Mate Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire 3) (3 page)

“I have a contract for you to sign. You can mark out the no doggy-style clause. And I put three kids—cubs—on there, but you can scratch it out and put whatever number you want to under eight.”

Something else crashed against the house so loud it made his ears ring. “I’m not your man, and we aren’t making eight cubs. Tell Harlan to back off so I can get out of here.”

Vera zipped the suitcase full of science shit and set the wheels on the floor. “Oh! I need clothes.” Suitcase abandoned by the door, Vera began to throw clothes from a dresser into an eye-scorching purple duffle bag. “Do you want to bite me now or later?”

“Bite you?” Another crash rattled the house, and Tobias scrubbed his hands over his face in sheer frustration. “Never is my answer. No biting.”

His bear snarled his disagreement, and Vera shot him a bright smile. “Your monster likes me. That’s good. I’m getting off this island, away from those murderous sons-of-bitches, and away from Harlan.”

“Harlan seems like a nice guy,” he argued.

“Are you serious? He smells like beef jerky, his teeth are the color of sunshine, and he can fart the alphabet. My kids would be weird. Look out that window, Tobias. Would you choose him as a mate?”

As soon as Tobias pushed the curtain aside, an empty bean can came flying past his head. “In all fairness, I’m biased because I’m not attracted to men.” But he could see where she was coming from. Harlan really did smell oddly like beef jerky. “Look, I’m a grizzly shifter and not meant to keep a woman. You seem nice, and you aren’t hideous. And your teeth are straight.”

“Aww! Thank you.”

“But I hibernate half the damned year, and I don’t want a mate. Not ever.”

“Oh, didn’t Link tell you? I’m hiring you as my mate.”

“Hiring me?”

“Yes, you don’t have to fall in love with me. I’d prefer you use me for my vixen body because that’s what I’m in this for, too. That and protection. I want a big shifter to bite me.”

“Vera,” he warned.

“And we won’t have to worry about you hibernating anymore.”

“Oh, yeah?” He was in crazytown, and Vera was the mayor. He should’ve known better than to come out here, and fuck Link for giving him the weirdest experience of his life. “And why is that?”

“Because I can cure you. Just in the winter months, and you can Change and roar and eat honey until your heart’s content in the summers. And diddle me because I’m serious about that being part of the contract.”

“I’m sorry…you can cure me?”

“I don’t earn enough to hire you with money, but I can barter with you. Bite me, claim me, protect me, and I’ll make sure you don’t hibernate if you don’t want to. And not only you, Tobias. Your brothers, too.”

Tobias sat heavily in a creaking chair near the door.

“Vera,” Harlan said in a whiny voice from outside, “can we talk alone?”

“Fuck off, Harlan,” Tobias and Vera both said at the same time. It would’ve been funny if he hadn’t been utterly dumbfounded over the situation. Mate this woman for a cure?

“Are you a witch then?”

Vera gave him a sad smile and knelt down in front of him, her duffle bag slung over her shoulder. “More like a mad scientist. I wasn’t born a shifter, Tobias. Someone I loved Turned me, and I’ve worked for years to learn how to fix myself. I can fix you, too.”

He narrowed his eyes and tried to guess what kind of shifter she was. Not many could Turn a person with a bite. “Fix me?” he asked, the words bitter on his tongue.

“Not like that. I need your bear as much as you do. I want to feel safe again. Living here wasn’t ever my choice, and I’ve been dealing with that shit,” she said, jerking her head toward the door where Harlan sounded like he was scratching at it, “for way too long. I need out, but Clayton won’t let me off this island unless I’m with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You and your brothers are his prized possessions. I’m unnatural and expendable.” Her voice sounded odd though, as if she was telling a half-truth, but whether she was lying about being unnatural or expendable, he couldn’t guess.

Tobias ran his hands through his hair and shook his head over and over, staring at her as he mulled over what she’d said. A cure? A real cure?

