Gray Back Broken Bear (Gray Back Bears Book 4) (7 page)

“What’s wrong?”

“You just…” Ana looked stunned as she gave a slow-motion blink and shook her head. “You just grew up right.”

“You make no sense.”

But as her palms drifted over his collar bones, down the curve of his pecs and over the ridges of his abs, he understood. She liked the way he looked. Her fingers shook as she unhooked the button of his jeans. Easton grabbed her hand to steady the tremble there. “Are you nervous?”

“A little. You?”

He should be, but he wasn’t. He’d never been surer of anything before. “No.”

She swallowed audibly and unzipped his pants. Then with her fingers inside his briefs, she pushed the remainder of his clothes down his hips. His dick hit air but wasn’t lonely for long. Ana pulled a gentle stroke with her warm hand that conjured a satisfied feral noise from his throat. Arms locked on either side of her head, he rolled his hips with her next pull. Shit he was too sensitive to her. Another minute of this, and he’d cream her shirt. Shirt, shirt, shirt—why was she still wearing a shirt? Straddling her, he pulled her top over her head and marveled at the black lace contraption that was pushing her perky boobs up to her collar bones. Floored, he ripped into her jeans and pulled them down to expose the matching see-through panties.

“Did you wear these for me?”

Ana smiled shyly and nodded. Holy fuck, she was gorgeous. Black lace and blushing cheeks. He could see between her legs. Tiny peeks through the lace. She’d shaved there too. He needed inside of her. Now.

With a growl, he pulled her panties down and flung them to the floor, then pulled off the tit holder she’d just unsnapped. Oooh, her nipples were perfect. Pink like her cheeks and all drawn up against the cold. He should warm them with his mouth. Leaning forward, he drew one in and sucked on it. When she responded with a helpless sound, he ran the flat of his tongue over it and cupped his hand over her sex. Her body moved against him like water. Every touch ushered a reaction. His dick was so hard right now. Too thick. Looking at Ana, this couldn’t work. She was tiny, fine boned like a bird. He would hurt her.

But when he brushed her folds with his middle finger, she was soaking wet. Damn, he wanted to taste her there. Wanted to taste? Was that normal?
Don’t scare her.

Ana reached down and pressed his hand against her harder as she writhed against his touch. “In,” she pleaded.

In? A little more pressure, and his finger slid into her by inches. Ana threw back her head as her eyes rolled closed. Oh fuck, that hole wasn’t only for dicks. His finger felt good to her, too. He eased inside of her up to his knuckle, but that wasn’t what got her going. When he bumped the spot right above her entrance, Ana cried out and clutched the comforter. Her knees spread wider, as if she was inviting him in again.

That was the spot she liked. That was the spot he needed to work. So he did.

“Stop, stop, stop,” she whispered. “I’m going to come.”

Easton slid out of her immediately. Wasn’t coming what she wanted?

“I want to come with you.”

Oh. Easton kissed her hard as he lay down on top of her. Ana’s breasts were soft against his hard chest—more opposites. He positioned the head of his cock at her slick entrance and teased. Ana begged by rolling her hips until she took him an inch, then again. How could anything feel this good?

“Please,” she pleaded. “I want you inside of me.”

Gritting his teeth against the intense pleasure, Easton slid into her tight entrance until she’d taken all of him. He eased out slowly as she clutched onto his back with her claws. Scratching little mate.
Mate, mate, mate.
Easton pumped his hips hard once, then eased out again, savoring her body. Ana begged him to go faster, but he wouldn’t. He wasn’t after a thirty second fuck-fest with her. He wanted to take care of her before he shot his load.

He kissed her to quiet her pleading, brushed his tongue against hers over and over until she gripped the back of his hair and pulled him even closer. Hard in, easy out. Hard in, easy out.

“Easton, please!” Ana cried, arching her neck back.

“Fuck,” he growled out, bucking into her faster.

Over and over he slammed into her as the pressure built in his dick. Ana ran her claws down his back and screamed out his name as her body pulsed around him, milking him.

