Boarlander Cursed Bear (Boarlander Bears Book 5) (10 page)

Clinton took his cell phone and keys out of his back pocket and settled them into Alyssa’s outstretched hand. God, why was she this nervous?

“You’ve got this, babe,” she said as Clinton removed his T-shirt. Apparently that was the rule Beck had negotiated for the All-Shifter events today. No shirts so the ladies could ogle, and so the news and photographers could catch those muscle-ripping shots of the shifters going to work.

Her claiming mark was fully healed and was hard to see at a distance, but still, it was scary having it on display. Clinton cupped her neck and kissed her deeply, dipped his tongue against hers, nipped her bottom lip, and disengaged. Eyes bright, he gave her one last here-we-go look and then made his way to his log with Mason. They were the only two Boarlanders in this event. Mason gripped Clinton’s shoulder, placing his hand perfectly over her mark as he talked low to Clinton. God, they were massive men.

The sheer volume of women at today’s Lumberjack Wars had been record-breaking, and the awed murmurs from the crowd around her were intimidating. These boys would always get attention from women for what they were. Their instincts to protect their mates and rear young, and their masculine, powerful bodies were partially to thank for that.

Alyssa had worn her contacts today since it was sunny. She pushed her sunglasses farther up her nose as she read the towering score board a few events over. The Ashe Crew, Gray Backs, and Boarlanders were neck and neck, but this event could win it for her crew. And dang, it would be so awesome for them not to be C-Team anymore.

“Come on, Clinton!” she cheered, clapping as he made his way up onto the plank of wood sticking out of the thick log.

It bounced smoothly under his weight, but he balanced on it easily. His eyes were on Mason, who was right beside him and talking to him low, his eyes blazing the bright blue of his boar people. Kellen and Drew of the Ashe Crew were in this event, Beaston and Matt were representing the Gray Backs, and Kong had been an all-day one-man wrecking crew for his small Lowlander family group. And wow, all their eyes were blazing inhumanly bright. The event workers ten feet below the shifters’ planks tossed up axes, and the competitors caught them easily. Arms rippling, tatted up, snarly, demon-eyed shifters, and all the ladies around her were cooling themselves with fans Beck had been handing out that said
Vote
with Cora Keller’s pro-shifter website listed at the bottom for more information.

She understood those wide-eyed tipsy looks from the crowd. The shifters swayed slightly as they found their balance on the boards and pulled their axes back over one shoulder, readying for the horn. Clinton had her ovaries in a mushroom cloud right now.

“Come on, baby,” she murmured, rocking up on the balls of her feet with nerves.

She squeezed his phone, and it vibrated. Crap, she probably pushed a button. Alyssa turned it over as it vibrated again. Someone was calling, but when she saw the number, the crowd disappeared around her. The cheering dulled, and even the air horn blasting the start of the event sounded muted and far away.

Why was Mom calling Clinton?

Her hand shook more and more with every ring as she stared at her house number on the glowing screen. Why was it labeled
home
? He hadn’t met her parents yet. Hadn’t even talked to them on the phone since she had planned on Clinton meeting them in person in a few weeks when she officially moved her stuff from North Carolina to 1010. When the phone stopped ringing, the
chop, chop
of the event echoed hollowly around in her mind.

“Clinton! Clinton! Clinton!”

People were cheering her man. She should be, too. There would be a good explanation.

She jacked her gaze up to the logs being chopped where Clinton was already halfway through, his powerful body twisting with each blow he sunk deep into the wood. His ax gleamed in the sunlight as he brought it back and swung again, chips of wood exploding outward on impact.

His phone dinged, and now it had a voicemail icon.

In a daze, Alyssa poked it and lifted his phone to her ear. Mom’s recording came over the line, loud and clear. “Hi, Clinton. I was just calling to touch base. We haven’t talked about what we’re going to tell Alyssa in a few days. Craig and I are worried about that dream you told us about. It sounds like a memory, and if she’s getting them back, we were thinking of coming clean. I know she’s happy with you, though, so we wanted to include you in the decision. All right, we love ya, boy. Let us know what you’re thinking. Bye.”