“Can you guarantee my brothers won’t go to sleep in the winter?” Because Tobias owed them both so much and, dammit, he was actually considering this contract pairing. Not for him or Link, but for Ian. For Elyse. For Jenner, the brother he’d almost killed because of what he was.

“I suppressed every animal on this island for two years.”

“They all smell like animals to me.”

“We stopped taking the meds almost a month ago when supplies stopped coming in. One of the misfits pissed Clayton off, so he punished us all by depriving us of deliveries. This island is a beast to live on without outside help. Harlan and the others decided they needed their animals to survive this place in case deliveries get patchy again. Some of us can Change already. And trust me when I say I won’t live through what’s coming. I’m the only female on the island.”

“Fuck,” Tobias gritted out. He couldn’t even imagine what the others would do to her if Harlan was already acting like this. Was he crying on the porch? Yep, and now he was chanting, “She’s mine. She’s mine,” in a deranged voice.

“Bite me, and I’ll spend the rest of my days helping you and your family. It’s a fair trade.”

“I don’t want cubs. That should be out in the open right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because of…hibernation.”

She arched her eyebrows and gave him a significant look. “I’m going to take hibernation off the table if you’ll let me. I want cubs. Doesn’t have to be this year, but I’ve always wanted a family. I didn’t have a shot of that here. Didn’t want it, but I’ve thought about this, and you should know going in it’s what I’ll want with you.”

“But you’re asking for a family with me, Vera.
Me
. You don’t even know me. I could be abusive or a shit father, and I’ll definitely be a shit mate.”

“Will you protect me if someone tries to hurt me?”

Tobias sighed and stared at her for a long time, then nodded once.

“Will you ever lift your hand to me?”

He shook his head. That one was easy. He would never hurt a woman.

“Good.” She handed him a thin stack of papers with handwriting scribbled across it. The contract was simple and straightforward. Vera would come up with the medicine to stop hibernation and, in exchange, Tobias would be her mate and protector. He did scratch out the number of cubs though and penciled in
1 eventually
in shaky scrawl. He couldn’t believe he was doing this, but the contract would be null and void if Vera failed to deliver on the cure, and as stupid as it was to build hope like Link had done, Vera wasn’t going at this hibernation problem like a witch. She was some backwoods scientist whose every word about the cure had sounded honest. She wasn’t lying about this, and for a shot at securing a solution to their hibernation problem, well…he’d do just about anything—including hiring himself out as a mate.

Sex, and no emotional strings, and he could just leave Vera somewhere safe to play with her test tubes while he ran his deliveries, so how much would he really see her? As little as he wanted. This could work.

With a sigh that tapered off in a growl, Tobias signed his name along the bottom. Vera sagged against his knee, smelling of potent relief, and now she was shaking. What a confounding woman. She’d been so confident when she spoke earlier, funny even, but she’d been hiding how nervous she’d really been.

Pity nagged at him. Harlan was cussing a string of obscenities outside, all aimed at her, and Tobias imagined she must feel desperate to escape this place. He had been here less than an hour and had been itching to leave the entire time.

“How long have you been here, Vera?” he asked softly.

She swallowed audibly and tried to smile, but it faltered off her face. “Three years.”

His chest hurt to think about a woman putting up with this for so long. To avoid his bear shredding him from the inside out, he needed action. Tobias stood and took her purple bag from her. “Do you have everything? We won’t be coming back here again.”

Vera’s face crumpled, and her pretty blue eyes rimmed with tears. What had he said wrong? He stared at her, too panicked to ask in case it made her cry harder.

She laughed thickly when she looked up at his face. “You look terrified.”

“You’re leaking.”

“I’m happy you said we won’t come back.”

“You’re crying because you’re happy?” Shit, females were confusing.

Vera sagged against him and wrapped her arms around his waist. And now she was leaking those happy tears onto his shirt as he stood frozen, arms out. Unsure of what to do, he patted her roughly on top of her head.

“Geez, Silver,” she murmured, easing back as she frowned at his chest. She poked him right by his nipple. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she looked up at him and grinned. “Come on, McBeefcake. Let’s make tracks before Harlan hits his stride.”

