Reign: A Royal Military Romance (69 page)

A
riana didn’t wake
up until Jake put a cup of coffee down on the nightstand, right next to her head. Her eyes still bleary, she looked up at him, uncomprehending. Then, she registered the amount of light coming in through the windows and the fact that Jake was fully dressed already, and sat up straight.

“What time is it?” she asked. She still wore the flannel shirt she’d borrowed from Jake last night, and the sleeves reached almost to her fingertips, like she was a kid playing dress up.

“Nine-ish,” Jake said, sitting on the bed.

Ariana rubbed her eyes. “It’s dark out here,” she said. “I slept like a log.”

“One of the perks of country living,” he said.

She took the mug in her hands and savored the moment: about to drink delicious coffee in bed, served to her by the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on.

Ariana took a sip. It was
terrible
. She forced herself not to make a face.

“Thanks,” she said. She couldn’t help but notice that Jake wasn’t drinking any coffee.

“Is it bad?” he said.

Ariana didn’t say anything.

“I found a jar of instant coffee in my cupboard,” he said. “You can tell me if it’s bad.”

“It’s awful,” she admitted.

“Damn,” he said, taking the mug from her. “Well, I tried. We can get coffee supplies today.”

Ariana felt something warm and fluttery inside her. She knew better than to take things so fast with Jake, especially after she’d broken up with Graham a total of two weeks previously, when she’d discovered him cheating on her, but he just couldn’t help it. She liked the way he said
we
, the way he assumed she’d be around for long enough to justify him buying coffee equipment for her.

The way he protected her and brought her coffee in the morning, even if the coffee was terrible. The way he’d said he loved her the night before, and how he didn’t seem upset that she hadn’t said it back right away.

She would, she thought. She just needed a little time.

Ariana yawned and stretched. “Can you drop me at my place on the way to work?” she asked.

Jake frowned, dumping out the coffee into his kitchen sink.

“I thought maybe you could come to my office with me,” he said.

Ariana crossed her legs in the bed. “What, is it ‘bring your girlfriend to work’ day?”

“I just want to keep you safe,” he said.

Irritation and fear mixed in Ariana. On the one hand, he was right — she’d heard that story about the dead girl whose only crime had been making out with a shifter in a movie theater. On the other hand, Ariana was a grown woman, and she had an idea of what she was up against.

“Okay,” she said. “What if I work in the library?”

Jake looked thoughtful as he washed and dried the mug.

“It’s full of people, plus there’s internet,” she said. “No one is going to turn into a bear and murder me in full sight of all those humans and kids, are they?”

“Probably not,” conceded Jake. “At least because they don’t want humans knowing they’re real.”

“Perfect,” said Ariana, getting out of bed finally, going to her backpack and pulling out fresh clothes. “You can drop me at the coffee place, I still need some caffeine.”

“You’ll walk along the main sidewalk?” Jake asked.

“I promise.”

“And you won’t go in the woods?”

She took off his flannel shirt and tossed it onto the bed. Jake walked over and took her, half-dressed, in his arms. He was warm even through his clothing, and for a moment, Ariana thought about telling her boss David that she was sick and taking the day off.

“I won’t go in the woods,” she said, and Jake bent down and kissed her, his warm, firm lips moving against her own. For a moment Ariana forgot about everything — the danger, her fear, her slight uncertainty that Jake wasn’t a psycho — and just existed in that moment, kissing her boyfriend.

Then he pulled away from her and slapped her ass.

“Hey!” she said. Jake backed away, grinning.

“We leave in five minutes,” he said. “Get a move on.”

* * *

S
he stood
in line at the Coffee Hut, looking at the hand-lettered menu and trying to decide between the medium and the large coffee. How tired was she, exactly? Would a large make her more alert, better able to fend off any attackers, or would she just have to pee more?

“Good morning welcome to the coffee hut how can I help you?” asked the barista, a young woman no more than twenty with a blue streak in her hair.

“Large drip coffee, please,” said Ariana, having finally made up her mind.

“Two fifty,” the girl said without looking up.

“Actually,” said a woman’s voice behind Ariana, “We’re together. I’ll take a small latte with a double shot of espresso, made with whole milk, please.”

The barista shrugged and typed on the register. Ariana’s breath caught in her throat as she turned to look at the woman behind her.

It was the woman who’d winked at her in the Lebanese restaurant, of course.

