Bearing Secrets (3 page)

Trey shook his big bear body
for all it was worth, dancing over to his new sisters-in-law and giving them
his version of a lap dance. He shook his fur in their face, slid his bear paws
over their thighs, and roared. This was his way of welcoming them to the family,
to let them know what they had really gotten themselves into.

Recently the Brown family had
become all work and little play. So this party was more than just welcoming
Kallie, Courtney, and Milo to the family. It was also a chance for all of them
to have a good time, let their beasts out. He might have been the only one
grooving around the makeshift dance floor in his bear form, but the night was
young and the party was just getting started.

He swayed his hips to the
motion, shaking his large body in front of her. The lap dance didn’t have the
same stunning sway of a naked body but this was more fun for him. Not to
mention that if he was giving naked lap dances it would be a fight between his
brothers and his mother as to who would have the privilege of killing him. His
bet would be on his brothers since they were closer.

“Get your hairy ass out of my
mate’s face.” Taber growled, and swatted Trey away.

Instead of fighting it, he
moved down the line to Tad’s mates, Courtney and Milo. Oh, how he loved to screw
with Tad about mating with a tiger shifter and a human. Three very different
people and attitudes all had to merge together in a mating bond, yet somehow
they were making it work.

He swung his hairy arm around
Courtney’s waist and pulled her up against his bear form. Squeezed tight
against him, she squealed. “Tad…”

“The more you fight the
stronger he will hold.” Tad warned her.

Trey lifted her off her feet
and spun her around. “How am I supposed to relax when I’m being swung around by
a thousand pound bear?”

“Trey…” Tad’s voice held a
warning.

Just to irritate his brother,
he brought Courtney’s hand to his mouth and licked the top of it. Letting out a
deep growl, he set her back down.

“Now we’ll have to work all
night getting your scent off our mate.” Milo bitched and pulled Courtney into
his lap, snuggling his head into her neck.

Like that’s a hardship.
He
spun around and shook his rear at Milo in a
kiss-my-ass
way. Screwing
with his brothers was a way of life, but it also eased some of the tension
between Tad and Aunt Bev. Even after the years since Rosemarie’s passing, Tad
still blamed himself. Aunt Bev swore she didn’t blame Tad but there was a
glimmer of sadness in her eyes throughout the party. The new additions to the
family served to remind her just how much she had lost when her only daughter
was killed.

“Trey, quit shaking your big
ass before they tear you to pieces,” Turi hollered as he came toward Trey with
a woman at his side.

Tight jeans caressed the
curves of her body like a glove, while a loose low-cut tank top gave a teasing
peek to her ample cleavage. The breeze sent her long blonde hair fanning around
her and gave him the urge to tangle his fingers in it, but it was her sea green
eyes that kept his attention locked on her.

Distracted by the gorgeous
woman, he was no longer paying attention to his siblings and their mates, when
Milo reached out and clawed Trey’s backside. An earthshaking growl poured from
him as he pulled away.

What the hell?
Turning around, he glared at Milo.

“It would seem as if we’ve
gained from our mating.” Tad sat with his mates and started to explain. “Milo now
has the ability to draw his tiger claws while remaining in his human form.”

Trey slipped behind the stage,
quickly pulling the energy and shifting back into his human form before donning
his clothes again. “You bastard.” He called to Milo as he came back around
buttoning his jeans, his T-shirt stuck in his back pocket.

“You got what was coming to
you.” Milo smirked.

“I guess what they say is
true…a cat’s bite is nothing compared to its claws.” Trey rubbed his hand over
the ass cheek that now sported long, burning claw marks.

“Quit your bitching Trey, I’d
like you to meet our guest, Ivy. She was a member of the Arizona Tigers and
will be staying with us for the time being,” Turi explained.

“Hello Ivy, welcome.” Trey
held out his hand to her. The instant their fingers met, the connection flared
to life. Electricity poured through them, rushing in circles as it tried to
find something. No…
someone
…Turi.

“Ivy?” Turi asked when she let
out a soft moan.

Trey couldn’t pull away or
even speak before Turi laid his hand on Ivy’s arm, closing the connection.
Electricity stopped circling through them and poured into Turi. The connection
complete, bringing all the emotions and thoughts from Ivy and Turi into him, transformed
the three of them into one.

“Shit!” Both of the twins shouted
at the same time, pulling away as if they’d been burned.

Turi was going to kill him.
They had talked about the possibility of them having to share a mate only that
morning. There was no way they were ready for it yet. He hadn’t had time to
prove he wasn’t a lazy bear, that they could make it work.

“What just happened?” Ivy
glanced between them.

“Boys…” Their mother’s voice
cut into them staring at each other. “There’s no reason to do this here, take
Ivy up to your house. Ivy, once my boys explain, if you have any questions come
back down and find me.”

