Clawed (Black Mountain Bears Book 1) (3 page)

She nearly ran into the third Sentinel before she saw it, but Jasper grabbed her shoulder just in time.

“Sit,” he commanded. “I’ll check the signs. I know you’re the mighty anthropologist, but this is my territory, too.”

They’d been hiking for three hours and she was exhausted, but there was no way they could quit. She sat on the nearest boulder, grateful for the layers of thermals she’d worn to protect her from the icy cold of the stone.

Jade collapsed beside her and Emma wrapped her arm around her cousin.

“Fuck, this is hard,” Jade said. “Not just because of the circumstances, but I keep thinking about them. The last time we did this we were all together. I miss Papa so much, Em. And Uncle Eamon.”

Emma hugged her cousin tighter, watching Jasper as he deciphered the signs around the boulder. She knew they had to travel in an arc, but her compass had never worked up here. The stones and the stars were the only reliable way to navigate.

“This way!” Jasper called.

Jade hopped up and jogged to her brother. Emma quickly gathered her canteen and the wrappers from their snacks. When she stood up, the moss on the rock caught her eye.

It hadn’t been green when they’d sat down.

Lush moss grew where her cousin’s backside had rested. Emma brushed her hand over it. Where it touched her skin, she tingled. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to ponder it further—they had to move forward, at all costs.

* * *

The rhythmic crunch of their booted feet down the snow-covered path became a backdrop for Emma’s thoughts. She could imagine her father and uncle beside her, taking turns weaving some tale about the necessity to travel this path every year. The story changed each year, too, growing more fantastical the older and more skeptical Emma herself became, as though it were their mission to make her roll her eyes and poke holes in their logic.

She humored the elder storytellers every year, though, listening avidly and asking questions. It wasn’t until she’d begun her research that she went back to her old journals, looking up the stories she’d written down once she began recording them when she was about ten years old.

The progression of their tales was what spurred her to dig deeper into her research. They’d become a kind of road map, directing her and never failing to lead her to deeper revelations about the mystical creatures she studied.

She found herself weaving her own tale in her mind, and impulsively began speaking it aloud.

“Once upon a time, a pair of brothers wandered into the forest behind their family home. They were young men, at the age when young men would be urged to seek their fortunes in order to be worthy of the love of a pretty girl. But these two young men were too in love with the forest and all her wonders to go out into the human world.”

She paused for breath and behind her, Jasper asked, “Why did they love the forest so much?”

Emma smiled. “Well, the forest was more beautiful than the most beautiful human girl they knew. Rich with life, filled with the songs of the wind through the trees and the gurgling lilt of the water through the creeks. Countless creatures called the forest their home, some of which were magical.

“On this particular day, they wandered deeper into the forest than they’d ever been before, and found an ancient path. The path was moss-covered and worn, as though it had been a part of the forest floor for ages. The two young men decided to follow this path. They walked for hours and hours. A couple hours into their walk, they found a giant boulder blocking their way, but with other paths radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel. Not knowing which path to travel next, the brothers decided to let the forest choose for them.

“One brother raised his face to the sky, gazing through the canopy to the cloudless blue above, while the other bent down and pressed his ear against the earth. The first brother spied a hawk circling above them. The second brother heard a rustle of leaves a ways off, and saw a snake slithering across the ground. Just at that moment, the hawk swooped out of the sky and grabbed the snake in its talons, flying away toward the north. So they chose that direction to travel.”

Emma continued her story, weaving a tale of the two men on their trek through the forest, reaching more such crossroads and each time letting the forest guide them on the correct path. When they reached the end of their path, they were greeted by a pair of beautiful women who were not women at all, but some other race entirely. She could picture the scene vividly in her mind. Sunset in the deepest part of the forest and the pair of men being seduced. When they woke up they found themselves at the start of the path again, confused about how they got there, but each with a fresh wound across their chest—claw marks from some beast that had attacked them, yet hadn’t killed them.

“They didn’t speak about their experience ever again, and stayed away from the forest for some time. But nearly a year later, one of the brothers awoke from a dream that called him back to the forest. He ran to the start of the path and found that a giant tree had sprouted up from the center of the boulder that marked the start of the trail. Within the crook of the branches was a baby with curly dark hair and big, brown eyes. The next week, the other brother had a similar dream, but instead found two infants cradled in the branches of the tree. A boy and a girl with the same black thatches of baby-soft hair and big brown eyes.”

