Alpha Rancher Bear: BWWM Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Bears of Pinerock County Book 3) (10 page)

Alec snorted.

"I'll think about it," she admitted. "But, while you're waiting for your shifter healing to kick in, why don't I climb up to the road and spread some flares around? Someone might come along. I can also see if I can get cell reception up there."

"Can't hurt, I guess."

The bleeding seemed to have slowed a lot. Charmian peeled her sticky fingers away from it, took one of Alec's hands and placed it against the injury. "Here, just keep pressure on it. I wish you could lie down, but there's no easy way to manage that." She looked over her shoulder at the spiderwebbed glass of the windshield, and beyond it, the headlights illuminating the brush. They didn't seem any dimmer. "Should I turn the lights off, do you think?"

"Leave them on. They'll run for at least an hour or two just on the battery, and make the car much easier to spot."

Charmian nodded. She crawled out of his lap, between the seats into the mess in the back of the Jeep. Fortunately her dad's lessons about winter driving had soaked in, and her emergency gear was neatly stowed in sealed Rubbermaid containers—currently lying haphazardly on the roof of the Jeep, but easy to find. She stuffed some road flares in her pockets and found a warm pair of gloves and a hat, as well as another flashlight.

Getting out of the Jeep turned out to be the difficult part. The doors were blocked with snow and brush, even on the uphill side. She had to open the tailgate, shoving against snow.

"I'll be back soon, Alec, okay?"

Alec grunted acknowledgement. She could tell it bothered him, letting her go out in the storm alone. But he was sensible enough to also acknowledge that clambering around in the snow in his current condition would only make it harder to do what he needed to do later. And, she realized as she closed the back door of the Jeep behind her, he hadn't tried to warn her to be careful or ask her if she knew how to light a road flare. He might have to work on it, but he was learning to trust her as an equal partner.

You're a stronger man than you know, Alec, and not in the ways you think.

She scrubbed the blood off her hands in the snow before pulling on the gloves. Her wrist was discolored and swollen, and she wished she'd thought to wrap it while she was still in the vehicle.

Just have to be careful, I guess.

She scrambled up the hillside, following the track through the snow that the Jeep had scraped out as it slid. As she'd expected, moving kept her warm enough that the biting wind didn't bother her too badly. It hit harder when she stepped onto the road, driving down from the mountains with all the force of the winter storm behind it.

And she nearly cried when she saw how badly the snow had piled up on the road just since they'd been in the ravine. Their tracks were almost covered, and drifts had already obscured the place where they'd slid off the road. The odds of someone coming along were next to nothing—the Lamberts were the only people who lived back here, and it wasn't like neighbors would be visiting or delivery drivers would be out in this mess. Still, she would've felt better if there was at least some chance of discovery. Her cell phone, as she'd suspected, had no more reception here than at the bottom of the hill.

Mary, I hope you're doing okay with your husband and mother to help you, because I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to get there in time.

She struck a road flare anyway, and planted it in the snow beside the road. In the gathering blue dusk, the hissing flare was painfully bright.

Sudden movement, looming out of the storm, made her jump. It turned out to be the cow—or, no, it was a steer, she saw, looking closer. It had the Lambert brand on its flank: part of their beef-cattle herd.

Its coat was matted with snow and it moaned plaintively at her. Beef cattle were not, in general, friendly animals—as a veterinarian's daughter, Charmian had spent much of her childhood trying not to be trampled by hostile cattle—but this particular steer was clearly sick to death of wandering around in the woods and was ready to try any port in a storm.

"You ran us off the road and now you want my help, huh?" Charmian muttered. She sighed and cautiously scratched its curly forehead. "Sorry, buddy. We've got all we can do just to get ourselves out of this mess you got us into. But I'll let the Lamberts know you're out here. They can come get you."

If she got a chance to talk to the Lamberts again. But she wasn't going to think that kind of thought.

She left the steer standing woefully in the road and clambered back down to the Jeep. There was a moment's panic when she started to lean in the driver's-side window and found Alec was no longer in the front seat; instead, he was a huddled lump in the back. Then she noticed the beam of the flashlight, partly concealed by his body, and relaxed a little. He hadn't collapsed; he was doing something back there.

