Reign: A Royal Military Romance (33 page)

M
iles jerked awake
, and it took a couple of seconds for him to remember where he was: his little house right outside town, in the Alaska woods.

He’d dreamt of
her
, for the first time in years: they’d been sixteen again, in the dream, before Delilah decided she was going to California.

This time, in the dream, they’d been lying in the back of his pickup truck, limbs intertwined, in the big warm sleeping bag he kept in the cab just in case.

Above them, the northern lights had undulated across the sky, green and blue and pink, and they’d been warm and half-naked.

Everything had been perfect.

Miles shook his head and looked at his alarm clock. It was still three minutes before six, but the sun had been up for almost an hour already, and this time of year it hardly even got dark, even at midnight.

He knew that there were other places on the globe that had regular night and day, twelve hours of each, but that wasn’t his life experience, other than a few weeks in spring and fall. Not only was he an Alaska native, he was a bear, deep down inside. He knew he was built for long summer days feeding and wrestling and running through the woods, then long winter nights in front of the fire, burrowed down under blankets taking a good long sleep.

The alarm started shrieking and Miles hit it. It stopped, and in the renewed silence he could hear the creek behind his house gurgling, the birds outside singing. Squirrels chattering.

Why would anyone live anywhere else?

He hoisted himself out of the big pine bed that he’d made himself. It had only taken him three tries: two ugly, unstable bed frames, but then this beauty on the third attempt. It was far from perfect, but it was pretty nice. Much better than it had to be.

He stood and stretched, all six and a half feet of him, wearing only socks and boxers, and looked out his bedroom window. It was going to be a beautiful day, sunny and long, the spring finally in full effect. This time of year he always had the wild urge to rip off all of his clothes, run out the back door and shift. It was tempting to just spend all summer in bear form, sometimes, but he always ended up missing the finer points of being human. Eating cooked food, sleeping in a bed. Reading a book.

Not today, though. Today he was due at the shop at seven. Spring meant taking snow chains off, putting the cars up on lifts and telling everyone what damage the winter had wrought. As much as he liked his job, Miles didn’t like that part, of looking at someone’s car and telling them what it was going to cost. The people in Fjords who budgeted for it properly were few and far between. Around here it was far more common to live hand-to-mouth every month with barely enough left over for smokes or beer, and waiting until something simply rusted off of your car to get it fixed.

Just like Miles, everyone kept a pile of blankets or sleeping bags or something in their cars. They all knew the stories: someone gets stuck in their car, way out, late at night, and they freeze to death before help can get there.

He padded in his sock feet to the kitchen and flipped the switch on his coffee maker, hearing it creak as it started. He’d gotten it ready the night before, just like every night. As the coffee brewed, filling the kitchen with its aroma, he pulled the eggs and bacon out of the fridge, started warming up his cast iron skillet.

One more time, waiting for the pan to heat up, he thought about his dream. It had barely been a dream, of course: it was really a memory that had just come back to him, floating in that space. He couldn’t believe she was back in town, or that he’d seen her yesterday. It had been years since they last spoke — she had visited her mom in Anchorage for Christmas one year and had come down to Fjords to see some old friends, just for a day. He’d spotted her out on Main Street, getting coffee, and they’d chatted awkwardly for a few minutes: she was still in college, at Berkeley, and he had finished training and was an Assistant Mechanic at Dale’s.

That had been five years ago. Seeing her then had nearly wrecked him. It was dark nearly all the time anyway, and he had still been living with his parents, though most of their energy had been devoted to his brother, Nathan, who even at thirteen had been a handful. All he’d done for months was go to work, fix cars, come home, and sleep.

Time had passed. He’d been initiated, given his energy to something else. He’d gotten better.

A spatter of hot bacon landed on his bare belly and Miles brushed it away. He reached for the apron that hung by the stove, mostly for bacon splatters like this one.

He felt okay, he thought. He’d seen her and he’d even given her his jacket, but he was going to be okay this time.

A little surge of relief flowed through him.

I’m really over her
, he thought.

* * *

F
ive minutes later
, he walked through his little house into the living room, still just wearing an apron, boxers, and socks, so he could eat breakfast on the couch and watch the morning news while he woke up, but when he flipped on the lights, something moved on the couch.

Something person-shaped and under a blanket. Miles stopped short.

“That had better be Nathan,” he said out loud.

There was an incoherent muttering from the couch.

“Again?” said Miles. “You get kicked out?” He walked around the front of the couch and sat his plate of bacon and eggs on the coffee table, then took a long drink of his coffee. If he was going to deal with his brother, he was going to need to be as awake as possible.

