Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (27 page)

A moment later, Ash cracked a smile. “I’m just glad you two aren’t hurt. But I’m serious, get to the hospital sooner than later. I figure you don’t want to pay the ambulance bill, and it doesn’t look all that bad, but you need to have it checked. Someone’s gotta keep all those kids safe.”

I smiled and thanked him. Orion shook his hand, and then as soon as it all began, all those weeks before with a falling tree and a crazy beaver, it was over.

Orion’s lips brushed against my forehead. I looked up to see him smiling. I pushed off his lap, spun around and straddled his waist, locking my long legs behind his back. “I think I’m ready too,” I said. “I think...”

He cupped his hands on either side of my face and watched my eyes. Softly, he kissed the tip of my nose, then my cheek and then in one breathtaking moment, my bottom lip. I pulled at his, feeling each line and curve of his mouth, then swirled my tongue against his.

I just about jumped out of my skin when a car horn honked twice. “Be safe, you two!” Ash called from the patrol car as he backed out and drove away.

“It’s just us,” Orion said. “You and me, out here in the woods.”

His words were velvet against my ears. “You and me,” I repeated. “This is how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Feels like... feels like I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time.”

“I know what you mean,” he said as a smile crossed his face. “So, I guess you’ve finally come around on all that fate stuff?”

I shrugged and then laughed softly. “I don’t know about that,” I whispered. “But I know one thing I believe in.”

“Yeah?”

“Us,” I said.

His answer was a deep, languid, softly swirling kiss. Liam? He was a million miles away. Mitch and Celia and everything else? Gone. For right then? For right when it mattered?

It was just us. Orion and Clea, in each other’s arms.

The smile I had wasn’t just on my face. The hand on my back wasn’t just warming my skin.

He was touching my heart, warming my soul.

This... this is how life is supposed to be.

Relaxing my forehead on Orion’s shoulder, I closed my eyes. I have no idea how long we sat there, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did – except him, and me.

––––––––

O
rion held my hand.

He’s my anchor, the gravity that keeps me pinned to earth. Thing is? It doesn’t go just one way. Everything he does for me, all the security and safety he makes me feel, the warmth that spreads through my chest every time he looks my way, the tingles between my legs that show up whenever he smiles? I do all the same things for him – or to him, I guess.

He squeezed my hand, and smiled. Of
course
he smiled.

In the weeks since two lovey-dovey, stitched up bears had held a dam, Orion saved me, I saved him, and a brave squirrel electrocuted an eco-terrorist, smiles had started coming a lot more regularly.

Something
else
had too. Or maybe I should say some
one
.

I shook my head, intent on not blushing my way through this bizarre little ceremony.

Alpha Danniken wandered into the main courtroom, pushed through a crowd, and pretty much collapsed into the chair at the front of the room. Orion shot a glance in my direction that made me melt just a little, and then nodded toward the alpha’s opened shirt.

Jamie Ampton, who was a little flushed herself, leaned over and whispered in Erik’s ear. He looked immediately irritated, and then rolled his eyes before buttoning his collar. He wrestled with his tie for a second, but then just sighed and gave up.

His mate came in a second later, much more put together, but glowing a little.

Orion slid an arm around behind my back and pinched me softly. When I looked at him, he wiggled his eyebrows a couple times. I slapped at him playfully and cleared my throat.

Not gonna laugh
, I told myself.
Not in the middle of everyone watching me
.

“When do we get to start complaining?” someone in the back – a wild-eyed panther with huge, red eyebrows, asked. “I got
sixteen
complaints!”

“Yeah! Start court, Alpha! We got places to be!”

Alpha Danniken stood up, banged on the lectern with a gavel, and then squeezed the top until his knuckles turned white. No one seemed to react, even when he did it again, louder. “They’re always like this,” he said, turning to me. “They’re gonna be
real
pissed when they figure out no one’s going to listen to them whine today.”

He pulled out a flask, dumped a generous amount of something brown into his coffee, and took a swallow.

“Wolves,” Orion said, stifling a laugh. He looked past me to the alpha, and they shared a strange, knowing glance before Erik faked a scowl.