She trailed off, her heart pounding more from the certainty of the truth of that tale than from her exertion. Her father and uncle did, indeed, carry scars that could have been caused by such an animal attack, though Emma didn’t believe they’d been attacked at all, and the tree growing up through the boulder didn’t exist

Something was wrong. She’d been so wrapped up in speaking, she was just now realizing how eerily silent the rest of the woods were, aside from the sounds of her own footsteps. They were nearly at the end of the trek, and the sky was beginning to lighten. She stopped, holding her breath as she turned.

“Jasper . . . Jade?”

But they were nowhere to be seen, and only one set of tracks stretched back the trail behind her for as far as she could see.

Chapter Three

E
mma shook her head, trying to clear her head of the haze her story had left behind. Where the hell were her cousins? She wanted to backtrack to find them, but she had no time. The growing light signaled sunrise. If she didn’t reach the end before the sun broke the horizon, the entire night of hiking would have been a waste.

It probably won’t even work
. She cursed herself for trying. Cursed Erika Rosencrans for planting the seed to start with.

“Fuck, Emma,” she chastised. “You wanted this before she came along, and you know it.”

She set her feet back on the path and moved forward at a quicker pace. In the stark, cold darkness she had walked like she had blinders on, and she had lost her cousins somewhere in the last few hours. She hoped that they’d gotten too tired to go forward and had turned back, but a sinking sensation in her belly told her that was unlikely. Once Jasper latched onto an idea, he didn’t let go, especially where being the protective older-brother-type was concerned. And wherever Jasper went, Jade followed, no matter how distasteful the younger woman found the activity in question.

Now that the light was rising, Emma kept seeing shadows out of the corners of her eyes. Shadows shaped like her father, or Jasper and Jade, or her uncle Ted. Sometimes there was a female shape striding alongside her, but the second Emma turned to look, the shadow disappeared.

When the bear showed up she ignored it, certain it was just another trick of the light or her weary mind. Then a second bear appeared on her other side, both keeping pace with her.

“I know you’re not real. No offense, but I’m not going to even look at you. When I get to the end of the path, I’m finding my cousins and going home. When I get there, I’m going to take the longest, hottest bath of my life, and then gorge myself on pizza and
Friends
reruns for a week. Then spend the rest of my life studying the significance of gnats in ancient culture.”

One of the bears snorted, the sound way too real for Emma to deny.

“Bless you,” she said.

“Thank you,” the bear replied.

Okay, now she was just hallucinating. It had been a long night. Her feet ached from the cold and hours of walking, her lower back twinged from the weight of her pack, and her stomach growled. Emma blinked, trying to coax more moisture back in, but the cold air stole it away.

Only a little longer and she’d reach the end. Then she could turn back and find her cousins. They knew the path as well as she did, so if they’d stopped to rest somewhere, they’d catch up soon. Fortunately, only one of them actually needed to complete the circuit.

“Pizza, a bath, and TV,” she said. “Maybe even a hot man to rub my feet. I wonder if Erika’s offer still stands? I could have the Adonis twins at my beck and call. Ooh, or Corey. He’s more my type—big, stoic, and a little rough around the edges. I never did care for blonds, anyway.”

She rambled on, trying to distract herself from her discomfort. Nearly fourteen hours on her feet, and she was ready to collapse. The trees wavered around her, seeming to shift between lush green and dead, leafless gray. The sky shimmered above her between deep blue and overcast white, threatening snow.

Emma stared up at the canopy of stark branches. Her ears pulsed with odd sounds. At one moment, she heard a cacophony of summer noises, tree frogs and burbling streams—wind rustling through leaves. Then a moment later, there was the cold silence of winter, broken only by an eerie wind making the barren tree branches clatter together like bones.

Heat flushed Emma’s body and the world spun around her. She stared down at the ground for a second, trying to catch her bearings, but the warmth seeping into her only increased, drying her mouth and making her armpits prickle. She scrabbled at her hip for her water bottle and guzzled it, then shucked her pack off her back.

The lessening of her burden helped, but not enough to cool her down. How had the temperature risen so much in the last few moments?