“Iwastoooolate,” Nathan said.

“Speak up.”

“I was out too late,” Nathan said. He pushed the blanket down over his chest, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. “Mom and dad would have chewed me out, but you sleep through everything.”

When Miles had moved out of his parents’ house and into his own cabin a few years ago, he’d given his younger brother keys. Nathan had been having trouble with his parents, and Miles, seven years older, wanted him to be able to come over any time if he needed a place to go.

It was starting to get ridiculous, though.

“What time did you get in?”

“Five.”

“What were you doing?”

Nathan shrugged. Miles absolutely hated this part of their relationship — the part where he felt like Nathan’s parent, quizzing him about what he’d been up to.

“Just out with the guys,” Nathan answered. He finally looked up at Miles, standing over him. “The fuck are you wearing, man?”

Miles realized he still had the apron on. It was the most masculine apron he’d been able to find — solid blue and utterly without frills — but he was wearing it with nothing but boxers and socks, he realized. Annoyed, he tugged it off and tossed it over the back of the couch.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he said. “Scoot over.”

Sleepily, Nathan obeyed.

“I heard Delilah was back,” Nathan said. “She saved Susan’s ass, someone said.”

“Yup,” said Miles, his mouth full. He didn’t want to talk about his ex-girlfriend with his little brother.

“Good thing,” Nathan said. “She’s been gone for a long time.”

Miles frowned and paused in his chewing, looked at his brother. Then he swallowed, still hunched over his plate, elbows on knees.

“And?”

Nathan shrugged. “You know how people feel about outsiders.”

“She’s not an outsider. She was born here.”

“She left for the human world. She thinks she’s better than us.”

Miles bristled at that. Inadvertently, he felt his bear rear back, snarl at something, a stronger reaction than was really warranted, he knew.

“She had dreams,” Miles said, more harshly than he meant to. “Where was she going to go to med school in Fjords?”

Nathan looked sulky and muttered something. Suddenly, a bell went off in Miles’s head.

“It’s that fucking Brock kid again, isn’t it,” he said. Nathan said something, and Miles rolled his eyes. “That dipshit is almost too dumb to wipe his own ass, so he doesn’t want anybody else doing better than him,” he said.

Nathan didn’t say anything, and Miles wolfed down the rest of his breakfast, now thoroughly in a bad mood.

He didn’t like Brock at all, a man his own age who mostly hung out with kids barely out of high school. Brock seemed to have some sort of hold over Nathan and his friends, though, and Miles couldn’t wait for the day that Nathan managed to start thinking on his own instead of following Brock’s shifter supremacy thinking.

Miles loved the pack — he’d do anything for the pack — but he didn’t necessarily think that they were better than anyone else. Just different.

Finished eating, Miles stood.

“I gotta get to work,” he said. “Mom and Dad ought to be awake by now. You better get over there.”

He was mad, and Nathan could hear it. Miles could sense his brother bristling in anger, then checking himself: Miles was still bigger and stronger, and they both knew who’d win in a fight.

“Okay,” Nathan said.

Miles walked back to the kitchen and had another cup of coffee while he did his few dishes. As he turned the water off, he heard the front door slam.

He’d deal with Nathan’s shit later. He didn’t know what his brother was getting himself into, but he had a deep gut feeling — an instinct — that it wasn’t any good.

But still, as he got into his old truck and drove to the mechanic shop, that wasn’t what he was thinking about. He was thinking about his dream, about Delilah and him in that sleeping bag, in his truck, about the dazzling night sky overhead.

“
D
o you need a receipt
, sweetheart?” the woman asked. She was an older woman, in her early fifties, Delilah guessed, and she smelled of cinnamon and vanilla, like she had a home full of scented candles.

“That’s okay,” said Delilah. “I really don’t think any of this is worth much. He was kind of a hoarder, I guess.”

“So many older people end up that way, it’s tragic,” she said. “At least your dad had you.”

Delilah shifted uncomfortably where she stood.

“There’s a ton more stuff,” she said. “Do you need anything in particular?”

“We’re always on the lookout for coats and jackets,” the woman said. The name tag on her sweater said Stephanie. “And we always need things in kids’ sizes. You know how kids go through clothes.”

Stephanie paused and looked at Delilah for another moment.

“Especially here, at that age,” she said.

Delilah just nodded. Stephanie probably meant seven or eight, the time that most kids started shifting.

“I don’t think he had much kids’ stuff,” she said. “But I’ll bring anything by.”

