Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (3 page)

In one corner, Professor Duggan was complaining about something or other to the town alpha’s new-ish mate, Izzy. She was the kind of cute that made me jealous. Always had something funny to say, or some off-beat comment to make that got people laughing.

On the other side of the room, two hyenas were playing pool. I knew they were hyenas from all the scratching. And then, sitting at the bar looking for the entire world like a sad sack, was Leon, the town salamander. I was always told to call him the town salamander instead of ‘drunk’ but there you go. Anyway, he and Lex were having it out, arguing about some fight later that night.

Lex looked up at just the right time, and I stuck my hand in the air, waving my mug. I’d never do that to anyone else, but Lex and I go back a long way. He was one of my first boyfriends, way back when I figured out boys and girls were different from each other.

Just looking at that big, muscled bear of a bartender got my heart pounding... but I knew him way too well to think about him as anything other than a friend.

“Sam Adams again?” he shouted over the low din of the bar.

I looked over at Henry with a raised eyebrow. She looked down, checked her watch. “We maybe can have one more,” she said. “Gotta get going to the fight pretty quick. Starts in an hour and we gotta go way out of town. Past Jenga Cranston’s weird-ass hut.”

“That guy gives me the creeps,” I said as I waved Lex over.

“You guys going to the fight?” he asked as he appeared with my next drink. He sidled in beside Henry. “It’s gonna be a hell of a thing. Crag Morgan – one of my cousins – he’s the main event.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, taking a drink. “His name is—”

“Yeah, it’s really Crag,” Lex said. “Used to be a football player, a pro, but something happened. I dunno, he never talks about it. Joined up with some underground boxing-fighting-martial arts thing to pay the bills.”

I was just staring at him, my mouth slacked open.

“Oh, but yeah, his parents are hippies.” Lex slid his arm around Henry who shrugged him off and pursed her lips.

“Hold on,” I said. “Your cousin is an underground fighter. He used to play pro football, and he’s named after a rock? How did I never hear about this before?”

Lex laughed and shot me one of the half-smiles that had broken my willpower so many times when we were dating. “What can I say? They keep to themselves mostly. But Crag’s a good guy. I’m heading out there to see him. It’s been... God, almost five years since I saw him last? Anyway, are you guys going? I think pretty much everyone is.”

He and Henry exchanged a curiously long glance. They were planning something, I just knew it.
What
, exactly, was anybody’s guess, but the only time she looked at anyone with her eyes narrow and one eyebrow lifted was when she was in the middle of a plot.

“Lex!” Leon shouted. “Where didshoogo?”

“Uh oh,” Lex said, irritably. “The salamander’s pissed. In more ways than one. Anyway, see you guys at the fight? Crag’d really like you, Orange.”

He was gone before I could tell him to quit calling me that.

“Why does he have to call me orange?” I asked Henry as she checked her phone.

“Your hair is orange, the name is cute, you’re cute. It fits. Anyway, did you catch what captain beefcake said about his cousin?”

I wasn’t paying attention, not really. The only thing on my mind was what sort of person this Crag guy was. I mean, Lex, for all his faults, isn’t a bad guy. He’s just, well, he likes what he likes. If this Crag dude was half the manly man that Lex was, then...

“Viola!” Henry said, reaching over and shaking me. “What is it with you and dazing out? Talk to me.”

“I was just thinking,” I said.

“About a bear?” A grin went all the way from one side of Henry’s face to the other. “You’ve always had a thing for the big, furry dudes, haven’t you?”

I couldn’t say no. Immediately though, I started thinking about big, strong arms around my waist. Big, strong hands on my back, pulling at me, tugging, holding me... it was almost too much. It was
definitely
too much for the middle of a bar. When she reach out and grabbed my arm, telling me it was time to go, it was almost a relief.

At least that way, I wouldn’t have to sit in the roadhouse and giggle myself to death imagining all the things I’d love to have a bear do to me.

“Come on, girly,” Henry said. “Let’s get gone. We got a thing to see. And from the look of you, you desperately need some lovin’.”

I could’ve thrown up. “You... I... what?”

“Oh come on,” she said, grabbing her purse, giving me a little wink. “Don’t think I didn’t see those eyes light up.”

