The Bear Who Loved Me (11 page)

Which was exactly the reaction Mark had been watching for. Damn it. The man's gaze shot to Carl and his expression turned from blatantly sexual to vaguely pitying.

“You're a fucking moron,” Mark said under his breath, obviously talking about the relationship between him and Becca. It was stupid on all sorts of levels, but it hurt hearing that condemnation from his best friend. And then Mark softened. “But she smells good and hasn't freaked. Plus, she raised a good kid. I'd say you could do lots worse.” Then he turned back to Becca. “You're too good for him. Let me know if you want to explore other options.”

Becca turned an adorable shade of rosy pink. Meanwhile, Alan scanned the tree line with a worried expression. “Are we really just going to sit and wait?”

“No,” Carl answered. “We can be effective without screwing up the cops.” He just had to figure out exactly how to help without jeopardizing Becca's safety. So he turned to Mark. “Report,” he snapped.

Mark ignored him long enough to give Becca a final low, sexual growl. It was all for show. Mark would never poach on Carl's territory—female or otherwise—but Carl had watched scores of women fall for that deep purr. He'd be damned if he let Becca fall prey to the lure that was his hypersexed best friend.

And then, just like that, Mark flipped to being all business, reporting in a flat tone. “I'm on perimeter search. Definitely something weird there.”

“Weird how?”

“They're undermanned. I see a bunch of women and a few preteen boys dressed up to look big.”

Carl frowned, pulling out his cell phone to access Google Earth. He wanted a satellite view of the area.

“I got it,” said Alan, as he reached into his car and pulled out his tablet. A moment later, they were looking at a clear image of the local area, complete with three big buildings and a half dozen smaller ones, four of which had gun turrets.

Mark crowded in, pointing as he spoke. “They've got people here and here,” he said. “Roof, too, and one in every turret.” Then his finger circled a dirt track on the east side. “Smells hinky as shit here.”

“A little more precise, please,” Carl said.

“Medical smells. Anesthetic, blood, urine. But weird, too. Animals: dog, cat, monkey.”

“Monkey?” Alan asked. “They have a monkey?”

“More than one.”

Definitely hinky.

“I'm going to scout this last side. Try not to shoot each other.”

“Mark, wait—”

Too late. The man had already headed off, moving quickly and silently through the trees. Carl wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and shake the man. The idiot was too close to the end, his bear dominating everything. It was in his scent, his quick movements, and his short, tight sentences. How much time did his best friend have before he became all bear? Until he went insane and Carl had to kill him? This was not the time for the idiot to rush into danger that might trigger that last change into animal. And even worse, what if his best friend was hoping to trigger the change so that ATF would put him down? It would spare Carl, but damn it, that was not what anyone wanted.

Meanwhile, Alan came to his side, speaking in a low undertone. “He ate at the cafeteria sometime around dawn. Told Marty the stew needed more beef.”

“Probably said it was overcooked, too.” Grizzlies like their meat raw.

Alan didn't answer, so Carl shifted to glare at his brother. He didn't like it when the two people closest to him kept secrets. “What did he give you?”

“Asphyxiation?” Alan quipped as he shoved his hands into his coat.

“Don't you fucking lie to me,” Carl snapped. “And that's a goddamned order!”

His brother's expression shuttered down, his jaw tightening in fury. But it lasted only a second before he answered by pulling a set of keys from his pocket. Carl immediately started swearing vehemently enough that Becca jolted.

“What's wrong? What happened?”

“Nothing!” both men said together.

“Sorry,” Carl said as he gestured for his brother to put away the keys.

Becca folded her arms and glared at them. “Do I look stupid to you?”

Alan raised his hands in surrender and backed away. “This is a job for Mr. Max.”

God, it sucked being in charge.

“Those are keys to Mark's underground den.”

Her brows arched. “He has a den? Like a bear—”

“Think of it as a big techno-marvel man cave. He's actually one of the most brilliant computer programmers in the world.”

She blinked, understandably surprised. Mark came off as a huge bear of a guy, short-tempered with men and hypersexualized with women.