“His stride?”

“Usually after the crying and cursing comes the fighting.”

Tobias Silver was the sexiest man Vera had ever laid eyes on. He wasn’t just some pretty face either. He was tall as a mountain, built like a brick, and his dominance came off so heavy even her crazy inner animal got quiet around him. He growled more than he probably noticed and had a filthy sailor’s mouth, but oh, when she’d hugged him, she’d felt like everything was going to be okay for the first time in a long time.

Sure, he didn’t know the whole story yet, but he was big enough and his inner grizzly felt gnarly enough that he just might survive what was coming after her. She liked the thought of him surviving the dark parts of her life. It’s why she’d chosen him. Sure, she had drawn up the mate-fur-hire contract sight unseen because it hadn’t really mattered if he was a crater-faced, dirty-diaper-scented ogre or not. She needed him for that apex predator that lived inside of him. This was about survival—or at least it had been until she’d seen him. He was strong, level-headed, and compared to the crying maniac clawing at her door, he was deliciously normal. He smelled like evergreens, spicy, manly body wash, and grizzly. That sexy combo was way better than beef jerky and toots.

Tobias was devastatingly attractive to her, all messy chestnut hair and looking like he’d just gotten out of bed. His serious green eyes had frozen her in place when she’d opened the door. She’d expected Harlan to be knocking again and was ready to give him what-for, but the sight of Tobias on her doorstep had shocked her silly.

He would be a good mate. Probably.

Tobias gave her an
are you ready?
look over his shoulder as she picked up the box of breakables he’d brought that she would definitely need to cure the Silvers’ hibernation problem. Tobias didn’t even realize how important this stuff was. It was the last thing that rat-finked Clayton had allowed her to order before he cut her off. The misfit who’d pissed him off so bad that he’d stopped supplies for a month? That had been her when she’d tried to escape by sneaking onto one of the delivery planes. The pilot had busted her the second he sat in the cockpit, and apparently tattled to Clayton. Maybe Clayton’s plan had been to remind her how much she needed him. Maybe leaving the misfits starving for a month was his way of scaring her into submission. She’d only become more determined to leave though. Oh, Clayton was going to be pissed when he realized she’d tethered herself to one of his precious enforcers, but screw him. He’d pushed her to this level of desperation. She almost wished she could be there to see his face when he found out what she’d done. Almost—because in real life, Clayton was scary as hell.

Tobias pulled open her door, and she gave one last look around at all the trinkets she was abandoning. No one here would have any use for her lab, and though she was more than ready to leave this place, it was sort of sad leaving with such a rushed goodbye.

Steeling herself, she followed Tobias out of her cabin and stepped over Harlan’s sobbing body. When he gripped her ankle, she gasped and rushed out, “The package!”

Tobias spun so fast he blurred, and in that split-second, he seemed to understand the desperation on her face because he lurched forward and steadied both her and the package. A growl ripped from his throat. “Get your fucking hand off her.”

When Harlan’s grip tightened, she cried out at the pain and stomped at him. “Let me go!”

With a crazy smile, he released her with a hard shove, and she fell forward into Tobias.

“I told you she was mine!” Harlan screamed, standing. He let off a shrill whistle, then called out, “He’s trying to take our woman!”

And just like they always did, the misfits appeared out of the trees when Harlan, their self-proclaimed king, called them. Shit.

“Tobias?” She should really warn him.

“I see them.”

“No, you don’t underst—”

Her throat closed up as Harlan gripped her neck from behind, strangling her. Tobias turned at her choked noise, and his face went feral, eyes darkening to the color of tar. Fear dumped into her system as she fought for breath, sandwiched between two terrifying brawlers.

He can shift!
She just needed to tell him that and warn him about Harlan’s animal because Tobias was going to feel some serious pain if he engaged. And for some reason, she really, really didn’t want this almost stranger to get hurt on her account. She already felt protective of him.
Can’t breathe!

