Unleashed By her Bear by Felicity Heaton
Chapter 7
Rune’s first instinct was to tell the wolf it was none of her damned business, but she moved another step closer to him and Misty stiffened. Her uneasiness hit him hard as she moaned and swayed, her dark eyes locked on the wolf. When the sow hit him, slapping her right paw against his left forearm and catching him with her long claws, Rune knew better than to seize hold of her to stop her.
Instead, he turned on the wolf. “Back off. If you back off, I’ll tell you.”
She surprised him by moving back several steps, placing more distance between them, revealing how badly she wanted to know why he was being gentle with this bear, why he would gladly take the time to speak with her or spend time with her whenever they crossed paths. He didn’t like the thought of revealing anything personal to this female, but he was a man of his word.
The apprehension he could feel in Misty subsided and he carefully lifted his left hand. Before he could rub her fur with it to show her that she was safe, the sow huffed and nudged his forearm, licked the cuts she had made.
“It’s okay. Nothing to feel bad about. Wolf scared you.” He let Misty assuage her guilt by cleaning the welts in his arm and looked back over his shoulder at the wolf. Was he really going to do this?
She had accused him of having no feelings, and he was about to show her that he had more than he wanted, that there was a side of him that could feel the same soft and weak emotions she did.
He huffed.
“I raised Misty and her twin sister Brook.” He wondered if he could leave it at that, but the look in Wolf’s eyes said she wanted to know more. “Has to be fifteen… maybe seventeen years ago now.”
“I didn’t know wild bears lived that long.” Her gaze flicked to Misty, a hint of concern in it, as if she was worried about the bear hitting old age too.
Rune grunted, “I’ve known ones that lived longer than thirty years.”
But secretly, he was worried that Misty wouldn’t reach that grand old age.
He tried to shut out the presence of the wolf and focus on Misty, wrangled his feelings as he rubbed her scruff, trying to shut down the part of him that was making his throat feel tight and his chest constrict as he looked at the black bear sow.
When she looked at him, he saw her as she had been all those years ago, a young and rebellious cub who had wanted to play non-stop, who had kept him awake most nights by demanding food, and who had been the boss out of the twins.
His eyes misted and he cleared his throat, part of him wanting to snap and roar at the wolf behind him as the feel of her gaze on him heated his back.
“Follow,” he murmured to Misty, stroked her right ear and stood. He moved a few steps away from her, in the direction of Black Ridge, and thankfully she obeyed him and began following him.
She kept pace with him, rummaging in the greenery at times, wandering left and right a few feet but never straying too far.
The wolf followed him too, keeping pace with him but keeping her distance. She remained mercifully silent as she watched him with Misty, said nothing even when he knew she probably wanted to. She had a lot of ammunition she could use against him now and he was surprised she wasn’t taking this opportunity to throw some snarky comments in his direction.
“There’s berries in the freezer,” Rune husked to Misty as she ambled along beside him, swaying to nudge his right leg from time to time. He snorted when she nipped at his jeans, still trying to make him play with her. Maybe he would later, once she was fed and Wolf was gone. “I picked a whole bunch last year just for you. I’m going to make you so fat and then I’ll make a nice place for you to rest.”
He knew he shouldn’t interfere in nature, that what he was doing was trying to tame her—cage her—but he needed to look after her.
He didn’t want to cage her. That wasn’t what he was doing. He just wanted to be a good foster parent for her. If she stayed at Black Ridge, she would be safe and would have all the food she needed, and she would live longer. She would be free to come and go as she pleased, but that soft part of him hoped she would choose to hang out at the Ridge for most of the year.
“How did you come to raise bear cubs?” Wolf’s gaze drilled into his back, silently pressing him to answer that question and tell her more about his relationship with the bear, just as he had promised.
“Hunters killed their mother.” He tried to keep it at that, but the memory of that day hit him hard and had him growling, “The spineless bastards targeted her during her winter sleep. Killed her for no godsdamned reason, leaving her cubs without a mother.”
“So you took them in,” she whispered softly, making him want to look at her and not want to look at her at the same time.
He didn’t want to see the look that would accompany those words, feared it might put a dent in the barrier around his heart.
He nodded and looked at Misty.
She was like a daughter to him.
Both her and Brook were.
