Heart of the Bear (Hells Canyon Shifters Book 5) (3 page)

“Please. You run like a duck, you pant like a horse, your only apparent defense is screaming, and you got a leg cramp after running half a mile. You can keep your humanity, princess.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Jesse bent and pulled her over his shoulder as if he was a caveman carrying off his cave-wife.

Rae Lynn gasped in shock and flailed her arms and legs. “Put me down! I’m not going back there with you. You can’t do this to me!” Desperate, she finagled her multi-tool from her back pocket, opened the first mechanism she could, and jammed it into Jesse’s back.

“Ow!” he yelled, loud enough to scare the roosting birds out of the nearest trees.

He set her down so hard she fell backward onto her ass and yelped at the unexpected pain.

“Did you just stab me?” He looked pissed, and his fare skin was turning redder by the second.

“Take it back!”

“Take what back?”

“I’d make a fucking awesome werebear! I’m so sick of being insulted. I’m not an idiot, I’m not a stupid bitch, and I’m not defenseless!”

His eyebrows shot up, and he reached over his shoulder and pulled the pocket knife from his back. “I didn’t call you anything but defenseless…and you stabbed me with a pair of miniature scissors?” He held the tiny weapon up, his hard expression morphing from disbelief to accusation.

“And I’d do it again if you threw me over your shoulder like that a second time, you barbarian. I’m a person, Jesse. Grow some manners.”

Jesse’s hands clenched at his side, and the red color that had crept up his neck landed in his ears. “Will you please accompany me back to my clan so we can assess if you’re going to run screaming to the police about what you’ve seen here today?” He gritted out each word like it pained him.

She lifted her chin and tried to look as dignified as she could from her seat in the dirt. “No.”

“Raah!” he yelled and threw her multi-tool into the woods.

“Hey, my mom gave me that.” She stared at where it had disappeared. “It was special to me.”

Jesse huffed an irritated sound and pulled her upward, then shoved her shoulder and angled her back toward the camp she’d escaped.

“At least tell me you’re not going to kill me,” she demanded.

“I risked my neck to save you from that lioness and from my alpha. If I wanted you dead, I could’ve saved myself the pain and let them have you.”

Angry tears filled her eyes as she thought about going back to that awful camp. “Swear to me, you won’t let them hurt me.”

Jesse’s sigh tapered into a growl. “I swear.”

The walk back was the longest, hardest thing she’d ever done. It took all her strength not to fall apart, but Jesse had really pissed her off when he implied she was weak, and she was not going to cry in front of him. She wasn’t weak. She just hadn’t expected people to turn into giant, raging, wild animals.

She still wanted to find a way to convince herself she’d imagined it, but every time she did, she just had to look back at Jesse with the obvious claw mark across his shoulder, and she couldn’t deny what she’d seen.

“Does that hurt?”

“My shoulder? Yeah, it hurts like hell.”

“Are you immortal?”

“Like a vampire?” Jesse chuckled from behind her where he apparently preferred to walk like she was some sort of prisoner. “Definitely not immortal. We die just like everyone else, but we heal easier and don’t get sick. Not like humans. This mark will be nothing but a scar in a few days.”

“Are all of those people in the camp like you?”

“Yeah. There aren’t many of us left. We’re just trying to survive out here. We aren’t hurting anyone, just trying to live, like everyone else.”

Having Jesse at her back bothered her. It was as if some inane human instinct long-buried by city life was kicking up her urge to run or, at least, walk beside him so she could keep a wary eye on whether he was going to turn into a bear again and eat her. What he’d said rang true, though. If he had wanted her dead, he could’ve just stepped out of the way and let the lion or that huge bear have her. He hadn’t. Instead, he’d saved her.

She’d have to thank him when he wasn’t kidnapping her.

Her legs locked up when she crested a ridge and saw the camp again. “I can’t do this.”

“You can and will,” a man said as he emerged from the forest shadows. He was tall with intense, blue eyes and a grim set to his mouth. “You brought a lion shifter onto my land and now pose a threat to the people who live here.”

Jesse twitched his head to the man and said, “This is Ethan, alpha of the Seven Devils Clan.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and he swung his attention to Jesse. “Since you took it upon yourself to lead her into my camp, without my consent or knowledge, she’s your responsibility.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket and tightened one side around Rae Lynn’s wrist.

“I like where this is going,” Jesse joked.

Ethan gritted his teeth and yanked Jesse’s arm, then closed the other side of the handcuffs to his wrist. “I’ll give you the keys when I can trust she won’t run away again.” Turning on his heel, the alpha strode off toward a blond-haired woman who was holding Samuel.

