Husband Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire Book 1) (16 page)

“Just the woman we’re in town to see,” Miller slurred from behind her, raising the hairs on her neck.

She slid the note smoothly into her pocket and gave him a sideways glance as he sat on the stool next to her. His youngest brother, Lincoln, sat on his other side, all mussed dark hair and irritated grey eyes scanning the bar as though he wished he was anywhere but here. Miller, however, was staring with an empty smile, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be than pissing her off.

“What do you want, Miller?”

“You.”

With a frown of disgust, she pulled the shot the bartender gave her closer. “You’re not my type.”

“I’ll have what she’s having. Make it a double,” he said to Eric, though from the slur in his voice and the reek of alcohol that wafted from him, Miller was already two sheets to the wind.

“You still owe me from a couple months ago,” Eric said low, his bushy gray eyebrows lifting high.

Miller slammed his fist on the counter. “Give me my fucking drink.”

Eric tossed her a quick glance, then began pouring another shot.

“Now,” Miller said in a calmer, saner voice as he arched his attention back to her. “You and I both know I’m exactly your type. You like trouble, Elyse. You like being roughed up. You like taking care of a man, just like you did for Cole. I look just like him, don’t I?”

Frozen, Elyse swallowed the bile that clawed its way up the back of her throat.

“Look at me, Elyse.”

Breath shaking, she clutched the shot glass and refused.

“Look at me!” Miller grabbed her chin and yanked her face toward him. “I’ve come to tell you I’ll be courting you.”

“I don’t want you.”

“Miller, let’s go,” Lincoln murmured, hand on his brother’s shoulder.

Miller lurched out from under his little brother’s hand and said, “Shut the fuck up, Link. This is why we’re here. To get our girl.”

“She ain’t our girl, and this is on you. I’m not after her. She’s Cole’s claim. Not mine and certainly not yours.”

Cole’s claim.
The way he said that dumped ice into her veins. The fine hairs on her arms electrified with chills, and she inched away from Miller.

His rough hand jerked her to a halt, and before she could stop him, he tore the neck of her sweater downward with a
riiip
. With a curse, she pulled away from him, shielding Ian’s new bite mark, which was still red and painful and hadn’t scabbed over yet.

“Did you see that, boy?” Miller growled in a voice she’d never heard before. It was low and snarly, and a long growl rattled his chest. What the hell? “Cole’s dead, but she’s still marked. She’s a McCall claim.”

Elyse stumbled off the stool and flung her shot of whiskey into Miller’s face. “Get the fuck away from me.”

Too fast to be human, Miller grabbed her by the throat and pushed her backward until her shoulder blades hit the wall behind her. His eyes were blazing such a light color they looked like snow against his flushed, whiskey-soaked cheeks. “Careful, girl.” He pressed his hard erection against her. “I like my women feisty, and you’re gettin’ me all excited in this public place, you kinky bitch.”

“Miller,” Lincoln growled out.

Elyse was struggling to draw air into her lungs as Miller’s grip tightened around her throat. Soft choking sounds slipped past her lips, but she couldn’t scream.

Scrambling, she reached into her pocket for the knife Ian had told her to always carry. She flicked it open with a jerk of her wrist and pressed it against Miller’s neck. She was going to pass out soon, but she could take this sadistic asshole with her. Desperate for air, she shoved it harder against his skin and a stream of crimson trickled out of him. “Get off me or I’ll slit your fuckin’ throat,” she gasped out.

Miller smiled and cupped her sex hard, then leaned into her blade, the psychotic sonofabitch. Spots dotted the edges of her vision now, and his smile shook and blurred. He opened his mouth to say something, but the crack of a gun being cocked drowned out everything. Miller’s eyes narrowed.

“Get your hands off her,” Eric gritted out, jamming a sawed-off shotgun hard against the side of Miller’s head. “Are you deaf? I said get your hands off her!”

Miller let off a single, humorless laugh, then released her. Stepping back, he raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, bartender. We’re just having a lover’s spat.”

“Get on out of here, Elyse,” Eric said in a steely voice.

