Rescued By Her Bear by Felicity Heaton
Chapter 18
“We need to talk.”
Cameo had never heard more ominous words. They rattled around her head as she helped Lowe back to his cabin, as the other men and Holly left them alone at the steps to the deck. Saint gave Lowe a look she could easily interpret, one that said Lowe wasn’t the only one who wanted to talk about something.
She limped up the steps to the deck, managed a smile as Lowe opened the door for her. She hobbled inside and straight over to her pain meds, picked them up and stared at them. The logical part of her brain had convinced her that the pills were responsible for the fact she had seen Lowe transform from a bear into a man, and it still clung to that. The thought that he might actually be able to change forms was far too out there for her tired mind to grasp, but she tried to make it sink in.
Tried to make herself believe it.
Partly because she was hoping this talk Lowe wanted to have revolved around that fact.
It struck her that she had been right to feel Black Ridge had a secret, and it was one that she never would have guessed.
One that blew her mind.
Everyone here could turn into a bear at will.
He sank onto the couch, a weary sigh escaping his lips, and she closed the door and looked at him. He was pale. A little too pale. She glanced at the blood that covered his chest on the right side and had soaked into the beige blanket near his hip too, and sickness swelled inside her. She swallowed the bile that rose into her throat and steeled her nerves, focused on taking care of him and pushed everything else to the back of her mind. Right now, tending to his wounds took priority.
Maybe she was just trying to pretend her world hadn’t taken a sharp turn towards crazy out in the woods.
“Do you think… I think we should call Yasmin.” She looked over her shoulder at the door and considered going out to find Saint to ask him to get the doctor for Lowe.
She looked back at him.
Lowe shook his head and sat up a little, his lips pulling taut as pain flared in his eyes. If he had been trying to make himself look less like he was knocking on Death’s door by sitting up, it hadn’t gone to plan. He grimaced and dabbed at his shoulder with his fingers.
Sighed.
“It’ll heal.” He swallowed hard and his hand dropped to his lap.
It would, but it was going to take days and if a bullet was still inside him, he might get sick. Could he get sick? She looked at the pill bottle in her hand, tempted to offer him one.
Lowe glanced at her, a look in his eyes that made her want to go to him, because he looked as if he expected her to run from him.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
As crazy as this place was, she wanted to be here.
With him.
And it wasn’t because Karl was out there looking for her.
Being here with Lowe felt right. As if she belonged by his side. She might feel as if she was going mad, had imagined half of what she had seen, but she was sure of one thing.
She had fallen for Lowe.
And she had fallen hard.
When she boiled it down, the fact that Lowe was different to her didn’t change a thing. She gazed at him, seeing the same man she had met in the forest that night—a noble, kind, and wonderful man.
“Do you have a med kit?” She wanted to smile when her words seemed to startle him, had his eyes widening and a look of disbelief flitting across his handsome face. “I said I wanted to take care of your injuries. Remember? If you won’t let me ask Saint to go for the doctor, then I’ll have to do.”
“I do… just…” His throat worked on another hard swallow and he gestured towards a cupboard. “Black bag.”
He hadn’t believed her. He had thought that as soon as they were alone that she would run from him, as if he was some big bad monster she should fear. There wasn’t a monster before her. There was only Lowe. Only the man she loved.
A man who needed her help.
A man who had bravely fought to protect her.
A man who had kept his promise to her. He had kept her safe. He had taken care of her. And now she could see in his eyes that he wanted to take care of the rest of her problem and deal with Karl. She couldn’t let that happen. Even once his wounds were bound, Lowe would be in no fit state to go out into the cold and up against five people. Knox was right about that.
For his twin’s sake and hers, she would keep him in this cabin, even when part of her wanted to be out there too, facing her problem and dealing with it.
Cameo found the bag and went to Lowe, settled the med kit on the couch beside him and focused on her task. She checked the wound on his shoulder first, grimacing as she moved around behind him and found an exit hole that was ragged and had tracked blood down his back. An exit wound was a good thing though.
