Bitten (Black Mountain Bears Book 2) (4 page)

He glanced over the balcony railing to the wide-open doors of the lodge below. Gunnar paced back and forth before them casting impatient glances up at him. Jasper swallowed thickly. This was a mistake. He couldn’t leave his family. Not yet. Jade hadn’t been wrong about his instinctive need to protect the females in his life. His sister and cousin had always come first.

Just as he began to shake his head, Jade’s hands shot up and gripped him hard by the ears.

“Ow!” he said, staring down at her in irritation. She hadn’t done that in so long he couldn’t remember the last time that fierce grip had held him. She only ever did it when she had a particularly important point to drive through his thick skull.

“Jasper! You have to go! Yes, I’ll miss you, we all will. But you can’t back out of this. This is not negotiable!”

“All right! Just let go of me, will you?” He clasped his hands around hers. It was an effort to pry them off his head, but before he could, she yanked him down and kissed him squarely on the mouth before letting him go.

“I love you,” she said. “Please be happy, for me, okay?”

The itch to run returned and he jogged to the staircase, looking back at her with a smile. “I love you, too. Both of you.” He gave Emma a quick wave when she came up beside Jade and wrapped an arm around her.

He couldn’t bear to look at them now, though. Jade’s smile came through a torrent of tears and she turned and buried her face in Emma’s shoulder. Emma looked as bewildered as Jasper felt.

“Are you coming or aren’t you?” Gunnar called from the doorway.

The voice called back the deep ache of worry in Jasper’s chest and he nodded, picking up his pace and following Gunnar out the door.

“Run, brother,” Gunnar said as he passed through the front doors of the lodge and ripped off his clothes.

Gleaming, white fur covered his body a split second before he morphed into his bear form and took off.

“Fuck, Gunn, I can’t keep up with you like that!”

“Then shift!”

Jasper took off running, pissed as hell at being left behind. He ran, keeping the white blur of Gunnar’s bear solidly in his sight. When the shape faded too far, he panicked. He couldn’t lose Autumn. If something happened to her, he had to be there, had to prove to her that he did want her. That he loved her . . . for saving him and his sister, for every sweet, solicitous moment he’d shared with her since. He’d been too overwhelmed, too shy to respond, yet she always persisted.

The afternoon’s sweet, lost promises caused a low growl to rise from his chest, even as he ran. His cock throbbed. He wanted her, and right now, he was terrified that something had happened to her.

As he ran, an odd tightness gripped his chest and his legs. He stumbled and righted himself. His shirt was too tight so he ripped it off. He stumbled again, breathless. His fingers dug into the ground as he caught his breath. He had to catch up to Gunnar, had to find Autumn. But his body wasn’t cooperating.

Fuck! Why did he feel so fucking heavy? He just wanted to
move
.

The second time he simply stayed all fours, found a comfortable pace, and ran, dimly conscious of his jeans ripping and falling off him. He was more aware of the deafening roar that bellowed from his throat, meant to signal to Gunnar that he was keeping up. He sped on four huge paws down the path, anxious to catch his friend, his lover, and to find the female who had seen fit to choose them both as her mates.

Chapter Five

W
ood smoke tickled at Autumn’s nostrils, followed by the sharp crackle of a nearby fire. She opened her eyes a crack and inhaled a little deeper to gather as many details about her surroundings as possible.

The harsh combination of scents was nothing like summer in the Sanctuary. Immediately around her were aromas of a winter cabin. Besides the wood smoke, the air was filled with the acrid scent of damp wool and mud. Beyond that lingered the fumes of fossil fuel and the very unique, and always surprising, sharp tingle of electricity—more a sensation than a smell.

More present than any of those aromas was the warm, spicy scent of her old lover. She tried to ignore the abrupt tightness in her chest. The old hurt had dimmed over the last two centuries, but the scar hadn’t faded as much as she’d hoped.

His silhouette sat hunched before the fireplace, face buried in his hands. She had an irrational urge to go to him, wrap her arms around him, and provide what comfort she could. She might have, if it weren’t for the very definite fact that he’d abducted her and taken her through the portal. For what purpose, she couldn’t even fathom.

With a soft groan, she sat up, wrapping the itchy woolen blanket around her shoulders.