Clutching her aching throat and struggling to draw air into her body, she rushed past Miller.

“I’ll see you soon, baby,” Miller called after her.

In the front seat of the truck, she looked at the red blade of her open knife and dropped it to the passenger’s seat in horror. She’d cut a man. The blade had sliced into his skin so easily. Nausea made her swallow hard, over and over— she couldn’t puke here. She needed to escape to somewhere safe.

Safe.
This morning
safe
had been Ian and the homestead, but now everything had changed.

Miller and Lincoln exited the bar with Eric right behind them, so she threw the truck into reverse and blasted out of town toward home.

She was caught in the middle of something big. Much bigger than she’d thought when she’d kicked Cole out of her life. Miller wasn’t human. He wasn’t. His eyes had changed colors, and he’d growled a feral sound like Ian sometimes did.

And he’d known about Cole biting her. He’d even called it a claiming mark. She knew what that was because Ian had given her one. But when Cole had bitten her before, she had assumed he was just being cruel.

Werewolf.

The word breezed through her mind.

Ian said bear shifters were rare, but there were also werewolves, and from the way he talked about them, they were bad news. As much as she wanted to reject anything Ian said as truth right now, Miller had always been a half-deranged pill. His mishandling of her in the bar said he was losing his fucking mind. He’d asked if he looked like Cole. Well, he definitely reminded her of Cole at the end. Something was wrong with that man, and her instincts said Ian knew more about the McCalls than he’d let on. And now the realization that Cole had been a werewolf and so easily hidden such a huge part of himself slammed into her middle.

She tightened her strangle hold on the steering wheel and hit the gas.

Ian had mountains of explaining to do.

When Elyse blasted through the final grove of trees and into the clearing in front of the homestead, Ian was sitting on the porch. His eyes reflected strangely in the headlights as she pulled around and parked the truck.

Her anger had grown into an inferno on the forty-five minute drive back. No longer was she in oh-woe-is-me mode. She was in punch-everything mode. Ian had lied about so much, then she’d been choked, threatened, and felt up by a fucking werewolf, and now her rage was infinite.

Pursing her lips over the urge to curse him out immediately, she grabbed the knife and the note and stomped toward him. Miki bounced around her legs and yipped a puppy greeting.

Ian had a lantern hung from a peg over the porch stairs, so she could see just fine when his eyes narrowed on her knife. Then he lowered his gaze back to the half-plucked duck in his hands and went back to ripping feathers from the breast. He had a small pile of the water fowl beside him and a bucket for the feathers a couple stairs below, between his knees. Their first major fight and what did she do? Weep and chug whiskey. Of course Ian had gone and done something productive, such as hunt down a couple week’s worth of meals. Pissed at the world, she kicked a cloud of dirt into the air and started jacking up the water pump handle.

“Who did you stab?” he asked conversationally.

“A werewolf.”

The sound of plucking stopped, but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she washed the blade off and contemplated which question, out of the billion rattling around in her brain, she would ask him first.

“No, you know what. I’m not going to ask questions right now. Why don’t you just tell me everything so I don’t have to decipher your infinite mysteries, Ian?”

“Okay. Why don’t you come sit beside me?”

“I feel like standing.”
So I don’t punch you in the face.

Nodding, Ian reached behind him and handed her a large, brown envelope. “This was waiting for me at my den on Afognak when I woke up from hibernation this past spring.”

“What is it?” she asked, moving closer to take it from his hand. When she did, there was a bloody thumbprint from where he’d held it.

Ian went back to plucking. “It’s a kill order for Cole McCall. I’m not just a bear shifter, Elyse. I’m what shifters call an enforcer. All bears take that title because we’re the biggest of the predator shifters. My brothers have taken jobs like this, too.”

“Are you paid to assassinate people?”

Ian huffed and lifted his narrow gaze to her. “Do you really think so low of me?”

“I don’t know what to think, Ian.”

“No, I don’t get paid, and it’s not called assassinating. It’s called ‘putting them down.’”

“Like animals.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because they
are
animals.”