She tried to recall her training and as it all came back to her, she sank into it, moving methodically from one step to the next. Using taking care of him to clear her mind and give this strange turn of events time to sink in. First, she cleaned the wounds. Then, she checked them, inspecting them more closely. Satisfied she couldn’t see any shrapnel from the bullet and the fact the bleeding had already slowed to a crawl, she cleaned around the wound again and covered it with a large dressing. She carefully smoothed the sticky edges down against his chest, her gaze tracking her fingers as guilt flared again.
Lowe lifted his left hand and caught her wrist. She glanced at him, got snagged in the soft look he was giving her.
“Don’t blame yourself.” He shook his head slightly.
How was that even possible? Lowe had been badly hurt because of her and if he had been human, like her, he probably would have died from this wound. Her gaze dropped to his hip. He certainly would have died from that one.
“You didn’t hurt me, Cameo. The man did.”
She sank to her backside on the couch beside him. A man she had killed. Lowe was right. It had been in part done in self-defence and in part done to protect another person and stop them from being killed, but she had still killed a man. Two men.
“What you did… it doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t change who you are.” Lowe stroked his thumb over the inside of her wrist, belief ringing in his deep voice, luring her gaze back to his. His blond eyebrows furrowed as he stared into her eyes. “Cameo…”
Pain surfaced in his eyes. Fear there too. His hand shook against hers again and she swore she could feel he was nervous. Maybe she was the nervous one.
Because she was about to take a leap.
“What you are, Lowe…” She clutched his wrist as he tried to draw his hand away from her, the fear winning in his eyes. She stopped him from distancing himself. She wasn’t out to hurt him. She only wanted to make him feel better. “That’s who you are and it doesn’t… it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
“It doesn’t?” His blue eyes softened, a hopeful edge to them. “You… Cameo, I know this is all a lot to take in and it’s what I wanted to talk to you about. This place… everyone here—”
“Can turn into a bear.” She put it out there for him, hating the sight of him struggling and the fear that began to fill his eyes again. “Were you bitten by one and this just happened or… were you born like this.”
“I was born like this. We all were.” He tried to shift to face her and grimaced, his other hand falling to his side.
Cameo cursed herself for forgetting about his other wound. She gathered the necessary supplies, set them on the couch between them, and undid the blanket he had tucked around himself. It pooled in his lap, revealing his chest down to his hips, and she glanced at him.
Caught the fact the nerves that had been in his eyes were gone now. Because she was occupying herself with his injuries again and wasn’t talking about the fact he was a bear-man or because she wasn’t running?
She figured it was a bit of both, but she couldn’t stay silent. She could however make this easier on him by busying herself rather than staring at him while she talked about what he was.
“So this place is like your sanctuary? You’re all bear-men in a kind of… pack?” She grimaced at her poor choice of words as she cleaned the wound above his hip.
“Bear shifters, and it’s a pride. Wolves have packs. The rest of us have prides.” He tensed and a glance at him revealed it wasn’t because she had hurt him. The awkward and worried look on his face said it was because he had just revealed bears weren’t the only shifters in this world.
“Wolves. Like werewolves?” She stared into his eyes, finding that oddly easy to believe, surprised by how it made all of it much easier to believe when she thought about Lowe and the others as werebears.
Only she didn’t think they changed during a full moon and howled at it.
He nodded. “Wolf shifters are a little divided on that though. Some like to be called werewolves and others prefer to be called wolf shifters. Me and my kin just call them wolves.”
She frowned and pursed her lips as she thought about what other shifters might be out there. Her eyebrows rose.
“Is Holly a bear or a wolf?”
“She’s a cougar.”
Cameo’s eyebrows shot up as something hit her. “That’s what you meant when you said you wanted to kill the cougars. Your neighbours are cougar… shifters.”
She hoped she had that right. Werecougars just sounded weird. She wanted to chuckle at that. If the thing she found weird was the name they gave their species, then she really had lost her mind. Or everything was sinking in and beginning to make sense to her.
Something else dawned on her.
