Hearten (Bayou Bear Chronicles) Read online

  Echo laughed at the scene and for the first time, I let myself laugh, bustling both of us in the seat.

  “The grizzlies are close. It’s been said that they intend to kidnap the Coeur.”

  Grunts and growls filled the room. No one would ever get away with taking the Coeur from us. She made our clan work. She was as important as the Alpha.

  We would die protecting either one of them.

  And it would be a privilege.

  “Security will be bumped up even more. We will have round the clock perimeter runs. If I need to call in more men, then so be it. We also need to make sure that the lands owned by Echo’s people are protected. As soon as the threat is over, I intend to return those lands to the tribe. But I will offer our lifelong protection, as long as I am Alpha, to them in reconciliation. I want guards at every corner and door of this house twenty-four hours a day. They won’t touch her. Are there any questions?”

  “How far along is the Coeur?”

  Martha spoke, and the room gasped in unison. We all knew she was pregnant, but we didn’t really speak of it, not knowing the boundaries and how much was our business. The best thing to do was to wait to receive information from the Alpha.

  The best policy was not to ask.

  Plus, we were all males and it seemed intrusive and weird.

  “I am nine weeks along. Why?” Echo answered promptly.

  Martha responded. I found it funny how Echo allowed Martha to speak to her as a friend. It spoke volumes of her continued level of humility.

  “In case we need a decoy. My friend, you have a little baby bump now. If we are pretending to bring you somewhere else, we need to make it believable.”

  Echo turned to the Alpha. “Told you she’d make an awesome Beta.”

  The Alpha laughed heartily. “You did. I never doubted you.”

  I squeezed my mate’s waist in recognition of her excellent plan. She wove her fingers through mine and made them tighter around her body. It would never come to fruition, but it was a good plan.

  “The Coeur will stay here with me. Everything else is business as usual. We will be overly cautious, but we don’t want to give the signal of fear.”

  The Betas filed out one by one, including Martha and me.

  As we left the Alpha’s house, Martha grabbed my hand and led me back to her house.

  “You’re exhausted. I feel it. You need to sleep.” She said on the way to her house.

  “I can sleep at my place. I don’t want you to feel pressured…”

  “I’m not pressured. I don’t ever want to be separated from you if I don’t need to. But you probably want to grab a shower. You have no clothes here.”

  “I will run back and get some. It will only take me a minute.”

  She looked at the ground, suddenly bashful. “Hurry please. It’s kind of like torture being away from you.”

  “Ahh, Martha.” I took her chin between my fingers and gently tiled her face upward. “I bet I can grab everything I own from that place if you want me to.”

  “I do. Come back ready to move into our home.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  As fast as my bare feet would take me, I went back to the cabin I’d called home for so many years. The truth was, it didn’t matter where we lived.

  My mate was my home now.

  When I reached the cabin, my things were strewn everywhere. Most of my clothes were on the floor. Furniture and belongings were broken and thrown about.

  And every bit of it stunk of grizzly.

  My cabin was on the outskirts of the clan’s lands, but closer to the Alpha than we previously imagined.

  I got on my phone at once—even though I hated the thing.

  “Rev. What’s up? You never call me.”

  “Alpha, a grizzly has been at my cabin—destroyed the place.”

  “Your cabin is right outside our regular perimeters. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, Alpha. The perimeter needs to be closed in. They are closer than we think.”

  “I will let everyone know. I assume you will be next door?”

  “I will.”

  “Excellent. Get there immediately.”

  I stuffed what clothes I could find into a bag quickly. The rest would have to come later. I made the trip back to Martha’s home quickly. I wanted to be at the post my Alpha needed me as fast as I possibly could.

  Martha opened the door as I stepped onto the porch.

  “What happened?”

  “A grizzly has been at my cabin.” I answered, walking into the house.

  “That’s closer than we thought.”

  Unwilling to wait any longer, I dragged her into my arms, smelling her hair as I did for good measure. My bear needed to be placated, knowing the grizzly hadn’t been near her.

  “I want you to stay either here or at Hawke’s house until we know everything is safe. Don’t argue with me on this. I won’t have you anywhere near them.”

  I had a slew of arguments ready for her retort. But it never came.

  “No argument?” I looked down on her.

  “No. If I’m not safe, I can’t help you protect Echo. And if you’re worried about me, you can’t do your job. I might be a little—finicky—but I’m not stupid.”

  The laughter couldn’t be stopped. “Finicky, huh?”

  “Shut up!” She slapped my bicep and hit my newly made mark. “I’m sorry. Shit! Does it still hurt?”

  I shrugged, “Not as much as it gives me pleasure. I’m going to shower.” Stepping away from her felt uneasy. “I’ll be back quickly. Make me something to eat, woman.”

  She cracked up. Breathing a sigh of relief at a mate who got my humor, I could feel her eyes watch me climb the stairs.

  I found her bathroom by scent. Her smell was concentrated there. I rushed through the shower, desperate to get back to my mate and my duty. Having Martha be the main financial support of the household was a hard pill for someone like me to swallow, but I had to admit, it would give me more time to commit to my Beta job.

