Heart Of The Bear (Appalachian Shifters #1) (3 page)

I felt the pain before I even woke up. Somewhere in my dreams I was groaning in agony, and it finally yanked be back into the real world with a scream.

“Caleb!”

Ivy’s voice echoed all around me as though I were in a tunnel. My vision was so blurred that I couldn’t distinguish anything but shadowy flickers.

“Don’t move!”

Caleb’s voice was sharp, but laced with nothing but concern. I felt his hands on my shoulders, and I instantly knew they were his. The tension in my muscles began to ease slightly, but the pain had brought the bitter sting of tears into my eyes.

“Stay calm,” Caleb said gently. “You’re going to be alright. I’ve sent someone for some pain medication for you.”

“Please,” I groaned. “I need something… anything. Tylenol. Aspirin. Something to take the edge off.”

“I’m so sorry,” Caleb said. “We don’t really keep many medications around here.”

“Please!” I begged, clutching the sheets with both hands until they ached.

“Get her some brandy,” Caleb said.

A few moments later, I heard the clink of glass against glass, and then the coolness of it pressed against my lips.

“Drink,” he ordered.

I parted my lips and accepted the fiery liquid. It burned its way down my throat and I felt a wave of nausea. Then my legs felt warm, and the pain eased slightly.

“More,” I pleaded.

Once again he filled the small glass and held it to my lips. At the awkward angle, some of the brandy spilled down my cheek, but I swallowed it greedily. I emptied the glass a second time.

“Better?” he asked.

“Some,” I acknowledged.

“Perhaps just a bit more,” he said.

One more shot of the burning liquid and my pain had subsided enough that I was able to stop crying and relax slightly.

“Thank you,” I told him.

“I’m sorry for what Anna did to you,” he said. “I assure you she will be dealt with.”

“She was going to hurt Ivy,” I told him.

“I know,” he said. “Ivy told me. I never should have left you here with Anna around. I should have known she’d start some kind of trouble.”

“It’s not your fault,” I told him.

“Yes, it is. While you’re here, you are my responsibility. I need to take better care of you than that. I promised your mother.”

“It’s my fault,” Ivy interjected. “I shouldn’t have let Anna get to me. I should have just ignored her.”

“You’ve been bullied by her long enough,” Caleb argued. “It’s about time you stood up to her.”

“You’re not mad at me for it?” Ivy asked cautiously.

“Not a bit,” Caleb said. “I’m actually kind of proud of you.”

Ivy said nothing, but I had a feeling she’d be beaming proudly from behind that wall of hair.

“It was Penny who gave me the courage to stand up for myself,” Ivy said at last.

“Me?” I asked with no small degree of incredulity.

“All that stuff you were telling me about how you got a job offer and just packed up and took a bus to California… I mean… you’re the kind of woman I’ve always dreamed of being.”

“Me?” I asked again.

“You’re not like any of the females around here. There are two types of women here. The evil bitches and the ones who get steamrolled by the evil bitches. I’ve never met someone in the middle like you. You’re strong and confident like Anna, but you’re not cruel like she is. You actually stood up for me even though you were in so much pain.”

“I couldn’t stand to hear her talk to you like that,” I said. “You don’t deserve to be treated that way.”

“She’s right,” Caleb added. “I’ve been waiting for the longest time to see if you’d ever step up and defend yourself against Anna.”

“Is that why you never tried to keep her from bullying me?” Ivy asked.

“I could have stopped it,” Caleb admitted. “But if I had, then what? There will come a time when I can’t be there to protect you. I needed you to learn how to stand up for yourself so you can be strong when I’m not around anymore.”

“You’ll always be around, won’t you?” Ivy asked.

“Well, let’s hope I’ve got a while left!” Caleb chortled. “But this world is unpredictable. Especially up here on the mountain.”

His words didn’t sink in as much as they should have, in retrospect. But it was at that moment that it really began to sink in that their world was much different from mine. This place… whatever it was… wherever it was… was the antithesis of my own. I began to suspect that maybe my original guess about who Caleb was might not have been so far off the mark after all.

“Caleb, can we talk?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Ivy?”

“I’ll go check on that broth you put on for her,” Ivy said.

I heard the click of a door shutting, and then the screech of wood on wood as Caleb pulled the stool across the floor to sit beside my bed.

“What is it, Penny?”

“You laughed before.”

“Huh?” he asked.

“When I told you I thought you were shifters, you laughed.”

“Yeah… because it’s ridiculous.”

“I don’t think so,” I challenged him. “Maybe it’s just the brandy talking, but I think there’s more to it. You don’t keep pain medication anywhere in your… town or whatever. I distinctly remember Anna referring to me as a human. I saw that bear at the crash site.” I paused to shudder at the thought of the crash, and for the first time I remembered all the other passengers that had been on it. They must have all perished, but Caleb had never mentioned it. I went on. “Caleb, you’re shifters, aren’t you?”

My vision was coming back into focus, and as he leaned over me, I gasped. His eyes… I’d recognize them anywhere. They were the same glowing, hazel eyes I’d seen staring down at me from within that mass of fur. Caleb was the bear.