“Oh my God. The bear. The bear that was bleeding everywhere.” She stared at Lowe, stunned as she thought about it. “That was Saint.”
Lowe nodded, but his features pinched in a way that made her feel he was worried about things again. He was tense for a few seconds, until she looked back down at what she was doing and started cleaning his wound again.
He loosed a long sigh as he relaxed. “You need to know what you’re getting into if you’re going to stay.”
“I’m going to stay.” She put that out there before her nerve failed her and glanced up at his face.
“I know. For now.” He went to look away from her.
“Not for now.” She rushed that confession out before he could say anything and his gaze locked with hers, his eyes widening.
“Not for now?”
She shook her head.
“I will understand if you want to leave. I won’t try to make you stay.” He had that defeated look again.
Cameo didn’t like it. It wasn’t like him. The man she knew was gentle, but a warrior too.
“You’re not going to fight for me?” She canted her head, her fingers pausing at her work, pressing softly to his damp skin just above his waist. “If I walked out that door right now, you’d just let me go?”
A flicker of something in his eyes told her that he didn’t want that. He didn’t want her to leave him. She didn’t want him to let her go.
She felt bad provoking him, pushing him, but she wanted to know how he felt about her. She wanted to know that he wanted her here, needed her with him as badly as she needed to be with him.
A war erupted in his blue eyes and she watched it unfold, could almost hear his thoughts as he went back and forth about what he would do.
An ache started in her heart, born of a whisper that drifted through her mind, too quiet for her to hear but it stirred a feeling in her, and she was sure that once it grew loud enough it would devastate her.
Lowe vanquished it before it could fully form.
He clutched her hand and stared deep into her eyes. “I’d fight. I can’t let you go. I meant that. Gods, I mean it. I would do whatever it took to keep you by my side because I’m crazy about you… I know this is fast… but… I love you, Cameo, and that means that if you wanted to leave—”
She silenced him with a soft kiss, unable to bear seeing him in pain, seeing him torn between doing anything to keep her with him because he loved her and doing nothing to hurt her.
Because he loved her.
Her noble bear.
The thought that he would let her leave because he loved her, that he would break his own heart, made hers ache for him. Made her love him all the more. If that was possible. She wasn’t sure it was.
He clutched her nape and kissed her, keeping it gentle and tender, filled with love that warmed her to her soul.
Lowe pulled back before she was ready, and she worried it was because his injuries were hurting him when she looked into his eyes and saw the pain that shone in them.
“Are they hurting?” She lowered her hand to his hip, checked it over and then tried to see the other side of the wound. “Are you sure you don’t need me to get Yasmin?”
He shook his head, his blond eyebrows slowly furrowing as he stared at her face.
She gently pressed her hand to his side and he shuffled forwards a few inches, so she could see the exit wound. She carefully cleaned and inspected it, covered it with a dressing and then eased him back again. She looked at the bullet hole in his stomach and swallowed hard. What if either of the bullets had hit something vital? She could dress them, but if the one that had penetrated his side had nicked an organ or his intestines, he might get sick. Terribly sick.
Just the thought of that happening was enough to have her worried, feeling frantic with a need to make sure it wasn’t the case.
She looked at him. “You said you could call an air ambulance.”
He shook his head and frowned at her. “No hospitals. I’ll be fine, Cameo, shifters don’t get sick like humans… but if it will set your mind at ease, I’ll get Yasmin to look at the wounds.”
“Is she a cougar shifter too?”
Another shake. “She’s a goddess.”
Cameo stared at him, her mind blanking as she tried to process that. There weren’t just shifter breeds in this world with the humans. There were goddesses too. Which meant there were gods. And what else was living undetected among humans?
Not quite undetected.
“You mentioned hunters.” She frowned into his eyes. “Are they the reason you won’t go to a hospital?”
He nodded and swallowed hard. “I can’t risk exposing my pride to them. We have to be careful about everything we do. There’s an organisation out there that does terrible things to people like us. Experiments. Torture. Raids that often end with most of a pride dead.”