“Let’s get some privacy.” Turi
started toward his cabin.

“They’re right, it shouldn’t
be done here.” Trey placed his hand on the small of her back, but once the
current began to flow through him, he pulled away to hover just next to her
without actually touching. He didn’t need the electricity charging his blood
any more than it already was. One of them had to keep a cool head and he had a
feeling it should be him.

* * *

The warmth of the cabin helped
chase away the chill that had settled over Ivy from being outside with only a
tank top on. She had been dressed for the Arizona temperatures, not Alaska, and
she was pretty sure there wasn’t a long-sleeved shirt in her wardrobe, let
alone her suitcase.

“Here.” Trey grabbed a blanket
off the back of the leather chair and wrapped it around her arms.

“Thank you.” She grabbed the
edges to keep it firmly around her. “Now, will one of you please tell me what
the hell just happened?”

“Mating…” Turi sank into the
chair farthest from where they were.

“No.” She shook her head.
“Mating is between
two
people. That was something else.”

“Twins run in the family.”
Trey leaned against the back of the sofa nearest her. “Our Grandmother
Annabell—our mother’s mother—mated with twins, giving our mom two fathers. They
sought high and low for a way to break their matting, anything to remove the
connection between the three of them, to give each of them a chance to find
their own woman.”

“That’s not how mating works.”
She shook her head, not wanting to believe what he was saying.

“For most couples you’d be
right, there’s only one destined mate for them. But there’s something more to
the twin connection.”

“You mean like DNA?” she questioned.

“Partially.” Trey nodded and
glanced to Turi who was sitting there with his arms crossed over his chest. “Identical
twins have the same DNA, which is why they can end up with the same mate.”

“Our oldest brothers, Taber
and Thorben, are twins and are mated to Kallie,” Turi finally said.

“I thought it was rare for shifters
to have twins.” Her legs turned to wet noodles and she needed to sit. The two
steps around Trey and to a chair felt like she was climbing a mountain. All of
the night’s activities were catching up to her.

“For most breeds, multiple
babies are uncommon,” Trey agreed.

“Were they able to find
something to stop this?” Even as she asked the question, she figured out the
answer. If there was a remedy for it, the other twins wouldn’t be mated to one
woman.

“There was nothing to find.
The mating is what it is.” Trey glanced at Turi and then back to her. “If the
mating is denied, the longing for each other’s touch becomes excruciating.
Given long enough, the need will drive you insane, our beasts will begin to
gain more and more control until we are unable to do anything but give in.”

“What happened with your
grandparents? I mean, I guess they gave in, but were they ever happy?” She
needed to know what was in store for her.

“They were left with no choice
other than to return,” Turi answered, his voice cold, averting his gaze as if
unable to look at her.

“But what kind of life did
they have? If they searched for a cure, they must not have wanted to be with
your grandmother.”

“As Mom explained it, they
both cared for her very much, but for them it was more of a challenge to win
her. Which of them were better and could withstand the mating need the longest?
It wasn’t until our grandmother began to suffer from their actions that they
wised up.” Trey stood from the sofa and strolled over to the window. “In the
end things worked out well for them. Our grandparents lived a very happy life
together.”

“Mom never told us any of this
until Taber and Thorben mated with Kallie. She said there was no reason to
because she wasn’t sure it would happen to us. Our grandparents were gone
before we were old enough to remember having two grandfathers.” Turi crossed
his arms over his broad chest.

She tugged the blanket around
her shoulders tighter and tried to put her finger on what she was missing.
While Trey seemed open to it, almost excited, Turi was the opposite. Since
their brief touch, he had closed himself off. Even as he sat there, he had
distanced himself from them. He couldn’t look at either of them without what
appeared to be anger in his eyes. What was she missing? Was there tension
between the brothers, and how was that going to affect the mating?

In the last twenty-four hours,
Ivy’s home had been blown up, her whole clan killed, and her brother was
missing, along with the clan Elders. Now she’d been thrown onto an island with
bears, and into a mating with twins who couldn’t even look at each other. She
wasn’t up to a long discussion about whatever had caused the tension between
them. Suddenly she realized all the tension between them would affect their
mating. This sent her heart racing as the first waves out doubt lanced through
her. The urge to run coursed through her body, uncertainty overtaking her. She
hadn’t known either of them very long, they had major issues to resolve between
them; if this wasn’t a red flag, she didn’t know what was. Could she risk
involving herself with these men?

Mating was something special,
something she’d hoped would happen to her, because if she chose a life with a
human she’d have to leave the clan. The clan wouldn’t risk their secret to
bring in another human they had no ties to. There would be no way to know where
their loyalty lay, possibly until it was too late. A shifter mate would allow
her to stay within the shifter folds, and close to her brother, friends, and
the people she considered family.