“Seven fifteen,” said the barista, totally oblivious to the drama taking place in front of her.

The tall woman stepped in front of Ariana and paid, putting a couple of dollars in the tip jar. The barista handed Ariana her drip coffee, and told the other woman she could wait over by the counter for her drink.

“Regular coffee,” the woman said. She had piercing blue eyes, dark hair and bangs, and a low husky voice. “I admire simplicity in a person. I’m so rarely somewhere with good coffee that when I come somewhere with a milk foamer, I just have to order something fancy.”

She smiled at Ariana, who didn’t say anything. The smile wasn’t particularly a pleasant one.

“I’m Violet,” she said, holding out one hand. Ariana shook it, noticing that she had a very strong grip and short nails that almost looked like they’d been chewed off. It was at odds with the rest of her: tight, dark blue jeans tucked into knee-high black leather boots and a black leather jacket over a fashionably old t-shirt.

“Ariana,” said Ariana, shaking the offered hand a little reluctantly.

“I think you know my godson,” said Violet.

“Small double latte?” shouted a different barista, and Violet stepped forward to take the coffee.

“Mind if we talk outside?” she asked, smiling that smile again.

“Sure,” said Ariana, fear gripping her from the inside. She tried to calm herself: outside was still public, after all.

“After you,” Violet said, gesturing with her coffee cup. As she walked, Ariana clutched the messenger bag that held her computer, wishing it could somehow anchor her down, keep her safe in whatever she’d gotten herself into.

There were a few tables outside, a little damp from being in the Pacific Northwest, and Ariana sat at one, the seat of her jeans getting wet.

“Now that we’re alone, I’ll just get down to it,” Violet said. “You’ve been fucking a member of my pack and I’d like it to stop.”

Ariana blinked. This other woman was certainly direct.

Violet leaned forward across the table, her blue eyes flashing angrily. Despite herself, Ariana leaned back in her chair, away from her.

“Jacob is a member of a very ancient, pure, and noble bloodline,” she said. “He has a life you’ll never understand. He has urges you’ll never understand. You can’t know our customs, or our ways, and you never will.”

“I know your husband or whatever beat him up and left him for dead,” Ariana said. “If that’s what your customs are, I don’t blame him for wanting out.”

The woman rolled her eyes and sipped her drink. “See? You don’t understand.”

“I understand that you’re a bunch of racists,” said Ariana. “Or species-ist, whatever, I don’t know.”

The woman jabbed a finger in the air at her. “We protect our way of life,” she said. “What do you think would happen to us if people knew? We’d all be dead in months,” she said. “How many species have gone extinct because of humans?”

“What, we don’t have passenger pigeons anymore so I can’t love whoever I want?” Ariana said.

Love?
Said a tiny voice in her head.

“We would be hunted down, murdered,” said Violet. “All we want is to be left alone.”

“And to brutally punish anyone who doesn’t fall into line, even if they’re teenagers,” said Ariana.

Violet shook her head. “You can’t possibly understand.”

Ariana stood up and shouldered her bag, feeling very brave. “Jake left you of his own accord, years and years ago, but now that he’s actually found some happiness, suddenly you want him back. This isn’t about me, or him, or humans and bears. You’re mad because you’re an asshole and he disobeyed you, that’s all.”

“Don’t you walk away from this conversation,” said Violet mildly. She leaned back in her chair but still managed to look threatening.

“Watch me,” said Ariana and she grabbed her coffee, turned around, and began walking.

“He belongs with his own kind,” the woman called after her. “He belongs with a shifter. You’ll never be enough for him.”

For a moment, Ariana wavered, her breath catching in her throat. She hadn’t even thought about that aspect of it: what if she couldn’t give him everything a shifter could? What if Jake would never be truly satisfied with her?

She shook her head and continued walking the mile to the library. She was half furious and half terrified, but she was sure about one thing: Jake had chosen her, and she wouldn’t leave Jake without a fight. A hard fight.

A
round ten in the morning
, there was a knock on Jake’s office door. His heart leapt for a moment, and wild flights of fancy ran through his head: had Ariana been killed? Kidnapped? Threatened? He should never have let her out of his sight.

“Come in,” he called, trying to make his voice sound normal.

The door opened and Ken, Jake’s boss, walked in. Well, technically, Ken was Jake’s boss. In reality, everyone at the ranger station just sort of worked in tandem on everything. Not a lot of managing went on.