  And writing made her happy. It wasn’t like I was making her support us by coal mining or something equally awful like parrot grooming.

  Maybe I needed to learn to follow my mate’s actions and go along with the plan the Creator had obviously mapped out for me.

  Surrendering was a real pain the ass.

  “Oooh, I felt that one in my ribs.” Martha was on the other side of the shower door. And though I registered what she was saying, I really wanted to have misheard her. Certainly she said something about eating ribs.

  “What?”

  “Whatever you were working through had my stomach in knots but then it all went away with a click, like a rib being broken—it was weird. I brought you towels. And I have a question while I have you trapped in the shower.”

  “You can ask me anything.”

  “What are the scars on your back?”

  Except that one.

  I’d forgotten to add that she couldn’t ask me anything about those.

  I wasn’t ashamed of them, but the story behind them didn’t speak much for me as a person.

  Anything but that.

  “Can I tell you later? I’m beat and hungry as hell.”

  I waited inside, letting the hot water, so much better than my always cold shower, pelt down on my senses.

  “Yep. See you downstairs. Towel is on the hook next to the door.”

  After toweling off and getting dressed in the only pair of pajama pants I could find, I went downstairs, following the smell of food.

  “Smells good.”

  She bounced her shoulders. “It’s just grilled cheese. I haven’t been grocery shopping in a week. Someone’s kept me distracted.”

  “Just wait until we finish the mating rights.” I quipped back.

  Her full body blush gave me the response I needed my words to have.

  We ate quickly while discussing the situation at hand. She had several viable ideas on how to trick the grizzlies into
thinking the Coeur wasn’t even on the premises.

  She was brilliant.

  “You’re dead on your feet, Rev. You need sleep, love.”

  I might not ever get used to that.

  She tugged me up from the table and led me to the bedroom where we’d performed the mating rights just the night before.

  “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be back soon.”

  I waited for her as long as I could but then finally succumbed to a chair in the corner. I heard her come back in the room, but my eyes wouldn’t open.

  “Come on, big guy. You’re gonna hurt yourself sleeping in that chair. You look like Goldilocks when she sat in the chair that was way too small.”

  Forcing myself to get up, I ungracefully dumped myself in her bed—our bed.

  Something like that.

  She joined me minutes later. My eyes were already closed again, but I felt her moving and trying to get comfortable.

  “You can’t sleep on top of me like you do when we’re shifted. Stop trying.”

  My mate giggled. “I’m not. Anyway, you like when I lay on you. I just can’t get comfortable.”

  Groaning, I turned on my side and pulled her flush with me, throwing an arm over her waist and threading my other arm under her head.

  “Be still and go to sleep.”

  “Goodnight, Rev.” I heard it but didn’t have the energy to answer.

  Martha

  Hours later we awakened together, with me sprawled across his stomach much like we’d slept as bears.

  “We’ve got work to do.” My mate tried to move, but I didn’t allow it.

  “Come on, Rev. Echo is fine. You’re ruining my morning after the mark thing. We’re supposed to lay here in bliss and be all makey outey.”

  “Makey outey is not a word. Aren’t you a writer?”

  “That’s called artistic license. I’m going to brush my teeth and then I expect you to be in this bed when I return.”

  “Got an extra brush? The grizzly must’ve needed mine.”

  His hair was messy in the morning and I thought I might love it more like that than when it was brushed. Something about the mutiny of it matched his wildness.

  “I think so. Let’s see what we can find.”

  In the bathroom, he leaned against the counter while I searched through the drawers.

  “I have good news and bad news.” I told him, holding the toothbrush behind my back.

  “What’s the good news?”

  “I found a toothbrush.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “It’s pink.”

  “Oh,” he shrugged and batted his eyes. “Pink’s my fave.”

  That’s when I lost it. I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt and I ended up leaning against him for support. I laughed all the way through brushing my teeth and even when we climbed back into bed, I couldn’t stop.

  “You can’t do that to me. My stomach hurts so badly.”

  Before I knew it, I was flat on my back with Rev hovering over me.

  “Can I do this to you?”

  I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down to me. “Nope. You made me wait all this time. It’s your turn to wait.” His weight on me made me feel secure and safe. It was the opposite of what I thought I’d feel. I expected to feel caged—trapped. Instead being safe there with him made me feel even freer. Rev took his time kissing my neck, my jawline—but when he reached the spot below my ear, I nearly lost all hopes of waiting—for anything.

  “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to have you beneath me?”

  He whispered the words in my ear so softly that I almost didn’t hear him. Our hearts pounded together as he moved his attentions down my collar bone while his hands gripped my hips.

  “If you don’t kiss me, I might die.” I meant every word. I’d been brought to life again and a fire had been kindled deep inside me.

  “Well, we can’t have that.”

  He shifted slightly, reaching down to hitch my knee up to his hip. My leg went around his leg, locking us in a position that left little to the imagination. His lips captured mine and soon we were in a tornado of soft sounds and low groans, letting each other know our love through more than words.