They finally reached the creek, a section of it where it was broad and shallow, running swiftly in the deepest part of it. At the edges, boulders that had been brought down the mountain caused it to slow. Trees lined the bank on both sides, providing a contrast to the bubbling pale blue water. This wasn’t going to be fun. When water was that colour, it was because it was coming down off the glacier, was filled with minerals and sediment, which meant he was in for a chilly crossing.
Misty groaned as she patted the water.
Rune looked down at her. “Yeah, it’s cold. Blame the glacier for that. A little too swift for you too. Come on.”
He stooped, removed his boots and tied the laces together, and then pulled off his socks and stuffed them inside. He slung the boots over his left shoulder and scooped the bear into his arms, and looked back at the wolf. She gave him a look, one he could easily read. He shrugged. He was more than happy carrying the bear. He just hadn’t wanted to carry her.
“Don’t expect the same treatment.” He waded into the water, the coldness of it instantly sapping his warmth and making his muscles stiff.
The current was stronger than he had anticipated in the middle where it reached just above his knees, and he had to be careful about each step he took, placing his foot and ensuring his footing was good before he moved his weight to it. If he slipped, Misty would get a dousing and might even be swept downstream. Gods, the thought of her getting hurt because he had failed to look after her was like a hot knot in his gut, twisting ever tighter as he slowly navigated the river.
Relief poured through him when he reached the point where the water slowed again, growing shallower, and he could see his feet. He picked his way around the rocks and smooth boulders to the earth bank and set Misty down.
He dumped his boots and untied the laces.
“Um.” The wolf sounded worried.
Rune looked back at her and found her standing at the edge of the deeper water, her amber eyes locked on it, worry written plainly across every sculpted line of her face.
“What’s the hold up?” The softer part of him called him a dick for asking that question when he could see what the problem was.
She was sporting an injured leg. The cold water alone would make it hard for her to cross the stream, sapping her strength even further. If he added the current in the deeper water and the fact she couldn’t see where she was placing her feet, she was liable to end up downstream or drowned.
He huffed and forgot his boots, gave Misty a look that told her to remain where she was. “Stay.”
Misty ambled into the bushes.
Rune sighed, shook his head and crossed the creek again. When he reached the wolf, he hefted her over his shoulder and banded his arm around her thighs, keeping her in place as she grunted. He turned with her and began back across the river.
“You couldn’t carry me in a nicer way?” She shoved her hands against his back, pushing herself up as she muttered, “This isn’t comfortable.”
“It isn’t meant to be comfortable. It’s meant to get you from A to B.” He grimaced as he placed a foot wrong, skidded a little and almost fell into the water.
He blamed the wolf for that. Talking to her was distracting him. The difficulty he was having concentrating had nothing to do with how warm she was against him or how the fleece she wore had ridden up and his bare arm was in contact with her very bare thighs.
“You didn’t carry Misty like she was garbage,” she bit out, sounding genuinely offended that he had slung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“Misty is a princess. She gets carried like one.” He grinned, purely because she couldn’t see it, and waited for her to hit him with a sarcastic or biting comeback.
He felt disappointed when she didn’t.
Felt angry at himself too.
He was getting too comfortable around her. He shouldn’t be wanting to hear her snarky retorts, shouldn’t be hungry to have her snapping something amusing at him, something that revealed her interesting sense of humour and that strength he had seen in her—the one that said she could take on the world if she had to.
Rune shifted his grip to closer to her knees when they reached the shallower water, preparing to set her down.
His entire body stiffened when she tilted forwards and pulled him backwards, yanked a reaction from him in a heartbeat as something inside him roared at him to stop her from plunging headfirst into the icy water.
He grabbed her.
Froze.
Wolf locked up tight too, her heartbeat off the scale.
And then she was battering his back, punching him in his damned kidney.
“You freaking pervert!” She elbowed him in the back of his head, jerking it forwards.
At this point, he was sure sense should have kicked in and made him remove his hand from the peachy softness of her bare backside.
Only it didn’t.
He stood there like an idiot, reeling from the feel of her warm skin against his palm.
Good gods.
It made him too aware of how close that part of her was to his face, how she was bare beneath his fleece. She elbowed him again, harder this time, the force of her blow enough to knock that sense he was lacking into him.
