Read Claim the Bear Online

Authors: T. S. Joyce

Tags: #Romance, #Fiction, #Paranormal

Claim the Bear (9 page)

BOOK: Claim the Bear
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Chapter Ten

“Follow me,” Bron clipped out, hands behind his back and posture ramrod straight.

Breshia wrung her hands and stepped in line behind him. They filed through the front door of his house, but he turned abruptly.

“Everything you said yesterday was truth, but before we move forward, I want you to swear to me you aren’t part of some convoluted plan for the pride to hurt my people.”

“I swear,” she said.

“Good. I am sorry about what you’ve been through, Breshia.” His dark hair fell forward into his bright eyes and he cocked his head as if he were studying her. “I haven’t ever concerned myself with pride politics, and all of this information about how it really is for you and your kind is unsettling. We are a monogamous clan of shifters. Do you think you’ll be able to handle a single relationship with Dillon?”

“You’re asking if he will be enough for me?”

“He’s one of my best friends. I want to know you feel about him the way I can tell he feels about you.”

“I think I already love him,” she whispered honestly as heat flared up her neck.

Bron’s smile transformed his entire face. “Good. Come with me. I have someone you need to meet.”

Bron led her into a sunroom at the back of the house, and a dark-haired woman with her back to them turned. Anger flashed in her eyes before she dropped her gaze to a small bundle in her arms.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Bron murmured, then left.

“Tell me you aren’t here to take my child,” the woman said in a shaking voice.

The room smelled like bear and fury, so Breshia backed into the corner farthest away from the woman. “I’m not here for that. I’m here for sanctuary. The pride isn’t my home anymore. Maybe it never was, I don’t know. I just…I guess I needed to start over, and the only place to do that seemed to be here.”

The woman drew her hard gaze back to her, but Breshia couldn’t hold it. Instead, she stared at the hem of the woman’s dark blue jeans.

“Logan told me about you.”

Unable to find her words, Breshia nodded. She hadn’t a clue what Logan told her, or how much he even knew about her, but she was too frightened to ask.

“I’m Muriel.” Silence descended heavily on the room. “What’s your name?”

“Bre—Breshia.”

“My mate told me you were in charge of the cubs in the pride.”

“I was.” A pang hit her in the gut with how much she missed Samuel. His smell, and the little noises he made.

“This is my daughter, Abigail.” Muriel lifted the corner of a pastel yellow blanket away from the little bundle. A beautiful infant with dark hair looked back at Breshia with solemn blue eyes.

Breshia paced closer, fear warring with her curiosity. This was the child Shira was willing to go to battle for.

When Muriel lifted her bright green eyes back to Breshia, they were rimmed with tears. “She stopped eating two days ago. I’ve tried everything, even formula. Her scent started changing, like she’s sick. She stays fussy most of the time and only seems to settle if I have her swaddled up tight like this. I have asked every mother in the clan what could be wrong with her, but no one has any answers and I can’t take her to the hospital. They’d find out something was different with her. When Logan told me you had experience with babies, I thought it worth the risk to summon you.” Her voice dipped to a whisper. “Please don’t make me regret this.”

“Oh, no,” Breshia breathed, heart hurting for what this child would go through. “She’s not sick, Muriel.” Her voice sounded hollow and sad, even to her own ears. “She’s changing.”

“That’s impossible. She won’t shift for a few years yet.”

“If she was a bear, maybe, but lions aren’t the same. Samuel, the baby I was caring for before I left the pride, he is four months old and has already shifted twice. It starts much earlier with us. May I hold her?”

“No!” Muriel backed away and twin tears streaked down her cheeks.

“Okay, I’m sorry. You need to un-swaddle her. She feels comfortable like that because it makes her feel like she’s not breaking apart. She has to change to feel better though. She’ll go back to eating after it happens.”

“Is this why she smells different?” Muriel asked, hugging the child more tightly to her.

“I can smell her lion from here,” Breshia said. Her lip trembled and she bit it to try and keep hold of her emotions. It would’ve been better for Abigail if she was born a bear. Her future would’ve been much, much easier.