Aidan’s blond head shot up and he stood. “You’re awake. Good.”

Autumn eyed him, perplexed by the sound of utter relief in his voice. “Care to explain what the hell you’ve done? And more importantly,
why
?”

He clenched his strong, square jaw, the muscles of his stubbled cheeks flexing in the firelight. His piercing blue gaze darted away momentarily, then back at her, landing with an intensity far deeper than she’d ever seen in the years they’d been together.

“I need your help. And I needed you to not say no. I’m sorry for the threat, but you are my last chance.”

Autumn only stared at him, her mind struggling to process the odd mix of attraction, regret, love, and sadness. Not to mention surprise at how desperate he seemed. She remembered him as a very determined, rebellious young man. She’d loved him for it—for disregarding their elders’ warnings and agreeing to run away with her so long ago. Her idea . . . her regret. Not his. Yet he still bore the weight of it as much as she did.

He picked up his chair and carried it to the side of the bed, sitting again and resting his elbows on his knees. A lock of his straight, dark-blond hair fell over one eyebrow, and Autumn resisted the urge to brush it away, to caress away all his worries like she used to when they were young. But they weren’t young now. And they had far too much hurt in their past to ever be so tender with each other again.

“Mother’s threatening to disown me, Autumn. She says I’m cursed to never find love again—that I’ve displeased Gaia somehow, and that’s why no female has willingly chosen me, why you rejected me when we were young.”

So he hadn’t ever told his mother the truth about them. That revelation surprised her, but perhaps it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t as if she’d been able to speak about what they’d done to anyone, either.

“Aidan, you know that isn’t true.”

“Do I?” he asked bitterly. “You haven’t found a mate, either, in all this time. How can you be sure we aren’t both cursed?”

Autumn worked to keep her voice even, though she wanted to blurt out that she
had
found a pair she cared for more than anything.

Ignoring his question, she said, “What do you expect me to do about it? I barely even speak to my own mother anymore, and that isn’t exactly possible now that you’ve brought me outside.”

“I didn’t want to risk your fathers, or anyone from the Stonetree clan, finding you too soon.” Aiden narrowed his eyes and his lips drew back in a sneer. “Or fucking Gunnar Windchaser.”

The bitterness that tinged his utterance of that name made her draw back. “What the hell do you have against Gunn?”

“Emma Stonetree choosing me would have proved to my mother that I
was
worthy of a powerful female. Gunnar’s such a fucking do-gooder, of course he managed to preempt my mating with the Princess. Fucking white-haired martyr. I was so surprised when I found out he gave you up for her. He’s probably been in love with you since he first opened those freakish red eyes of his. But he’d never resist a chance to be a hero. At least I know he won’t follow us here, if he’s mated to her.”

Autumn suppressed a smile at how apt Aidan’s description of Gunnar was. He clearly didn’t have all the details, though. Still, being disowned was a devastating threat for an ursa as highly ranked as Aidan. It meant exile, and he’d be stripped of his name. No other ursa female would choose him, and his offspring would have no claim on his birthright. They’d be allowed back into the Sanctuary when they came of age, but only as part of the lower class. Aidan himself would never be allowed to return.

“It isn’t so bad out here,” she said softly. “Have you ventured beyond the mountains since we took our pilgrimage together? There are a lot of amazing things in the human world. And one of our sister races could even take you in. There’s a turul enclave not far from the Stonetree portal. It isn’t the worst thing that could happen.”

Aidan didn’t need to know that her own plans included leaving the Sanctuary permanently, if her mating to Gunn and Jasper worked out.

The reminder of her plans caused her stomach to lurch.
Oh, shit, Jasper!
Gunnar hadn’t been far behind her when Aidan had taken her in the woods. If he convinced Jasper to come after her . . . She didn’t want to consider the danger Jasper would be in if he passed through the portal again before his birthday.

As if in response to the very thought of the two males she’d chosen, a sharp pain shot through her midsection, settling low and spreading into a burn. She wrapped her arms around her torso, trying to fend off the clenching spasm. Damnit! The last thing she needed now was to have her body’s needs take over.

“Losing my name would destroy me,” Aidan said. “I know you willingly gave yours up, with your mother’s blessing, but your blood is as much a Windchaser as it ever was a Sundance, and you had another clan who wanted you. My entire existence is defined by my heritage as a Sundance, as my mother’s son. If I lose that, I lose everything.”