They’d been spending some time together recently – him and Erik and Ash Morgan. Those two took him in, sorta training him to live in regular society. They even played golf once, although that was aborted after one of them broke so many clubs they had to replace the entire rental set. Since then, it was mostly weight lifting. Harder to break enormous iron bars, I guess.

Mitch got a speedy introduction to the state prison system, and almost the second he was hauled in, the Dirty Devils more or less dissolved. Celia, oddly, never surfaced. Everyone was convinced she was a permanent resident of the river, but I wasn’t so sure.

“Oh, finally,” Erik said. “The... uh, well man of the hour. I guess. I’ve never been sure about this.”

Preceded by Jenga and his rattling beard, Atlas and Sara tromped into court. A cloud of lilac, and a cloud of lavender, came with them. It was hard to tell which one smelled like what, but it was a noticeable improvement over last time. It might be overpowering, but nothing –
nothing
– is worse than the ripe smell of Axe.

“Hey! No cutting!” someone screamed at Jenga as he tried to push through. “Wait at the back!”

Atlas frowned. His hand shot out, catching the collar of the guy hassling Jenga. A second later, the mousy looking, brown-haired man’s kicked back and forth like he was running on air.

That
got everyone quite.

“Oh!” Erik said. “Thanks Atlas. I wondered how I was going to get these idiots quiet.”

Orion squeezed my hand again. He had
that
look on his face. The one that wobbled me knees, the one that made me all warm inside... and outside. I couldn’t handle it much longer, I knew. I wanted this all over so we could go back and...

“Keep looking at me like that, and I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and we’re leaving right now,” Orion growled, under his breath. The vibration from his talking did something crazy in the pit of my stomach.

“I wouldn’t complain,” I whispered back.

He chuckled. “I’ve got a surprise for you. I promise it’ll be worth it.”

“You’ve been saying that for a week,” I said. “Why won’t you tell me what it is?”

Orion’s answer was to grin, to shrug, and turn back to the circus.

“All right, Atlas, put the chucklehead down,” Erik said.

“Hnnng,” Atlas groaned, then did as he was ordered, very literally. The guy fell about three inches, then plopped on the floor when his feet went right out from under him. Atlas cracked a slow, satisfied smirk. “O...kay.”

“Psssh!” Sara hissed. “Don’t be... don’t... rude!”

Atlas took a slow, deep breath, and sighed.

“Welcome to mated life, big friend,” Erik said, slapping the massive bear on the shoulder as the trio approached. He took his hand away, rubbed his fingertips together, smelled them, and shook his head.

Evidently, someone in the gallery heard. “A mating? Son of a
bitch
! I thought this was Complainer’s Court! My neighbor put up a fence that’s ugly as hell!
And
he’s got two unlicensed pigs!”

On the other side of us, the hedgehog professor, Duggan, began to bristle. “We need to deal with that, Erik!” he said as he puffed up. “That’s a violation of—”

“Next week, professor anxiety,” Erik said, raising a hand. “We can take a week off from all that once in a while.”

The crowd began to grow restless. Two people tried to slip out the back, but Erik caught their attention with a slammed gavel. “Stop!” he ordered. They did. “These two almost killed themselves to save this town.”

“Well, in a way,” Jenga said. “They wouldn’t have actually
died
, they would have just—”

Erik silenced him with a glare.

“Right, sorry.”

“As I was saying, the town of Jamesburg owes these two completely unlikely, and frankly, slightly disturbing, bears a great debt of gratitude. I’m not entirely sure of the legal ramifications of mating two zombies for life, but here we are. In the last four years, I’ve learned that when things get weird, that’s the best time to roll with the punches. And this is one punch that,” he trailed off and shook his head.

Izzy poked him in the leg and nodded toward the audience. They were all silent.

“Oh,” Erik said, distracted by something. “Thanks for your attention. Anyway, I’ll keep this short because we’ve got two of these and the next one is a little warmer, uh, so to speak.” He laughed at his own joke.

Atlas turned his huge head and groaned. He started to drool, but Jenga caught it with a handkerchief before it got out of control. Sara pushed him away, grabbed the cloth, and wiped Atlas’s mouth. “I ca-ca-ha-ha! I take... care,” she said with a wide grin.
She
, in turn, drooled, but didn’t seem to notice, so Jenga caught that one instead.