“Wait,” Jesse called out as he frowned at their joined wrists. “Are you serious? I’m still on the job. How am I supposed to work with her attached to me?”

“You picked her. You figure it out.”

“No, no, no. I didn’t pick her. I just—Ethan!”

The alpha disappeared into a log cabin at the end of a row of homes. The sign over the door read
Ranger Station Office
, and the woman holding Samuel followed him inside.

Rae Lynn tried to slide her hand out of the manacle, but Ethan had secured it too tightly for escape. Devastated, she dragged her eyes up Jesse’s chest to the injury across his shoulder. It looked like it wasn’t bleeding anymore, but it was still raw-looking and open.

Her attention dropped between his thighs again, and she jerked her gaze away, embarrassed. “Can you put some clothes on before you drag me to whatever job you have to do?”

“Huh?” Jesse dropped his eyes to his unclothed body and nodded once. “Oh, yeah. Come on. My house is the third from the end.”

The man didn’t even cover his dick with his hand as he walked with confident strides to his house. She had to jog to keep up, averting her eyes from his swinging shaft. She wasn’t so comfortable with her own body. She even avoided mirrors when she was changing in her apartment. She couldn’t even imagine waltzing around this place naked as the day she was born and not feeling utterly humiliated.

Jesse, on the other hand, waved to a couple of women walking toward the ranger office. “You going to Reese’s party tomorrow night?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” one of them replied with a grin. They waved back, as if his bare body wasn’t on display, and continued talking quietly amongst themselves.

“Are you all so comfortable with nudity?” she asked, her curiosity too much to stay quiet any longer.

“Yes,” was his only response, and she got the distinct feeling she wouldn’t get much out of him about his people.

He didn’t trust her, and looking around at the small existence these people had carved out for themselves, it made sense. They didn’t have much, but they seemed to have each other, and she could put them all in danger.

A woman drew in a sketchbook as a small child played on a playground near the last house. Two men laughed comfortably as they disappeared down a thin trail in the tree line. At the end of the cabins, Ethan emerged from the office, only to turn around and give the blond-haired woman behind him a lingering kiss.

Embarrassed at witnessing their private, intimate moment, she turned away and bit her bottom lip. She’d give her knees for a man to kiss her like Ethan was kissing his woman.

She could only imagine what humans would do to these people if they found out. Maybe they’d annihilate the bear people completely, or maybe they’d do experiments on them. Maybe they’d use them as weapons for some covert government agency. Her gaze slid to the little boy on the swing set, and sadness washed over her. She was angry that she was being forced to stay here, and scared as hell, but could she really blame them for being overly cautious?

It seemed like Ethan and Jesse had a lot to protect.

Jesse cleared his throat as he opened the heavy wooden door to his home. He watched her as if he was gauging her reaction, and for some reason, his scrutiny made her self-conscious. He was powerful and different, and with every breath, his rigid muscles flexed. His moss-colored eyes seemed to miss nothing, and under his dry wit was obvious intelligence. And that hair. God, she wanted to touch it. He looked like some wild Viking, all scarred and fierce-looking, and here he was, a stranger, watching her as if her first impression of his home mattered.

Jesse seemed to be many things—man, bear, brawler—but above all of that, he scared her in ways she hadn’t been scared by a man before. She shouldn’t feel safe in the care of a bear shifter who was holding her here.

Jesse was clouding her escape plans.

His home was small but tidy. The living room opened up to the kitchen, and a rustic table sat in a small breakfast nook. A door on the longest wall of the living room was open, and though it was dark inside, she ventured a guess that was the bedroom Jesse slept in. Arching her neck back, she studied a ladder that led up to a loft above. She could make out the edge of an unmade bed, red and blue quilt hanging over the side.

“Who sleeps there?” she asked.

Jesse blinked slowly, and when he opened his eyes again, it was obvious he’d shut down. “This way,” he murmured in a low rumble that sent chills up her arms.

Sidling a plush armchair, she followed Jesse into the dark room off the living room. She’d been right. When he flipped the light switch, a small bedroom with a neatly made bed greeted her.

“You’re very clean,” she observed.

“I like my den organized,” he muttered, then gripped her hand like he’d known her for years and pulled her toward a dresser. “You need better shoes than those.” He pointed to the red wedges she’d pulled back on. She’d nearly rolled her ankle three times on the hike back, but she was determined not to complain anymore. Jesse didn’t seem the type of man to have patience for complaints.