“He's brilliant,” Carl stressed. “But he also has too much bear DNA in him. He's going feral and he knows it.”

Her lips pursed in a silent
O
of understanding. “That's why you asked about eating and sleeping as a man. You want to know how close he is to turning completely animal.”

He nodded, misery tying up his insides. “He gave over his keys because he knows he doesn't have long.” He jerked his chin toward his brother. “Alan's the one with the law degree. He handles all the wills and stuff.”

“Because he's going to die as an animal? Don't they just live…as bears?”

No point in sugarcoating it. “The human mind can't handle that much animal. Spend too much time as a bear and the mind goes insane. A crazy bear is a destructive killer and needs to be put down. There's no way around that.”

“My God,” she whispered. “And Alan will have to do that?”

“No,” he said flatly. “Alan handles the legal stuff. As Max, the killing is my job.”

She gasped as she turned to him, her eyes wide with horror. “Is there any way to stop it?”

He shook his head. He'd spent every spare moment of the last decade looking for a solution, but so far he'd come up with a big, fat nothing. He wasn't a scientist, though God knew he'd tried. He diverted as much money as he could to funding quiet research into the question, but it hadn't yielded anything useful. The most he'd come up with was an ancient spell book that talked about bonding magic to quiet the beast. It had been used to some effect in other clans, but as far as he could tell, it just shifted the crazy to someone who was easier to kill. Which left Mark handing the keys to his life to Alan while Carl waited for the moment he'd have to do the unthinkable to his best friend.

Crazy-making all around.

Meanwhile, Becca stepped into the circle of his arm, setting her soft hand on his face. “I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

And just like that, his bear went from growling to purring. The heat from her palm eased the tension in his jaw. His gut loosened even as his dick thickened. And when he touched the back of her hand, pressing it closer to his mouth, everything in him settled into one thought: How can I make her mine?

“You're doing it,” he rasped. “You understand.”

He was looking at her mouth and thinking about kissing her when he heard the noise. Angry words, shouted voices—loud enough for him to hear but not clear enough to make out the words. Mark reappeared a moment later, prowling up behind them, unnaturally silent for a man his size. And when Carl turned, Mark's eyes had a subtle glow to the golden brown, saying to those in the know that the grizzly in him was coming out to play. Goddamn it. He had to do a dominance display, forcing Mark's grizzly to retreat. Problem was he'd shifted too recently, so he couldn't change. He'd have to do this as a human. So he thickened his shoulders and bared his teeth.

“When I tell you to stay, you stay,” he growled. “Got it?” Then he clocked the man as hard as he could, right in his jaw. Mark's head snapped back and his eyes flared bright. Behind him, he heard Becca gasp and Alan step in to hold her back. Good. This was too dangerous for her. Hell, it was too dangerous for Alan.

He tensed, focusing everything he had on forcing Mark to submit. Which meant even before the man recovered from the first blow, Carl stepped in and grabbed his friend's short hair. He jerked Mark's head to the side to bare his neck. It was hard. Mark was shorter than Carl, but layered in muscle. And then he put his free hand straight on the bared flesh, digging his nails in like he was going to rip the man's neck apart with his bare fingers.

“Submit,” he growled.

Carl didn't know if it was an order or a plea. Both because he sure as hell knew that one day soon, Mark wouldn't. And that would be the end.

Mark's neck bunched, as did his fists. His breath huffed out in two hot bursts of air. If he went grizzly, then Carl would lose. He couldn't shift, so human against grizzly this close would be the death of him. But he was counting on Mark's control. On Mark's ability to beat the grizzly back one more time.

“Submit, you fucker!” he barked as he dug his fingers in with all his strength.

And then it happened. Mark's eyes lost the hot glow behind the golden brown. His muscles went lax, and his breath eased out on a slow, almost human exhale.

“I submit,” he said in a thick, low growl.

Carl held the pose for a few beats longer. It never worked to give over quickly. But after a slow count to ten, he was able to ease off. And Mark, thank God, didn't fight him. But he couldn't completely relax, either. He had to follow this up with hard commands.