“That’s awful.” She wouldn’t mention hospitals again or anything to do with humans. She stilled. “Lowe… I’m human. The way that man looked at me… He doesn’t want me here. He thinks I’m a threat or a liability.”
“Maverick can go fuck himself,” Lowe snarled and reached for her, slid his hand around her nape and gripped it gently as his eyes darted between hers, softening again. “You’re staying. He understands that. He knows the reason I need you here.”
“Because you love me?” She wanted to hear him admit that again.
He sighed. “Because I love you, and—”
“And?” She shuffled a little closer to him when he looked as if he didn’t want to continue. She was damned if he was going to leave her hanging, leave her wondering what he had been going to say, especially when he looked so torn. So afraid. She raised her hands and gently framed his face. “Tell me, Lowe. Whatever it is, it can’t make this whole thing any crazier.”
He looked as if he doubted that.
Dropped his gaze to his knees and heaved another sigh, and she frowned as she felt sure he was nervous. He wasn’t shaking and he wasn’t looking at her. Nothing about him betrayed his nerves. How was it she could feel these things about him? It was like a sixth sense.
“There’s a reason…” He sucked down another breath and exhaled hard as his eyes darted up to lock with hers. “There’s a reason I felt compelled to find you the night you were attacked in the woods. When I scented your blood… I didn’t realise it at the time, but as I fell for you, as we grew closer, it hit me. We’re fated.”
“Fated?” She lost herself in the calm blue of his eyes.
A warm blue.
There was so much affection in his gaze as he looked at her, mixed with a dash of hope and a hefty dose of fear. Because he was afraid that what he needed to tell her would scare her off?
It wasn’t going to happen.
He nodded. “Shifters… We have fated mates. A true mate. Someone we feel was made for us and we can share a powerful bond with them.”
A bond.
Something suddenly made sense.
Over the days she had spent with Lowe, she had begun to feel as if what they shared was special, a once in a lifetime kind of love and a deep and powerful connection. Things between them had felt intense, as if someone had turned the volume up to eleven on everything he made her feel.
Because she was his fated mate.
“You look… shocked.” He grimaced. “I’m rushing this and not doing a good job.”
She shook her head. “I’m not shocked. In fact, a lot of things just clicked into place and made sense. From the moment we met, I felt drawn to you. Something about you made me… wild… a little reckless. I felt—This is going to sound crazy. I feel incredibly protective of you and, well, I can’t seem to get enough of you.”
A stunned look crossed his face.
“You feel it too? I mean, I wasn’t sure you would. You’re human… Not like I know much about how a human should feel in this situation, but I figured… Well, it doesn’t really matter what I figured now, does it?” A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “You think this potential bond makes you reckless and wild, you should see it from my side. I’m insanely possessive of you, want to lash out at any male who so much as looks at you, and I really can’t get enough of you. Hell, right now, I just want to gather you into my arms and spend the rest of the day kissing you.”
She smiled at him. He was rambling, but it was good to see him relaxing. It made her relax too, made everything feel normal again, back to how it had been before she had discovered that he was a bear shifter. She still had so many questions to ask him about that, was sure she was going to spend the next few weeks, if not months, suddenly thinking of something else she wanted to know about his kind.
But right now, she wanted to know one thing.
“You keep mentioning a bond. What does that mean?”
His face lost all warmth, his skin paling as his smile faltered. He ran a hand over his hair, mussing the golden threads of it, and grimaced.
“Cameo… we’re fated and that means…” He huffed, sank back against the couch and then sat up again, agitated now.
She placed her hand on his knee, wanting to show him that he could tell her. It wasn’t going to change how she felt about him. She wasn’t going to run.
His eyes locked with hers. “I’m driven to mate with you.”
“Like sex?” She shrugged at that thought, because she wasn’t going to turn down sex with Lowe. It was hardly a chore. In fact, there was a part of her—a wicked part—that wanted him right now. The sensible part overruled it, pointing out that he was injured. Wicked part just pointed out that she could be on top.
