Bearing the Midnight Sun (Ice Bear Shifters Book 3) (2 page)

But Tyler’s bear instinct inside of him demanded to be heard, roaring out insistently with a message that came clearer and clearer with every rush of passion through his body. Tyler slumped his head down into his hands, unsure of what to do next.

Kat Peterson was his mate. He was sure of it.

Kat cursed under her breath for the duration of the walk back to her cabin. She had decided to walk the mile to the pub earlier, but now she was wishing she had a snowmobile or car to get her home quicker. Even though it was mid-May, the nights in Glacier Point were cool. The sun was still up, even at this late hour, but it was waning, and the temperature had dropped. Kat shivered, and cursed some more. She should never have shared so much personal information with Tyler. Training with him was probably going to be super awkward now.

But what bothered Kat more than the forthcoming awkwardness, was the fact that she realized she actually cared what Tyler thought about her. He had looked at her with such kind, sad eyes as she told him her story. He focused on her completely when she talked, and the faint lines on the sides of his eyes crinkled every so often with concern. Ethan had never gazed at her like that—like she was the only person in the room. Kat had figured that men only looked at women like that in movies. Men in real life could only be expected to always be somewhat distracted. Or so Kat had thought, until tonight.

Kat shook her head as she reached into her purse for the key to her cabin, trying to shake off all the thoughts of Tyler creeping into her mind. She hadn’t come here to find a boyfriend. She had come here to win her former fiancé back. And even if she and Tyler did hit it off, she was going back to Nebraska in four months. Then what? He seemed pretty settled here. Kat didn’t want to move this far north. And Alaska to Nebraska wasn’t exactly an easily commutable distance. Flights were long and expensive.

Kat let herself into her small cabin and pulled her coat off, throwing it on the couch. She went to the kitchen to pour herself a tall glass of water, all the while trying to convince herself that Tyler Cox was not, in fact, the kindest, sexiest man she had ever met.

The butterflies in her stomach every time she thought of him suggested that she was losing that battle.

* * *

Across town, Tyler was doing some mental gymnastics of his own, trying to figure out how to justify to his alpha his very sudden interest in a human woman. He stood in the lobby of Neal’s Tattoo shop, waiting for Neal to finish up the last touches on a tattoo for a big, burly man. The man scrunched his face up in pain every so often, a comical sight on such a large person. Neal remained professional, pretending not to notice. Tyler could have cared less what was going on in the tattoo chair right now. He just wanted Neal to hurry up and get the man out of the store so Tyler could get some advice. It was late—after ten p.m.—but Neal frequently kept his tattoo shop open for customers who wanted to come in and get some ink done after finishing up their own work shifts.

Neal Ray held the title of Alpha for the Northern Lights Clan, the clan of polar bear shifters to which Tyler belonged. Neal had a reputation for being hotheaded and throwing temper tantrums if he perceived the slightest hint of subversion from any of his bears, but he was also quick to apologize when he knew he had overreacted. In addition, Neal gave excellent advice. He had learned well from his father, the previous alpha. Tragically, Neal had lost his father, along with most of the Northern Lights Clan, in a poisoning incident last year. A rival polar bear shifter clan, the Blizzards, was slowly wiping out the clans in the northern Arctic Circle. Their attempts to take over the region had left many of the clans with only a handful of bears. The Northern Lights Clan had five bears left—Neal, Tyler, Ryker, Eric, and Alan.

Since the polar bear shifter clans were vanishing due to the Blizzards’ attempts to eradicate them, Neal had relaxed a prohibition on dating humans. Neal wasn’t the biggest fan of human life mates, since many humans feared shifters and would attack if they knew shifters existed. But with the lack of bear shifters, his bears were likely going to have to choose humans for life maters. Ryker had already chosen a human life mate, Kenzie, and she was pregnant with their first cub. Eric had recently chosen a human life mate as well, a spirited woman named Delaney.