“What the fuck do you want, Aidan?” she snapped, voice strained from the effort of containing her blazing need. She had to close her eyes to avoid the all too enticing sight of his broad shoulders and dark gold hair. Gaia, she had loved him once, so long ago. She had left that love behind, but her body didn’t know the difference. All it knew was raw need to be possessed by a male.

“Choose me, Autumn. If you do, then our secret stays with us. And we can do it right this time. We can make sure our child lives.”

Chapter Six

T
he groan of need that swelled in Autumn’s throat escaped as a sob, wrapped in the memory of what they’d lost.

“Aidan, no. You can’t make me relive that. I left you behind. I left the whole messed up ordeal behind. It can never be undone. You’re right, maybe we
are
cursed.”

In that moment she believed it, too. His reappearance in her life must be Fate’s cruel trick. She was so close to believing she’d found the pair of mates she was meant to be with—two males who she couldn’t imagine living without. Yet what she and Aidan had done had angered their goddess, and they were destined to atone.

“All the more reason for us to stay together. Maybe this is our chance at redemption. I never stopped loving you, Autumn.”

The heat flowing through her body overwhelmed her and she threw off the blanket. Leaning forward, she looked into his eyes, struck by the pain and longing in them. She raised a hand to his cheek.

When her fingertips came into contact with his skin, the heat grew, her eyesight blurring as though she were viewing the world through a shimmering haze. She shook her head, but the image remained, a wavering scene that was incongruous to the dim, fire-lit interior of the cabin: Aidan in a sunlit grove and a lovely, dark-haired female smiling at him with the most profound look of adoration. She seemed familiar but was too far away, too blurry, for Autumn to identify.

“Sweet Aidan, we were too young. But I know better now . . . we’re dangerous together. You make me dangerous. You’ll find someone, and she won’t be a Sundance, either. She’ll be better than me.”

Her vision cleared and now all she could see was Aidan’s frown.

“You’re in estrous, aren’t you?”

Autumn laughed. “Did you just figure that out?”

“Females don’t have visions unless the magic’s eating them alive. What did you see?”

“I told you . . . didn’t I?” The image had faded as abruptly as it had appeared in her mind. No memory of it existed, nor of the words she knew she’d just spoken.

“Mark me,” he said, standing and stripping out of his shirt. “You just need your claws. Two swipes, and it’s done. Then I can help you through this. Please don’t give me an excuse to tell my mother the true reason why you left the clan without mating me. The Golden Children, they called us . . . do you remember? They idealized us, and we destroyed their ideals together. You left to become a Windchaser, and I languished. Everyone thought it was my fault, of course. No one ever blames the female.”

Before Autumn could control her reaction, her claws manifested as though the mere suggestion were enough.

“No,” she growled, struggling to keep her true nature in check. But if he told their secret, Gunnar and Jasper would know. Emma would know. All the clans would know what a terrible thing they’d done.

She’d lose her status as a trusted runner—the fastest Windchaser in the clan—a title unusual enough for a female, and one she treasured even more than the honor of being a shaman’s daughter. She would become an outcast, reviled as much as Aidan would be, were he disowned. She’d be stripped of her power, and stripped of the ability to conceive. Everything that she’d worked for her entire life would disappear.

“Don’t let me endure this alone, Autumn. Please,” Aidan said. “One little vision isn’t enough to prove I still have a future with the clans.”

“I can’t choose now. Please don’t make me. You don’t know what I’d be giving up.”

His frown deepened as he took in her stricken features. “Don’t tell me you found someone. After all this time?”

“Aidan, don’t . . . ” Autumn let out a harsh cry and clenched her thighs together, twisting them back and forth to try to find some relief from the ache in her core. His proximity wasn’t helping matters any. She needed the attention of a male, and badly, but in spite of the fantastic scent of him seeping into her senses, he wasn’t the male she really wanted.

“Fuck, Autumn,” he said, shaking his head and swiping his hands over his face. “All right. After this episode passes, we’ll talk. Can I help?”

Shaking her head, she groaned out a harsh, “No!” just before doubling over with another spasm. She pressed her hand between her thighs, wishing like hell for relief, but knowing it was useless for her to take care of the ache herself, now that her estrous had taken over.