––––––––

T
he tape squeaked when Crag squeezed his fist. The thickest part of his very thick fingers made it stretch, and a few of the cotton threads running through the tape popped and frayed. He let out a groan and flexed the huge muscles framing either side of his neck.

He stared at the box on the floor with the lid open and the picture on top. It was a collection of trinkets. Dog tags, some pictures, his brother’s old badge, just junk like that – but it was all he had from his old life, and he was in a mood to reminisce. Really, he was in a mood to do anything in the world except fight.

Crag Morgan was a bear through and through – a Morgan bear. Morgans always fought. They were the roughest, the toughest, and the baddest bears in Jamesburg but they only fight for a reason. And here he was, about to fight for no good reason at all. He knew he didn’t have a choice, though that didn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow.

That was the past though. It was all the past. His brother, his football career, any hope of settling down into a normal life; it was all gone. Even though he was home for the first time in five years, he’d be back on the road in two days.
Home
was another thing he wanted, but feared he’d never have.

He went to close the box and pretend for another night that fighting for a crooked, shifty, grease-ball of a fight promoter didn’t bother him. At least until the fight was over, the crowd disappeared, and he got to climb into a bottle.

Crag grunted, then he frowned. Looking back at him from the box was a picture of his brother. “I won’t let him get away with what he did to you. Not for a second. The first chance I have...”

Crag’s brother was a rare sort. The one non-hyena on the Jamesburg police force, he was the first one into dangerous places. Every day for ten years, he kept the most helpless of Jamesburg’s residents safe. That is, until it all came crumbling down.

Marlin Guatorre hadn’t been a fight promoter for long. Years back, he’d peddled drugs and guns, and part of his business went through Jamesburg. So, on more than one occasion, Aiden had run up against him. Never anything deadly – not until Aiden had him cornered, and Marlin shot him out of panic.

With his brother dead, and Crag adrift, Marlin appeared and lent what seemed like a helping hand. That was when the fighting promotion was born. He took Crag out of Jamesburg, and made him a headliner.

When Crag left on the chance to play football – a chance at life outside the ring – Marlin was furious. Somehow, he’d managed to get to him even then. He drugged Crag and made him explode in the locker room... which made Crag run again.

Then after two years of blowing every cent he’d earned, Crag was right back on Marlin’s doorstep.

It always came back to Marlin.

“Twenty minutes!” Ralphie, the boss’s lackey, called from the door of Crag’s trailer. “Hurry up, you go on in twenty, what the hell are you doing, Crag?”

Crag didn’t bother to look over. He knew who it was. Same guy it always was when the door opened and someone told him there was a fighting in twenty minutes.

He wished he could go one whole week – that’s all, just one week – without hearing those words.

Blood pounded in Crag’s temples. He wanted to get up and squeeze Ralphie’s neck until he popped his tiny, pointed head. But he wouldn’t. He knew that. He also knew that Ralphie, for all the things he had in common with weasel, wasn’t one.

The only member of this group who was like him – a shifter – was the one he hated the most. Thinking about Marlin made him ball up a fist and pound it against the bench he was sitting on so hard that the trailer shook.

“Whassa matter, Crag?” Ralphie whined. “Hung over?”

“Yeah, Ralphie, that’s it.” Crag’s voice sounded like a rumble from deep inside the earth. “Drank too much. Doesn’t matter. I gotta get dressed, all right?”

“You do dat,” Ralphie said. “You want some Alka-Seltzer, just ask. I got plenty.”

“Thanks, Ralphie,” Crag said softly. “I appreciate it. I’m fine. Get outta here.”

Ralphie made a squeaking noise and closed the door. A second later, Crag heard him yell to the boss that ‘the prize fighter’ was going to be ready, even though he had a hangover.

The boss, he was the one Crag wanted dead. He didn’t care if it took the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to let that slimy bastard get away. Sometimes, he wondered if Marlin even remembered his brother. Probably not, Crag thought. Marlin didn’t seem to remember anyone except Marlin.