When Tyler had entered Neal’s tattoo shop, unannounced and looking distressed, Neal had briefly raised his eyes from the work he was doing on the man’s arm. Tyler had shrugged and mouthed “I need to talk to you.” Satisfied that Tyler’s visit wasn’t due to an emergency situation, Neal had smiled politely and said, “Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” That was thirty minutes ago, and Tyler hadn’t sat down for even a minute. He had paced relentlessly, running his fingers through his hair and wishing Neal would hurry up and finish that stupid tattoo.

After forty-five minutes, which felt like an actual eternity to Tyler, Neal finally finished his work on the man’s arm and sent him on his way.

After cleaning up from the last customer, Neal motioned to the back room. “Let’s go talk back there,” he said. Tyler followed him to the back storage room, and sat on a box, as he had during so many clan meetings over the last year. Neal opened the mini fridge and stuck his head in. “Beer?” he asked, his voice sounding muffled by the inside of the fridge.

“No, thanks. I’ve had plenty already tonight,” Tyler said. Tyler tried to remain patient and let his alpha take his time settling in and unwinding from his long day of work. But he felt like he was going to explode, and he wished Neal would stop dilly-dallying. The room was silent as Neal perused the selection in the fridge. Finally, he grabbed a bottle of his favorite Pilsner, and shut the fridge door. Using a bottle opener magnet on the fridge, Neal opened the beer. The clinking sound of the bottle cap hitting the ground sounded abnormally loud to Tyler in his agitated state. Neal took a long, slow sip from his beer, then sat down on a box across from Tyler and grinned.

“So, buddy, who’s the girl?”

Tyler let out an exasperated sigh. “How do you know it’s a girl?”

“You’re eyes are glowing yellow.”

“Shit, really? Still?” Tyler rubbed at his eyes, which had traitorously revealed his emotions. A genetic mutation in Northern Lights bears caused their trademark violet eyes to glow yellow around the edges when they were sexually aroused by a potential mate. Tyler was pretty sure his eyes had been glowing all during dinner, but he had thought they would have calmed down by now. Apparently his attraction to Kat was even stronger than he thought.

Neal chuckled. He seemed to be in an unusually cheerful mood, and he took long sips of his beer as he waited for Tyler to spit out his story.

“She’s human,” Tyler said, carefully watching to gauge Neal’s reaction. Although Neal allowed his clan to mate with humans, he did so grudgingly. Neal required any of his bears who wanted to date humans to clear it with him first. The Northern Lights bears all grumbled about this rule, mostly because Neal had a tendency to automatically fly off the handle whenever he discovered that one of his bears was interested in a dating a human. But tonight, Neal seemed resigned to the idea. He merely nodded, with a neutral expression on his face.

“I figured,” Neal said, and waited for Tyler to continue.

“Her name’s Kat. She came into the gym today looking for some personal training. She’s beautiful—just beautiful. The most stunning woman I’ve ever seen. But she’s only here for four months. She’s from Nebraska, and came here to try to find herself after her dad died and her fiancé dumped her. Her goal is to find herself, get in the best shape of her life, then go back to Nebraska and sweep her ex off his feet. Her ex sounds like a big jerk to me, and Kat’s plan sounds like a horrible plan to me. But she seems very determined.”

“Oh, buddy,” Neal said, shaking his head and looking at Tyler like he was a lost cause.

“What?” Tyler demanded, a note of irritation in his voice.

“Come on, dude. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen this before. Girl gets dumped by jerk, but for whatever reason thinks he is amazing and she is the problem. You don’t stand a chance.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

Neal’s voice softened. “Look, I know you’ve been lonely. I know things have been difficult lately, but chasing after a girl who lives so far away and is bent on getting back her boyfriend is only going to make you feel worse. There are going to be lots of pretty girls coming in with the tourist flocks in a few weeks. Why don’t you find one a little less attached to swoon over?”

“My bear wants her,” Tyler said flatly.