“You’re him,” I nearly whispered.

For a moment he was silent, and then he hung his head, defeated.

“You don’t understand what this means,” Caleb told me.

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t let you leave now,” Caleb said. “Anna was right. I never should have brought you here.”

“Caleb, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Pack law says that if a human discovers our secret, they cannot be allowed to leave with it,” he explained. A pained expression strained across his face. “You could tell other humans. You could bring a lot of shit down on us.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I promised him. “I would never do that.”

“I believe you,” he said. “But the fact is, I can’t break pack law even if I wanted to.”

“Why not?”

“It’s something that’s so ingrained into my psyche that it’s literally physically impossible for me to go against it,” he said. “And I’m Alpha of this pack, so it’s even more important that I follow pack law to the letter.”

“Wait a minute, I thought Alphas were only for wolf packs,” I blurted out.

“You read too much,” he said.

“Maybe so, but am I wrong?”

“We’re a blended family,” he said. “This pack was originally a small pack of wolves. But after their Alpha got killed in a war over this territory, they started taking in other shifters. Strength in numbers, you know? They never could find another Alpha until I came along.”

“So what makes you Alpha?”

“Dominance,” he said. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

“I suppose so,” I agreed. “But not everything is like it is in books, is it?”

“Definitely not.”

“Then explain to me how you became Alpha.”

“When I first came here, I’d left my family behind in Pigeon Forge to start fresh. There was too much crap going on in my clan. I wanted to live somewhere peaceful and get away from all the fighting,” he explained. “I stumbled across a young wolf shifter getting mauled pretty badly by a group of panthers, so I jumped in and chased ‘em off. That wolf explained their situation – that their whole line was in danger of extinction because of the turf wars and the fact that they’d lost their Alpha. I agreed to stay and help them for a while.”

“So how did you end up as Alpha?”

“There was no one else to do it.”

“You didn’t want to be Alpha?”

“I told you, I left my clan to get away from fighting. It was never what I wanted. But I really grew to love these people. They’re good people. The wolves, the cats, even little Ivy.”

“Ivy?”

“Bless her,” Caleb chuckled. “She’s just a little fox. That’s why she gets bullied so relentlessly around here. She’s too small to defend herself in human form or shifted.”

“But she looks so strong!” I argued.

“She’s a shifter, Penny,” he said. “Of course she’s going to look strong compared to the average human. But to the average shifter? She’s small potatoes. And foxes aren’t particularly aggressive in general.”

“Is she the only fox in your pack?”

“Yep. We have a number of wolves, a handful of bears, a couple of panthers, a tiger, a lion… all strong, aggressive animals. And then there’s Ivy.”

“Poor thing.”

“She’s learning to stand up for herself,” he said. “That’s a good thing… as long as she understands when to back down. She’ll never have dominance in the pack, but she can stop some of the aggression towards her if she’ll start standing up to the bullies.”

“So what are my options, Caleb? You said you can’t let me leave. Does that mean I’m stuck here forever?”

“By pack law, there are three options when a human discovers our secret,” he said. “One, we hold you captive permanently. Two, we kill you.”

“That’s two.”

“Yes.”

“What’s three?”

“I don’t want to discuss it.”

“Caleb, what’s three?”

“It doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to happen.”

“What’s three? Just tell me!”

“Three, you are permanently mated to one of the pack, which would involve you being changed.”

“Changed,” I said. “You mean, changed into a shifter? Is that really possible?”

“It’s possible,” he said. “But it’s intensely painful for humans, and it’s not an option.”

“Well, trust me, I’m not eager to become the lifelong mate of someone I don’t even know.”

“It’s not an option.”

Something about the way he said it really grated on my nerves, and I started to feel annoyed. What exactly did he mean by
It’s not an option?

“Why not?” I asked defiantly.

“Because it’s not.”

“Wait a minute,” I argued. “If my only choices are jail, death, or marriage… maybe I’d choose marriage. So why is it not an option?”

“Because there’s no one for you to mate with,” he said in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

“Ivy said there’s a shortage of women up here on the mountain… a shortage of women that shifters find attractive. Was she lying?”

Caleb gritted his teeth for several long moments before saying, “No, she wasn’t lying.”

“Then surely there must be someone in the pack who would…”

“No,” Caleb interrupted me.

“But, if there’s such a shortage of women and…”

“No!” Caleb roared with a ferocity I never would have expected from him as he slammed his fists against the top of the bedside table. The crack of splintering wood set my heart into a state of tachycardia.

“What the hell, Caleb?” I demanded.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, his voice still edgy, but calmer. “I’m sorry about that. I just… I need some air.”

He got up and barged from the room with such haste that he overturned the stool as he brushed past it and he didn’t stop to upright it. All I could do was stare at the ceiling in confusion.

Several moments later, Ivy crept into the room and picked up the stool.

“Everything ok?” she asked cautiously.

“He got really upset at me,” I said, my eyes brimming with tears that I fought to suppress.

“What happened?”