Bears? I always thought it
would be a tiger.
Bears weren’t really what she had in mind, but
destiny hadn’t given her a choice. This was hers to claim and she needed to
claim it with both hands. With or without the red flag. In order to accept what
she desired, she needed to figure out what the underlying tension was from.

“What am I missing? Turi, why
can’t you look at either of us?”

“Don’t get upset. It’s nothing
against you.” Trey stood up for his brother when Turi didn’t answer. “Over the
years I’ve done things within the family that have caused problems. Turi was
the one who suffered the most for them.”

“Damn right, Trey.” Turi shot
out of the chair, the anger pouring off him. “I spent my life covering for you,
picking up on your slack. You’re my brother so I’ve done it, plus it was for
the best of the sleuth, but I won’t do it when it comes to mating. I’m not
going to have to share a mate with you when I know you’ll end up hurting her,
and I’ll be left trying to keep her from hating us both.”

“I told you—”

Turi waved a hand, cutting him
off. At the same time he took a step forward, rage etching a scowl on his face.
“Don’t! I’ve heard it all before.”

She pushed off the sofa,
putting herself between them. “Hold on. I don’t know what the hell happened
between you two and honestly I don’t care. That’s for you to work out, but
you’re not going to come to blows here. Let’s sit down and talk about this
rationally.”

Turi stepped back, the anger
still clinging to him, but he relaxed his fists. “I need some air.”

“Then get some, and when
you’re ready we’ll be in here.” With a mixture of irritation and understanding,
she watched him walk away. She couldn’t help but wonder if that would be a
staple point of this mating.

The door clicked shut while
Trey leaned against the wall, his gaze on the floor, unable to look at her.
“I’m sorry.”

“Every family has problems.”
Her statement made it sound so simple, yet it was anything but.

“This isn’t fair to you to be
drawn into this.”

Shivering, she took a step
back and sat down on the sofa. “Why don’t you tell me what the problem is
between you two?”

With one last glance out the window,
he moved away from it, and to the fireplace. Crouching next to a pile of wood,
he grabbed a couple of small logs and tossed them into the dying embers. Keeping
his back to her, he grabbed the poker and stirred the fire until the new logs
caught. “I’ve always been the troublemaker of the family. Take my leather
jacket for instance.” He nodded toward the chair where he’d casually tossed it.
“I started wearing it because it drove Mom nuts. I just gave a lap dance in my
bear form to Kallie, Courtney, and Milo to welcome them to the family. What
kind of welcome is that?”

“A big Kodiak bear giving a
lap dance, shaking your furry body…come on, Trey, that was adorable.” She
smirked, remembering the way his bear form moved.
Maybe he’ll give me a lap
dance in all his manly glory.

“Turi didn’t find it too
amusing.” He shoved the poker back into the holster. “He just saw it as another
way I wasn’t falling into line. It didn’t matter that I dispelled the tension
with Tad and Aunt Bev earlier. All he could see was I wasn’t him.”

“Fall into line?” She decided
to stick with one problem and leave the comment about Tad and Bev for later.

“Taber and Thorben are the
oldest, they are supposed to take over the sleuth when the time comes for Dad
to step down, but they live full time at the Alaskan Tigers’ compound. They’re
there to help the Elders Ty and Raja and because their mate feels safe there.
Tad is mated to Courtney—a human—and Milo one of the guards for the Alaskan
Tigers’ Lieutenant’s mate Bethany, so they’ve taken up residence at the
compound too. It leaves Turi and me as the next oldest, to assist Dad with the
sleuth responsibilities.”

She raised an eyebrow, unable
to believe what she was hearing. “Are you telling me Turi thinks you can’t do
your duties because you like to push the limits, play some jokes, and have a
good time?”

“Turi is very much by the
book, even if that book is an unwritten one. He’s all business. To him I’m
slacking off, and sliding through life like it owes me something.” He sank down
by the fireplace and sat on the hearth. “To him there’s no balance, it’s all
work and no play. I guess that’s why I’ve always been the one to push things
further. I needed to make up for the stick in his ass.”

“I have a brother just like
that.” She laughed and the tension from the day slipped away. “Chad’s the
Captain of Guards for my Alpha…well, former…”

“Don’t.” He reached out to her,
placing his hand over hers. The touch brought the connection back to life. “We
don’t know anything has happened to them. They could have escaped and might be
in hiding.”

“Isn’t this cozy.” She turned
to find Turi standing just behind them, the disgust dripping from each word. “I
step outside for a few minutes and you start laying your claim.”

“Turi…” The rage in his eyes
made her want to go to him, to lay her hand on his arm and calm the storm
raging within him. The anger called his beast to the surface, making the
situation dangerous. One wrong move and his bear would come out howling. That
very thought kept her at bay more than the way his body screamed for her to
stay away.