Aidan slipped out of his chair and knelt in front of her. His warm hands on her knees sent another spasm through her. He squeezed and lifted a hand to her face, urging her to look at him. She stared at him, hating herself for the haunted look in his blue eyes. She’d done that to him. They’d done it to each other.

Aiden stroked his thumb over her cheek. “Autumn,” he coaxed, “you need this. I promise it’s nothing more than me servicing you through it. I’ll keep my pants on. My dick doesn’t exist.”

A rough laugh escaped Autumn’s throat. “Your dick used to be the hero in all our stories. Now he doesn’t exist?” Suddenly all she could think about was the first time she’d been with him, how amazing he’d made her feel.

“Remember who his sidekick was?” Aidan asked.

“Hmm . . . your tongue. I do remember that.” She remembered it all in vivid detail just now, their innocent experimentation after deciding to ignore their race’s customs and take their pilgrimage together. Her first estrous, which had come way too early for either of them to be fully prepared. Their conviction that they were in love and didn’t need to follow the rules, because love transcended rules.

If she only thought about the first few months with him, all she remembered was happiness. Right now, she wanted to go back to those moments. Her body craved that contact.

“So let me in,” Aidan said, a warm hand caressing her cheek, then moving to her shoulder, sliding down her side to her thigh. So gentle, yet urgent. She needed more, but not like this. Not lying there helpless.

Groggily, she sat up. His offer hung heavily in her hormone-drunk mind. She stared down at his kneeling figure. He’d kidnapped her today, threatened her with an old secret, begged her to mate him. Yet now he knelt like a supplicant, ready to service her. Something wasn’t quite right.

His eyebrow tilted. “You’re trying to decide if you’d rather suck my cock, aren’t you? I remember how much you liked that.”

Yeah, that was the Aidan she remembered.

“Fuck you, Sundance. Eat me.”

She spread her legs and gripped his head, pressing his face to her aching pussy.

Aidan laughed and clutched at the backs of her thighs, then delved in with abandon. Autumn’s head fell back, her eyes closing from the pleasure. His tongue did things she didn’t think she’d ever experienced before. It made her wonder where he’d gotten the practice. Servicing ursa females was beneath the status of the son of a clan leader. Had he left the Sanctuary and had human lovers?

Soon, none of it mattered. The pleasure he gave her distracted her too much from rational thought. When she came, she gripped his head and pressed his face into her.

“That’s right, lap it up, you dirty boy. This is what you get for what you did to me.”

Aidan froze, and when she comprehended the words she’d said she sat back, pushing him away.

He wiped his mouth. “We did it to each other.”

“We did,” she said, though she hadn’t been thinking about their tragic mistake just before her outburst—she’d only been thinking about the fact that he’d abducted her. The anguish in his eyes kept her from clarifying. She didn’t want to diminish the significance of what they’d shared so long ago. Hurt or pleasure . . . they needed to feel it to be whole.

“Come here,” she said softly, opening her arms.

Aidan went, burying his face in her chest and wrapping his strong arms around her. She covered them both with the musty wool blanket.

“Thank you,” she said. “You always knew just the right way to get me off.”

“It felt different than it used to. Less like you enjoying it—more like you trying to get it over with.”

Autumn chuckled. “That’s what two centuries of being serviced will do to a woman. I never really enjoy being serviced through estrous anymore.” The simple fact of the necessity of it rendered it too much of a formality, no matter how attentive her partner was.

He lay silent, his cheek resting on her breast. After a moment, he extracted himself and stood, bent to retrieve his shirt, and put it on. His torso flexed in the firelight, the very sight of those rippling muscles covered by a light dusting of gold hair making her body come alive again of its own accord.

He sat down on the chair again and looked at her, hands clenched together.

“I saw you yesterday, with Gunnar. And Gunnar with the new guy . . . They’re yours, aren’t they? Your chosen, I mean.”

Autumn’s heart lurched at the idea of Jasper and Gunnar. What would they think of her if they found out the truth? No. They couldn’t find out. They’d be better off believing she’d left them. They’d still hate her, but for reasons she could live with. She steeled herself for what might be the worst decision of her life. Hopefully she could still redeem herself somehow.