She waded through the snow to the tailgate and struggled with the frozen outside handle until Alec leaned over and opened it for her. Charmian brushed snow off her clothes and climbed in.

"Any luck?" Alec asked.

"With the phone, you mean? No. I didn't really think it'd work." She looked around at the recently disturbed mess, and saw he'd pulled everything out of her midwife to-go bag. "Hey! What are you doing?"

"Getting ready to go. I won't need clothes as a bear, but I will if I shift back, so I'm going to carry them with me."

Charmian pushed down her annoyance. There was a time and a place to get upset about someone messing with her stuff. The middle of an emergency wasn't it. "Tell me what you need me to do."

He looked up and met her eyes with his intense blue ones. "You're still set on coming with me."

"You better believe it."

"Okay then, pack up anything important enough to take with you. I can carry it as a bear, as long as there's some way to put it on me."

Which was why he'd emptied out the duffle where she kept her midwife gear; it had straps. "Won't it be hard on you carrying something like that, if you're hurt?" Charmian asked, sorting quickly through her first-aid equipment. She wasn't licensed for narcotics or other controlled substances, but painkillers and bandaging supplies might come in handy later if they ended up somewhere she could properly treat his injuries.

"Trust me, to an eight-hundred-pound bear, ten or twenty pounds of supplies doesn't matter any more than carrying a wallet."

Oh my God, I'm going to see him as a bear.
It hadn't quite sunk in. She knew about shifters, as most people did. She'd seen them on TV. But she had never seen a real shifter change shape in real life.

"Which way are you planning on going?" she asked, putting her supplies in the duffle.

Alec was taking off his boots. "I was hoping you'd tell me. How close are we to the Lambert place?"

"A few miles, I think. But there's somewhere closer that we could aim for. Back down the road a mile or so, the way we came from, there's a turnoff to a hunting cabin. I don't know who uses it, but you can see it from the road—well, on days when there isn't a blizzard, anyway. We could get out of the snow, make a fire, and warm up."

"Sounds like the best option," Alec agreed. "You're sure it's that close?"

"Pretty sure."

"Then that's what we'll do." He started to remove his coat, but stopped with a grimace of pain.

"Need a hand?"

His only answer was a slight nod, barely noticeable in the flashlight's glow. Charmian knelt beside him and helped him work his way out of the coat, then peel out of his ragged, bloody shirt.

This was her first chance to see the injuries in his side. There wasn't a lot to see, though. His chest and rib cage were dark with blood, but it was drying now, clotting in clumps and covering up the injuries beneath. She couldn't tell how healed he was, but he didn't seem to be actively bleeding anymore, and that would have to be good enough.

"I need to hurry up and get shifted," Alec said. His breath huffed out in clouds. With the windows broken out, the temperature inside the Jeep had dropped to match the temperature outside.

"Yes, of course." She helped him strip out of his jeans. The right leg was the one he was favoring, but she couldn't see any signs of a severe break—no visible deformation, no lacerations. There was a lot of bruising on the lower leg and ankle.

He was also very naked and
very
close to her ...

And turning blue. "Go, quick, get shifted," she said, giving him a push. "I'll get this packed up and join you."

Alec pushed open the tailgate and clambered out into the snow. Full darkness had fallen, so she could barely see him; there was only the reflected light of the headlights to illuminate the area, and he was in the shadow of the Jeep. Still, it made her cringe in sympathy, seeing him kneeling naked in the snow.

And then ... he shifted.

It wasn't dramatic. She had been subconsciously expecting something flashy, a swirl of smoke or a rush of light and wind, like special effects on TV. Instead, his human body melted and flowed into a great, dark, shaggy bulk, so huge she couldn't even see all of it through the Jeep's open tailgate.

Stunned, she sat back on her heels, staring out at the great hulk of the bear.

Alec swung his head back toward her and gave a low, huffing grunt.