  I ran my hands down the length of his bare back, feeling the dips and change of texture from his scars. He’d moved back to my neck.

  “You didn’t tell me about these.”

  That stopped him cold in his tracks.

  Me and my damned big mouth.

  Before speaking, he ducked his head between my face and neck, and stayed there for a while, breathing in and nuzzling my neck like he had when we’d shifted.

  He sat up a few moments later, leaving me cold and feeling lighter than air.

  “I was hoping you’d forget.”

  I laughed. “For the rest of our lives?”

  “Mmm…that sounds good.”

  Slapping his bicep, I sat up next to him. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “You’ll think different of me. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “Just say it. There’s nothing you could tell me what would make me think anything bad about you—ever.”

  He delayed for a moment, playing with the ends of my hair. “I told you my mother died during childbirth but my father lived.”

  I nodded. I had wondered about that fact. The Creator had the young in mind when he schemed the ways in which we could die as mated bears. If a female mated bear died, her mate died along with her. There were no ifs, ands, or buts in the scenario. But if a male mated bear died, the female lived on. We’d accepted this fact as a way for the young to carry on.

  So Rev’s mother dying and his father living to tell about it didn’t add up.

  “That doesn’t make sense. Either your parents weren’t properly mated or…”

  He looked down and picked at something invisible on our comforter. “Or my mother had already been mated and her mate had just died. She was already pregnant with me when they performed the mating rights—she cut her own mark off her leg so that it looked like any other scar. But he knew as soon as she died and he didn’t follow that everything was wrong. I don’t know how he didn’t know. I don’t know how he couldn’t tell she was lying. I was a baby. He got angry, shifted right there in the room with me—in that cabin. My back took the brunt of his claws.”

  I was glad Rev’s father wasn’t alive anymore. Regardless of the circumstances, we bears never mistreated young, belonging to us or not. We revered our young and raised them to be good, righteous creatures.

  I wanted to kill him for doing that to a baby.

  “You were only a cub.”

  I reached out to my mate, so tangled about an experience he didn’t remember, yet had been made to live with the consequences.

  “I was. And my dad spent the rest of his life making it up to me, raising me the best he knew how to. Nevertheless, being raised without the love and affection of a mother is like a clan being run without a Coeur. There’s no affection—just cold, blunt facts.”

  “Our cubs will have a mother.” I assured him. It was second nature now to talk about the future with Rev. My entire state of being and thoughts about the mating were changed with the mark.

  The ritual had drilled everything I knew about who we were down into my core.

  “I know, love.”

  We sat for a few minutes in silence. I looked down at his ragged pajama pants and wondered how I could wrangle him into letting me buy him new clothes. That was when I remembered how Echo had said he always responded to food. I mean, really, what male didn’t respond to food.

  “I have a proposition.”

  The tug of a corner smile was back. “Propose away.”

  “I will make you whatever you want to eat—because I’m an excellent cook—if you let me buy you some new clothes to replace the ones that nasty grizzly took.”

  Oh Creator, I sounded like a deranged sugar mama.

  “It sounds really one sided. I s
till am uneasy about you earning all the money.”

  I scrunched up my face. “We’re partners, right? Everything that is mine is yours and whatever is yours is mine, right?”

  He shrugged—the big, broody galoot.

  “Look at me.” He met my gaze. Inside he was a big ball of knotted threads of disagreement. “You are the best damned Beta this clan has ever seen. There isn’t enough money in the world to pay you properly for the loyalty and dedication you show to the Alpha pair. Some work can’t be paid for. Some work is honor driven and honorably rewarded. Some work, like what you do, will be left to the Creator to reward. He gave me you as a mate because I needed an honorable male to put me in my place. And you needed me so you can continue to be the leader this clan needs. As long as the bills are paid, who gives a damn?”

  He chuckled and a tinge of blush marked the tips of his ears. “Must you go against every convention?”

  “Yes. I turn all the conventions on their ass and you love me for it. Get over it.”

  “I’ll be the best damned mate I can.”

  “I won’t. I’ll mess everything up. But no one will ever love their mate as much as I love you.”

  “I have one more request.” He was really smiling then.

  “What?”

  “Blueberry muffins. Echo said you make the best blueberry muffins.”

  “Deal.”

  Echo and Hawke came to the house later. The boys were pushed from the kitchen to the living room when their conversation drifted to a tangent about security and perimeters and all the garbage that made Echo look like she was going to barf.

  “Come on, tell me.” Echo whispered over our cups of coffee.

  “Tell you what?” I blushed as the possible questions and answers came to mind.

  “What your mating gift is.”

  “Oh, that. It’s almost done. It has to be sent somewhere to take care of the final touches.”

  Her face pursed. “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “No. Sorry. You’d want to see it and it can’t be shared. It’s too personal.”

  “You suck. So when is the mating ceremony? Soon, I hope. We need something to take our minds off all these silly grizzlies.”

  “I think we are postponing it until the grizzlies are long gone. Priorities, sister.”