“Cole was a little crazy, but he wasn’t—”

“He was. You don’t need me shit-talking your ex though, Elyse. I can see how little you trust me. That folder contains most of your answers.”

Elyse stomped up the stairs, then dragged a rocking chair loudly across the porch to the ring of soft, glowing light. Then she pulled out the stack of paperwork from the envelope and read silently, her heart breaking with every word. It was a history on Cole—a list of all the things he’d done to call attention to himself. Some of them she’d known, but the last several pages made her sick to her stomach. There were photos of two trappers who had been attacked by a wolf. One had survived and one had not, and whoever had put together the file for Cole had included the after pictures. It was the next two pictures that drew a horrified gasp from her lips. One was a posed school picture of a little girl. Dark hair and dark eyes. Alaska Native perhaps. She had a snaggle-toothed smile. The photograph that followed was of the little girl in a hospital bed.

Elyse had read about this wolf attack in the newspaper. Her doctors thought the girl would make it for a while, but she hadn’t.

“Cole did this?” Her voice was no better than a wisp of air.

Ian nodded his head and set the naked bird down beside him, then picked up the next to pluck. “The McCalls all go crazy. It’s in their blood. Most of them are smart enough to recognize their expiration date and not involve a mate, but Cole, for whatever reason, felt like taking you down with him at the end.”

“Was this all that was in the file?”

Ian shook his head, his back to her as his body jerked with every rip of the feathers. “There was one last thing.” Leaning to the side, he reached in his back pocket and pulled out a folded photograph.

When she opened it, she found herself staring at the camera with a hollow look. Someone had photographed her from the woods near the garden. She almost didn’t recognize herself, as skinny as she was. Dark circles hung from under her eyes, and her lips were chapped. This picture had been taken right after she’d kicked Cole out of the house. Her lip was still split.

“Why was this in your pocket?”

“Because I fell in love with you from that picture. I carry it everywhere.” When he cast her a glance over his shoulder, his eyes pooled with such deep vulnerability. “It can’t touch the real thing, seeing you in person, but I like the feeling that you’re always close. My bear chose you before I even met you.”

“So you being here isn’t some way to get rid of your guilt over killing Cole?”

“Fuck, woman, is that what you think? I called you, do you remember?”

“When?”

“At the beginning of the warm season I called you asking where Cole was.”

Elyse’s mouth fell open, and she rocked back against the chair. “I remember. I felt better, more hopeful after I talked to you. You said I could call you if I needed anything.”

“And I meant it. I would’ve dropped everything and helped if you ever called. I waited, hoping you would. Not hoping that you needed me, but to hear your voice again. Cole knew I was coming. He didn’t even try to hide from me. He told me he was hoping I got to him in time because his wolf wanted you.”

“Wanted me how?”

“He said he’d given the wolf that little girl to buy him time so he wouldn’t come back here.”

“He wanted to kill me?”

“His wolf did, Elyse. You have to understand. Cole wasn’t right. The McCalls have bad bloodlines. They have for centuries. Most werewolves are okay, but the McCalls always end up losing control of their animals.”

“And you put them down.”

Ian went back to plucking as he darkly said, “Sometimes me. Sometimes my brothers. Cole didn’t deserve it, but I gave him an honorable death. He asked me to give you the note, and I told him I would.”

“An honorable death. Tell me.”

“Elyse,” Ian warned.

“Tell me, Ian.”

He sighed and dropped the duck into the pile, then lifted his jacket and sweater out of the way, exposing the worst of his scars across his ribcage.

“That was Cole’s doing?”

“Nah, that was his wolf’s doing. It was a fight to the death, animal versus animal. His wolf knew he was beat, so he attacked while I was Changing. I couldn’t do anything as he ripped into me, but I can’t really blame him. He didn’t deserve to live, but he still wanted to. Survival is a powerful instinct, even for the broken. This is the gig, Elyse. If a shifter goes wild and wages war on humans, or if they take innocent lives and threaten to expose us, I get the order to put them down.”