“Well, if you’d like to track down Shay with my car, I have a pair of tennis shoes in the bag I packed. Otherwise, this is all I’ve got.”

He made a single clicking noise with his tongue and reached into a small closet, then pulled out a pair of sturdy-looking hiking boots. “Try these on.”

“You keep woman’s shoes in your closet?”

He offered her another dead look, and her heart fell. Right. He probably had a girlfriend or wife or bed buddy.
Oh, stop it!
He was a bear person, and no matter what he looked like, or how firm his abs were, or how attractive the strips of muscle over his hips were, or how powerful his legs looked, or how soft his hair probably felt, or how sexy his mouth was when it was all serious and downturned like that…she couldn’t afford to grow an inconvenient crush now. It was weird, and maybe wrong, to be attracted to a bear shifter.

Wasn’t it?

And even if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t ever make a move on another woman’s man…er…bear. She had more class than that.

She slid her skinny jean-clad legs into the mid-calf boots and laced them up. They were a little big, but better than too small. She peered at herself in a full-length mirror leaning against the wall. As far as shoes went, they weren’t awful. She wouldn’t have chosen to wear tight-fitting jeans like this with them since they accentuated her shorter legs and curvy hips even more, but beggars and choosers and all.

The jingle and slight pull of the handcuffs drew her attention away from her reflection, and when she looked up, Jesse had a sexy smirk on his lips.

“What?”

His eyebrows hitched up. “Nothing at all.” But the smile remained in his words.

“Spill it, manimal.”

A surprised sounding chuckle burst from him, and he shook his head. “You’re a sassy little thing.”

“Were you laughing at my shoes? You were the one who gave them to me.”

His eyes danced as he raked his gaze down the length of her body. “I like the boots much better than your other shoes.”

Rae Lynn narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe that at all. Men like women with long legs, and these bad boys make me look like I’ve got no ankles at all.”

“That’s not the way I see you.”

Her breath froze as the smile fell away from her face. “How do you see me?” His answer scared her. He could hurt her, and she’d opened herself right up to the pain. If he damned her body now, she’d only have herself to blame for the insecurity that would follow.

He twitched his chin to the mirror. “You want my first impression?” Angling her body, he stood behind her and stared at her reflection.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Beautiful. Curves like a woman should have, the kind that would make a man worship you in bed. Hair just the right length, just the right color. Classy. You seem like a woman who takes care of herself and her appearance.”

She was growing drunk on his soft words, as if he were putting her in a trance. Maybe this was a power he possessed because of what he was. “I’m short,” she argued half-heartedly.

“Makes me…makes men want to protect you. And more important than your looks, you dove for that car when you thought Shay would hurt that little baby in the back seat, no matter the risk to yourself. That’s admirable.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “But that’s just my first impression. You stabbed me after that, and it’s all been downhill from there.”

Jesse laughed and ducked out of the way of her swat. She didn’t want to encourage him, but he made her want to laugh. In fact, his sense of humor and his ability to lighten the mood had her more relaxed than she’d been in a long time. Which was insane, because she’d just found out an hour ago that werebears existed.

“You probably say that stuff to all the ladies.” A man who looked like him wouldn’t have any problem in the women department.

“Not so,” he said as he pulled a pair of forest green cargo pants off a hanger in his closet. “You’re the first one to ever stab me in the back, literally speaking. I don’t think I’ll ever forget you, Rae.”

Even if he was teasing, she liked the way he said her shortened name like that. She’d always thought the name mannish and used to give her mother grief for naming her after her great grandfather. When Jesse said it though, it sounded like the prettiest name in the world.

“Jesse?”

“Yeah?”

“Were you born like this?”

He shoved his foot into a boot that looked like a bigger version of what she was wearing, then sighed. “My parents were both bear shifters, and I turned for the first time when I was four. I’ve always been like this. Does that make you think less of me?”

She shook her head and wanted to cry with the words she would admit to him. Words she hadn’t said out loud since she’d let her ex-boyfriend go. “I’m different, too.”

He frowned and opened his mouth like he was going to ask her a question, but a great pounding at the door rattled the cabin.

“What?” Jesse yelled.

“We’ve got two missing hikers,” came a muffled reply through the door. “Teenagers. Their parents just called it in. They were due back midday and never showed.”

“Shit,” he muttered, rushing to tie his boots. “We’ll be right there.”

Rae knelt down so she could loosen the strain of the handcuffs for him, and when he stood, he grabbed her hand like he’d done earlier, then led her back through the living room.

“What about your shirt?” Because if he didn’t put the damned thing on, her ovaries were going to explode.