"Yes, yes, I'm hurrying." She left his bloody shirt behind; it wasn't worth wearing anyway. His boots and the rest of his clothes took up the remaining space in the duffle. In fact, the coat didn't fit, so she put it on awkwardly over her own. Alec was big enough that there was room to spare. She felt ridiculous, but also cozily insulated from the storm.

She crawled out into the snow. Let out to its greatest extent, the duffle's shoulder-carry strap was just big enough to go around Alec's neck. The duffle hung below his chin, making her think of the chin casks on St. Bernard rescue dogs.

"Are you sure that's comfortable?"

He nodded. The effect was very strange on the great bear's body, as was the human intelligence gleaming in his eyes.

"Well, let's go, then."

There was no point in leaving the headlights on any longer. She leaned through the driver's window to turn them off and take the key out of the ignition. After a moment's thought, she crawled back inside and found a pad of paper and a pencil in the glove box. She scribbled a brief note:

We are okay & have walked to hunter's cabin 1 mile down road towards town. There are two of us. Please send help if you find this.

She put the note in the waterproof box that had contained the flares and left it on the driver's side of the car, where it should be fairly obvious. Then she took a flashlight, tucked the other one into the pocket of Alec's coat as a spare, and began climbing the hill behind the plodding bulk of the bear.

With Alec shuffling along and breaking trail, Charmian found it much easier to climb the hill the second time, even with his coat weighing her down and making her clumsy.

She heard a loud snort and a grunt from the bear when he stepped onto the roadway. From down here, all she could see was his shaggy ass. She scrambled the last few feet and shone her flashlight around, discovering that the steer had panicked at the bear's appearance. It had run a few yards away, then turned and faced them with its head down, as if it wanted to charge.

Alec gave a low growl.

"Yes, it's still here," Charmian sighed. "I don't think it's going to hurt us." Or, more to the point, hurt
her
, which was clearly what he was worried about. "Come on, let's go."

They started walking down the road. She tried to stay in their tire ruts to avoid wearing herself out wading through snow, but it was hard to even see where the ruts had been. Alec didn't seem to care; he forged through the snow, pushing it aside like an ursine snowplow. After a little while, Charmian gave up and walked in his wake, lighting her path with the flashlight.

When she shone the flashlight behind them, she found that the steer was following them at what it apparently considered a safe distance. Having it at her back made her nervous, but it no longer seemed hostile towards the bear. It just didn't want to be left out in the storm alone.

She could relate.

Fighting their way through the wind and the snow was exhausting. Alec seemed indefatigable at first, but as he plowed forward, his head hung lower and lower.

"I can break trail for awhile," Charmian offered.

Alec looked back at her, his eyes gleaming in the flashlight's beam, and huffed.

"Fine. Be that way." Though she was glad he hadn't taken her up on it. She was tired enough just wading along behind him.

They almost missed the turnoff to the cabin. It had no mailbox and was marked by nothing except a break in the trees. Charmian had to turn back to be sure. "Alec, wait, come back. This is the place."

The snow on the road had been deep, but in the woods it was unbroken and came up to the middle of her thighs in some places. At least the trees helped cut the wind somewhat. The cabin, she recalled, was located on a hill above the road, visible from below. Hopefully this was the right driveway. It certainly seemed steep enough.

She was glad they hadn't tried to make it to the Lamberts' tonight. Alec was already staggering as he walked. Under normal circumstances she knew he would have been able to tramp through the woods for miles, snow or no snow, but he was still suffering from his injuries, and the accelerated shifter healing process must be exhausting him as well.

They tramped out of the woods into a clearing. It was hard to be sure if this was the cabin she remembered seeing from below, but it was certainly
a
cabin. The windows were dark, the snow unbroken around it.

A padlock held the door shut. Alec looked at that for a moment, then hooked it with a massive paw and tore it off.

"Oh, Alec ..." But she couldn't argue. They needed to get inside. She'd have to find out who the owners were later, and make sure their door got fixed.

Inside, the cabin was dark and ice cold, but dry and clean. Just being out of the wind was a massive relief. Charmian shone the flashlight around, picking out a table and chairs, a stove, and a ladder leading to a loft upstairs.