She stripped out of her down parka and the several layers beneath without thinking, needing to feel cool air on her body. The crisp breeze let her breathe again when it hit her bare skin. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of the hot fog that filled it. This felt good, being naked in the woods. And somehow, she instinctively knew she had to be naked when she passed through the portal.

The path before her was clear now. No snow or leaves obscured it. Even in the dim, early morning light she could make it out clearly. Flowers lined the path now, though. Daffodils.

“The fuck?” Emma blurted. She bent down and touched one. The soft yellow membrane of the flower gave under her fingertip. When she stood again, the entire path was bordered by spring flowers and a pleasant breeze tickled across her skin.

She took a few more steps, blinking gritty eyes and nearly stumbling under the weight of exhaustion. Only a little farther. With each step, the path grew greener, the aroma of blooming flowers stronger. Bees buzzed around her head and butterflies flitted between the bright blooms. One delicate, blue-winged beauty landed on her fingertip and Emma stared in awe.

Rounding a stand of laurels that obscured the path, she saw the end. The boulder that marked the start of the path cast a shadow to the west, but a much larger shadow sprouted out of it. Today, there was a giant tree, fully leafed as though in the height of summer, growing out of the rock.

“You have got to be kidding me.” Emma charged to the stone and placed her hands on the trunk of the tree—the tree that had only ever been there in stories, and definitely hadn’t been there when she’d started this hike.

When her palms met the rough bark, searing light blasted over her, consuming her in a torrent of flame. She cried out, pulling away and stumbling backwards. She fell to the ground, the air forced from her lungs.

The two bears that had been shadowing her for the last few hours drew close. Emma gasped, trying to regain her breath. Weakly, she pushed herself back, retreating from the huge, dark forms that closed in on her. Slowly, each one rose up on its hind legs, their bodies glowing and changing before her eyes.

Just before Emma’s vision went dark, she was sure there were two beautiful, naked men standing on either side of her.

* * *

“She’s here. Fuck, it took her long enough.”

“Leave her alone.”

“She’s so soft. I just want to bury myself in her and stay there.”

“Let her wake up first.”

The words filtered in while Emma regained consciousness. Two different, unfamiliar male voices continued bickering above her.

She didn’t really want to wake up, though. She really just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but she had shit to deal with, and something unbelievably hard and pointy was digging into her hipbone.

“Where are my cousins,” she said through clenched teeth. She had no idea who these men were, but they had to have answers. She still had to work up to actually opening her eyes, though.

Silence.

“Should we tell her?” The deep voice sounded a little bit like he was joking. It was a very sexy voice, at least.

“Tell her what? That we have no idea where her cousins are? They shouldn’t even be here.”

Emma cracked one eyelid, then winced at the pain of bright sunlight piercing through to the center of her head.

“They’re not here, Princess. We don’t know where they are, but we’ll look for them as soon as you’ve recovered. I’m sure they’re fine.” A large, warm hand rested against her bare shoulder and squeezed.

Emma ventured another peek through heavy eyelids and was greeted by a pair of moss-green eyes peering out from under a mop of brown hair. Kind eyes, she thought, framed by a pair of eyebrows drawn together.

“How do you know?” she asked.

Green-Eyes glanced past her and she turned her head to see another bare-chested man kneeling by her on the opposite side. This one had deep brown eyes and straight black hair, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Even if they were meant to pass through, the way only allows one person through at a time. There were three of you, so the others were each sent through their own portals to one of the other clans, once the barrier accepted them as worthy. Can’t be too careful.”

Emma’s mind spun as she tried to process what he’d told her. She shifted and winced as the stone she lay on dug harder into her flesh. She rolled to the side and reached beneath her, extracted the offending object, and flung it away.

“Where am I now?”

“In the Sanctuary, Princess,” Green-Eyes said.

She sat up, scrubbing her hands over her face, then raked her fingers through her tangled hair. A warm breeze blew through, tickling across her skin, the sensation way too pleasant and intimate. She shivered, glancing down her body and realizing she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Her stomach lurched, her entire body growing intensely warm at the realization she was buck naked. She immediately clutched her knees to her chest and looked wildly around.

“Where the fuck are my clothes?”