Silence hung in the room for several moments as Neal processed this information. Neal now understood that the problem was deeper than a mere physical infatuation. Thanks to their human side, bears shifters could easily be drawn to a girl based solely on her appearance. But they had to be careful not to sleep with her unless they wanted to awaken their bear. Sex could trigger a deep, unbreakable bond between a bear and his mate, and anytime you slept with a girl you risked that. You didn’t want to bond with the wrong person. Despite this, Tyler had a bit of a playboy reputation. He had mated with several bears when the Northern Lights Clan still had a lot of bears. His behavior had been reckless, but he had never bonded with any of them. None of them had awoken his bear. And after the poisoning tragedy wiped out most of the clan, Tyler had given up his ladies’ man lifestyle and focused on his work, pouring his energy into learning as much as he could about personal training.

But sleeping with a woman wasn’t the only way to form a bond. Legend had it that, in rare cases, a bear’s connection with a woman could be so strong that merely spending time with her could start the bonding process. Tyler hadn’t even kissed Kat, but his bear was struggling to bond with her. After sleeping around so much and never forming a bond, Tyler had begun to think that his bear simply wasn’t interested in finding a life mate. But he had been wrong. His bear had just been waiting for the right connection, and had now found it.

His bear wanted Kat.

Neal finally sighed, breaking the silence. “Look, Tyler. If your bear wants her, he wants her. If I were you, I would avoid seeing her as much as possible, because the more your bear sees her, the stronger the bond will grow. You risk reaching the point of no return, and believe me, you don’t want to end up fully bonded to someone who’s going to head back to Nebraska in a few months. You’ll be miserable. Your bear will be miserable. But, I know you, and I know how stubborn you are. So you’re probably going to ignore my advice and spend a bunch of time with her anyways. But just be careful. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you have to shift in front of her. The last thing we need is a tourist from Nebraska going home and blabbing about how she saw polar bear shifters during her little Arctic holiday.”

“So you’re not forbidding me from seeing her?” Tyler asked

“I’m not forbidding you from seeing her. I’m strongly advising against it, but I know you’re going to ignore that recommendation.”

That was all the encouragement Tyler needed. He stood to his feet and headed for the door before Neal could change his mind. “Thanks Neal, good talk!”

Before Neal could respond, Tyler had slipped out to the front of the tattoo parlor and let himself out the front door. Neal stayed perched on his makeshift box chair, polishing off the last sips of his beer and shaking his head at his clan member’s stubbornness.

Kat woke up the next morning wondering what the hell she had been thinking by signing up for personal training. Tyler was going to laugh her out of the gym the minute she tried to lift a single weight. She considered cancelling several times, but finally convinced herself not to by imagining the expression her ex would have on his face when he saw her new, improved body. For the thousandth time that week, she pushed away the little voice inside telling her that if a man didn’t love her unless she had the perfect body, then he wasn’t worth her time.

To distract herself from her impending moment of doom at the gym, she decided to try going for a run. She knew it was pointless to try to work out in preparation for her personal training session. It was sort of like flossing your teeth the morning before a dentist appointment, after neglecting to do so the rest of the year. One time wasn’t going to fool the dentist into thinking you actually took care of your teeth. The cavities were still there. And one run wasn’t going to fool Tyler into thinking Kat actually kept herself in shape. The extra pounds were still there.

But Kat felt like she would go crazy if she sat at home in her cabin and watched the minutes tick toward her scheduled training session, so she laced up her tennis shoes and bundled up for a run outside in the brisk May weather. The ground was still largely covered with snow, and would be until next month when the temperatures finally rose above freezing. But the snow on the roads was packed down hard from the snowmobiles that constantly drove across it. Kat took off running, slowly, toward the west edge of town. Although it was early, the sun was already high in the sky thanks to the long days.

Kat only ran about three minutes before her burning lungs forced her to slow down. Panting and out of breath, she decided to alternate walking and running for a while. Doing something was better than nothing, after all. As she headed west, the cabins became further and further apart. Eventually, she came to a spot at the edge of a clearing where the hard-packed road veered off to the left, and a less trampled trail turned to the right. The trail led into a grove of huge fir trees, and Kat decided to walk down it for a while. The bright, white snow that still covered the dark green branches looked like a scene from a postcard. Kat briefly wondered if it was safe to be heading out beyond town by herself, but she shrugged away the thought. As long as she stayed on the trail, she would be fine.