He was quick to stride to the edge of the river and set her down, averted his gaze as she hurried to cover herself, something he found strange since she had stood naked before him last night and hadn’t cared then.
A noble part of him that he hadn’t realised still existed until that moment pushed him to apologise.
He lifted his head to do just that.
Staggered backwards as he got a fist in his mouth as his reward.
The coppery tang of blood flooded his mouth, made him growl and square up to her.
“It was an accident. I was stopping you from falling!” He stepped right up to her, until there was barely an inch between them, and glared down at her. “You want to take a dive into glacier water?”
Her lips flattened, fire blazing in her eyes as she held his gaze. Rose climbed her cheeks and he didn’t think it was because she was furious with him. He told himself to be the gentleman, told himself not to mention that her mouth might have been saying one thing to him back in the river, but her body had been saying something else.
He had been close enough to scent it on her.
She had liked the feel of his hand on her backside.
And it had rattled her.
Hell, it had rattled him too.
“I wasn’t taking liberties,” he muttered and turned away from her, tugged his boots on and laced the first one. “Like I’d want a wolf.”
She growled and kicked him in the hip while he was bent over, easily knocked him off-balance and onto his ass. He bared fangs at her. She didn’t back down, didn’t flinch away. She stood there with that fire in her eyes, fury he had ignited in her.
“I don’t know what your problem is with wolves… but if I had to guess, I’d have to go with you being the crux of it. Your shitty personality is enough to put any wolf in a bad mood.”
She hobbled away from him and he scowled at her back, tempted to tell her why he had a problem with her kind. He kept his mouth shut, because he didn’t want her to know about him and he didn’t care whether she hated him.
He didn’t care that she was angry with him.
He really didn’t.
He huffed and tracked her with his senses, keeping tabs on her as he finished tying his boots, in case she got ideas about running or finding a really heavy branch to hit him with. She stomped around the woods, muttering to herself.
Misty came to him and nudged him, and he stroked her black fur.
Grumbled, “Yeah, she’s got a bad attitude… but she’s probably got her reasons. We all do.”
He got to his feet and patted Misty’s scruff, silently telling her to follow him. He trudged into the forest and found the wolf sitting on a fallen, rotting log, huffing as she checked her leg.
“Is it all right?” he said.
She shot him a look that asked what did he care?
He sighed. “You were going to fall.”
She looked as if she was going to argue again and then her expression shifted, growing defeated with a hint of regretful as she muttered, “I know. It just… When you… It’s…”
She blew out her breath.
Closed her eyes.
Lowered her head.
“In the past, at—” She cut herself off.
Rune stared at her, his senses locked on her, revealing something to him that had him backing down, dulled the edge of his mood and had guilt flaring in his stomach.
Fear.
Hurt.
He didn’t need to be a genius to piece it together. This wolf had some bad experiences in her past, had been subjected to abuse, and his touch had triggered memories of that time.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
She shook her head but didn’t look at him.
When she drew in a breath, it was shaky.
Rune had heard tales of how some wolf packs treated females, had seen with his own eyes at the compound that those tales were true. Wolf males had a bad tendency to think they could do as they pleased with the females of their kind. He had taught them to treat the females with more respect, had entered into more than one fight outside the ring to teach the wolves a lesson about how a female should be treated.
She pushed to her feet. Dusted her backside down. Hobbled to him, but kept her eyes on the ground.
“Forget about it.”
Rune tracked her as she walked past him. He couldn’t do that. The thought of such a beautiful female, such a strong female, being treated like that had an inferno running through his veins, made him want to hunt down every male who had hurt her and butcher them.
He patted Misty again and started after the wolf, easily caught up with her before she took a wrong turn and gently caught her arm. He led her back towards the river and picked up the trail that ran parallel to it and would take them to the Ridge. Once she was on that path, he released her again but kept his senses locked on her, making sure she couldn’t move a muscle without him knowing about it.
The trees began to thin and he smelled smoke, and frying bacon.
Black Ridge.
His stomach growled in response to the tempting smell that evoked images of fresh soft white rolls thickly stacked with the breakfast meat.
“Was that your mouth or your stomach?” The wolf sounded brighter.
He wasn’t glad about that.
He wasn’t.
“Stomach. I missed out on dinner last night. Steaks and beer.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Had to save a wolf.”
