I Married a Bear (8 page)

“Shit. Can't believe the old timers were right. Looks like he really does hibernate...”

Laura smiled. I watched as she stepped past me and crouched down near the bear, speaking softly into his frayed ears. Years of frostbite out here in the harsh Alaskan winters had taken their toll on his body.

“Wakey-wakey. We've come a long way to find out the truth...”

Her soft, feminine voice must've hit a bell inside the old man's head. The furry lump beneath her suddenly jerked awake, towering up to the ceiling on two legs, one of them slightly crooked and deformed.

Sparks let out a deafening roar. I threw myself in front of Laura, reaching into the bag for the salmon.

Gods, I hoped he hadn't gone senile and let his bear take complete control over his human side. It rarely ever happened to old bears, but it was possible.

“Shaman! Forget about her. Do you recognize me?” I stepped up to the old bear's drooling snout and held out the fish.

He lowered his face, growling and sniffing my hand. A couple long seconds passed.

The bear shrank slowly, transforming into a withered old man with a bad leg. Spark snatched the salmon packet from my hand with surprising strength, swept low to the ground, and threw his furry blanket on. He crouched on the floor, ripping through the plastic and feeding big fistfuls of pink meat to his lips.

“Is he okay?” Laura asked, an oddly amused smile on her face.

“Dunno yet. It's been a good two seasons since anyone from the clan came out here...he's not getting any younger.”

That was the fucking truth. He looked like a man and ate like bear. If Laura wanted the brutish, bad mannered bear all tigers expected, then she'd found him in this beast.

Spark looked up, smacking his lips. His brow creased angrily and he stood after swallowing the last big bite.

“Careful, boy!” he thundered. “I was sending real grizzlies to the gods when you were in diapers.

Why've you stolen my sleep?”

“We've come to seek your advice, Shaman. Need to know what the gods are telling you about my mate.” The last word sent frustration, love, and fear rippling through my blood at once. “There's plenty more where that salmon dripping down your chest came from...”

I unzipped the bag, pulled out the packets, and began throwing them up in a stack one by one. Spark watched with greedy eyes.

No, the old man wasn't totally crazy. He knew how to command a steep price. Everybody who came out here for his wisdom said the offerings had only increased over the years. Several travelers who showed up with anything less than thirty pounds of fine meat were turned away with nothing.

He started to shake. I reached out to steady him, but he bent to the little nest, and picked up an old cane with a large silver orb at the top.

My ears rang with the sound of him tapping it loudly on the ground.

“Your offering is sufficient. Ask your question.” Spark stared at Laura, his pale gray eyes holding a little of bears and men simultaneously.

“Should I?” Laura looked at me, worry lining her face.

“Do it. Our Shaman's a lot of things, but he isn't a judgmental bastard like all the others. He'll give you an honest answer. That's what we're here for.”

Laura swallowed something hard in her throat. “I...I'd like to know what the future has in store for James and I. What's our destiny? Can you see?”

Spark rapped his cane hard against the old floor. He closed his eyes tightly, his skinny arms trembling as the heavens reached into him. Denali people said he gave part of his soul each time he communed with otherworldly forces.

“I see sin! A sick, unnatural sin!” Spark spat the words loudly.

Laura smoothed one hand over her pretty face and clutched my arm. “I thought you said he wouldn't judge?” she whispered.

“No!” Old Spark cut me off before I could answer. “Tigers...bears...skinwalkers...they're all the same.

All children of the gods, brothers and sisters with men. You want to know your fate – your blasphemy?”

He opened his eyes and looked at us. They were paler than ever, glowing with a strange energy brighter than an angry bear's.

“We're ready,” I said, giving him a nod.

My muscles tensed up something fierce. So did the hold my little tiger had me on. It was easy to laugh and dismiss the Shaman as a senile nut back in the village, but here, in front of him while he was working his magic...this was some serious shit.

“Your love confounds the heavens. It's unwritten! White as the frost and snow!” he bellowed.

“Destiny is never a certain thing, and neither are fated mates. Your destiny is infinite, blinding to our creators and to me. The Gods are fickle, fickle, fickle...”