Brown-Eyes chuckled. “You left quite the trail of breadcrumbs. It was fun watching the striptease you gave us on the way in.” He let out a pleased sigh. “Gorgeous, really.”

Emma stared at him, shocked at the appraising look he gave her and uncertain whether she should be offended or flattered. At least until she gave him a once-over and realized he was just as
au naturel
as she was. She raised an eyebrow, then turned to look at her other new companion. Yep. Green-Eyes was as bare as a newborn. He was also definitely all hard-bodied man and not the least bit shy about it.

Seeing his naked body made her forget about her own. How in the world could a man so perfect actually exist? So perfectly messy, really. His brown hair was short, but a little shaggy, sticking out in all directions like he’d worried it over and over. He was well-muscled without being bulky, with a long, lean torso, his chest covered in a luxuriant layer of hair. Just enough to make her want to run her fingers down his chest and stomach, but not so thick that she’d think of him as actually furry. The hair tapered past his navel, the natural growth a kind of arrow pointing southward, and her eyes followed.

A throat cleared, but Emma found it difficult to tear her eyes away from the slumbering beast that was nestled between the man’s legs. Jesus, he wasn’t even hard and he was
that
big?

“See something you like, Princess?”

Um, everything?

Emma shook her head and met Green-Eyes’ amused gaze, struggling to regain her bearings. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and forced herself to think. If the crazy shift in season and these two amazing, naked men were any indication, she’d apparently succeeded with her hike, just as she believed she would. She’d made it past the point of disbelief and skepticism about how accurate her theories were. More than that, she’d made it past the questions about what her life really meant. Every story her father and uncle had told her and her cousins as children had been true. Her journey was over.

Except what the hell did she do now?

She clenched her eyes tighter, digging her fingernails into her legs trying to decide. The anthropologist part of her wanted to be analytical and ask them questions, delve into their customs and history. Learn everything there was to know and then go write about it.

But something deeper screamed that this was her heritage. The stories she’d heard growing up were so much more than bedtime stories about bears living in the woods behind their house. And if it was her
life,
could it also be her life’s work? Could she share it with the world the way Erika had shared her own father’s theories about dragons? What would Erika do once she found what she was looking for? Would she embrace her legacy, or put it on display for the world to see? Emma dug her nails deeper into the flesh of her legs, uncertain what she should do.

A pair of hands grabbed hers and encompassed them, peeling them away from her legs. Another pair descended on her shoulders, large thumbs digging into her muscles, massaging hard enough to elicit a groan from her.

“You can open your eyes, Princess, we’re not going to hurt you,” the man with the expert fingers on her shoulders said.

“I can’t,” Emma said. “You’re naked.”

“You’re naked, too,” the man in front said.

“Yeah, but you can actually get away with it. Nobody, and I mean
nobody,
would get tired of looking at you naked.” Emma’s eyes fluttered open long enough to get a nice eyeful of taut stomach and sculpted abs before she clenched them shut again. Was she dreaming? She had to have fallen and knocked herself out. She was probably dying of hypothermia and not actually embarrassment.

“So, why are your eyes closed? Did you get tired of looking at us?”

Fuck
. She opened her eyes. It was Green-Eyes in front of her, holding her hands.

“I . . . ” She hesitated, extracting her hands from his. “You’re strangers and fantastically hot, and . . . um . . . better
armed
than I am . . . ” She hazarded a swift glance between his legs again and rose an eyebrow to emphasize what she meant.

“You’re not as big a stranger to us as you think, and you are fantastically hot, too, if I may say so. Your arsenal is just as amply alluring as ours, I think.” He cast an appreciative look down her body, even though she still had her knees to her chest, ankles crossed. No way in hell they’d see more than she wanted them to. They could already see way too much.

As if agreeing with him, the thick column of flesh lying in a nest of dark curls between his thighs actually twitched, then flushed darker and grew an inch.

Holy fuck, was he getting a hard-on right in front of her?
Because
of her?

“Oh, God.” Emma tilted her head back and stared up at the pale blue sky above, at the canopy of trees and blue sky beyond, anywhere but right in front of her.

Focus, Emma!

Except focus was becoming even more of a challenge, what with the pair of hands so expertly massaging her shoulders and now moving down her back. When the hands reached her low back, they seemed fully intent on moving even lower. She couldn’t take it.