His mind was going, filling with the snarling, possessive monster inside of him.
No, no, no, hold on!
Growling out a wild sound, he lost his mind and drove into her one last time. Heat flooded out of him in throbbing spurts.

My mate. Mine.

He wanted to keep his Ana for always.

And as he bucked erratically into her, emptying himself completely, he did the unforgivable.

He sank his teeth deep into her shoulder.

Aviana cried out at the mixture of pleasure and poignant pain that shot jolts of electricity firing down the nerves of her shoulder and arm. She gasped as Easton clamped his teeth down harder. He went rigid above her and released her torn skin, then flinched away from her. In a blur, he was in the shadows against the wall, light reflecting oddly in his eyes.

The scent of iron filled the air, and warmth ran rivers down her shoulder and onto the sheets. She clutched her shoulder as tears of agony ran down the corners of her eyes. Why had he done that?

“Easton, you hurt me,” she murmured in a broken voice. “Why?”

“Ana, Ana, I’m sorry. Fuck.” He jumped up on the bed, legs on either side of hers as he held out his hands to calm her. His eyes glowed in the light that filtered in from the bathroom. He really was an animal. Wild and violent, and not even her affection could slow his destruction.

“I love you Easton, and you hurt me!” Anger blasted through her. Betrayal lashed against her heart.

“Don’t say that, Ana! You don’t love me. Can’t love me. You don’t know me.” Easton dragged his horrified gaze across her hand that had gone slick with blood. It wasn’t stopping. Putting pressure on it wasn’t working. “Ana, Ana, listen. You’re going to Turn. I put a bear inside of you. I’m sorry, Ana!” He fell to his knees, straddling her hips. “I’m so sorry. My bear— No! I did it. It’s my responsibility. I have to get you help. Creed will know what to do. I messed everything up. I’m so sorry.”

Aviana searched Easton’s eyes. This made no sense. Why had he bitten her? To Turn her? Creed had forbidden it. “What will Creed do if he finds out?”

“Any minute now, any minute now. Your first Change shouldn’t be with the monster who broke you.” Easton lifted her in his arms like she weighed nothing at all and strode through the house. He yanked open the front door as she clutched her shoulder, but he hadn’t answered her question.

“Easton! What will Creed do?”

“Kill me, as I deserve.”

“Oh, Easton, what have you done?”

Creed wouldn’t find a bear in her, though. There wasn’t room for one. A raven had claimed her since birth. Easton didn’t know it, but he never had a chance of Turning her into a bear. “Stop,” she whispered as he blasted past the woodpile. “Easton, stop. I have to tell you something.”

Confusion and regret marred his features as he set her down. His eyes were bright and resigned, and his body had gone rigid. He wasn’t going to hide her injury. He was marching to his death to find her help. She couldn’t let him do that.

“You didn’t Turn me,” she murmured, searching for the right words that would fix this. “I told you to be yourself with me, and you were. I was surprised, but it’s okay. The bite is okay. We both got lost in the moment.”

“What do you mean I didn’t Turn you?” Easton’s eyes drifted to her arm, the opposite one he’d bitten, and back to her face. He canted his head and frowned, then looked at her arm again. The healing slice under her arm was what was drawing his attention. He took a step back and angled his face away from her, eyes never straying from hers. “What’s on your arm, Ana?”

“A cut.”

“From what?” Easton’s voice came out a low rumbling growl, more animal than human.

She exhaled slowly, shakily, then whispered, “Someone threw a knife at me.”

“Who?”

She closed her eyes, and twin tears escaped down her cheeks.

“Who, Ana?” he yelled, frightening the birds roosting in the trees around them into the air and making her jump.

“You.”

Easton paced, hands linked behind his head as he shook it. “Show me.”

“Show you what?”

“Show me my raven! Show me what betrayal looks like. Feathers, feathers, show me your feathers. I suffered out there alone! All those years. Years and years. Show me the bird who watched me break and then
left me
.” Agony filled Easton’s eyes as he leaned against the woodpile and slammed his head back. “Please, Ana. Do it fast.”