Laura gasped. The Shaman's nearly white eyes rolled up into his head.

His shaking stopped. I watched as his wrinkled face rolled on his chest. His cane tapped loudly on the floor and then he was falling backward.

I barely rushed forward in time to catch him before he went crashing to the floor. The old man was hot, clammy, like he had a bad fever.

Laura helped me steady him on the mattress where we'd found him. She brushed his head while I covered him with the big furry blanket he'd used as a cloak.

“He's burning up, James!” she said, drawing away her hand. “Gods...what if he's completely delirious and it isn't a message from the heavens?”

“Don't test me, tigress!” Sparks jerked beneath her, his eyes flipping open. “You have the truth, and you'll see it in time. You two should go.”

I crossed my arms. “I can't leave you like this when you're deathly sick, Shaman.”

The old man bolted up, throwing off his covers. Laura jumped. He clutched at my leg, looking up with hard, wild eyes.

“Touch me again, and pass me more salmon, boy.”

What the fuck?

Slowly, I reached out, if only to humor him. I was already wondering how we'd haul his scrawny ass to Denali for help, or else bring the village doctor here for treatment. Doctor Reed hated crawling out into the boonies.

His forehead was weirdly cool. I gestured to Laura, and she touched him again, pursing her lips.

“Strange. Could've sworn he was on fire a second ago...”

“I control myself, as much as the heavens allow, girl. The same burden both of you carry. Now, the salmon!” He looked at me and licked his lips.

The tremors and blazing heat on his flesh were gone. I reluctantly passed a packet of pink meat into his hands. He ripped it open with the same gusto as before, shoveling the meat into his face.

We stood around for another half hour, watching him eat, wondering where it all went. I also wanted to make damned sure he wasn't about to vomit it all up again.

“Go, boy. You're Denali's Alpha. Not mine. I've given you your answer.”

Had he? What he'd given us needed a damned interpreter. Except the interpreter was supposed to be him, and if he was getting a dead tone from the heavens, then Laura and I really were up against stiff odds.

I suppressed a low growl. Technically, he was right about this place falling outside my jurisdiction too. Seeing as there was no obvious danger, I took my girl by the arm and led her away.

At least we had just enough time to get back to my cabin before sundown. When I reached the edge of the path where everything became wilderness again, I shifted, and waited for her to do the same. The journey would be much easier in our animal forms.

My bear prickled and growled just a few steps into the forest. The flood's smell was still thick, but I sensed Hannah's scent too, angry and fearful after our last encounter.

Too fucking bad,
I thought.
This trip was useless. If what Spark said was true, we're gonna make our
own destiny, tigers and bears be damned.

I'm loyal to my clan, but just as loyal to this curvy, captivating tigress.

As if to underscore the point, Laura brushed against me, her orange tail flicking from side to side.

Even in her tiger form, I saw the love in her eyes.

We crossed the last of the flooded woodlands by dark.

I saw the black shadows creeping around us when the sun was nearly down. They moved like

wolves, and that's what I thought they were at first.

But wolves would never attack a bear and a tiger. Certainly not when we were together, emitting the mixed scents of humans and predators these animals feared.

Growling, I tried to get Laura to stop so I could circle around to the side and scare away whatever the hell was closing in on us. If anything threatened her, I'd stomp it with a thousand pounds of grizzly fury.

My bear was fucking hungry for a fight.

He'd been on edge all day after the weird meeting with the Shaman. The consultation hadn't done much to reassure her, and that pissed us both off.

The bear fully took over, bowing up to protect his mate, throwing my human sense behind the mental curtain.

The first dark shape lunged. It plowed right into me, obviously aiming for Laura instead.

My roar echoed through the whole forest. I threw my paws on the beast and bit down hard, hearing an unmistakable growl from the animal when my teeth sank near its spine.

A raspy, fierce, and all too familiar roar.

Tigers!

Now, it was Laura's turn to roar. I heard her shrill scream behind me, alarmed at the intrusion of her own kind.