Alec shifted suddenly back to his human shape, making her jump. "I saw a woodshed outside."

She hadn't even thought to look. Despite his obvious intent to go outside, he was already shivering, gooseflesh rising on his bare arms. She stripped off the extra coat she was wearing. "You get dressed, and I'll bring it in."

She went outside before he could have a chance to argue, and yelped when she found the miserable-looking steer standing right off the porch, close enough to reach out and touch. Its black coat blended into the night.

Alec charged out the door, wearing the coat, but otherwise naked. "What's wrong?"

"Just our friend here, giving me a shock. Go, go, get dressed before you freeze." She shoved him back through the door. Alec, although easily large enough to stop her, allowed himself to be manhandled (or womanhandled) back into the cabin. Charmian shut the door on him.

The steer was still there. It swung its head in her direction and gave her a mournful look.

"You need to get to shelter too, don't you?"

She descended the stairs, and the steer followed her around the side of the cabin, where there was a large woodshed with an overhanging roof. It wasn't a great place to put an animal, but it was out of the wind. And most of the local ranch cattle were used to being outside in the winter; they had windbreaks and extra feed in bad weather, but they weren't barn animals. He'd probably be okay in here.

The steer seemed to agree. As soon as he was out of the wind and snow, he sank down wearily beside the wood pile.

"I'll bring you some water and something to eat, if I can find anything," Charmian promised. As she headed back to the cabin with an armful of wood, she thought,
Charmian, you're talking to cattle now.

On the other hand, her boyfriend was a bear, so why not?

There was a light flickering in the cabin window now. Inside, it was still just as cold, but she discovered that Alec had lit some candles. He was kneeling in front of the wood stove with its door open. He'd found a magazine and was tearing up pages to make a fire.

"Alec, I need to give some water to that steer. He's probably really thirsty from struggling against the wind, and I don't want him to eat snow and get hypothermic."

"I saw a hand pump in the corner."

There was indeed an old-fashioned hand pump, the big iron kind with a long handle. A sink was next to it, and under the sink Charmian found a bucket. She had to work the handle for awhile before water sputtered out in a thin trickle, growing to a stream.

She carried the bucket of water to the shed for the steer. He plunged his muzzle into it, and Charmian picked up another armload of wood.

This time she got back inside to find a fire crackling inside the stove. It hadn't yet started to drive off the chill, but she relaxed a little. They weren't going to freeze.

Another three trips to the woodshed resulted in a nice pile of wood beside the stove. "That's probably enough," Alec said, his voice coming down from the loft.

"Anything interesting up there?"

"Found a couple of beds and some blankets."

"I hope these people don't mind us using their cabin."

Alec stepped to the loft railing, where she could see him. He was wearing his coat; it gapped slightly over his bare chest. "People out here in these rural parts of the county understand about emergencies. I don't think they'll mind. We can replace anything we use."

There was already some heat coming off the stove. Charmian stripped off her wet gloves, wincing as she pulled off the left one. Her wrist was staging a vehement protest against all the work she'd made it do. Still, she could use it, so she didn't think it was broken after all. Just battered in the crash, and possibly sprained.

It would be nice to stop using it, though.

"Did you see any food around?"

Alec descended the ladder carefully with an armload of blankets, favoring his bruised leg. "Some canned goods on the shelf there. They look pretty new."

"The owners must still come out and use the cabin. Probably during hunting season, which means they would have been here this fall."

Alec was right, there was a whole shelf of various food items. As well as cans of soup, beans, and tomatoes, she found crackers and flour in tightly sealed containers to keep the mice out. She located a clean saucepan on another shelf and opened some of the cans into it.

When she came over to put the pan on the stove to heat, she discovered Alec had spread out blankets beside the stove to make a sort of nest. "What's this?" she asked, smiling.

Alec returned her smile. Though it was still chilly in the cabin, he'd taken off his coat and hung it beside the fire to dry, leaving him stripped to the waist. "This means it's time for you to sit down and let someone take care of you for a change."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're soaked to the skin. I had something dry to change into, but you don't. And I can tell by the way you're holding your arm that your left wrist hurts." He patted the blanket beside him. "Sit down here, and get out of your wet things."