With a soft hiccup, Muriel set the child down on the cushion of the chair and unwrapped her blankets. A wail filled the room as Abigail found her lungs. It sounded pained, but there was nothing to be done about it.

“What do I do?” Muriel asked through a sob.

“Here, may I?” Breshia asked, eyes averted and head angled to expose her neck.

Muriel hesitated, then handed her the squalling baby. “The only way Samuel settles down for a shift is to hold him like this.” She turned Abigail and rested her cheek and belly across the inside of her forearm, then rocked gently and stroked her back. “Shh, shh, shh,” she said. The child’s arms tensed and relaxed, then tensed again as her whimpering subsided. “Here, you try.”

She handed her to Muriel and helped her position Abigail. Two of Muriel’s strokes down the child’s back, and she tensed again and morphed into a tiny lion cub.

Muriel wept as she brought the cub to her chest and murmured how proud she was of her, and what a brave little thing she’d been. The cub looked frightened, but settled against Muriel, and as minutes ticked by, a tiny purring could be heard.

Muriel laughed thickly as tears streamed down her face. “I thought she was dying,” she murmured. “I thought I was losing her.”

“Bron,” Breshia called out.

“What?” he asked, appearing in the doorway almost instantly.

“You might want to call Logan back. He’ll want to see his daughter in her first shift and this one won’t last for long.”

“She’s a lion,” Bron said, eyes round.

Muriel smiled through her tears, like it made no difference to her. “Abigail is a lion.”

And with that, Breshia knew the child was right where she needed to be. She didn’t need to be raised by a pride of apathetic lionesses. They wouldn’t care about raising her, nor would they care about her. They only cared about what she would mean to their future, but what kind of life would Abigail have? Breshia fell to her knees in front of Muriel as the tears she’d held back fell from her damp lashes.

“I pledge my fealty to you and Abigail.”

“What do you mean?”

“As long as I breathe, I’ll never let the pride have her. She’s meant to be here, to be raised by you and Logan. She’ll be a great lioness someday, but only if she stays here in Hells Canyon.”

Muriel sank to her knees, cradling her tiny lion cub. She pulled Breshia in and hugged her until she couldn’t draw breath. “Thank you.”

By the time Logan burst through the front door, Muriel was leaned back on the living room couch, playing with her cub. Abigail seemed to be getting the hang of her body, because she had already started practicing retracting her claws and Muriel’s royal blue, silk blouse was on its way to being shredded. The mother seemed so relieved she apparently didn’t care much, and when she saw Logan, the most beautiful smile stretched Muriel’s face.

Logan dropped his gaze to his small, golden-furred cub, and for the first time in Breshia’s life, she witnessed emotional tears fill a male lion shifter’s eyes. He wasn’t disappointed in her animal, like Breshia was afraid would happen. He laughed thickly and ran his hands through his hair as Bron clapped him on the back and offered him congratulations.

Dillon leaned on the doorframe, and his slow smile filled Breshia’s heart to bursting. He’d been gone less than an hour, but she’d missed him terribly.

“Breshia helped,” Muriel explained as Logan sank down onto the cushion beside his mate and daughter. “I was wrapping her too tight and keeping her from shifting.”

“You didn’t know lions shifted in infancy?” Breshia asked him.

Logan shook his head slowly, his gaze never leaving his daughter as she leapt clumsily for his lap. “I was never around cubs and I didn’t remember my first shifts.”

Abigail climbed his thin, cotton T-shirt, and he grunted as her little claws found purchase. He scratched her back as Abigail rubbed her face all over Logan’s two day scruff on his jaw. She hadn’t stopped purring, and he laughed as she switched her affection to the other side of his face.

A small frown took Dillon and he twitched his head like he was just putting together what Breshia rubbing against his face all last night meant. She giggled and nodded.

“We’re having a dinner to celebrate,” Muriel announced. “I want you to be there,” she said, swinging her gaze to Breshia.