It was over before quickly. Atlas groaned his I-Do’s and Sara chirped hers. The two of them hugged, and had a half-hearted attempt at a kiss that was aborted due to public safety concerns.

“Thank... you,” Atlas moaned, in Erik’s direction. The alpha nodded, and the happily mated couple, along with their every present chaperone, shuffled, jingled, and lurched out of the courthouse, pausing every few seconds to share a heartwarmingly sloppy kiss or two.

As soon as they were gone, I grabbed my purse as my heart started to race. Soon, I’d be in
his
arms, I’d be touching him, holding him, and he’d kiss me up and down and in and out.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Orion asked. “He said there were two matings today, didn’t you hear?”

It hit me square in the chest. “I mean,” he continued, “if you’ll have me, I mean.”

My valiant attempt at not blushing when I thought about him naked the whole day went right out the window. My mouth moved, but no sound came out. That’s when I noticed that Orion – huge, powerful, beautiful Orion – was blushing too, but he didn’t care one damn bit.

“I’ve never met anyone, never knew anyone that made me feel the way you do.” He grabbed my hands, in front of Erik, Jamie, Duggan and an entire room full of scratching, tongue flicking, irritable shifters. “I didn’t know it was even possible to feel like you make me feel. Not until I met you, Clea.”

His eyes were burning in me. The whole world was gone except for him, and me. Somehow – it didn’t even make sense – I had such powerful tunnel vision that all the cheering and the whistling and everything else simply didn’t exist.

“Will you? Will you be mine for life, and let me be yours?”

I let out a gasp as warmth spread from my head to my toes, prickling, sparking, melting me from the inside out. Every insecurity, every bit of self-loathing that Liam had put on me, every shred of guilt or hate or fear, it all drained out of me and into a puddle on the floor at my feet. I didn’t need that anymore. I was past it all.

Somehow, this man had helped me work up the courage to step over all that, and then turn around, and kick it right in the damn face.

“I,” my throat hitched, and I swallowed. “I’m ready,” I whispered, as a smile crept across my face. “I’m ready for this, for you, for life, for the future. I’m ready to turn my back on the past and look
forward
for once.”

When I was finished, I took a deep breath to steady my hands. Eloquence under pressure hasn’t ever been one of my strong suits. I was just as surprised as Dean and Malia were – who I just noticed for the first time, were sitting in the front row, along with the raccoon twins, the panda triplets, and my two favorite bear cubs. All of the little ones were doing the best job they could at keeping still, but Dean and Malia definitely had their hands full.

And
Ash, Rex and Lilah Lee, how had I managed to not notice them before? All of them were sitting on the same bench as Dean and Malia and...

Sometimes I could just slap myself in the forehead.

“Ready?” he asked. “I fooled myself into thinking I wasn’t. I fooled myself into thinking I backed away to keep you safe from my father and from the gang and everything else. But now? I know what I was doing. I was scared of myself. I was scared of admitting that I was in love. That it was even possible for me to love. I’ve never been more ready for anything in my life.”

Taking my hands, he pulled me to my feet, stared into my eyes, and then parted my lips with a soft kiss that went all the way to my soul.

“Well then,” Erik said. “Mates for life, there you go. I’d try to give a speech, but what the hell, I’m not gonna top that.”

Eternity swirled around us, Orion’s hands running up and down my back and me desperately gripping him, clutching him, clinging to him. Heat welled up inside me, heat like I’d never felt.

I’d heard a whole lot about two bodies with one soul, and always thought it was a big old load. But right then? Well let’s just say that all that fate stuff? And all that stuff about taking love on faith and not doubting when beauty is looking you straight in the face?

I was starting to realize I’d been wrong all along.

*

“D
on’t you dare make me wait one more second.”

I was grabbing at Orion before the door had time to close.

“I don’t think I can,” he said. Grabbing my shoulders, he forced my head back with a kiss so strong I thought I saw the sun behind my eyelids. I opened my mouth for him, he pressed his tongue against mine, before exploring me with the tip. I fought back, pushing mine into him, sliding it along his lips, behind his teeth, before clutching his face in my hands and kissing him as deep as I could.