“Can you hear what they're saying?” He jerked his chin at the Moss compound.

Mark grunted and turned his head to listen more closely. “Moss rhetoric. Evil government. Over my dead body. Standoff.”

So a piece of paper wasn't enough to open the Moss gate. No big surprise there. But there was more than one way to get through the doors. “You say they're shorthanded. Still seem true?”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “I think the men are off somewhere else.”

“Then we need a distraction. Make them even more shorthanded as they send people to check things out.” He moved to the back of his truck. “I've got a couple grenades. Low grade. Just enough to make a few booms.”

Alan shifted to peer into the trunk. “You carry grenades?”

Carl didn't answer. He wasn't in the habit of explaining how difficult and dangerous it was to take out a feral bear. Or to deal with Nick Merkel.

Meanwhile, Mark didn't even blink. “How long to get in position?”

Carl looked at the tablet, pointing out the best place for maximum distraction. “Ten minutes.”

“Make it five. I'm breeching here and then heading here, where it smells weirdest.” Mark stabbed at the tablet with one finger while shucking off his jacket and shirt with the other. Beneath his clothes, his cell in a neoprene pouch dangled from a large lanyard, so he wouldn't lose his phone while running around as a bear.

“It's too soon!” Alan said. “You went grizzly less than eighteen hours ago.”

Mark grinned. “You keeping track?”

“Yes!” both Carl and Alan said together.

“How sweet,” he returned. Then he looked hard at Carl. “I need the release, Max. I got it under control.”

He was asking permission from his alpha. A good sign, but Carl still didn't like it. But a good leader knew when to trust his men, so he nodded. “Be careful.”

“Don't have to be. I'm good.” Then his grin abruptly widened into a muzzle.

Holy shit, Mark turned fast. He hadn't even fully pushed down his pants when a grizzly suddenly kicked the jeans away.

“Stay in control!” Carl growled, but he had no idea if his friend heard. The man was full grizzly and moving fast into position.

To one side, Becca breathed his biggest fear. “He has a death wish.”

“No,” Carl countered. “He has a death sentence. And he wants to go out doing some good along the way.” Meanwhile, he pulled open the box of grenades, handing one to his brother, who was just putting away his phone.

“I texted Tonya what we're doing.”

Smart man. Then, with a quick nod, Alan took off, heading through the tree line to the edge of the Moss compound. Which left him alone with Becca, trying to decide what was safest. Did she stay with him, close to danger? Or inside the truck down on the floorboards?

Becca decided for him. She set her chin and opened the truck door. “I'll only slow you down.” Then she fixed him with a glare. “But first thing tomorrow morning, I'm heading for a shooting range.”

What a woman! Logical and smart enough to look ahead. But damn, he didn't like leaving her alone. “Here,” he said, handing her his keys. “Drive home. I'll call you as soon as I can.”

She took the keys but didn't put them in the ignition. “Go! Save Theo and Mark.”

Time was ticking away, but he couldn't leave yet. He leaned in and kissed her quick and hard. Then he took off, running as fast as he could through the trees to where Alan waited for him.

Two minutes later, he heard Mark crash through the barbed fence, roaring. He'd be sliced up, but it wouldn't be lethal. A split second later, he and Alan threw their grenades. The shooting started almost simultaneously, but the bullets went wide at seemingly random targets. He and Alan were safely hidden, but Mark was right there in the open, barging through like only a grizzly could. Fortunately, they'd guessed correctly that kids were manning the turrets. None of the shots landed where they were supposed to, and Mark made it inside the nearest building by ripping open a metal door with his claws.

From there, it was wait and pray while the rest played out. After long minutes, the shooting stopped, women peered out of windows to investigate, and then Carl's cell phone chimed. He thumbed it on, his grip so tight it was painful.

“Mark? Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” his friend said, his voice thick and heavy. “Tell Tonya she's got probable cause.”

Alan huffed from nearby. “She has a warrant. She doesn't need—”