“Hey,” Ken said. “Are you busy today?”

Jake looked at his desk and shrugged. “I was working on putting together the summer calendar for the amphitheater. Nature programs and stuff. It’s not urgent, though.”

“Some hikers just got in who reported that the backbone trail got washed out a little, just about two miles from the trailhead,” he said. “Normally, I’d put it on the schedule for trail work, but since it’s pretty minor and so close, I wondered if you’d be able to just go fix it right now instead of waiting, it being a pretty popular trail and all.”

Jake was already standing, putting on his jacket. “Sure, no problem,” he said. “Give me five minutes to round up my gear and I’ll be off.”

“It doesn’t need to be right this second,” Ken said, trailing off at the end.

“No problem,” said Jake, smiling at the older man. “You know me, any opportunity to get out of that office chair.”

It was true — even knowing that Brock was out there, somewhere, and that Jake was outnumbered three to one, he felt desperate for some fresh air and solitude to clear his head. The only thing that worried him was Ariana. Two miles in, there was no cell signal at all — what if she got into trouble and needed him? What if something happened?

She’s a grown woman
, Jake reminded himself.
She’s in public and she’s safe. Stop worrying about her.

He texted her quickly that he was going to be off doing trail work for two or three hours, and she texted back that she was totally fine, at the library, and that he should quit worrying already.

He smiled a little half smile. It was like she could read his mind.

Five minutes later, Jake was cruising the back roads in his truck again, still too fast. He loved driving on these twisty, windy roads, loved feeling the asphalt beneath his tires as he went around the tight turns. He’d loved it even when he was a teenager in Alaska, though in that case, driving into the wilderness and being alone in a car had felt like some of the only respite from the pack.

As he drove, he thought about the pack more than he had in ten years, easily. He was surprised to realize that he’d never missed it. He’d missed his parents, even though he knew they were fanatics who wouldn’t have helped him if they knew the packmaster had shunned him. He missed his friends — even though he’d spent four years with Boone and Coleman almost all the time, once they’d re-entered human civilization, they’d drifted apart. Boone lived way, way off the grid somewhere north of the Canadian border, and Jake wasn’t sure that whatever he did for money was legal. He was sure, though, that Boone spent more time as a bear than as a human. Coleman, always the friendlier of the two, had taken up sports and was a ski instructor in the winters at a resort closer to Seattle, and in the summer, he guided whitewater rafting tours. They’d been drawn to Jake’s territory by Brock’s sudden presence, and they were probably back home by now.

Maybe not all bears need a pack
, he thought. He’d been raised to understand that, unlike real grizzly bears, shifters only lived in packs and adhered to the incredibly strict structure, but years on his own had shown Jake that this wasn’t true, not even a little. Sure, he’d wished for a mate from time to time, but now that he’d met Ariana, everything was going beautifully.

For one second, he wondered what their children would be — human, or shifter, or some hybrid of the two?

Then he shook that thought out of his head. They’d been dating
two weeks
. Thinking about children was just silly.

A
t the trailhead
, Jake pulled a shovel, a rake, and a pack from the back of the truck and headed on in. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, and there weren’t even any other cars parked at the trailhead. He whistled as he hiked, his long legs covering the two miles quickly, and it seemed like no time at all before he saw the portion of washed-out trail.

Really, it wasn’t a big deal. A little of the trail was gone, but the main problem was the huge pile of debris that had somehow ended up on the trail, and that was just a little shovel work to fix. Still whistling, he set his pack down, took a long drink of water, and set to work, sometimes using the shovel to move the accumulated leaves and dirt, sometimes tossing logs down the hill bare-handed.

He was nearly done, working up a good sweat, when he smelled Brock.

Even when he was in human form his sense were sharper than other people’s, and he knew the other shifter was there immediately. He tossed the log he was holding into the brush and stood up straight, looking around, trying to ascertain exactly where the other man was.

It only took a few moments: he was a little ways behind him, on the trail. Jake took off his gloves, threw them on the ground, and strode off.

When Jake finally saw him, Brock seemed to be examining a very large fir tree. Jake said nothing, just crossed his arms in front of him and stood, staring at the newcomer.

“I heard there were grizzly bears in Washington State now,” Brock said, casually, still looking up the tree. “They’ve been trying to bring them back for years, and they’ve finally succeeded.”

“Brock, what do you want?”