"If I didn't know better, Mr. Tanner, I'd think this was some kind of ploy to get me out of my clothes."

This time his smile was wide and dazzling. "Maybe."

Charmian was, as ever, unable to resist that bright grin and the sparkle in his blue eyes. She pushed the saucepan to the back of the stove where it would heat slowly, and began stripping out of her wet things. Alec was right; the snow had melted through her jeans, and her sweater was damp with the sweat of her exertion outside. No wonder she couldn't get warm.

"Brr," she complained, shivering in the chilly air as she peeled out of her clothes. She could only warm one side of herself at the stove; the other side was exposed to the wintry chill of the cabin, raising goosebumps on her arms and legs.

Alec was watching her with his usual intensity. A slight smile of appreciation curved his lips. "Get those off, and come here and warm up."

"You had me at 'warm'." She hesitated for just an instant when she got down to her underwear, but it wasn't like he'd never seen her naked. She stripped out of those, too, and hung everything on hooks on the wall behind the stove, where Alec had hung up his coat.

"Come on over here before you freeze."

"Twist my arm." She scampered over to the offered blankets. Alec had spread one to sit on, with the others wrapped around him in a warm cocoon. He lifted an arm and Charmian crawled into the blanket nest with him.

"Ooh," she said, pressing against his hard-muscled torso. One of Alec's hands wandered down to caress her ass. He was still moving cautiously, however, which made her remember how badly he'd been hurt. "Alec, can I take a look at your side?"

"You can look at whatever part of me you want. I've got some suggestions."

"Just your ribs will do for now."

She pushed back the blanket. Flickering light from the fire's grate and the glow of the candle on the table didn't provide the best illumination for a medical exam. It was enough, however, that she could see the wounds had closed up. Most of the blood had been scoured away while he was in his bear form in the snow, and where once-grievous injuries had been, there was now nothing but fresh pink skin and the discoloration of old bruises. It looked as if he'd been healing for a couple of weeks.

"This is amazing," she said, touching the unbroken skin lightly with her fingertips. "No, it's miraculous. But how does it
work
?"

"I don't know. It's just how we are. How I've always been."

"Miraculous," she whispered again. "
You're
a miracle. Watching you change in the snowstorm ..."

"Did it bother you?"

Was that a hint of nervousness underlying the question? She'd come to be able to read him so well. "Not at all," she said, tipping her head back to look up at him. "It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

His eyes gleamed in the firelight, and she thought for an instant of her fantasy earlier in the day—was it only a few hours ago?—about Alec stretched out in front of her fireplace, tawny in the fire's glow. This wasn't how she'd imagined it. But now she had him, half naked in the fire's glow. They'd made it through the crash and the storm, and now it only remained to warm up and reassure themselves of each other's safety.

Alec touched her face lightly, cupping her hand under her chin as if she were something incredibly rare and delicate. "
You're
the miracle," he murmured. "The most amazing thing
I've
ever seen."

In someone else's mouth, the words might seem overblown, even silly. But Alec's deep, serious voice imbued them with a depth of sincerity that took her breath away, especially when he tipped her face up with the lightest of touches and lowered his mouth to hers.

As before, she was intensely aware of the controlled passion behind his kiss, the power and strength that he held in careful restraint. Maybe it was only because she'd been so cold, but the heat of his mouth captivated her, lips and tongue so hot they seemed to burn. He sucked and nibbled at her lips until they felt hot and swollen, until she was shaking and breathless and wet—and all too aware that she was completely naked under the blankets, sitting in his lap.

His erection pressed against her, a hard curve standing out against his jeans. She laid a hand on it, feeling its heat.

"I think I need to get warm," she murmured against his mouth. "Hypothermia is a real danger in a snowstorm, you know."

"I think that sounds like a really good idea."

He ran his hands down her body, and she thrilled to his touch. The chilly air in the cabin, warming now with the heat of the fire, already had her nipples standing up, but now they hardened to tight nubs, burning like the rest of her for the touch of those big, sure hands.