Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 21482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 72(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 107(@200wpm)___ 86(@250wpm)___ 72(@300wpm)
He takes one look at my face and says, “You saw Sam?”
My throat closes up. Doesn’t matter if he hears all I’m feeling in my voice because he’d smell it anyway. Still I manage a “Yeah.”
“She’s not dead.”
“What?”
“Sam. Not a ghost. She just smells like one.”
I don’t know what the fuck a ghost smells like, but Sam smelled like she always did—sweet and hot, like steel raised to the melting point and doused with honey. Though not usually burning so hot. But that was the rage.
And something more. Something that threatens to crack my chest open if I focus on it too hard.
I focus on Travis, instead. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She took that tea. That whatsitcalled—”
“Aiden’s weed.”
“Yeah. Last week.”
When she must have found out that I was coming back. Wanting to hide from me.
Not her anger. Didn’t hide that at all.
Maybe hiding that she still wants me. Might be something else. But at least the thought of her hoping to disguise a hot pussy offers me a little hope.
Travis’s brows draw together. “So you saw her?”
Wordlessly I hand over the citation.
“Holy fuck.” He starts laughing as his gaze travels down the half dozen violations she listed, starting with how fast I was speeding and ending with not carrying my license on my person. Sam dinged me for everything she honestly could—because even furious, her integrity runs as deep as her bones. “Remind me never to piss her off.”
I like to think that she secretly wants me to stay around at least until the court date. I hold tight to that thought, otherwise her You ought have stayed gone might send me running back to the woods again. If I make it that far.
And I do have another reason for coming. “Where’s that baby of yours?”
Emma’s just the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Strong smell of wolf in her, too. Not gonna lie, I was hoping Mama Bear’s genes would sneak through and Emma would be a berserker. Maybe the next one will be.
As for Mama Bear, she gives me about an hour to play with the baby before the steely look in her eyes tells me that my time’s up.
We amble out into the park behind the ranger’s station. The afternoon thunderstorm has already passed, leaving an electric odor in the air. The sun’s out again, but the grass is still wet and the park’s empty of humans.
But the weather doesn’t matter so much to a bear. Rain feels good. Sun feels good. Snow feels good.
And we’re only wearing boots and shoes because we’re walking out where people can see us.
To look at her, no one would guess that Deborah Ranger once tore apart a man-eating werewolf with her bare hands. And not even while she was in her berserker form, but just like she is now—six feet tall, built solid like me but not as thick or as heavy. Curly dark hair cut to chin length, eyes a dark gold when they glow and near black when they don’t.
They’re glowing now, because I know she’s feeling deep. And she’s waiting for me to start but I know she won’t wait long.
“I didn’t know it was a year,” I tell her. “Not until I came out of it.”
Mama nods. “Time moves different for a bear.”
Yeah, it does. A whole fucking year different.
She pauses to breathe deep next to the roses growing along the walk. “What brought you out?”
“Sam did.”
Her eyes roam over my face, and the sheen of tears in them just about finishes the job that Samantha started on my heart. “You’re in deep?”
“Couldn’t be deeper.” We start walking again, meandering our way through the flowers and the trees. “I kind of always figured the whole ‘berserkers will die without their mate’ thing was just some overblown crap to compete with a werewolf’s curse. That gold chain is some dramatic fairy tale shit, you have to admit.”
A fond smile curves her lips. “Wolves are like that.”
“But it’s true about berserkers?”
“It’s true. It’ll be slow but sure. Does she know?”
“That I’ll die without her? Fuck no. I’d never lay that on her.”
Mama gives me a look that says I just jumped off the wrong end. “Does she know that you love her.”
“Oh.” I don’t know. “I said something about how I’d spend my life loving her…but I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me. I think she got her heart banged up quite a bit before I came along.”
“Like Alicia did? Those poor girls.”
“Yeah. No. Not like Alicia. But yeah.”
Her brow arches in amazement of how articulate I am.
From somewhere over by the ranger station, my brother answers. “Alicia pushes almost everyone away. Leastwise she did before accepting her beast. Samantha lets people close. Just never too close.”
That sounds about right.
“She was hurt real fucking bad when you went, brother,” Travis goes on. “Pretty sure she still is.”