Redeem The Bear (3 page)

“You’re a really good friend to Anya,” Hannah said.

“More like she’s a good friend to me. I was displaced from my clan and came to Bear Valley when I was older. It’s been nice talking to someone who understands.”

“You’ve helped her transition here too, Corin. Don’t sell yourself short. I adore Anya. She is an asset to Bear Valley and she’s so strong. I admire her so much, but I can’t figure out
how to talk to her like you can. I think I will eventually, when she’s had time away from the Long Claws, but for now, you’re that comfort for her. You and Chase.”

Corin frowned and shook her head, confused. Anya had become someone important in her life, but did
she need Corin’s friendship? Anya seemed so strong. It was Corin who was reaping most of the benefit from their closeness.

“I want you to ride with us to Bridger Teton,” Hannah said.

Hannah was close with Jenny, Joanna, Anya, and their mates and Corin had figured Anya would be riding with them. “Will there be enough room?”

“Jenny is staying behind with Blaine to organ
ize the evacuation for the young families here, in case we lose the war. The Long Claws will immediately come after anyone remaining in the valley if we fall. Jenny’s pregnant and Riker doesn’t want her anywhere near the war so there’s an extra seat. It won’t be comfortable, and you might have to sit on a lap, but so will the others. You’ll ride in Riker’s truck with the rest of us. Here.” She took Corin’s duffle bag and hoisted it onto her shoulder. “You go help load up, and I’ll put your things with mine in the back of Riker’s truck.”

“Okay, thank you.”
Corin was starstruck as Hannah strode off. The mate of the alpha was offering her a seat in the lead truck. She’d get to make the ride with Anya inside of the cab instead of hanging onto one of the hummers like a lot of the Bear Valley shifters would have to do.

An hour passed in the blink of an eye, and as Corin tied the last bungee cord over the supplies in the back of the trailer, the first hummer roared to life. Everywhere, able bodied men and women piled into vehicles and onto trailers.
They hung onto grab bars and sat in windows.

Riker was checking that everything was tied down properly and Hannah, Chase, Anya, Juan, Brody and Joanna were streaming into the oversized
black pickup truck. A wave of insecurity took her. Surely there wasn’t enough room for her in there with all of those giant men. She should just go get into a trailer with the others at the bottom of the clan.

“Where are you going?” Riker asked, resting his hands on his hips. “You’ve got a seat up front with Hannah.”

Lamely, Corin took one look behind her to see if perhaps he was talking to someone else, but no, he was staring at her with those inhumanly lightened eyes. He was a lot more terrifying than he probably knew.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

Taking up space in his truck? For assuming Hannah had reneged her earlier offer? For breathing the same air space as the
most influential alpha in the history of Bear Valley? She didn’t know. Apologizing had always been her go-to response. A little gift from her inner bear’s crippling submissiveness.

He canted his head and nodded once to his truck. “Load up. The supplies will hold. Thanks for the help.”

Thanks for the help? No one did more for this clan than Benson Riker, and he was thanking her? This morning was just getting stranger and stranger. “You’re welcome. Anything you need, just ask.” With a shy smile, she sidled the trailer and hopped into the open passenger side door.

Hannah sat in the middle of the front bench seat, while Chase, Juan and Brody sat in the back. Joanna and Anya sat comfortably on their mate’s lap
s, talking easily over a map of the Big Horn Mountains.

When she pulled the door closed, Riker slid behind the steering wheel and turned the engine. Hannah patted her leg once and they were off.

Away from Bear Valley land.

Away from the safety of home.

Away to war.

Corin was drowning.
Six hours of jouncing around back roads and forest paths in a truck full of the most dominant bears in the entire clan, and she was seconds away from asking if she could ride in the bed of the truck with the tents.

Somewhere around hour four, Hannah had reached across her lap and hit the windo
w button, like she could feel the weight of their bears too, even with her less sensitive human instincts. The crack of power made Corin’s blood hum and the hairs on her arms stand on end, even with her head hanging halfway out of the window, gasping breaths of fresh mountain air like a landed fish.

Riker stared at the road ahead with a hard, unreadable expression, but Hannah looked like she was trying not to smile.

“You look terrified,” the alpha’s mate observed.

“I am,”
Corin admitted.

Anya reached forward
from her seat in the back and squeezed her shoulder once. “The boys won’t hurt you. They’re just all riled up for battle.”

“You want to sit on my lap?
” Juan offered. “I’ll make you forget all about these assholes.” The brute even waggled his eyebrows when she turned to see if he was serious.

“Y
our bear is part of the problem,” Corin deadpanned. “You know that, right?”

His dark eyes danced with humor. “Not my bear. He’s docile as a kitten.”

“A tiger. Is that what you mean? You have my bear wanting to change and run for the woods.”

“Corin,” Chase admonished her. He kissed Anya’s
forehead and leaned back against the headrest, closing his eyes. “Surely, I’ve trained you better than this.”

Crossing her arms,
Corin huffed a breath and leaned against her chair. “You didn’t train me to party with grizzlies, Chase. And furthermore, I’m thinking the only way I’ll survive this battle is if I find a squirrel to fight.”

Brody snorted and she scrunched her face. She’d been serious. “I’ve gone to battle with Long Claws before, and from what I remember, they’re all giants. I’m doomed.”

Riker growled and she hunched her shoulders. “Corin, you go into a battle thinking like that, then yeah. You’re as good as dead.”

“Riker,” Hannah scolded.

“No, she should get her head right before we do this. Find your inner beast, Corin. How old were you when you fought the Long Claws?”

“Fourteen.”

“Shhhit,” Juan drawled from the back. “How did you get away?”

