“Shift, or I'll kill you in your skin and everyone will know you died a coward.”
I let him take his fur and rear up on his powerful hind legs. He was huge. I’d forgotten how ferocious his teeth were, like the ones wild polar bears used to rip through seal bone. But he had never seen my beast. I shifted, and while my bear was bigger than his, it wasn’t by much. He charged.
We met in the middle of the clearing with a thud that sent snow flying.His claws raked across my shoulder, and warm blood welled up and spilled over my beast’s fur, but I got my teeth intohis neck and bit down hard. He roared and threw me off. I got up on all fours and lunged at him again.
It was brutal and vicious. And I poured the hatred I'd held back for twenty years into my beast’s teeth and claws. We rolled through the snow, tearing at each other, and I barely felt the wounds he opened across my sides and back. All I could think about was his boot on my head and the water drowning me as I knew I was going to die.
But not this time.
My bear caught his throat again, and he didn't let go. Kipp thrashed, and his claws created furrows over my bear’s ribs. My bear sank his teeth deep into his beast. Blood spurted out like a fountain, and my bear roared.
There was a gurgling and a rattling wheeze from Kipp, and the strength went out of his grip. I released him, and his bear collapsed into the snow, staining the white around him red. He shifted, as did I, and I watched when the light faded from his eyes.
I kneeled while bleeding from a dozen wounds that would heal quickly but hurt like heck right now.
Everyone was silent, waiting for the Alpha to speak.My father crossed the space between us and pulled me into his arms. His tears fell on my wounds as he ran his fingers over my face. “My son. I should have questioned what happened.”
“It’s over, Father.” The bitterness vanished, freeing me from its grip.
I turned and got Weston to his feet and untied his hands, wanting to hold him and cover him with kisses and ignore everything else. But there was den protocol to observe.
“Your mate is human and a scientist.”
“Yes.”
My father sighed, and there was twenty years of weariness behind it. “I’m not happy about this. But you're my son. And if this human is your mate, we'll figure it out.”
Weston was swaying as someone covered him with a blanket, but his eyes never left my face.
His voice was little more than a whisper when he asked, “Am I dreaming?”
14
WESTON
My head was still spinning from everything that had happened: from thinking Asher didn’t want me to finding out he did, to wandering in the woods to be captured by Kipp, to discovering that the polar bears here were actually people most of the time, to Kipp’s death… It was all so much, so fast.
I spent last night holding on to Asher, trying to focus on the fact that everything was okay—that I was fine, that he was mine, and that, yes, the polar bears were shifters. So was Asher, and we were mates. I asked question after question, and Asher answered them all, not once getting frustrated when I’d ask the same thing in multiple different ways, just trying to wrap my head around it all.
As shocking as finding out that shifters were real, learning that had so much of what happened here making sense.
They were people, and yes, they lived in a “den,” but it wasn’t a bear den. It was just what they called their housing, but it was so much more than that. There was a hierarchy and politics involved. I wanted to learn everything, but not for publishingin a scientific journal. I wanted to know so I could better understand my mate.
Poor Asher, all the things he went through because of Kipp. And the fact that he’d grown up with wolves meant there were other shifters out there, something that blew my mind. How many animals had I passed over the years that went home and lived a boring human life most of the time?
All the nice, neat compartments I put everything in were now gone, and I needed to figure out this world all over again.
But one thing was for sure, I needed to protect this town and these bears, and that meant my project couldn’t continue. The crew was probably already packed and ready to come, and I needed to cancel it or at the very least buy some time to figure out how to cancel it. It would be best to have an all-hands meeting soon, but that would take time to organize, and we really didn’t have that. Not with the timing the way it was. If I didn’t catch them pretty much now, they were all going to be leaving their homes to come here, and things were chaotic enough without adding a team of scientists to the mix.
I wrote an email with the subject:Field delay due to environmental complications. It was a lie, but it would keep them from being too pissy about it. The body of the email talked about unstable terrain, community resistance, a needed safety reassessment, and a whole bunch of bullshit. It was plausible bullshit, though, and that was what we needed right now.
I felt bad that the work they had planned on doing for the next month was gone, but I’d try to figure out a way for them to still get paid and see if I could pull some strings at the university for those who signed up to get some field practice in. Before I could change my mind, I hit send. It was a very real possibility that thisemail would be the destruction of my career. But I really didn’t have a choice.
Now that I’d done that, I had to tell Uncle Frank. For him, I did a video call. I wanted to be able to read his body language.
When he answered, all smiles, asking how things were, I went into the conversation I had rehearsed in my head, telling him that we needed to postpone the study, possibly cancel it… that as things stood, I couldn’t ethically continue. I’d already been worried he was going to pull the funding, and now I was sealing that fate, because the truth was, postponing wouldn’t be actually postponing and more likely cancelled.
“I don’t know how I could— Hmm, what’s that on you?” He pointed to where my Asher had left what I called a love mark, and I instinctively pulled my shirt up. How did he hear all my word salad about basically blowing all of his money and think my hickey was the first order of business?
