Rescued & Ravished: An Alpha's Conquest (A Paranormal Ménage Romance) (3 page)

Chance smiled. “I know. You’ve been good to me, Jason. You and Gorse.”

Jason’s hold on his shoulder tightened. “Just don’t let him kill you. These combats get savage.
Live
. Live, and be Alpha. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”

“Smell anything? See anything?”

“Nah. You?”

“Nah, me either.” Dove popped her hip and put a hand on it. She was blonde and brassy and young, and range-running with Hudson Farris entertained her. “You think we
will
see anything? Anywhere?”

“Are you asking me if this girl that Hazel saw exists?” Hudson asked, crossing his arms. They had paused on an old, mossy rockfall, one that was blooming with stonecrop in the spring sun.

“Cutting through the BS as usual, Hud?” She smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”

He shrugged. “Between you and me, I doubt it. But it doesn’t do any good to disrespect Hazel by saying so. Got it?”

Dove played with her hair, squinting out over the down-sloping forest. “Got it. But maybe we could forget this goose chase and go look for some berries.”

“No.”

“Alright, fine. We’ll keep range-running.”

“Yes, we will.” He peered out over the woods. “We’ll cut around back toward the notch. See what we see.”

“Nothing,” Dove said cheerily. “We’re gonna see nothing.”

“Probably. But develop some
politesse
and hush up about it.”

“Huh?”

“Shut up about it, kid. That’s what I meant.”

“You’re real charming, Hud, you know that?”

“I know it.”

“But cute.”

“That’s the Season in you talking,” he said with real seriousness. “Be careful. It’s not time to couple up yet. We’ve still got a job to do.”

She rolled her eyes,and then, right then and there, she skinchanged.

One moment she was a svelte, robust-looking girl, and the next she was a big, muscular grizzly sow, ambling powerfully down the mountainside. The sun glittered over her coarse, light-brown coat.

Hudson changed, too, into an immense, dark-furred male grizzly, big and strong enough to fight an elk, and they both headed downhill.

Harper struggled through fool’s huckleberry and fir saplings, making her way uphill. If she could just get to an overlook, she could figure out where she was in relation to Mystic Pass.

Maybe.

She hadn’t seen anyone for days, now. In fact, the only company she’d had since this morning had been a couple of yellow-pine chipmunks chattering near her tent. It was disturbing, the nobody-ness—she wanted to be alone, but not
isolated.
If she’d stayed on the trail, she would have seen other backpackers, maybe some horse tours. She would have seen
someone.

She didn’t kid herself. This was rapidly becoming a survival situation. She should never have left the trail.

If wishes were horses, beggars would—

Abruptly, she tripped and went down hard on the slope.

“Damn!” she muttered, struggling up with a dirty, throbbing knee. Some pipits in a spruce overhead chittered like they were laughing. “Yeah, yeah. Thank you for your sympathy, you little shits.”

She
had
to get to a vista. She had to.

It didn’t help that the sky was greying up. Rain was the last thing she needed.

“Hudson!”

“I hear it too. Hush, girl!” Human on a dime, he gripped Dove’s arm to keep her quiet.

“It sounds like somebody’s coming up the slope.” Dove’s brown-and-gold eyes were very large in her face. “Is somebody coming?”

“Hush, I said!” But Hudson could already tell that somebody
was
coming, no doubt about it.

“Is it that girl? It has to be that girl. Hazel was right,” Dove said. “The elders are never wrong, are they, Hud? We shouldn’t have doubted them. We—”

“We don’t know who it is,” he cut in. “Follow me and we’ll find out. Quietly!”

With all the skill of natural-born hunters, they slunk silently through the woods. Downhill, downhill, and downhill until they were only meters from the loud, obvious sounds of someone’s passage through the brush.

“It
is
someone,” hissed Dove.

“Quiet!” Hudson mouthed. He crept even closer to the sounds, Dove trailing him uncertainly.

“It
is
a girl,” she breathed, once they’d come up behind a screen of bearberry. “It is.”

It was. They could both see her pink, nylon-shell rain jacket, as well as her bright green backpacker’s pack and her light-blonde hair. She looked flushed and tired.

