Unleashed By her Bear by Felicity Heaton

Chapter 16

Callie was still trying to process what Rune had told her about his life in Vancouver and about Grace, and how he had gently tucked a flower in her hair, was so caught up in her thoughts that the grizzly bear suddenly charging them startled her. The animal thundered towards her across the meadow, moving at speed, and she wasn’t sure whether to stand her ground or attempt to move out of its path.

She had never been charged by a bear before.

Was she meant to remain still and look big, or run like hell?

Her gaze shifted to Rune, that question on the tip of her tongue.

He shocked her too by stripping off and shifting.

It wasn’t seeing him naked that stunned her, or even the fact he had shifted to face off against an animal.

It was the fact he wasn’t a grizzly bear.

Callie stared at Rune’s rounded, furry backside, her eyes slowly widening as she tried to take in the fact he was a cinnamon black bear. His reddish-brown fur was lush and thick, covering his big body, and when he moved to stand side-on to the charging grizzly to reveal his size, she noticed his snout was tan, a slight contrast to the rich colour of his fur.

Rune roared when the grizzly didn’t stop his charge and kicked off, thundering towards the bear. She flinched as they clashed, as both Rune and the bear rose up on their back legs and roared again as they struck each other with their large paws. The grizzly was far smaller than Rune, but that didn’t stop it from trying to take him down. The bear attempted to bite him and Rune slapped it hard across the face, knocking it away. It landed on its side and was quick to get up again, to swipe and bat at Rune as he landed on all fours in front of it. Rune growled as he took a hit, the bear’s claws catching his left front leg.

The one she and the wolf back at the ravine had both injured.

The roar he unleashed on the smaller bear echoed around the valley and the grizzly shrank back, took a hard blow from Rune’s right paw again.

This time, the bear took the hint and turned tail, its furry backside jiggling with each stride it took. Rune chased it, smacked it on its bottom, and the bear loosed a mournful groan.

Callie shook her head as Rune finally gave up his chase, feeling bad for the grizzly and unimpressed with Rune. The bear had been leaving. It hadn’t been necessary of Rune to chase it and humiliate it further by slapping it on its backside.

Rune stalked back to her and she frowned as she noticed he was limping slightly. She gathered his clothes and hurried to him, worry arrowing through her as she crossed the meadow to reach him.

She grimaced as she got close enough to see the blood causing glossy patches on the shorter reddish-brown fur that covered his left front leg, unsurprised that he had made his injury worse by running the bear off.

“Was that really necessary?” Callie dumped his clothes before him as he shifted back, the fur sweeping away to reveal pale golden skin as he rose onto his back legs.

Rune looked at his forearm and shrugged, stood there naked as the day he had been born. “The bear challenged me. What was I supposed to do?”

His pale blue eyes met hers, as serious as she had ever seen them, and she shook her head again.

“Oh, I don’t know. Let him have his way? He was just a little bear.” She picked up his jeans and tossed them at him, even when part of her was quite enjoying the view and didn’t want him to steal it away from her. The sight of his incredible body was distracting her though, rousing that need that constantly simmered in her veins when she was around him.

He grunted and tugged his jeans on, a black look settling on his handsome face. “He charged you. I wasn’t going to let him just charge you like that and not respond.”

That was kind of sweet of him.

“I can handle myself.” She ignored the voice that whispered she hadn’t been handling anything. She had panicked and hadn’t even known what to do when faced with a bear charging her. By the time she had figured it out, the bear would have been on top of her.

He frowned at her, his dark eyebrows knitting hard and narrowing his eyes as his lips turned downwards.

She stepped up to him, lifted her hand and gently brushed the pad of her thumb between his eyebrows, smoothing the deep furrow away. “But thank you for saving me.”

His expression shifted, softening by degrees as he gazed down at her, right into her eyes. For a heartbeat, she thought he would kiss her, but then he stepped back and pulled his boots on, following it with his long-sleeved T-shirt. He picked up his fleece and clutched it in his right hand.

A hint of colour touched his cheeks as he glanced at her, his eyes quick to leap away from her again. He rubbed the nape of his neck and grunted something as he jerked his chin in the direction they had been going before the bear had decided to challenge him.