For several minutes, she continued deeper into the forest, feeling truly at peace for the first time since her flight had landed in Alaska. She had needed this break, this time away from everything. She hadn’t had time to think, or to grieve her father’s death. Everything after he passed away had been such a blur. The funeral arrangements, the will probate, packing up his possessions to sell or donate, or put in storage. The breakup with Ethan. There, in the middle of a quiet forest trail outside of a small Alaskan town, Kat found herself overcome with the emotion of it all.

Tears started pouring down her face. They came slowly at first, and gradually turned into rivers as she let her sobs ring out through the forest. She sat down on an old log, and let the tears come, bringing clarity and healing to her soul. She didn’t know how long she sat there, but she must have cried for the better part of an hour. As her loud weeping finally faded into soft sniffles, she found herself feeling better. She was glad that she was alone on a secluded forest trail, because she must have looked like a complete mess. She could feel that her eyes were puffy. She knew her face would be flushed red from crying, and her blond hair was coming loose from the ponytail she had put it in for her run. She shivered, as she realized the sweat from exercising was still sticking to her body. She should head back into town.

But as Kat stood, she suddenly froze, and then screamed. A bloodcurdling scream, at the top of her lungs. If she had been thinking rationally, she probably would have realized that staying calm would have been a better course of action. But thinking rationally wasn’t easy when the largest wolf she had ever seen was standing about a hundred feet away from her. The wolf was gray, and enormous. The fur on his back bristled upwards as he snarled at Kat, putting his giant, knife-like canine teeth on full display. He had green eyes, the angriest green eyes Kat had ever seen. Terror overtook her, and she screamed again.

The wolf snarled louder, and started creeping toward her, slowly at first, and gradually picking up speed. All Kat could think about was that he was about to charge, and she was going to die out here in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness. She gave up any vestige of trying to be calm, and started to scream hysterically, which only seemed to encourage the wolf. He began charging at full speed. Kat kept screaming, and as the wolf closed the distance between them, she kicked as hard as she could. She landed a blow square on his nose, and he seemed momentarily stunned. But he quickly recovered, and clamped his impossibly large teeth around Kat’s leg. The agonizing pain of his sharp teeth ripping through her thick pants and into the flesh of her calf muscle left her breathless. All she could do was scream some more. This was it. She was going to be eaten by a wolf, while Ethan sat at home in Nebraska, happily oblivious with his hot new flavor of the month. So much for proving she was the adventurous type.

Suddenly, a shot rang out, startling both Kat and the wolf. The wolf leaped backwards and started snarling again, his angry gaze directed somewhere over Kat’s right shoulder.

“Kat, stay perfectly still,” commanded a voice that she recognized as Tyler’s. “Don’t move a muscle if you want to live.”

Kat wanted to live. She forced herself to sit there, frozen as a statue while the wolf snarled and snapped at the air, then started slowly creeping forward once more. Just as the wolf started charging again, a loud shot rang out, then another. The wolf yelped and jumped backwards, then turned and started to run away. A final shot rang through the air as the wolf fell to the ground in a crumpled, bloody heap. The adrenaline of the moment, coupled with the pain from her bleeding leg and the chill from the wind on her sweaty body, became too much for Kat. She felt herself fading as she heard hurried footsteps crunching toward her through the snow.

“Kat, are you alright?” Tyler asked, his voice laced with concern. He reached her just as her vision started to blur. “Kat! Kat, stay with me!” The last thing Kat remembered was seeing Tyler’s concerned, violet eyes hovering just above her face. Then everything went black.

* * *

When Kat came to, she was lying on a soft bed and staring up at the ceiling of a log cabin. She could hear the sound of an axe outside, splitting against wood over and over with rhythmic timing. She sat up slowly and looked around. She was inside a one room cabin. Across the room from her, a slender woman with dark brown hair was washing dishes at the sink with her back to her. Kat tried to move her injured calf and winced at the pain that shot up her leg.