Someone jostled her hard, and when she lowered the phone, Audrey and Beck were screaming and jumping, cheering loudly. “Clinton won! The Boarlanders won!”

The Boarlanders won. No more C-Team. More jostling, but everything felt so surreal. And when she looked up at Clinton’s grinning face as he knocked axes with Mason on the log next to him, she just couldn’t understand how he had this rapport with her parents.
We love ya, boy.
He’d told them about her dream, and mom said it was a memory? Her with the boy. Her being grabbed. That was a memory?

No. She backed up a few steps and ran into a barrel-chested man with his beer mug raised in the air. “Sorry,” she murmured.

Clinton’s eyes locked onto hers, and time slowed. His bright smile faded from his face, and his eyebrows lowered in confusion. He hopped off his plank, but she wanted to run. Run away from whatever betrayal he and her parents had cooked up. Run away from the hurt. Run away from him.

“What’s wrong?” How had he gotten to her so fast? His eyes were light, more white than gray.
More white than gray
. Just like the boy in her dreams. She wanted to retch.

Alyssa wrenched her arm out of his grasp. “Why don’t you ever say my name?”

“What?” he asked, matching her stride as she made her way past the outskirts of the crowd.

“I’ve thought about it, and I’ve never heard you say my name.” She rounded on him. “Say it. Say Alyssa.”

The fire cooled from Clinton’s eyes, and he straightened up. His lips twisted into a stubborn line, and he gave his gaze to the tents nearby. Alyssa pushed him hard in the chest, but he didn’t move. “Say it!”

He looked furious now as he blinked slowly and brought those blazing eyes to hers, his face angled to the side in warning.

Why was she crying? He didn’t deserve to see her tears. “Say my name, Clinton. My real name.”

His Adam’s apple dipped into his throat. “Shae.”

“No.” She shook her head and backed away, bit her bottom lip hard to punish the weak tremble there. “No.”

She bolted for the front entrance, then sprinted past the gate and into the parking lot. Where was her damned car? Where had she parked? Frantically, she scanned the lot as she ran through row after row of cars. There it was, another five rows to go.

“Shae, stop,” Clinton pleaded.

His hand on her arm was gentle enough, but she flinched away from him. “My fucking mom called.” She held up his cell phone. “She left a voicemail about which way to spin your lies. You know me! You’ve known me all along. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“If you’ll just calm down, I’ll tell you everything.”

“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down!”

“Listen, I didn’t tell you for a reason.”

“What reason could you possibly have to lie to me? What reason, Clinton?”

He held his hands out like he was soothing a startled horse, but his eyes were blazing so bright they were hard to look at. The air felt heavy. Too heavy to breathe.

“I’ve known you all my life.”

A sob wrenched from her throat. “Who am I?” she screamed.

Clinton looked gutted when he murmured, “Your name is Shalene Dunleavy. You were born here in Saratoga, and you lived a few doors down from the trailer I grew up in. Stop backing away.” There was an edge to his voice. “Don’t give me your back right now and don’t run.”

Chills blasted up her forearms. “You were the boy, Clinton. I guessed, and you told me you weren’t.”

“I’m not him anymore.”

“I dreamed you traded yourself for Shae.” She shook her head hard to rid herself of the creeping dizziness. “You traded yourself for me.”

“I had to. You were there because of me. God, Shae, you should know you were there because of me, and whatever happened to you in there, you don’t want to remember. You don’t. You were taken when you were sixteen. I fought them. I couldn’t fucking Change. My bear wouldn’t work right when I was a kid, and I was trying so hard to just Change into my animal and kill those mother fuckers who were after us, but I couldn’t. And when I woke up in the woods, I was bad off, and you weren’t where I’d left you.”

“The log.” Her face fell, and tears streamed out of her eyes.