“Does it matter now? You’re threatening to undo my life to get me to stay with you. I’ll do it, but I have one request.”

Aidan’s eyes widened. “You will?”

“I will. But I made a promise to a friend. If we mate, we live outside as guardians. We take the place of the Princess’s mates who are out here now.”

Aidan’s smile fell and he shook his head. “I can’t live out here.”

“Why not?” she pressed, sensing he had a secret or two of his own besides the one they shared. Two hundred years was a long time to live without gaining a secret or two.

“Does it matter?” he asked bitterly, mimicking her earlier words. “I just can’t.”

“Fuck you,” Autumn blurted. She stood, hovering over him. “You don’t get to pussy out of this negotiation. You want me, you live with my terms.”

“I need my mother to acknowledge me. I need her to see us together.”

The crack in his voice brought back the old memory of why they’d run away to begin with. They’d spent too much time together, had become too intimate too early, so their mothers had separated them. She hadn’t understood why.

She understood exactly why now, but the revelation didn’t change the fact that Aidan still craved his mother’s approval, her acceptance. After Autumn had left to join the Windchasers, his mother had never forgiven him for losing her as a mate.

She rested a palm against his cheek.

“Aidan,” she said softly, “you don’t need her at all. What you need is to live your own life. Find what makes you happy. I know it isn’t me. It might have been possible for us to be happy together once, but we’ve both grown past that. It’s ancient history.”

He pressed his face into her hand, so vulnerable in spite of his huge frame and the rough growth of stubble against her palm. The roughness of his cheek startled her. Her old memories of him were of a smooth-faced boy, but now he was all man.

She wished she wanted him, wished she could comfort him with the attention he craved, but all she could think about were Jasper and Gunnar. Were they looking for her now? Oh, Gaia, how she would have to hurt them to protect her secret, but it was something they could never know about her. They would eventually recover from rejection, might even forgive her for it, as long as they had each other.

“Do you ever wish we could go back and change things? If you had marked me then . . . ” Aidan began, gazing up at her, but paused when she took her hand away from his cheek and turned with a shake of her head.

The old regrets still lingered, even after all this time. The memory never really even faded. It still sat heavily in her chest like a cold, hard stone. The baby they’d recklessly conceived together without being properly mated, and then just as recklessly destroyed before her belly had even begun to swell.

“Marking you wouldn’t have made us any less foolhardy. If I could change anything, that’s what I would have changed. I would have listened to my mother when she told me to take my time choosing a mate. But neither of us really heard our elders back then. We were too young.”

“I shouldn’t have convinced you to take your pilgrimage with me . . . to experience the human world outside together. But so much was changing back then. I wanted to share it with you.”

“You misremember. It was my idea all along. Remember even before we did it when I suggested we could have an adventure together once we were Outside and away from our parents?” Autumn said, smiling and sinking down to the rug by Aidan’s feet. She pulled her knees up to her chest and gazed into the fire.

She did still occasionally have fond memories of their little rebellion. All young ursa who had just come of age were encouraged to take a pilgrimage out into the human world, though it was frowned upon for them to leave as an unmated pair. A proper ursa pilgrimage was done alone, and they’d left their mothers with the impression that they were each on solo trips, but made plans to meet outside and see the world together. It had been an adventure, but one that ended in tragedy.

“I wanted you so much during those years together. I always resented that you wouldn’t formally choose me, mark me . . . ”

Autumn let out a deep breath. “I was idealistic. I wanted the entire clan to know I’d made a choice, to have our union witnessed by our mothers. Witnessed by Gaia. And I believed returning with a cub already growing inside me would make them even happier.”

Aidan’s knuckle brushed over her cheek and she looked up at him, then at the wetness on his finger that he’d gathered from her face. She swiped at her eyes. She hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

“We didn’t know passing through the portal would harm the baby,” he whispered. “You couldn’t have known.”

“It wasn’t the portal. It was me. The magic was eating me alive, Aidan. I don’t even know if mating you would have been enough to keep me grounded. When we came through, I knew we’d made a mistake. The magic was too volatile, and the portal’s defenses were forced to balance it for me. I’d have been a time bomb, coming back in like that. The baby was collateral damage for our mistake. And I just . . . ”