Elyse swallowed hard at the thought of a wolf tearing into Ian while he was mid-Change. Of the damage his body had sustained to keep the awful scars that he did. “Why did you wait so long to come find me to give me the note?”

“Because I knew I wouldn’t want to leave if I saw you. If I talked to you in person, I knew I’d want you. I just meant to give you the letter and say sorry and leave, but you were determined to hire a husband, and dammit, Elyse, you were standing there, so fucking beautiful, offering me everything I hadn’t known I wanted, and I was weak. I couldn’t say no. Every instinct in my body screamed that I could take care of you where Cole had failed. I could provide for you and make you stronger. I could make it so you never came out of another winter so skinny. And as time went on and I got to know you better, I got terrified of losing you. I’ve wanted to tell you about Cole a million times. I’ve laid awake after you’ve gone to sleep just thinking about it. The thought of losing you was so painful. No, I’m not here out of guilt. I’m here because I fucking need you more than the air I breathe. I love you more than I’ve loved anything. Any life without you would be empty. I told you before, and I meant it. You weren’t ever supposed to be Cole’s mate. You’ve always felt like mine.”

Elyse clutched the picture of herself. This wasn’t the black and white
he-killed-my-ex
scenario she’d assumed. This was about a different set of rules for shifters to follow, about Ian putting down someone who was dangerous and who’d taken innocent lives. She thought about the trapper and the little girl. About their families, who would forever be changed for the worse because of Cole’s actions.

Life out here required sacrifice. No one made it without getting blood on their hands. Taking life, like those of the ducks on the porch stair, was a part of living. It was a cycle. Cole had become a kink in the chain and disrupted the balance, and Ian drawing out his bear and fighting Cole to the death wasn’t the betrayal she’d thought. He’d avenged the people Cole had killed. He’d given justice to their families. Ian Silver had placed himself between Cole’s dark intentions and the rest of the world and taken scars upon his body to keep her and everyone else safe from that werewolf’s descent into madness.

And he’d saved her in the process.

She didn’t even want to imagine what Cole would’ve done to her if left to his own devices. If she read his letter again now, every sentence he’d written would have a different meaning.

Ian had gone back to plucking, but Elyse slid off the chair and squatted down behind him. Slowly, she rested her cheek against his back and wrapped her arms around his middle.

With a long sigh of relief, the tension left Ian’s body, and he relaxed under her. He angled his head back toward her as if he wanted to be even closer. “I’m sorry.”

“Were you really going to tell me everything when we went to Afognak tomorrow?”

“Yeah. I had it all planned out. Afognak has always been home to me. Miller found the cave I hibernate in. I’d built a cabin inside, but he burned it to ashes.”

“Oh, Ian.”

“It’s fine. I was going to show you and bring the folder and tell you everything—let you see all of me. I couldn’t have gone to sleep for the winter without coming clean. It’s part of why I wanted you to wait to marry me until you’d been with me through the cold season. I want your eyes wide open when you take my last name.”

Her eyes felt puffy, and she had a headache from crying so much today, but some of the tension had left her shoulders as well. She hugged him tighter, then released him and sat down on the stair. Pulling a duck into her lap, she began to work in silence beside him.

And for a while, they just were. It wasn’t until she was working on the last duck that he turned to her and asked, “Are you going to tell me who bruised your neck?”

She swallowed against the lingering ache there. “Miller. He came in the bar drunk. I know how Cole was at the end, and his brother is headed down the same path, Ian. Maybe he’ll be worse. I don’t know. He seems to think that mark Cole gave me makes me a McCall claim.”

A snarl ripped from Ian. “You’re not. You’re mine.”

“I know I am.” No longer able to shoulder what had happened in the bar, she murmured, “Miller choked me, and I put the blade against his throat. Then the bartender, Eric…well, he put a gun to Miller’s head and got me breathing proper again.” She dragged her gaze to Ian and rested her elbows on her knees with the limp, half-plucked bird hanging from her hands. “Ian, he’s going to bring us trouble.”

“That’s what they do, Elyse.” Ian’s eyes turned fierce, darkening like storm clouds. “The McCalls always bring trouble.”