“We should welcome her,” Dove whispered. “Let’s tell her there’s a clan near here, and she can rest, and it’s safe, and—”

“No. Smell her, Dove! Smell her carefully.” His expression was grim. “She’s
human
.”

“No!” Dove gasped. “A human? Here?”

Hudson knew she had to be. She smelled like sports deodorant and polyester and grapefruit shampoo. No bear ever smelled like that. “She is.”

Dove sniffed the air, her eyes dilating. “You’re right. Oh Hud, what do we do?”

“We run her off,” he said, his eyes hard.

“But… she looks lost.”

She did. But the clan came first. “I’ll herd her back toward the valley. There’s a survival shed down there, with a radio. I stopped there when I was coming up, years ago.”

“It’s… it’s a big valley, though… and sheds are tiny, and—”

“I know, Dove, but she can’t come up. A human can’t be allowed to find us.”

Dove bit her lip.

“Stay back. I’ll handle her. I’ve got experience with these people.” He put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Watch me.”

Harper was hot and exhausted. She was almost looking forward to being soaked by the rain, even though she knew that getting cold and wet out here was dangerous. But hell, she was already soaked with sweat, wasn’t she?

She paused, closing her eyes and leaning on a pine. The forest smelled resiny and humid. There was a distant rumble of thunder.

And then a closer rumble. Something else.

Something else.

She opened her eyes.

Her heart seized up in her chest. Her skin went hot with fresh, thick sweat.

Not three meters away there was an adult male grizzly bear staring at her.

Where had he come from? She hadn’t heard anything, there’d been so sign. She knew this was grizzly country, she
knew
that, but she hadn’t even heard a twig break or a squirrel chatter.

He was pushing through the undergrowth, coming towards her. He was enormous, the biggest she’d ever seen, five feet six, five feet seven at the shoulder, easily. Huge paws, hump-shouldered, thick-furred, blazing eyes.

Her instinct was to run, plain and simple. It was to turn tail and book it down the mountainside, and then to race all the way back to Calgary, or, if that wasn’t going to work (and it wasn’t), then her instinct was to climb a tree. But grizzlies could run at 35 miles per hour, and they could climb trees, too.

It was such a huge animal, and it was so obvious that its target was her: it was coming straight for her, staring, growling. The cold, aggressive glint in its eyes made sour ice of her stomach. She could see its big claws pressing into the dirt and smell its earthy, furry scent. It was going to hurt her, wasn’t it?

Bear spray.

Bear spray.
Bear spray.
Of course.

“Hey, bear,” she said as calmly as she could manage, talking to it coolly like the safety books told you to do. “Hey, bear. Easy, now. Easy. Don’t mind this canister. Don’t mind the tag popping. I’ve got something for you, since you wanna start a fight. Just a little something.”

Clearing out a shed was the last thing Chance wanted to do, especially with the Season being so close and fogging up his mind. But Jason’s word was law, and so here he was, clearing out a shed.

There were a lot of things in there that could serve as weapons, things he kept carrying in to Gentian and Egan’s mudroom and stacking there. Shovels, walking sticks, ropes, a hacksaw, a foldable saw, a crowbar, flares, a lantern and oil and matches, an ancient sander. All things you would not want a hostile creature to get their hands on.

It was hard to stay focused, especially with memories of his dream flitting through his head: a beautiful young woman, curvy as a fertility goddess, soft and pale and blemishless with round, powerful thighs and high, full breasts and thick, blond hair—

Fuck.
He had to adjust himself; his thick cock was pressing insistently against his jeans.
Where do I get me one of
those
girls?

“Chance?”

He almost jumped. “Whoa! Gentian?”

“I brought you some food.” Gentian was a kind, sweet lady with long, greying brown hair. “Acorn cakes and scrambled brown eggs. I put on some chicory as garnish, but if you don’t like—”

“Oh no, that’s wonderful, thanks.” He was holding a random lid in front of his crotch, counting the seconds until his hard-on went down. “You didn’t have to.”

“Well, of course I did,” she said warmly, pleased he liked her spread. “I can’t let you go hungry out here while me and my man take a meal inside. And you replacing our lock and everything.”

“Thanks, really.”

“In fact, would you like to come inside and sit with us? It’s looking like rain. I’m sure it will get cold out here.”