Awkward Rune was quite adorable.

She followed him as he started walking, her gaze drifting to him as he tugged the long sleeve of his T-shirt up his right arm and inspected the bite wounds on it. He huffed as he prodded one of the deeper welts, and then sighed and pulled his sleeve back down again to cover them. When they reached the other end of the meadow and entered another stretch of dense pine forest, she couldn’t hold her tongue any longer.

“So… are we going to talk about the fact you’re not a grizzly?”

Rune cast a glance at her. “I never said I was one.”

“That’s true, I suppose. I just thought… Since you called Maverick a grizzly… Are there any other black bears in your pride?” She was curious now, couldn’t imagine Saint as a black bear, but thought perhaps Lowe and Knox might be that breed. Although, while Lowe came off as laid back enough to be a black bear, Knox had the grizzly temperament.

“No. They’re all grizzlies.” Rune gestured with his right hand, pointing out a faint trail that led downwards in that direction, and she turned with him, following it.

The smell of water grew stronger and she could hear the river running. The fear that had disappeared when Rune had told her that Carrigan couldn’t cross the river until he was close to the White Wolf pack returned, trickling through her veins as she realised they were almost at the point where they would finally be level with the river.

To take her mind off it, she said, “How did you come to be in a pride with grizzly bears?”

“I told you. Saint came to Vancouver around twenty years ago, together with some other bears and shifters, and they executed a raid on the compound where I was being held. Shut the place down pretty quickly.” Rune pulled his fleece back on and she wanted to pick him up on the fact he hadn’t told her that Saint had been the one to free him, but in the end she let it slide, because it was nice he was opening up to her, telling her more about himself. If she mentioned he hadn’t told her these things, he would clam up again and probably lash out at her. “After we all escaped… well… Maverick talked to Saint and Saint offered us both a place in his pride.”

“I thought…” She trailed off as she thought about the things he had told her and realised that again she had assumed something, because he had spoken of his family as being the bears at Black Ridge. But before that, he had told her that the White Wolf pack could be what Black Ridge was for him—a new family. She had thought he meant new for her.

He had meant new for him.

She studied his profile as they walked. “I thought you were all from the same pride.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “We are… now. The pride is around forty percent bears who were born into it and the rest are strays that Saint has picked up. Us strays… Maverick and me… Knox and Lowe… we stick around most of the year. The other seven bears tend to come and go. They have their own lives outside the pride and have homes elsewhere. It’s rare for us to all be together at once at Black Ridge.”

Callie ducked beneath a low branch of a young pine.

“Sounds like the White Wolf pack.” She shrugged as his gaze landed on her, as she thought about that and about herself. “Guess I’m a stray too.”

Rune looked as if he wanted to say something, but a noise coming from ahead of them had his pale blue eyes leaping towards it and narrowing. Callie cocked her head, listening hard to see if it would come again, because it had sounded a lot like a voice. Her heart drummed, blood rushing at the thought it might be Carrigan and his men.

Only the laughter that echoed quietly through the trees was feminine.

“Looks like we’re here.” Rune jerked his chin towards something as she glanced at him.

Callie looked there, peering past the trunks of the densely packed pines and spruces, trying to spot what he had. Dread pooled in her stomach, nerves replacing the fear in her veins as she caught a glimpse of a log cabin among the trees.

The White Wolf pack.

Rune must have sensed her nerves, because he gently laid a hand on her right shoulder and murmured, “They’ll take you in, Callie. They’ll give you the protection you need.”

The thought they might reject her wasn’t the reason she wanted to turn tail and run in the opposite direction. She shifted her gaze to Rune, stared into his eyes as a thousand things she needed to say to him leaped to the tip of her tongue, warring with each other to be said.

She was afraid he was going to leave and she would never see him again.

Crazy, she knew, but she feared it all the same. The fact she knew the way to Black Ridge wasn’t a comfort to her either, had her imagining going there only to be openly rejected by him in front of all his pride.

“Rune—” she started.