Crag laughed bitterly and went back to wrapping his fingers. He counted each loop up to thirteen, tore it off, and moved on to the next finger. When he was finished, he turned the tape over in his hand. He lifted it to his mouth, bit down, and ripped it off.

That fist made the same squeaking, straining sound before the tape started fraying around his huge fingers.

Crag looked up and down his tattooed forearms, thinking about every single little mark. Each of them had a meaning. Three numbers – six, eight, seventy-three – those were his brother’s birthday. There were stylized images of his parents, and one of the Morgan family crest nestled in among countless others that formed an intricate pattern stretching halfway up his biceps.

All those memories, they had all gone dark.

“I need a nice girl,” Crag said under his breath. “A nice woman, not a girl. I need a woman to take care of, one to give me some reason to wake up every day and a reason to smile. One who can make me calm down. That’s what I need.”

He looked back at the picture of his brother, smiled for a second, and then closed the trunk with a loud bang.

“Maybe,” he continued rambling to himself, “maybe you’re gonna be out there in the crowd tonight. Maybe I’ll see you. It’ll hit me like a shot of lightning. Wouldn’t that be something? First time back home in ten years and I find the girl of my dreams in the crowd.”

Balling up both his fists, he listened to the straining tape.

Then, outside his trailer, the crowd grew louder. They were out there, filing into the make-shift venue. And they were waiting for a fight.

Lifting one of his shoulders, he turned his head side to side and popped his neck.

The worst part of all this was that he couldn’t even
really
fight. Morgans loved a fight, sure, but ripping normal people limb from limb wasn’t a fight. Hell, it wasn’t even legal. Of course, whether or not fights
without
murder were legal depended on where they were at the time.

An air horn’s obnoxious honk burst through the slight repose Crag had taken on. He pulled up his torn jeans, zipped them dutifully. Grabbing his trademark flannel shirt, he threw that on too, and buttoned it halfway – as far as it would go up his chest without tearing.

Then, as an afterthought, he reached back into his trunk and grabbed the necklace he kept in there. It was just a simple pendant that hung from a thick, leather collar, nothing anyone would ever steal. It was just a little Morgan crest with all the paint rubbed off. But, it was the last memento Crag had from his older brother.

He hooked it around his huge neck and then bent down to the floor, flattening his palms against it, popping every vertebrae in his back.

He hated fighting like this, sure, but he loved popping his back.

It’s the simple things in life, right?

“Morgan! Get out here! Like right fuckin’ now! Need you for a stunt! Hurry up!” Marlin was yelling outside his door.

For a second, Crag imagined wrapping his hands around that crocodile’s neck and squeezing until his eyes bugged out. He’d never do it to Ralphie, not in a million years. But Marlin? Oh yeah, oh
hell
yeah he’d do it to Marlin.

Crag paused with his hand on his trailer door and gave himself just one more second of thought. Doing this is how he kept himself calm, how he kept himself from getting angry in the middle of a fight or the middle of one of Marlin’s stupid stunts, and accidentally transforming.

If that happened, there was no telling what kind of mess he’d leave.

That’s not what he wanted though. Crag wanted to be himself. He wanted someone to call him by his
real
name. He wanted a nice girl to love and to hold and to care for... but most of all, in that moment, Crag Morgan wanted revenge.

––––––––

“S
o, like, what do we
do
here?” I asked, looking down at the bench to see if there was any danger to sitting.

I almost sat, but then had the presence of mind to spread a paper towel out. Then, I looked at the oil sheen on the paper towel and got a little queazy. There was so much of a slick that it was almost see-through. Two more of them and I wasn’t much anywhere closer to a clean seat, but Henry grabbed my hands and yanked me down.

“What are you doing? Enjoy life sometimes, you damn princess,” she said. “So what, you got a popcorn grease stain on your skirt. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Well,” I said, thankful for a lull in the increasingly wild crowd noise, “it could be something other than popcorn grease.”

Henry crinkled her nose. “Chili?”

I shuddered. “Why can’t there be chairs?”

“Oh hell, Viola, come on. Sit in your mess there and lighten up some. It’s about to start!”

She pulled my hand again, and I sat down with a wince, a frown, and more than a little bit of trepidation about cleaning the back of my skirt.