Ash hesitated, his jaw tightening as if he were physically forcing the words out.“...hire a male escort. Bears aren’t wolves. You don’t have to get pregnant or die. Putting hundreds of kilometers between you and Cody and getting..." He cleared his throat. "…attended to by a human for a few days will get you through this cycle without a pregnancy.”
His chin jutted out, his expression pained as he added,“But if you do that, you can never come back to Bear Mountain. Even a whiff of Cody, and you’d probably go right back into estrus again.”
Somehow, I understood the truth of that statement. Cody smelled... beyond amazing. Like something baked fresh just for you. The urge to start rubbing myself against him came back like a stove re-lit.
His cock was right there.Right there.Just waiting for me behind one thin layer of fabric.
“Or,"Ash said, interrupting my carnal thoughts, "we could get you through your estrus the bear-fashioned way. You couldagree to complete your cycle with..." Here, his calm and steady voice finally faltered. "All three of us."
All three of them?The new thing inside of me reared, even as my mind clunked, stuttering over the thought of having sex with three people when I'd never even allowed myself to date two guys at the same time because it felt disrespectful.
“How about if I just wanted Cody?”I asked, grasping for some shred of normalcy.“One him. One me. One cub.”
Cody’s face fell, his amber eyes dimming like I’d just stabbed him in the chest.“That’s not how mauls work,”he said softly.
“Mauls?”I repeated, falling back into confusion.
“A maul is the base romantic unit for Bear Mountain,”Ash explained.“Three males to one female. What we call Four-Direction Spirit.”
“Like polyamory?” I asked.
“Sort of,”Ash said, wincing slightly.“Four-Direction Spirit is sacred to us. It’s not just about sharing a mate—it’s about balance, unity, and protection. We’re maul-bonded. That means we’ve pledged to mate a female together through oaths and a bond-biting ceremony.”
He raised both arms, showing me his wrists. A deep, jagged scar stood out on each, the tissue thick and pale, like something healed too quickly to fade entirely, and the sight of them sent a shiver down my spine.
“Our bond can’t be broken without shattering the foundation of our maul,”Ash said, his voice steady, but his gaze flicked to Cody and Mak, like there was more weight to his words than he let on.
“Even if one of us decides to stupidly bite a human woman,”Mak muttered, his glare aimed squarely at Cody.
My shoulder tingled at the reminder that I'd been bitten, too, and for a moment, fear and doubt overwhelmed me. I felt like I’d been dropped into the middle of Lake Gemidgee without a life jacket. Underwater and struggling for air.
“Don't panic. Talk to us.”Cody gently pulled me into another hug, resting the side of his face on the top of my head as he asked,“How can we help you through this decision, cocoa bean?”
“Choices,”I choked out, thinking of Bradford.“I need choices. If I do this… if I get pregnant, would you make me stay here? Would all of you bite me, too? Hurt me?”
Ash’s face softened, his tone calm but resolute.“We would never hurt you or make you do anything you don’t want to do, Noelle. What Cody did was an accident. And since Cody was the only one to bite you, his would probably be the only sperm that takes. Female bears are very selective about who they let into their uterus. If you got pregnant, we could... Cody could...”
He glanced down at the man who continued to hold me in his lap."He could work out a custody agreement for visitation rights. Mak’s parents are divorced, and that’s what they did.”
An unexpected pang of empathy flickered in my chest.
"Your parents are divorced, too?"I glanced over Cody's shoulder at Mak, who immediately looked away as if my sympathetic gaze had burned him.
“Rejecting Cody after he gets you pregnant might fracture our maul bond,”Mak warned darkly. His voice was quiet, but theweight of his words hung in the air.“Tell her that, Ash. How Cody might end up in Alaska, drinking himself to death because she decided she didn’t want him after all the fun shit was done.”
My eyes widened, the breath catching in my chest.“Is that what happened to your father?”
Mak’s piercing blue eyes met mine, a flash of something raw and unspoken glimmering beneath the surface. But then he turned away, his jaw working like he was grinding his teeth into dust.
“This is a bad idea,”he muttered.“You need to put her on the road to an escort in Vancouver if she doesn’t want to stay. Don't give her that choice.”
“Mak. Look at her. Smell her,”Cody argued.“She has my bite, and she’s in estrus. You know that’s not physically possible for me.”
“Or me,”Ash added, his voice low with a ripple of pain.“She’s obviously a match for all of us, or we wouldn’t be struggling this hard. Our bears want her. All of our bears want her.”
All of them? Wanted me? My heart fluttered, and my stomach twisted, not knowing what to do with that information.
“Doesn’t matter what our bears want if she doesn’t want the same thing,”Mak snapped, cutting Ash off. His jaw clenched, and his shoulders tensed.“Are you really promising to let her go after mating her?”