“Who are you?” A young brunette female bounced into Rune’s path, making him stop dead. Her bright green eyes assessed him as she sniffed. “You’re not wolf.”

Rune looked as if he might flash his fangs at her but then he grunted, “Came to see Rourke. Got a wolf in need of a home and protection.”

Callie stepped forwards. “If you could just tell us where to find him.”

The female shrugged and stepped back up onto the deck of the log cabin to Callie’s left, and nudged the blue-jeans-clad thigh of a blond male. He snorted as he woke with a jolt and scowled at her, his folded arms falling away from his green checked shirt.

“Got a wolf here wanting to see Rourke, and a guy who looks like trouble.” The female glared over her shoulder at Rune.

The male huffed and leaned to his left, peering past her. “That’s a bear. Told you not to poke bears. You’ve got to put more effort in at school and learn to tell the difference between shifters, sis.”

“Maybe if I didn’t have to do all your chores on top of mine, I’d have time to study, lazy ass.” She kicked him in the thigh again and then went inside the cabin.

He scowled at the door as it slammed and then sighed, gripped the arms of his wooden recliner and pushed onto his feet. “Come with me.”

Callie stuck close to Rune as they trailed after the wolf, following a path marked by three-foot-high electric lamps that barely chased away the gloom. She looked up at the dense canopy above her, barely able to make out patches of the evening sky. The dirt path wound between closely-packed cabins and she peered down the paths that broke off from it, ones that led to even more cabins. There had to be thirty or forty of them beneath the trees. How big was this pack?

When the trail took them close to the river, she moved to that side and stared at the shallow rippling water and then at the other bank, where more cabins clustered together.

“You okay?” Rune grumbled.

Callie forced a nod, but she wasn’t okay. She wasn’t anywhere near it. Everywhere she looked, she saw more wolves, and it was setting her on edge. She hadn’t managed to get a good look at a lot of the males who were accompanying Carrigan. Any number of them might be hiding in plain sight among the wolves milling around outside the small log cabins.

Rune closed ranks with her, his arm brushing hers, the scent of him filling her lungs to calm her together with the feel of him beside her. Nothing bad would happen to her. He would make sure of that. She knew it deep in her heart.

A clearing came into view ahead of them, the large firepit in the centre of it catching her eye. The flames flickered and leaped, sending sparks shooting into the air between the overhanging branches. She looked up as she reached the clearing and breathed deep as she gazed at the sky, soothed by the sight of it. Everything about this place felt claustrophobic, but this small spot was different. Wolves hung out in groups of two or three, talking as they went about their business, some of them coming and going from one of the larger cabins. The smell of food emanated from inside it.

Their escort quickened his pace and Callie tracked him with her gaze as he skirted around the fire to the other side. The largest of the cabins stood there, one that had to be twice the size of the others she had seen. The L-shaped affair had a wide deck that ran along the front and around the inside of the L, and beneath the overhanging roof of the porch of the façade, two large picture windows framed the open door.

The blond wolf took the two steps up onto the deck and poked his head into the building. He nodded and moved back and to one side.

A tall, handsome male with wild white hair and kind eyes stepped out onto the deck, rubbed his hands on a small cloth and strode down the steps. His dark jeans emphasised his long legs and a red-and-black plaid shirt hugged his chest, accentuating his athletic figure.

The white wolf himself.

She swallowed her nerves as he approached them, the firelight chasing over the sculpted planes of his face, bringing out the flecks of gold in his dark eyes.

“Was told you wanted to see me?” He tucked the cloth into his back pocket and looked from Rune to her.

Rune tensed and she swore she sensed anger in him, glanced at him and found him staring at Rourke with no trace of emotion in his ice-blue eyes.

He was angry though.

She could feel the barest undercurrent of it in him, knew him well enough to spot the subtlest of shifts in his mood now. He was angry with Rourke. Why? It dawned on her that it was because the male had looked at her.

“We have a tail,” Rune said, his deep voice darker than she had ever heard it, even when he had been growling at her when they had first met. His features pinched, eyebrows knitting hard above his glacial eyes as he locked gazes with Rourke and stared him down. “Got an alpha after her and he has eight men with him. All looked like they can handle themselves.”