He considered that. The sky was getting awfully dark and angry looking. Spring storms in the Rockies were ferocious as tigers.

“Well, I feel bad saying yes when you brought the plate outside already, but I think I’ll take you up on that.” There was already the soft, sprinkling hush of rain starting further down in the valley. “Thank you.”

“Not at all! It’s always nice to have a visitor. Especially a young person. We’ve missed ours ever since they went West.”

It was the natural order of things for some of the clan’s children to get restless and leave, or to find mates from far away at a packmeet and go off with them. That was what had happened with Gentian’s children,
Maple Blossom and Finn. Their parents only saw them at the Gathering every few years.

“The pleasure’s all mine. Let’s go in before the rain starts, huh?”

He closed up the shed since it’d been stripped of everything usable for violence, put an arm around Gentian’s shoulder, and guided her back inside. There was a monumental crack of lightning far away; he knew the storm would be here soon enough. It was a good thing all the clan’s cabins were built in the thick of the pines, so the trees could be lightning rods instead of the roofs.

He had to worry about Hudson and Dove, though. He hoped they would get back to the clan soon, and out of the weather.

Gentian and Egan were kind people and just a little bit lonely, so Chance spent much longer with them than he’d planned to, from lunch on to supper. At least they kept him away from Briar, or Briar away from him, whichever.

Gentian was serving up dinner—pine nut bread and rabbit stew—while Egan was retelling old stories about hunts and packmeets from his youth. He’d encouraged Chance to smoke with him, and shared out a pipe and a lobelia-bearberry smoking
blend.

“There were more wild bears in those days—I don’t mean us, I mean
animal
bears—and they made good neighbors. You were forever coming across ‘em in the forest. They understood us and we understood them. I don’t know what’s happened to make ‘em so much scarcer. It has something to do with cities an’ humans, I expect—”

Rain rattled the windows. Gentian set the stew bowl on a wood underliner on the table. Chance took a drag, half listening to Egan and half worrying about the range runners.

Hudson could take care of himself, and so could Dove, he knew that, but still. If they weren’t back by the time he left to go home, he’d go looking. Just in case.

“Love, what do you think?” Egan asked his mate. “It’s the cities, isn’t it? It’s humankind? That’s what’s done away with all the animal bears, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know. I suppose that must be it. I
do
know that dinner’s ready, though.” She patted Chance’s broad shoulder. “Don’t you hold back now, eat as much as you want. I know what young men’s appetites are like! Especially this close to the Season!”

“Lord, is the Season tomorrow already?” Egan asked, puffing. “Time just flies away.”

“It does,” Chance agreed. “And thank you both for having me all day. This food looks better than I know how to tell you, Gentian.”

“You’re a good boy. Now—”

The cabin’s front door slammed open, cracking against the inside wall. Chance and Egan leapt to their feet, ready to fight, but it was only Dove, white-faced and soaked.

“Dove!”

“Is that Dove?”

“Oh, Dove, darling! You’re all wet—”

“Chance!” she cried, ignoring the others. “Come out! Now!”

“What’s happened?”

“Now! He said
now
!”

Chance squeezed Gentian’s hand—she looked afraid—and then moved around the table to the door. Dove gripped the front of his shirt and tried to drag him out onto the creaky porch faster, forgetting he was at least five times stronger; he pulled the door closed behind them.

The weather was bad. A cut of lightning lit up the valley, arcing wickedly across the sky. Rain drummed down, cold and thick.

“You cleared the shed? You changed the lock?” Hudson was there. He was standing on the porch, naked and muddy and—

Chance did a double-take.

Hudson was carrying a
girl
.

She was slung over his shoulder like a sandbag. He couldn’t get a good look at her, but the shape of her, the curve of her thighs. He swallowed.

Now he looked around, there was a hiker’s pack slung to the side of the cabin door which Egan was opening, holding a lantern. That must be the girl’s. Had Dove carried that while Hudson carried the girl?

“What’s going on?” Egan asked, frowning. “My God! Is that a girl?”

In the lantern light, Chance could see that Hudson’s eyes, nose, and mouth looked raw; the gold in his eyes was shimmering dangerously.

“Did she
spray
you, brother?” Chance asked, shocked.