Two more big cats closed on her. My bear went completely ballistic, and I flattened them with another roar before my claws landed on their backs.

There were at least four, maybe five, and they started to fight back. I knocked one to the ground with a strong headbutt, only to feel another tiger sink his claws into my side.

Kicking with my back leg, I caught his face and walloped it as hard as I could. The big cat went flying.

Laura joined in, snarling and sinking her teeth into a tiger's tail. The male howled with fury and pain.

Two more tigers scampered out behind me, but they didn't pounce like I expected, fleeing into the woods instead.

I looked up, ready to give chase. My heart sank when I saw more dark shapes closing in, this time shadows moving on two legs.

At least half a dozen men – tigers who hadn't shifted by their smell – threw something high into the air. It landed on Laura near perfectly and tightened around her. She shrieked and clawed, and so did I, snorting pure rage when I realized it was a net.

She thrashed wildly in it, trying to cut her way out. The rope was too strong. More tigers lunged at me, snapping their jaws. I swiped them away with my claws.

Barely had time to step on the very edge of the net. The bastards in the woods were pulling on it, reeling her in like a fish.

Fuck no, you don't!

I sat on the net's edge, throwing my bulk on it. There was a sound like thick rubber coming apart, and Laura's sleek orange and black body blurred by a second later.

She was free. And now it was time to make the fucks who'd tried to drag her away like a fresh salmon pay.

James the thoughtful, civilized leader went to sleep. James the twelve hundred pound grizzly bear went crashing into the woods like a train, pursuing the men and big cats running for their lives.

I caught the edge of a man's camouflaged leg and sank my teeth in deep. He screamed, slamming the butt of a rifle on my head.

Kill him? No.

Much as I had the urge to, these assholes were equipped with guns and they hadn't used them on either me or Laura. This wasn't a seek and destroy mission by Tiger Bay. This was an attempt to repo my bride.

More men circled me, slamming metal so hard into my skull I saw stars. But I didn't let up. I shook his lean body as his pleas turned into a tiger's yelp and he began to shift. Tiger claws and human fists raked my back.

His wounded skin turned to thick fur. I held on. The pack of humans and tigers beating on my big body were scattered a second later when something crashed next to me.

Laura.

Growling with surprise, the man ripped his injured leg from my mouth, flopping on the dirt in a strange half-shifted state. He looked at me with tiger's eyes, begging for mercy.

Laura and I spat more warning growls, slowly stepping backward into the woods. The other tigers shifted into men and stood over their injured comrade, eyeing us carefully as they moved to stop his bleeding.

Go home, cats. And don't ever think about trying something this fucking stupid on my turf again.

Everything here belongs to me, including Laura.

My bear began to calm, his craving for blood satisfied. I didn't take my eyes off the group until they faded among the dense trees, making sure Laura was right at my side.

When we were finally clear to continue our journey home, my golden eyes flashed to hers. Her tail twitched in frustration and she licked her lips, whiskers showing the same mad horror burning up my brain.

Something about this wasn't right. I thought back to the way she stood firm during the encounters with Hannah and the Shaman, even when they leveled terrible accusations about betrayal and discord in the spirit world.

I refused to believe she was going to betray me. But each time I looked at her bright tigress eyes, there was a glimmer of fear, and she always turned away, staring at the ground or off into the distance instead.

My bear whined in my head, pawing at the ground. Laura was hiding something from me, and I couldn't ignore it.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

We were man and woman again. I grabbed the fresh towels I always kept by the door and threw her one to help wipe away the dirt and debris from the woods.

She nodded, wrapping it around her nudity, still turning away from me.

Damn it, why won't you look at me?

I stepped up behind her and grabbed her shoulder. Laura spun, letting out a surprised yip that sounded more like a tiger than a human female.

“We both know the men in the woods came from Tiger Bay to take you home. What I want to know is why. There's something else going on here, isn't there, Laura?”

“They knew I was getting too close to you. Daddy's had his scouts keeping an eye on me since the wedding. Probably wanted to drag me home before I messed up everything.” She made a face like she bit her tongue, closing off her words.