Corin balked against the question. She didn’t want to revisit that day. It had
tainted her nightmares for years and now the people she respected the most would witness her breakdown. “I can’t.”

“How, Corin?” Riker demanded.

“A boy saved me.” The words sounded strangled in her throat, like there was a noose around her neck.

“Every shifter see
ms giant to a fourteen year old,” her alpha said in a gentler tone. “You aren’t that same little girl anymore. You’ve trained and become strong. Don’t let them mess with your head before you even see them.”

Hannah grabbed her hand
, and Corin watched the passing ponderosa pines out the window.

“Say what’s on your mind,” Chase rumbled from the back.

Corin hadn’t the foggiest idea who he was talking to, so when no one answered, she scanned their waiting faces. “Me?”

“Yeah, you. Say what’s on your mind.”

“Okay, it’s easy for you guys to say don’t let them in my head. You’re a dozen feet tall and have won fights against them. My bear is half your size, and I watched them slaughter my people.” Shit. “Well, there it is. I saw it happen, but what could I do against so many? I ran as the boy…my boy…fought them off me. He died…fuck.” Her shoulders sagged and misery tightened her throat. “He died for me. Almost all of them did.”

“Who was your clan?” Joanna asked quietly.

“The Kodiaks, back when they numbered in the hundreds.”

Anya already knew all this. She’d been the first person Corin had been comfortable enough with to share the story. Her friend rubbed her shoulder soothingly from the back seat.

Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she said, “It’s hard not to be afraid of the people who took everything away.”

“
That won’t happen this time,” Riker said, pulling his eyes away from the road long enough for her to see the promise in his gaze. “We won’t let it. You’ll be on the second wave and we’ll try to pull the brown bears to us. You find black bears or Andeans your size, do you understand? You engage to the side of the battle, not in the thick of it. When you win your first match, your adrenaline will kick in and your training will come back to you. You and Joanna and Anya stick together, help each other and protect each other. Tell me
okay
, all of you, so I know you understand.”

“Okay,” she, Joanna and Anya said in unison.

Corin swallowed hard as she watched Riker’s rigid profile. He didn’t want this war. The realization hit her like a wrecking ball. He’d led the clan through more winning battles than any shifter on earth, and he was balking against fighting the Long Claws.

“You know they have to be stopped,” she whispered. She wished she
could swallow the words back down again because they were so out of line, but they were out there, hanging in the thick silence of the cab.

“I know. I just don’t want to lose our people to stop them.
”

“If we don’t, there’
s no one left to stand between them and the extinction of every non Long Claw bear shifter in the world. They’ll demolish every last bear, and then they’ll eat themselves from the inside out until our kind is extinct.”

Rocking against the divots in the washed out mountain road, Riker ghosted her a glance. “We’ll stop them, Corin.”

He looked tired, battle-weary already. It was impossible to tell the toll the clan members and friends he’d lost through the years had taken on his soul, but she wasn’t the only one who needed to get her head on straight.

No one spoke after that, and for the next hour, they were connecte
d only by matching lurches as the off-road tires hit gaping potholes. She couldn’t guess at what thoughts made the others so somber, but for her, it was memories of the day she’d lost everything to the Long Claws playing over and over on a loop.

“Did you hear?” Daniel asked. “They’ve approved us for a match.”

His excitement was catching and Corin leaned against a stately spruce. “You sure you want to be tethered to me forever?” she asked, teasing.

Daniel was tall
, with dark hair and patient eyes the color of coffee. Some people found it unsettling that his eyes were black as pitch, but she saw the adoration in them when he looked at her. Like now, as his gaze dipped to her lips.

The smile fell from his face as he frowned. “Don’t talk like that, Corin. I would be honored to be mated to you when we get older. You know that.”

And she did. They’d been friends since they were cubs, and when the other girls their age had started paying attention to how Daniel was changing for the better, he seemed to only have eyes for her. She’d never felt threatened for his affection.

He linked his hands in hers and rested his chin on top of her head.

“You’re so serious,” she murmured. “I was only joking.”

This was usually the fastest way
to get a rise out of him. He didn’t understand jokes like the others, but she didn’t care. His mind just worked differently than the other kids. She understood him, even if they didn’t.

“O
h,” he said, easing back so she could see the confusion swimming in his shadow colored eyes. There it was, that tentative smile that told her he knew he was being teased.

Ducking out from under him, she
laughed and ran toward a deer trail that led away from her parents’ cabin. His chuckle followed her as she bolted. Faster and faster she ran until she was sure she’d lost him. Spinning, she heaved breath as she searched the woods. Nothing stirred, save the leaves above in the gentle breeze.

She’d finally bested him.

“You’re always running from me, Corin,” Daniel said from behind her, startling a giggle past her lips. “Are you sure you’re not the one who doesn’t want to be tethered to me?”

His hands rubbed down the back of her arms, and she shivered under his touch. He made her feel…everything.

Turning, she lifted her gaze to his and allowed him to see the genuine happiness in her eyes at him touching her. He’d only recently grown comfortable enough to hold her hand. He didn’t do well with touch. She’d never even seen his parents hug him, though they seemed to love him a great deal.

“I’m yours for always,” she said, lifting up on her tiptoes and brushing her lips against his.

It was her first kiss, and she didn’t know if she was doing it right, but when she pulled away, his eyes were wide with surprise and a silly grin stretched slowly across his mouth. He brushed her hair from her cheek, settled it behind her shoulder, then slowly lifted his palm to cradle her cheek. The pad of his thumb brushed a gentle stroke as he leaned down. His eyes closed just as his lips touched hers again. The kiss could’ve lasted minutes, or maybe hours. She didn’t know. Time left her.