“More than sex. When we…” A blush climbed his cheeks. “I have a powerful urge to bite your nape, and if I do, it’ll trigger a need in you to do the same. But you don’t have to bite me.” He rushed those words out, his eyes widening as he shook his head. “Only I have to bite you and that… that will bind us as mates.”
Oh.
Her eyebrows rose as she let that sink in, and he wasn’t the only one blushing when she remembered how she had clawed at his nape when they had made love, unable to deny the wicked need to mark him there. At the time, she had put it down to a heat of the moment thing. Now, she had the feeling she had wanted to mark him. She had wanted to trigger this bond she hadn’t even known about.
Just thinking about him sinking his teeth into her nape had heat curling through her, something that surprised her. The thought of someone biting her should scare her, even disturb her, but it didn’t. She felt hazy from head to toe, felt an overwhelming need to kiss him and seduce him.
Cameo tamped it down.
The heat that shone in Lowe’s eyes said he had noticed her reaction though, and when he looked at her like that, she found it hard to resist the wicked needs rolling through her.
She cleared her throat and focused on what he had said, because she had seen a few horror movies in her time, and her sensible side was screaming a question at her.
“If you bite me… will you make me a bear too?”
He was quick to shake his head. “No. I can’t. We’re born like this, not made. Biting you won’t turn you into a shifter, but it will change you. Your life will be tied to mine. You’ll be stronger. You won’t age. Won’t get sick. Your senses will be sharper. You’ll probably be faster too, and you’ll heal quickly. You’ll live as long as I do. We could have centuries together.”
“That’s quite the list of perks,” she muttered and smiled as she couldn’t hold back the words, needed to lighten the atmosphere a little because it was all beginning to feel terribly real. “Here I was thinking that amazing body and incredible smile were all you had to offer.”
The right corner of his mouth quirked at that, causing a dimple in his cheek.
“You said that with a smile, so I’ll let you off.” He sobered, his eyes gaining a serious edge again. “This is a big decision. I know that. Even though it kills me because I want you to be my mate right this second… You have all the time in the world to make your decision. If you want to be my mate one day, you only have to say the word.”
She appreciated that he wasn’t going to rush her, because he was right. It was a lot to take in and she needed to take things slowly, wanted this thing she had with Lowe to deepen and grow stronger before she took the next step, and wanted him to answer around three million questions. Even though her instincts were pushing her to mate with him, she was determined to take her time and learn all there was to know about his kind and his world, and once she had all the facts and felt she was ready, she would take the leap.
Cameo nodded and leaned towards him, kissed him softly and slowly, savouring the way he sighed as her lips danced across his, as if he was in heaven. She knew she was.
She drew back and stroked his bare chest as she looked deep into his eyes. “One day.”
He smiled and she knew he had seen the promise in her eyes, one that came from her heart. She wouldn’t keep him waiting long. She wasn’t sure she could.
The sensible side of her lined up the first one hundred questions for him.
The wicked part of her shut it down.
She would start filling a mental binder with all the answers she needed tomorrow.
She leaned into him and kissed him again, gasped into his mouth as he slid his left arm around her waist and tugged her against him, pressing her chest to his. There was so much love in his kiss that she warmed down to her marrow, her heart growing lighter as she lost herself in it and in him, and in thoughts of the future she knew deep in her soul she wanted with him.
As his mate.
One day, she would bravely step into a wild new world to be with the man she loved with all her heart. It might be years. He kissed her deeper, igniting heat in her veins that burned that thought away. It might be months. She moaned and shivered as he drew her closer, his arm flexing against her back. Maybe weeks. Weeks at a minimum.
It might be weeks, but one day she would take the leap and become his mate. For him. For her. For them.
Forever.
One day.
Soon.
Possibly tomorrow.
The End
The Black Ridge Bears series will return in August with Saved by her Bear. Pre-order your copy from http://www.felicityheaton.com/black-ridge-bears-shifter-romance-series.php
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Read on for a preview of the next story in the highly addictive Black Ridge Bears shifter romance series, Saved by her Bear