“They thought you were the bear shifter, and it took me two years of searching. Two years of you in that goddamned hell facility, and that was part of the deal. They would do a trade for me, but only if your memories were wiped. It was that or they would dispose of you.” Clinton winced and shook his head hard. “And I agreed because that sounded like the perfect solution to me. I was going in, and I wouldn’t get out, but I didn’t want you remembering me or feeling guilty that I’d traded places with you. But more than anything, I didn’t want you remembering whatever they did to you.” Clinton shrugged. “I still don’t! If I could’ve gotten away with this and your parents stayed on board, I would’ve taken this to my grave if it saved you from pain.”

“And my parents were okay with lying to me, too? Alyssa isn’t even my name!”

“It is. It is. The medicine they gave you worked for a long time. Months after you got out. You would lose a memory a moment after you made it. That medicine just…dissolved them. Your parents and I had a plan before I even found you. If you were alive, they would move far away and start over, just in case IESS ever came looking for you again. But Shalene Dunleavy had all this news coverage around your disappearance, so your parents changed your name to protect you from that.”

“So, I’m not even from North Carolina. I’m from here? My whole life, all of my memories were from here? I didn’t fall down a ravine, I was fucking kidnapped?” She backed away from him, so angry and hurt her head spun.

“Don’t leave.” His voice came out a desperate snarl, and his eyes were the color of snow.

“Clinton!” Harrison called from the entrance of the park. The other Boarlanders were behind him, looking concerned, and Alyssa or Shae or whoever the fuck she was couldn’t do this in front of them.

“I’m going back home.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Not to your trailer park. I’m going back to North Carolina. I need space.”

“No, no, no, no,” Clinton chanted in quick succession. “Shae.” Clinton’s voice sounded strangled, and then there was a popping sound behind her.

Horrified, she turned, but she couldn’t make sense of what she saw. Clinton was on his hands and knees, his shoulder crunching and his spine elongating. His eyes were terrified, and when he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth were longer and sharper. “Run.”

She must’ve misheard him. A minute ago, he’d told her not to run, and now he was changing his mind? He was breaking. She’d done this. She had to help. To save him somehow. “What do I do?”

“Shae,” he said, leveling her with those fierce eyes. “Ruuuun!” His voice tapered into a roar as a massive, blond grizzly exploded from his body. The bear stumbled toward her, as if he was fighting his steps.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered as she stared at the slowly approaching predator. His jerky footfall was so hard it vibrated the ground under her feet.

His silver eyes lifted from the long, curved claws on his feet to her, and there was a moment of regret that pooled there in the mercury. But in a flash, he blinked, and then there was nothing but determination in his wild gaze. And the next step he took was deliberate.

Clinton was coming for her.

She spun and bolted toward her car, yanking her keys out of her back pocket. She fumbled for the right one. Damn keychains! Why did she need all these cutsie, jingling
obstacles
? No time to reach the driver’s side, she aimed for the passenger’s side. A horrified sound wrenched from her throat as she dropped her keys into the grass.

She stumbled to a stop, off balance and going down to her hands and feet to turn for the keychain. She gripped clumps of wild grass to help with traction, but Harrison was screaming now. “Don’t stop, Alyssa. Go!”

Clinton was getting closer, ducking and dodging parked cars, his eyes glued to her. He was hunting.

With a terrified gasp, she heeded the alpha’s demand, spun back around and sprinted for the woods behind the parking lot, pushing her legs faster than she ever had in her life. In the distance, over the trees, a wall of storm clouds ghosted the horizon, lightning flashing in the darkening sky.

She was small enough to fit through the space between cars, but not Clinton. He was having to swerve into empty spaces and it was buying her time. When she dared a look to her left, Bash was keeping pace with her fifteen cars down. Her next glance over and he was a pitch black grizzly. An earth shattering roar sounded from behind her, and then another answered. Now the Boarlanders were hunting her, too.