He really didn’t like Rourke. She thought about that and about what he had told her, and had the feeling it wasn’t because he was surrounded by wolves and didn’t like it. He just hated Rourke. He hadn’t reacted badly to the young female or the male who had led them here. His mood had only taken a dark turn once he had seen Rourke.

Because Rourke was as handsome as Saint had said he was?

He might be good looking, but Rune was more handsome in her eyes.

“Sounds like trouble. We can handle it. Any information you can give me on the ones pursuing you might prove helpful though.” Rourke’s bass voice was smooth, even and calm, exactly how Saint had spoken with her. He was doing his best to defuse the situation and show Rune he wasn’t the enemy, but Callie had the feeling it wouldn’t work on her bear.

Her bear.

She looked at Rune, every fibre of her being screaming that he was her bear.

Her bear who grunted and spoke loudly enough that the entire world could hear him, intentionally raising his voice to ensure he was heard. “Alpha is a real asshole. Piece of shit who thinks he can do as he pleases with females just because he was born with a dick. Expects them to serve and please him. You know the sort.”

Rourke’s eyes darkened and his jaw flexed, but he proved just how diplomatic he was by not rising to the bait. “We get a lot of wolves coming here from such packs and all are welcome.”

Rune didn’t look happy and when he opened his mouth to launch another salvo at Rourke, she touched his arm, stealing his focus away from the wolf. He looked at her, the fire in his eyes fading as he gazed down into hers, as he lingered. She smiled softly, covering the hurt welling inside her as she looked into his eyes, as she thought about how little time she’d had with him and how she didn’t want him to leave.

“What’s your name?” Rourke said and she realised he was talking to her.

She glanced at him. “Callie.”

Rourke nodded and signalled with his right hand, and a brunet male and a sandy-haired female came over to him.

“You must be tired, Callie. You look as if you’ve been through a lot, but you don’t have to worry anymore. You’ll be safe here. Let’s get you settled and then we can talk more about your problem.” Rourke looked at the two wolves. “Take her to lodge twenty-two. Make sure she has everything she needs.”

She glanced at Rune, her brow furrowing as she found him staring at the fire, his head turned slightly away from her and his shoulders rigid. She touched his arm and willed him to look at her, but he kept his eyes on the flames. The air seemed to chill around her as she waited for him to acknowledge her, the cold sinking deep into her bones when she realised he wouldn’t because he was building a wall between them again, bringing his barriers back up to shut her out.

“I’ll just…” She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, couldn’t find her voice as the hurt welling inside her grew more intense, stealing her breath and weighing her down.

The female wolf took hold of her arm and Callie stared back at Rune as she led her from the clearing.

Rourke shifted his dark gaze from her to Rune. “Come with me. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you about this alpha.”

Rune nodded and followed him.

Didn’t even glance at her.

Callie trudged along beside the female wolf, not really hearing her as she prattled on about life at the White Wolf pack and how much she was going to love it. The male trailed behind them, adding comments from time to time, and it was clear the two of them were an item. That only made her heart feel heavier.

“Here we are.” The female opened the door of a small log cabin, one with an overhanging pitched roof and a small deck in front of the door and a single window.

It reminded Callie painfully of the one where Rune had held her the night they had met, deep in the woods on the mountain.

She tried to be polite as the female showed her around the cabin, excitedly pointing out the working bathroom facilities and the fact everyone had electricity here. It was nice.

But it didn’t feel like home.

She looked over her shoulder at the door, an ache to see Rune forming in her breast as she reached out with her senses and couldn’t pinpoint him with them.

Panic lanced her.

“I just—” She cut herself off, smiled and hurried from the cabin, running back towards the clearing as the ache to see Rune became an undeniable need, as fear whispered to her again.

Only this time, it didn’t stop at telling her that he was going to leave and she would never see him again.

Her heart clenched as the reason for how distant he had been hit her like a lightning bolt, shaking her to her soul.

He was going to leave and go after Carrigan alone.

And he would get himself killed.