She frowned at him, that mulish twist to her lips again. “I would have gotten myself out of that snare eventually.”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “And lost a foot in the process. You don’t have to thank me.”
“I won’t,” she bit out.
“Good.” He refused the temptation to glance at her again.
“Good,” she parroted.
Almost tugging another smile from him.
He shut down the urge and stoked his mood, reminded himself that she was a wolf. A beautiful wolf, but still a wolf. He couldn’t trust her. For all he knew, she was probably manipulating him right that moment, was probably close to completing her mission to reveal the location of Black Ridge to Archangel, pleasing her masters.
That thought shoved him straight into a bad mood, had him skipping all the stages in between what had been a rather good mood and a black need to hunt and kill whoever was out there, looking for this wolf.
The clearing of Black Ridge came into view and he was tempted to drive her away, to turn her around and march her back into the woods before she could see it. He held his nerve and kept striding forwards, because he still had questions he wanted answers to and part of him wanted to see what would happen.
If the wolf was working with hunters, then they were about to make a fatal mistake in targeting his pride.
He would rip them apart with his bare hands.
Rune stepped out into the morning sunshine, leaving the chill of the shady forest behind, and smiled as Misty lumbered towards the pebbly bank of the creek. The water was shallower here, remained that way throughout Black Ridge and even as it passed Cougar Creek, the neighbouring property. It was barely a foot or two deep, so he didn’t worry about the bear.
His smile widened as he watched her frolicking at the edge of the water, chasing what was probably a fish, acting as if she was young again.
When he passed her, he muttered, “Come on.”
Misty broke away from the bank and bounded past him, nipped at his calf, hard enough that it stung. He sighed and turned his head, tracked her with his gaze until she stopped and looked towards the heart of Black Ridge.
Rune looked there too.
The five cabins situated in the grassy clearing on this side of the creek looked warm and inviting in the sunshine, the logs all deep shades of amber that reminded him of the wolf’s eyes. His gaze skipped over the two cabins nearest him, both of which stood with their backs to him, the gable ends and the decks facing south, towards the other three cabins.
He spotted what Misty had just as the bear began running.
Maverick.
The black-haired male was wringing out washing near the creek a short distance from his cabin, the one on the left of the two Rune was closing in on now. He paused and his head swung towards Rune, his grey eyes catching on Misty instead as she hurried towards him, her bushy backside wiggling with each rushed step.
Maverick cracked a rare grin.
Opened his arms and caught Misty as she barrelled into him, rolled onto his back with her on top of him and growled as he playfully wrestled with her.
Rune huffed. “Hussy. Always running off after that grizzly.”
Maverick eased up into a sitting position as Misty swatted at him, caught her in a light chokehold as his eyes landed on Rune and then the wolf trailing behind him. His friend nodded towards her.
“Bringing in strays now?”
Rune shook his head. “Where’s Saint?”
“Cougar Creek.” Maverick rubbed Misty’s fur, appeasing the bear as she kept trying to initiate play, keeping his eyes on the wolf. “Was worried about you there for a moment, Rune. You good?”
Rune grunted. “Just fantastic.”
He was deeply aware of the female tailing him as he looked at his friend and noticed the lines that bracketed his mouth and the dull edge to his grey eyes, signs that the male had been up all night worrying about him. The need to apologise to him was strong, but he pushed it aside and swore he would do it later, once the two of them were alone.
Wolf growled, “Cougar Creek? Please tell me you don’t mean cougar like shifters?”
He nodded towards the south, beyond Saint’s cabin where it stood proud in the centre of the clearing, not far from a sweeping bend in the stream. “Down that way. Be good or I’ll feed you to them.”
She scowled at him, her eyes brightening.
Hell, he wasn’t happy either. He had been banking on Saint being here to question her, taking her off his hands. He had thought that when he got her to Black Ridge, he would be done with her and wouldn’t have to see her anymore.
“Get Misty some berries from the freezer,” he said to Maverick and was tempted to growl at him when he just carried on staring at the wolf. “Maverick?”
Maverick slid his grey eyes to Rune. “Sure.”
Rune grabbed hold of the wolf’s arm before Maverick could start staring at her again and marched her past his friend’s cabin towards the one beside it.
“Where are you taking me now?” she bit out.
Rune looked across at her.
“It’s time you answered my questions.”