Tobias dropped her bags in the dirt by the porch. “Let her go.”

“I can do whatever I want with my witch.”

“She isn’t yours, Harlan. She’s mine. My mate. If you don’t let her go, I’m going to rip you limb from limb.”

She didn’t doubt it from the savage look in his face, but the corners of her vision were starting to spark, and Harlan was lifting her off the ground now. “Tobias,” she choked out.

Harlan yanked the neck of her shirt to the side. “She don’t have your bite mark, so she don’t look like your mate to me.”

“Don’t!” Tobias roared.

Fuck, Harlan was going to mark her. Desperately, she flailed and caught him in the shins with the heels of her thick-soled hiking boots. Harlan grunted in pain and eased his grip on her throat, and as soon as she connected with the porch floorboards, she pushed forward, yanking them both off balance. She fell down the stairs, gasping for that beautiful oxygen in the absence of Harlan’s strong grip. Holding her throat and sucking at the air like a landed fish, Vera lifted her gaze to Tobias who didn’t look like Tobias at all anymore. Standing a few feet away from her was a form she couldn’t understand. Twelve feet tall with dark brown fur sprouting from his massive body, Tobias was in the final moments of his Change.

“Holy shit,” she choked out, arching back to look at his terrifying face. Big block head, lips curled back over long canines and death in his eyes, Tobias was a much bigger monster than Harlan was.

Behind her, she could hear rustling and then the sound of Harlan’s animal chirping. Harlan’s non-terrifying battle cry would be comical if she wasn’t lying frozen right beneath a freaking enraged grizzly bear right now. Tobias roared a deafening sound that shook the earth under her, and in a flash of self-preservation, she made like a log and rolled away, sure at any moment either Tobias or Harlan would attack her.

She sat up, windpipe feeling like it had been crushed, and fumbled for her little weapon in her pocket. The medicine that suppressed her animal was still lingering in her system, and she wouldn’t be able to help Tobias that way, but she was about to pepper spray the shit out of Harlan the giant porcupine.

Stupid Harlan wasn’t like wild porcupines that turned their back on their attackers and tried to survive. He was six times the size of a wild one, and on the attack, charging Tobias. The dumb fuck was going to die, but his quills hurt like a mother trucker. She knew. She’d been at the wrong end of Harlan’s anger before.

She popped the cap of the pepper spray and aimed, but someone yanked her arm and spun her.

“I don’t think so, witch,” Grady growled out, his eyes blazing bright blue. Grady was cougar shifter and apparently his meds were wearing off, too. With a squeak, she lifted the mace and sprayed. He howled in pain and fell backward, just as she inhaled the cloud.

“Ow,” she moaned, rubbing her eyes. They watered so badly she could barely see, but she could make out the blurry forms of Tobias and Harlan locked up. And if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a wolf headed into the fight. “Dammit, Ewen, you country-ass son of a cockchafer!” she screamed. “Mind your own business!” She bolted for the snarling battle and aimed the pepper spray, but everyone was fighting now, and she didn’t know where to shoot that wouldn’t get Tobias. Just as she was about to push the little button on Harlan’s face, Tobias turned on her with murder in his gaze. There was a moment between them when they both locked eyes, and she could see it. She could see his plan and oh, it was an awful one. “No!” she screamed at him, only able to stumble back a step before he opened those massive jaws and came for her.

Tobias’s teeth sank into her, two on her front and two on her back shoulder. She screamed a bloodcurdling sound of pain as his teeth clamped deeply into her flesh. The bite lasted a moment, and the second he released her, she fell backward.

As she looked down at the two puncture wounds on her front in horror, the woods grew eerily quiet. Even Harlan had stopped his attack and was staring at her with those wide, stupid porcupine eyes of his. And out of sheer madness, she pulled the trigger of the pepper spray on him until he ran away and hid under the porch. This was all his fault.