Aviana’s shoulders shook with sobs of agony. She hadn’t known he saw her that way. She’d tried to help, not hurt him worse. Closing her eyes, she let the raven have her body. The Change was instant, and she beat her powerful wings against the pain in her shoulder. Harder she pressed against the air currents until she sat on the lowest branch of the closest pine, staring at the man who owned her heart. At the man who was looking at her with such heartbreak in his eyes. Chin at his chest, he whispered, “You can’t love me, raven. You don’t know how.” Easton stepped forward and yelled. His yell turned to a roar that shook the trees, and a giant, silver grizzly burst from his skin.

He could’ve reached her from here, as big as he was. He could’ve charged and ripped her from the branch, but Easton did something much worse instead. He lifted those glowing green eyes to her and exposed his crippling sadness. Her heart burned, as if he had reached into her chest cavity and yanked it out between her ribs.

He turned his back on her and walked away through the trees, moonlight shining off his gray back.

And just like that, Easton—her Easton—was gone.

Easton buttoned the fly of the too big jeans he’d snatched from a laundry line of a cabin fifteen miles back. He didn’t mind nudity, but here, it was different. Here, a layer of protection felt necessary.

With a steadying breath, he scanned the clearing where he’d grown up. It had taken him all night and part of the day to travel here as a bear, and now the sun sat high in the morning sky, casting the rubble of his childhood home in light.

The yard was overgrown, and young saplings had sprung up here and there. The wild grass had recovered from the winter and already came up to his thighs. He ran his hands over the top of the waving grass as he approached the charred rubble of the house he’d grown up in. The faint scent of smoke still clung to the burned lumber after all these years. Only the porch stairs remained intact, and moss and vibrant green overgrowth had blanketed all but the seared ends of the wood. This had been where he had burned Mom and all of her belongings, just like she’d asked.

Easton’s lip twitched at the residual anger he had for her. She hadn’t even tried. He couldn’t begin to imagine where her head had been when she’d gone into labor. It hadn’t been on him or the baby. Maybe she had gone mad with grief, or maybe she had already accepted her fate from that dream she kept raging about as her fever spiked. It had taken her two days to die, and all the while, Easton had done everything an eight-year-old boy could to save her and the baby.

He’d seen awful things in this house.

Easton slammed the door and pressed his frail shoulder blades against it, then slid down the splintered length of it, sobbing. The baby had stopped moving yesterday, and now Mom was gone, too. It wasn’t fair.

He screamed his rage into the abyss as something shifted inside of him. Fear, anger, loss…loneliness. There would be no more room for happiness. The world was ugly, and now it would swallow him up. No matter. His insides were ugly now, too.

“Shit,” Easton rasped out, sinking down onto the creaking porch stair.

Everything had gotten so messed up here. His entire life had been shaped in the three-day window when he’d lost his family.

He’d dragged the supplies they’d gathered for winter from the house into the shed. Even at eight, he’d known it was an awful idea to burn his shelter, but it was that or go back into that room with Mom’s body. No, Dad had gotten a funeral pyre in the clearing. Mom got the cabin.

The raven brought him two more black ribbons. One for Mom and one for the baby. He’d knotted those together and kept them in his pocket to stop his weak tears when the hurt welled up too deeply. He’d set out on his own, headed due north the next day to find help, only to get lost and turned around, and to come back three days later dehydrated, hungry, and feeling even more empty than he had before. That first winter he’d lived in Dad’s workshop. Easton had rationed the supplies they’d gathered and insulated the outside of the shed with spruce limbs and mud shoved in the cracks, but it was still so bone-deep cold he’d almost died of it. He came out of that first season emaciated and heartbroken. And the raven was waiting. Always waiting on the bottom branches of a lodgepole pine. He couldn’t control his shifts very well anymore. Sometime in those lonely months, his bear had decided he was better off without those pesky human emotions, and he’d begun to take over. Easton hadn’t minded so much back then. He wouldn’t have survived without his animal instincts driving him to carve a life out of that harsh wilderness. He hadn’t known it at the time, but giving his bear that much power cost him his soul.

The raven had saved his sanity when he was a cub trying to figure out how to fend for himself, but just barely.