“Did you know there used to be grizzlies all over the western United States, almost down to Mexico? The bear on the California state flag is a California Grizzly. They’re extinct now.”

“So you came here to tell me bear facts?”

“And now all that’s left is a pocket in Montana, a pocket in the Northern Cascades, where you are, and the cold, unforgiving, Canadian Rockies.”

“And Alaska.”

Brock smiled, something that Jake didn’t find pleasant at all. “Yes, and Alaska,” he said. He finally turned to look at Jake.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” Jake said. “What do you want?”

“My point is, humans have chased bears off of their ancestral land for thousands of years now. They’ve slaughtered us, made us into rugs in front of their fireplaces.”

“Most bears aren’t shifters.”

“They’re still our brothers. We’re closer to them than we’ve ever been to humans.”

Jake recognized part of Brock’s dogma: stay as close to nature as possible. Humans are a great evil.

“And therefore,” Brock went on, “It’s unwise to mate with them.”

“I thought so,” said Jake. “Well, luckily for you, my love life is none of your goddamn concern, so you can head back to Alaska.”

Brock just laughed. It was even more unpleasant than his smile. “Of course it’s my concern,” he said. “Jacob Kodiak, whether you like it or not, you are still part of my pack, under my leadership.”

“I’m not part of
anyone’s
pack,” Jake said, angrily. “And absolutely not yours.”

“And in my pack,” Brock went on as if Jake hadn’t spoken, “Nobody takes a human as a mate.”

Jake hadn’t taken Ariana as his mate yet, but he didn’t feel like arguing semantics. Besides, pointing that out would feel like he was trying to argue for mercy on a technicality, and there was no way he was doing that.

Instead, he growled, still human.

“You’re forgetting your manners,” Brock said. He began to take off his shirt, and Jake knew he was about to shift. “Growling is for animals.”

For a moment, Jake was sixteen again, kneeling on the cold, hard Alaska gravel. He could almost see his breath frosting in the air, see the circle of adult men who’d gathered to watch their psychotic leader beat up three skinny teenage boys. His heart beat faster, and for the first time since he’d seen Brock, he was afraid for himself, not just for Ariana.

Brock undid his belt, and Jake snapped himself out of it. He was fifteen years older now, and he was bigger and stronger and had been out alone in the world for a long time. Brock was fifteen years older too, and even as he began to shift, Jake could see the signs of age on it: his sideburns just a little gray, lines around his eyes.

Jake tore off his clothes and shifted, not bothering to look where they landed.

The two bears faced off in the middle of the hiking trail, circling each other slowly, growling and showing their teeth, each waiting for the other to show some sort of weakness: a glance, putting a paw down in the wrong place.

In Brock’s eyes, Jake saw something he’d never dreamed he’d see: hesitation. It wasn’t quite fear, but suddenly he realized that the older man knew Jake was a match for him, something he obviously hadn’t expected. Right at that moment, Jake lunged for him, trying to bite the side of his neck and the two bears rose up on their hind legs, grappling with each other, wrestling.

Jake nearly got a grip with his teeth when Brock twisted hard, wrenching himself out of Jake’s grasp, leaving Jake with a mouthful of fur.

Furious, they circled again, now snapping and biting at each other. For a moment, Jake thought he heard a twig snap on the trail, and took his eyes off of Brock for just a moment.

It was a mistake.

The other bear was on him and they rose up on their hind legs again, wrestling and biting. Jake felt teeth sink into his shoulder and he roared shaking Brock off, knocking them both down with a furious swipe right across the other bear’s snout.

Then, just as they began circling again, there was a
very
human shriek. Both bears turned their heads to see three women, just on a bend in the trail, looking completely terrified.

Jake took stock of the situation for a moment, knowing that Brock was doing the same. Then he roared again, this time at the women, advancing toward them. They turned pale and ran, dropping packs and water bottles in the process. He didn’t follow. It was a bad enough situation already: they’d already seen not one but two grizzlies, fighting, next to a bunch of human clothes, not at all far from a trailhead. Obviously they wouldn’t assume the bears were shifters, but they might think the bears had attacked another hiker, and
that
was bad news.

Still in bear form, Jake turned back to Brock and bared his teeth, just a little, but both of them understood that this couldn’t go on here. As Jake watched, Brock collected his clothes in his mouth and wandered off into the forest.

He didn’t shift back until he was certain the other man was gone, then got dressed again and began the walk back to the trailhead.