“I thought you would be romantic when you claimed me!” she screamed, worked into a proper fury now. She stood and wished her animal would come out now so she could bite the shit out of Tobias’s eyeball or his bear dick or somewhere else super sensitive because, “You bit me in the tit!”

Tobias stood frozen on all fours in front of her, and now her anger was so great she rushed him and bit his neck. She couldn’t pierce his tough hide, and now her mouth was full of fur. Tobias didn’t act like he was affected it all, which pissed her off more, so she clamped down harder until her teeth felt like they were coming loose from her head. Releasing him, she shoved him instead. There. “You deserved that,
mate
.” Stifling a sob, she stooped and picked up the package, then lifted her chin primly and addressed the misfits. “I will not miss any of you asshats.” Then she marched off into the woods toward the runway she’d been manicuring for her knight in shining bear-fur to come rescue her.

Ignoring the trickling warmth that tickled her boob and her back, she stomped this way and that through the alder brush.

About halfway to the runway, Tobias asked from behind her, “Are you okay?”

She went to toss him an angry glare over her shoulder, but stopped dead in her tracks. He was back in his human form, naked as a jaybird, and
oh my
! She tripped on a tree root, lurched forward, and landed on top of the package with an
oomf
.

Tobias yanked her upward then spun her in his arms. Hands on her shoulders, he hunched down to look at her eye level. “Are you hurt?”

Her boob and back, yes. Her pride? Definitely yes. Her eyeballs? Hell no, but he was still in trouble. “Your dick is showing,” she said grumpily. “And just so you know, it’s ridiculous of you to have a boner right now.”

He straightened up and hooked his hands on his hips, eyebrow arched. “Well, I’ve never claimed anyone before.”

“Biting me while you’re a bear gets you off?”

“And fighting.”

“I’m traumatized. And your dick is the size of my arm. You should’ve told me that before you signed the damned contract.” She gestured toward it, palms out, fingers splayed. She couldn’t stop staring. “I mean, how do you even—”

“Oh, enough. You aren’t mad at my dick. You’re mad that I bit you like that, but what was I supposed to do? Your entire village was shifting and yeah, I can take them, but I was worried about you. I saw that asshole touch you and I lost my head, okay? It’s not how I imagined biting someone either!”

Grumpily, she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at his bleeding body. He was covered in Harlan’s quills. “You look like a pin cushion.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t know your backwoods boyfriend was a freaking porcupine. A
porcupine
? Really? I didn’t even know they existed.”

“Island of Misfit Shifters, Tobias. Always expect the unexpected with us.”

He winced as he shifted his weight off the leg that had long black quills sticking out of it. “What are you?”

“Rude.” She turned and picked up the box, then continued her angry march toward the plane.

“You know what I am,” he said from behind. “And we’re mated now, officially, so I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Ignoring him, she gritted her teeth against the pain in her teat and high-kneed it over a tall patch of grass. The storm clouds were beginning to open up, drizzling rain over them. “If you have pliers, I can get the quills out of you before we take off. The idiots won’t follow us anymore. They’re dumb as bricks, but they love their traditions. You bit me. I’m yours. They lost.”

“I’d appreciate you taking these out,” he said in a strained voice. “And I’m sorry about where I bit you. I was aiming for higher up, but you moved.”

“I thought I would have a pretty scar, Tobias. One I could show off to my friends when I wear tank tops in the summers.”

“Do you have a lot of friends?”

“No. Have you seen Perl Island? Inbred weirdos only. I thought I could latch onto your brother’s mate like a barnacle and make her be my friend.”

“Elyse?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know about her?”

“Because I did my research before I hired you, McBeefcake. The fact that you have a built-in family was one of the pros. I wrote them down.”

“Pros and cons?”

She made her way around a giant pine tree. “Yep.”

“What were the cons?” His voice was sounding more and more pained, and she got it. Harlan’s quills had barbs that dug deeper and deeper the longer they were left alone. Tobias didn’t know it yet, but pulling them out would hurt worse than when they went in. He probably didn’t actually care about this conversation. More likely he was trying to take his mind off the pain.