Every year got harder, and that young crow had been there, always watching, leaving him trinkets to find right when he needed a pick-me-up, as if she could see him wearing down. He should’ve known she was more than what she seemed, but she’d been there as long as he could remember, and to him, she was an intelligent animal who had become his friend. She’d ridden his hump when he’d gotten older and his muscle mass had started coming in. She’d sat on top of him, tiny talons clutching his fur as she rocked back and forth with his lumbering gate—content to just be. When he’d caught his first fish in the stream near the clearing, he’d tossed her a scrap because that’s what friends did. They shared.

Easton stood and sauntered over to the shed his Dad had built. It was still standing but was leaning dangerously to the side. The weather had gotten to it and rotted most of the wood. Inside, old rusted blades and tools were scattered about. Small animals had made several burrows inside, probably in the wintertime to keep from freezing. On the back wall, on an old, rust-colored nail, still hung the snares he’d made.

The raven had brought him one that first spring after his family had passed. He was starving and wasn’t hunting with any success, and the vegetable garden, the first he’d planted by himself, hadn’t been producing much. He’d built a treehouse in the canopy of three ancient pines just across the yard, but now only a few rotted boards clung to the branches of his old den. He’d taken to sleeping up in the treehouse back then instead of the drafty shed, and it was on the uneven porch of his treetop home that the raven had dropped a loop of wire. A rabbit snare.

He hadn’t caught a damned thing in it for the next three weeks, but little by little, he taught himself how to read signs for rabbits. Burrows, fur, scat, smell. He’d taught himself where to hang the loops around the burrow exits so that he could find success. And one day, he did. One dead rabbit that said he would survive another few days.

And the raven had been watching with something akin to pride in her eyes.

After that, he’d used that first snare as a template for making nine more. And by the second spring, setting and checking snares became part of his daily routine.

Late in the second year, the raven had dropped off two shiny fishing lures that glinted in the sun. She liked shiny things best. Meat became his main source of food in those early years since gardening didn’t come naturally to him. He had struggled to figure out how to get seeds for the next year, and his plants often got yellow patches on the leaves and wouldn’t produce. Eventually, he’d figured that out, too.

And his raven sat in her tree, always watching.

By his eleventh birthday, however, not even the raven’s presence could keep the loneliness at bay. Wild bears were solitary creatures, but Bear shifters were social by nature, and he had no one. He didn’t speak and eventually lost the use of his words until he’d met Creed. Now he had to work constantly at communicating with other people because back then, for so many years, his world had been void of human interactions. Cicadas, crickets, injured rabbits, bullfrogs, howling coyotes…these were thing things that filled up his head. Not the laughter from when Mom and Dad had been alive. Not conversations about how his day had gone or lullabies to help him sleep at night. His human world had dimmed and quieted until there was no need for it anymore. He had no one around to teach him about growing up or how to act around other people. There was no verbal compass for right and wrong, only instinct. And a bear’s instincts weren’t driven by good and evil. They were driven by want and need.

Why the fuck hadn’t she told him then? How many times had he been curled in on himself with hunger? How many times had he been driven to the edge of madness with desperation to hear someone talk to him? To say his name, or tell him everything was going to be okay? How many times had he been bone-deep cold in those snowy winter months and been sure that day would be his last?

Yet, she’d never revealed her human side to him. Aviana had watched and brought him tiny treasures, but she hadn’t given him what he really desired—companionship.

And now she was back after all these years, and for what? To reveal herself now after all the damage had been done. After he’d lost his mind, lost control of his bear, and was worthless as a functioning member of society? His thoughts had become clearer and clearer around her. His bear had quieted, and for a minute, he’d felt normal. Like maybe Creed wasn’t going to have to put him down. And it had been such a huge relief to feel safe for that instant, because every morning Easton woke up thinking today was going to be his last on this earth. Living in fear for his life like that for too long had ruined him from the inside out.

She could’ve ended his suffering years ago by Changing and talking to him. By looking at him like she had last night through those big blue eyes, as if he was worth something.

Instead, when he’d needed a friend the most, she’d flown away and left him altogether.

And after she’d gone, out in these woods all alone, Easton’s bear had killed the last good parts of him.