“Whatever we don’t use, we sell,” Stephanie said.

Delilah turned and left the Fjords Battered Women’s Shelter, walking back into the June sunlight. She knew her father wouldn’t have approved — before they’d stopped talking she’d heard time and time again how domestic disputes should stay
domestic —
but that was half the reason she’d come here.

* * *

B
y the time
she got into her car, warmed a little by the sun, it smelled of Miles’s leather jacket — and worse, it smelled like
him
. In medical school she’d learned that, unlike the other four senses, the sense of smell was routed straight through the amygdala, which was the brain’s memory and emotion center.

That’s why you feel sixteen every time you’re near that jacket
, she told herself. It didn’t help that her bear-self meant she had a mean sense of smell even as a human.

She’d brought it with her so she could swing by the repair shop give it back. There was no use in keeping it around. If she had it with her, she’d just smell it more, think even more of all those good times they’d had together in high school, and then she’d get to thinking of how much she’d loved him, how much it had broken her heart to move away. There hadn’t been a ring on his finger the day before, but she knew he must at least have a girlfriend, some lucky woman he was going to make his mate someday. Miles was young, strong, and handsome, one of the few men in town with skilled, steady work.

Not to mention he was apparently in Roy’s inner circle and, if her guesses were right, at least in the running to be the next alpha. Even though Delilah hadn’t been in town for years, it hadn’t taken more than a glance around the accident scene the day before to see how the other pack members deferred to him. After all, he’d been the one who actually lifted the car off of Susan.

Miles would probably never admit to thinking about it, at least not until it happened. That wasn’t his style. He knew, though.

Delilah pulled up to the repair shop and leaned into the back seat of her car for the jacket, then got out into the sunny but blustery day. As soon as she did, she could feel the eyes on her, of every mechanic simultaneously thinking,
Is that Delilah Silver?

Is she back for Miles?

Almost immediately, she wished that she’d just taken it to his house. Though he probably didn’t live with his parents any more, she realized, and she didn’t know where he lived now or even what his phone number was.

“Help you, miss?” asked someone wearing coveralls, his head deep inside a car’s hood.

“I’m just looking for Miles,” she said.

The man looked up at her, still upside-down. She didn’t recognize him, thank god, but there was a beat where she thought he might have recognized her.

“He’s taking some rust off of a Volvo over there,” the man said. “Hold on, I’ll go get him for you. Garage is dangerous.”

Delilah half-followed the man, jacket in hand, and watched him go find Miles, point back at her.

It was
hard
not to admire Miles. Even under his ugly dust-blue coveralls he had a gorgeous body, tall and wide-shouldered, the kind of strong muscles that came from physical labor and not lifting weights in a gym.

She wondered if he still had those incredible washboard abs he’d had at seventeen, that she’d run her hands over, totally delighted that she was allowed to, that this man with this incredible body was hers to do whatever she wanted to —

“Hey,” said
that
voice, and Delilah smiled, pulled out of her reverie.

“Got your jacket back,” she said, holding it up.

“Thanks,” he said, but held up both his hands. “Mind carrying it to the break room for me? I should wash my hands before I take it.” They were covered in black grease, a matching smudge on one cheek.

“Sure,” said Delilah. “Lead the way.”

He had a nice butt, too. Delilah felt a little guilty for thinking about him this way, especially after she’d broken his heart all those years ago, but he never had to know. She could just watch it from behind, following him to the break room, unseen.

“You didn’t need to bring it back so soon,” he said. He flipped the lights on and stepped up to the big stainless steel sink, scrubbing his hands with dish soap and the brush that lay next to it. “I can wait until you get another jacket.”

“I brought about five,” she said. “I haven’t forgotten what spring time is like up here.”

Miles grinned, still scrubbing. “The infamous June snows,” he agreed.

“Exactly.”

He dried his hands on a gross-looking towel and finally took the jacket from her, glancing at the door to the break room as he did.

“Do you ever miss it?” he asked. “Fjords, I mean.”

He didn’t look Delilah in the face, instead staring off at the wall.

Delilah narrowed her eyes, trying to find the right phrasing for what she was about to say.

“Yes and no,” she said, slowly.

“I bet I can guess what you don’t miss,” he said, looking at her again, rubbing the spaces in between his fingers with the hand towel.

Delilah laughed. “Go ahead.”

He began counting on his fingers. “First, you don’t miss every restaurant in town closing at 8 o’clock every night. You don’t miss the winters. You don’t miss the Rusty Anchor.”

“All true,” she said.