The woman heard her, and turned around. That’s when Kat saw that the woman was pregnant. She was one of those lucky skinny women who only gained weight in her stomach when they were expecting. You always wanted to hate them because of how good they looked, even pregnant, but you couldn’t because they were just too damn adorable.

“Hi, I’m Kenzie,” the woman said, shutting off the water and drying her hands on a dish towel. Kenzie crossed the room and put her hand gently on Kat’s forehead.

“Good, no fever. You were shaking a lot earlier, but you must have just been in shock. That and your clothes were drenched in sweat and blood. I changed you into some of my sweatpants so you’d be warm and dry. You’re very lucky. The wolf had a hard time biting too deeply through your thick pants. The cuts are deep, but not horribly so. I was able to stitch them up easily, and you should be good as new in a few weeks. Although, you’ll probably have a couple nice battle scars on your legs to show for the experience.”

Kat tried to move, and winced again. Her leg felt really stiff. “You’re a doctor?” she asked.

Kenzie laughed. “Sort of. I’m a veterinarian. But there’s only one medical doctor in town, and, as you can imagine, he’s quite busy and can be difficult to track down if he’s out on a call. Especially since there’s no cell service out here. So I’ve ended up helping out a lot in town lately with minor emergencies. I was nervous to treat humans at first, but it turns out stitching up a human isn’t all that different from stitching up an animal. Flesh and blood is just flesh and blood.”

“Well, thank you,” Kat said.

“It was nothing,” Kenzie said, smiling kindly. “Tyler is the one you should be thanking. It sounds like he saved your life out there.”

“Yeah, he did. Where is he, by the way?”

“I sent him outside. He was hovering over you like an overprotective maniac and I told him to go do something useful. Want me to go get him?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I should thank him, although I’m a little embarrassed over the whole situation. I should have known better than to wander into the woods alone out here.”

“Well, you’ve learned your lesson well, I’d say. Wolf attacks used to be rare, but they seem to be increasing lately. We’ve had a long, cold winter, even by Northern Alaskan standards. The wolves have gotten braver, coming closer and closer to town trying to find food. I’m hoping that once the weather warms up and the tourists come, the wolves will be too overwhelmed by the crowds to want to come close to town anymore,” Kenzie said, as she crossed the room and filled a glass with water from the sink. She grabbed a bottle of what looked like ibuprofen from a cabinet, then shook a few of the pills onto her hand.

“Here, take these. I’ll go get Tyler.”

Kenzie stepped outside the cabin, leaving Kat alone with her thoughts for a moment. She had no idea what she would say to Tyler. She felt like she should apologize, although she wasn’t exactly sure for what. Putting a damper on his day by almost dying in front of him? Kat didn’t have long to think about it, because a moment later, Tyler burst into the cabin and covered the distance from the door to the bed in long, quick strides.

“Oh my god, Kat, I’m so glad you’re okay,” he said, and then wrapped his arms around her. Kat hadn’t expected such an exuberant gesture, and it caught her completely off guard. As did the sudden butterflies in her stomach and the electricity that filled her body at his touch. She felt herself heating up with desire, and she couldn’t choke out any words other than “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Tyler said, pulling back to look at her. “I’m just so glad I was out here today and heard you screaming. What in the world were you doing walking on that trail by yourself?”

“I went for a run. I know it was stupid. But I wanted to warm up a little and get ready for our training session later today. The woods looked so beautiful, and it didn’t feel like I was
that
far out from town. I thought I would be alright, which obviously was not true.”

“Well, you’re a little ways out, but, you’re right, it’s not that far. It doesn’t take much, though. You shouldn’t leave town’s boundaries unless you have a gun, or someone with you that has one. Do you know how to shoot?”

Kat nodded. “My dad taught me,” she said, and then burst into tears. She tried to force herself to stop, expecting him to roll his eyes and tell her to quit acting like such a girl. That’s what Ethan would have done. But Tyler reacted completely differently.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, putting his arms around her and holding her close. “I know you miss him so much.”

Kat again felt the warmth of Tyler’s touch, and she melted into his arms, allowing herself to sob into his shoulder. It was the first time she had felt truly safe since her father had passed away and left her with no family.