummed just under her skin with the need to do…something. And Dade had known just how to put her at ease.

He wasn’t the rude, confounding man she’d thought he was. Sure, he was a dangerous sort of creature. Nothing screamed that more than his scars, the inhuman, lithe grace in his gait, and the steely, humorless looks he could give in an instant. And she was pretty sure he would’ve made good on his oath and ripped someone’s limb off outside of the hospital earlier, but with her, he was gentle and accommodating.

He was a powerhouse, practically reeking of dominance, but he was aiming that bubble of protection he could provide right at her. It made it really hard to resent the feral side of her protector. She wanted to know everything about him. His dodging questions about his scars and missions only made her want to be closer to him. She had a natural curiosity and desire to dig deeper into what made Dade tick. And whatever that said about her, she didn’t care.

There was something base between them. Some chemical connection on a cellular level that made her want to touch him and be near him. Maybe it was science or some instinctive compatibility of their basic natures. Perhaps it was that he was part animal, and she understood him better than most people she’d met—she didn’t know. All she knew was when she was around him, he made her want to be braver and better. He made her stomach do curious flip-flops, and for the first time in a long time, the thought of a future with a man made her pulse race with excitement over the unknown.

“Are you sure you’re okay with me crashing at your place?” she asked in a much smaller voice than she’d intended. Waves of random shyness did that to her. Apparently, the grizzly sleeping inside of her didn’t do much for bolstering her confidence around intimidating, sexpot shifters like Dade Leland Keller.

“Of course I’m sure. I don’t think I could handle you staying in town without the protection of the Breck Crew right now. I’d be there watching over your house from the uncomfortable seat in my truck and putting us both at risk by allowing us to be separated from our people.”

Our people.
That was insane to think about. She had people, and she didn’t even know them yet. A sense of excitement and terror unfurled in her stomach, and she clenched her hands against the urge to panic, or squeal or both. “When will I meet the rest of the Breck Crew?”

“Tomorrow if you want. Ma has already sent me about thirty text messages asking about you. I think she’d given up on me ever finding a mate.”

“Mate,” she whispered, testing out the word on her tongue. Simultaneously, it sent a trill of intimidation and elation through her, leaving her breathless.

“Sorry. I know humans don’t talk like that. Sometimes I forget that you’re new to this because you seem to be handling it so well. We don’t have to talk about that stuff until you’re ready.”

She drew up straight at the realization she was kind of handling this like a champion. The animal lover in her was just as accepting of her new inner furry rider as it was scared for her future. She’d been on a roller coaster of emotions with all of this, but a small, quiet part of her felt right at home with her new animal side. “What does being your mate mean?”

Dade huffed a laugh and rubbed his hands over his platinum blond hair, spiking it up everywhere. It seemed to be a nervous habit of his, one that made this big tough guy even more endearing to her. “I don’t really know. I was planning on calling my half-brother about it tonight after you fell asleep.”

“What do you feel?”

Dade screwed up his face and shook his head. “If I tell you, you’ll run for the hills and never look back.”

Quinn held back a squeak in her throat at how cute he was. “Well, now you have to tell me.”

“Swear that anything I say in this car doesn’t make it back to my brothers or their mates. Or Ma.”

“Fine.” Easy promise. She didn’t even know his family other than Boone. She pulled her duffle bag of clothes tighter against her side and settled against the passenger seat cushion of his truck. Outside, it was late in the evening and the fireflies were just coming out, illuminating the piney woods with little blinks of light. It was beautiful, but not as alluring as watching Dade’s profile as he struggled to find words. Chiseled jaw adorned with the beginnings of that short, blond beard, as if he hadn’t bothered to shave since she’d been taken to the hospital. The thick chords of muscle in his throat moved when he swallowed, and when he ghosted her an are-you-sure-you’re-ready-for-this look, his aqua-colored eyes were worried. That he was concerned with what she thought of him was baffling.

Him, a big, dominant bear shifter who’d survived God knows what, and he was worried about what she, a quiet, mildly clumsy widow, thought of him.

“When I first saw you, my bear woke right up. It was this there-she-is moment, and you were sitting on the floor of the vet’s room, mourning something I didn’t understand, and all I wanted to do was make it better. But right before I’d gone in there, Shayna had stopped me on the side of the road, threatened a girl I used to hang out with, and I’d just got done swearing up and down that I’d never put a living soul in that woman’s path. And then there you were, not fifteen minutes later. And then when I heard the vet tell you to take the rest of the day off, I got this jumpy feeling inside. I stalled paying for Tank’s check-up so you’d have time to gather your stuff and head out, because even though I had just told myself I wouldn’t get involved with anyone, I was already planning to see you again. And you were so upset, and your tire was flat, and I wanted to put your bike in the back of my truck and ask you out. Take you to a movie or dinner or something. But Shayna was there tailing me, reminding me I couldn’t have anything that I wanted without it being ripped away from me, just like the agency she works for has always done to me and my crew.”

“Is that why you ignored me for that whole week?”

“Exactly why. And it wasn’t easy, woman. You’d already made your mark on me. I threw myself into work up at the firehouse, but I couldn’t keep you off my mind for long. I wanted to know you. Know what you were doing and if you were seeing anyone. I wanted to know what you liked to do outside of work.”

She grinned and looked pointedly in the back seat where Daffodil and Beans were snuggled up together in the crate they shared. “Did you imagine you’d be shacking up with me and two frilly dogs by the end of the next week?”

“Now,
that
I didn’t imagine. I pegged you for a cat person for some reason.”

“Daffodil can’t handle cats. I fostered one once, and my dog got bullied relentlessly.”