He sat down in a folding chair, gesturing at the one opposite him, both around a flimsy card table. He reached over and took his jacket, flopping it across his lap and then leaning back, the chair squeaking under his bulk.

“If I know you, you don’t miss the bullshit pack politics,” he went on.

She shook her head. “Not at all.”

“You don’t miss every person in this town knowing about everything you do and who you do it with.”

“Nope.”

Miles grinned again and put his arms behind his head. Even wearing ugly, stained coveralls, Delilah had to admit he was gorgeous and had only gotten better while she’d been gone.

He was dead on with how she felt about Fjords, though.

“This part’s harder,” he said. “I gotta guess what you
do
miss.”

“It shouldn’t be so hard,” she said. “Want me to give you a head start?”

“Be my guest.”

“Spring,” she said. “Real spring, with melting snow and blooming flowers, the sun really coming out again. California doesn’t get that right at all.”

“I thought you were in northern California.”

“I am, but still. June is foggy and cold, and sometimes February is gorgeous.”

“Okay,” he said, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “You miss seasons. You also miss elk burgers at Smitty’s, and salmon fresh off the boats at the dock.”

“So far so good,” she said.

His face got more serious. “You miss being around other shifters,” he said, looking her right in the eyes.

Delilah just nodded.

“Yeah,” she said simply.

“You miss running through the spring forest with other bears,” he said. “And you miss having a town full of people who’d help you out of a jam, whether they liked you or not.”

Delilah wasn’t as sure about that one, but she nodded anyway.

“You miss drinking shitty beers that Jackson’s older brother bought us on the shore in the summer.”

Delilah laughed out loud.

“God, there was really nothing to do here as a kid, was there?” she said.

“There were a couple of things,” Miles said. His eyes were mischievous now, dancing blue in his face. “Drinking was one.”

Delilah could fill in the rest of that sentence:
fucking was the other
. She felt herself blush, just a little, as she remembered those warm summer nights when the sun barely went down, when they’d drink on the rocky shore until all their friends left and they were there, alone, and they’d go into the back of Miles’s truck and have sex in the sleeping bag he always kept there.

“Is that everything I miss?” she asked. She tried to keep her tone light, like this conversation wasn’t bringing up old memories.

Miles’s blue eyes bore into her face, and in an instant, she knew exactly what he was going to say.

“You miss the northern lights,” he said.

Delilah broke his gaze and looked down at the card table.

She knew exactly what he was talking about, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at him just then. Instead she played with a pamphlet lying on the table advertising Goodyear All-Weather tires.

The silence between them stretched out.

“I should let you get back to work,” she said, still not looking Miles in the face.

“Come get a drink with me,” he said.

Delilah crossed one ankle over her opposite knee and looked up at him, searching his face.

Was he asking her out again? She hesitated, feeling a little like she was on the edge of a cliff, staring over it at the water breaking against the rocks below. She had left Fjords once and she knew it had broken Miles’s heart.

She didn’t think she could stand to do it to him twice.

“Just a drink,” he promised, like he could read her mind. “Friends, nothing more. We haven’t seen each other in years. You can tell me what California is like, and I can tell you which of your high school classmates has three babies by three different fathers.”

Delilah laughed, her guard down a little.

“Is one of the fathers you?” she asked, teasingly.

“I hope not,” he said, grinning back at her.

A sudden, small pang of jealousy stabbed through her.

Could one of them be?
She wondered.
Who else was in the back of that pickup truck?

Stop it
, she told herself.

“We don’t even have to go to the Rusty Anchor any more,” he said. “We got an upscale joint a couple of years ago.”

Delilah raised both her eyebrows. She suspected that she and Miles had different definitions of ‘upscale,’ but she was interested in his.

“Place called
Bella Notte
. They’re open all the way until eleven on weekends, and their wine doesn’t even come in gallon jugs,” he said.

Delilah had to laugh. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll get a fancy drink with you.”

“Tonight?”

Is this really a good idea?
Delilah wondered.

“Okay,” she said.

“See you there at six?”

“I thought this was drinks only, not dinner,” she teased.

Miles stood, went to hang his jacket on a hook on the wall.

“It’s whatever I can talk you into,” he said.

Delilah stood and followed him back out, into the repair shop.

“See you tonight,” he said, walking back underneath the car he’d been working on.

“See you,” she called and walked back to her car.

Delilah could feel the other mechanics look over at her, but she tried to ignore them.

We’re just friends
, she wanted to shout.
We’re catching up. It’s no big thing.

People move on from their first loves all the time,
she told herself.