“Me?” she asked. She hadn’t ever been invited to anything with the pride, and had always been reminded she was an outsider. Here, she felt so…different.

“You’re one of us now,” Muriel said, lifting her chin.

Breshia’s face crumpled and she pursed her lips as she tried to keep her tears from coming back. A strong hand gripped her shoulder, and she nuzzled Dillon’s knuckles. “I’d like that,” she whispered.

Bron’s phone chirped and he frowned at the screen before answering it. “What do you want?”

Everyone was talking, and she couldn’t make out the conversation across the tiny speaker, but Bron’s look darkened and he turned his back on the room and strode for the kitchen.

It must be hard to be alpha of such a big clan. He probably never got a rest. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad being a submissive at the bottom of the pecking order. At least she didn’t have to bear the responsibility of people’s lives depending on her.

“Breshia,” Bron clipped out. “Come here.”

Nervous flutters filled her stomach like bat wings. The laughter and chatter in the room died to nothing as she hunched her shoulders and followed Bron into a guest bedroom.

“It’s Shira.”

Just the mention of her name dropped the bottom out of Breshia’s stomach.

“She wants to talk to you.” The hard planes of Bron’s face said he wanted this about as much as Breshia did.

She took the phone just as Dillon entered and leaned against the wall nearest the door.

“Hello?”

“You surprised me, Breshia,” Shira growled out. “I never in a thousand years would’ve called you growing the balls to run away. The game is up now, and I’m tired of playing. Come home and your punishment will be less severe.”

Dillon’s eyes blazed with fury and the air became thick and hard to breathe. Apparently bears could hear just as well as lion shifters.

“I am home.” Damn her trembling voice. Breshia swallowed and tried to sound stronger. “I’m not part of your pride anymore, Shira. I belong here, with my mate.”

Shira’s laugh was cruel and loud enough to hurt Breshia’s ear through the phone. “Be serious. What is your plan? Live outside of the pride? Where do you see yourself in ten years? Alone and surrounded by ten bear cubs, with no pride to help you raise them?”

“I’ve seen how the pride raises children, Shira,” she said, as a bolt of anger lashed through her chest. “If I wasn’t there for your cubs, they’d be left alone to take care of themselves. You aren’t fit to help me raise children. If, and when, I choose to have cubs, I’ll be raising them with my mate.” She drew her gaze to Dillon, then Bron in turn. “I’ve seen the care the people here give to their cubs. That’s what I want. That’s what I see in my future. I’m sorry, Shira, but nothing you say would make me ever come back. I’m a Hells Canyon shifter now. Best you let me go.”

“Let you go?” Shira’s voice had gone low and dangerous. “Let one of our only breeding females go? You’re throwing away the honor of saving your people from extinction. The honor of your cubs being raised by the pride, as we’ve done for hundreds of years. You’re the biggest disappointment.”

With every battering word, Breshia’s stomach clenched a little more. Sinking onto the bed, she absorbed what she was really doing. For her own happiness, she was forsaking her people. She was damning them to extinction.

“I’m going to kill him, Breshia,” Shira hissed low. “I’m going to kill Dillon McCain as your punishment, and I’m going to make sure you live a long, fruitful life repopulating our kind at the hands of Thomas. I’ll make sure you know that his death is on you. His agony will be on your hands. I will not rest until the pride bleeds him. I swear it on Samuel’s life.”

The line went dead and Breshia dropped the phone onto the bed in horror. Shira was insane. She’d always been extreme in her opinions and prejudice, but this was different. This wasn’t some idle threat she wouldn’t follow through with. This was a deadly promise, no matter how it hurt the pride. Every instinct Breshia possessed said Shira would burn her own people to exact vengeance.

She lifted her shocked gaze to Dillon. Strong and tall, with his arms crossed over his chest and his stormy blue eyes studying her closely. She loved him, adored him. He was the most important thing that had ever happened to her, and now, because of her choices, she’d put him in the crosshairs of the pride.

Her devotion to him wasn’t a gift after all.

BOOK: Claim the Bear
2.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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