“Well, she’s three pounds of submissive. She didn’t stand a chance with a cat. What the hell is going on here?” he asked, leaning forward.

Red and blue flashed across his face, and Quinn stretched her neck to look out the front window. A crowd was gathered at the mouth of a fork in the road. Some held signs, and some seemed to be trying to hold others back. A police barricade covered the entrance to a poorly fenced property.

“The police around here have better things to do than babysit our land,” Dade muttered as he pulled through.

He rolled down the window. “Hey, Monroe.” Something hit the back of the truck and Dade threw the crowd behind him a pissed off glare. “I thought they kept our names out of the press.”

The dark-haired officer from the hospital nodded and gave him an empty smile. “This isn’t the national news’s doing, I’m afraid. A couple of bloggers in Breckenridge interviewed the witnesses from the fire. Your names leaked online.” He jerked his chin at the restless crowd. “They’ve been at this for hours. Sorry, Dade. If you don’t want to stay closer to the station, we’ll have to camp out here until these yahoos get bored. Cody is posting no trespassing signs to protect your property, but I wouldn’t advise going after anyone who slips through, and especially not as an animal. Everyone is waiting for you to screw up. Don’t give them the satisfaction, yeah?” Monroe patted the open window and nodded a greeting to Quinn. “Y’all have a good night. We’ll be out here if you need us.”

“Mmm,” Dade murmured. “You know I’m sorry for this, man. I wish what we were didn’t stir everyone up.”

“It’ll be a tornado at first, but the storm will pass eventually.”

Dade gave a two fingered wave to a tall, muscular man who was nailing a
No Trespassing
sign onto the rundown fence beside the road. Quinn recognized him from the video.

“Is that Cody?” she asked.

“The one and only.”

As they began to pull away, she asked, “And he’s your alpha, right?”

“Nah.” Dade kept his troubled eyes straight ahead on the road. “Cody is
our
alpha.”

“Oh. So we’re his servants?”

“No, woman, you won’t bow down to anyone unless Cody is making an important decision for our crew. He’s a good leader with a good head on his shoulders.”

“Maybe we should stop so I can introduce myself.”

“That’ll slow him down, and he has a family to get home to. You’ll meet him tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She waved to him, anyway.

Cody nodded once and raised a hammer in the air, then turned back to his work.

Quinn fidgeted with the strap of her duffel bag. “He’s out here because of me,” she murmured, settling back into her seat.

“No, he’s not. We discussed going public before you were even on my radar. I get your need to take credit for bad things happening. I have the same instinct, but this one isn’t on you.”

“Why would you want to go public? Your kind has stayed hidden all this time. Why now?”

“
Our
kind. And the answer to that is IESA.”

“What’s that?”

“The International Exchange of Shifter Affairs. They are a secret arm of the government that has been flexing its muscles with us for a while. With lots of shifter crews actually, and it’s not just bears. Their leader, Krueger, pressed on the Breck Crew for two generations. He hit the kill switch on my dad while he was working a fire, made it look like an accident. We didn’t figure that out until he hit my kill switch, though. Our chemical burns looked the same and were both on our necks. When shifters lost their usefulness, they came up missing, or if they cut their trackers out of their throats, IESA sent us in.”

“What do you mean? Like, you were a clean-up crew?”

“Unintentionally. After me and my brothers served, we came back with a special set of skills. Combine that with our healing and shifter strength, and Krueger recruited us for missions we were made to believe were for protecting the public. A couple of weeks back, though, Cody and I went on a mission with a target that didn’t feel right, and we found out we’d been hunting shifters the whole time. Putting innocent marks down, thinking we were still serving our country. And yeah, we didn’t have much choice in it. Krueger threatened the crew’s cubs, Gage’s mate, Ma, Rory. It doesn’t change that we were the ones who pulled the trigger time and time again. I don’t think the government meant for Krueger to take the liberties he did with us. I think he did things on the sly, and they lost control of him. At least, that’s what I hope. Cody wanted to come out because we went to war with IESA a couple of weeks back, and now the woman who hurt you, Shayna, is rebuilding it from the ground up.” He cast her a quick glance. “As you can imagine, we aren’t thrilled about going back to the way it was. Krueger wasn’t going to stop until we were all dead, and now Shayna is just as vindictive.”

“Holy moly,” Quinn said on a breath, facing forward again. “How many people did you have to kill?”

Dade shook his head tightly. “I can’t, Quinn. I’m haunted enough without recalling my ghosts.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I won’t ask about that anymore, but if you want to talk about it, I won’t run.”

“You would. If you knew the real me, you wouldn’t be able to stomach being in the same room.”

His words filled her with a numbing sadness. How could he say that? He’d sacrificed so much at the hands of horrid people, and he was still standing. Sure, he’d done awful things to survive, but he hadn’t chosen to. He hadn’t known his marks weren’t a threat. He’d been lied to and manipulated, and now those lost lives were gashes on his soul, lined up so he could feel the eternal pain of each target he’d taken. She hated Krueger. Hated IESA. Hated Shayna. “It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair.”

She bit her thumbnail and looked out the window. “Despise yourself all you want to, Dade. I saw you cradling your dog last week while he got his shots. I saw the pity in your eyes when I was crying on the floor. I heard Monroe talk about all the people you’ve saved fighting fires. I’m alive right now because you were cool with putting your entire crew at risk to save me. Everyone has dark places in them, myself included. It matters what you do to keep those shadows small. Try to convince yourself all you want to that you’re too damaged for me to accept.” She swung her gaze to him. “I’m still proud that you’re mine.”