Joel (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 5) (7 page)

"You said you had a daughter," Ian began tentatively. "Does she…?"

"Not yet, at least, thank God," Iris shook her head. "I hope she never has what me and Ellie have. I mean, it's not as bad as…you know, it's not as disruptive as being a shifter, but sometimes it feels like I don’t have control over the things I feel or the way my body reacts to stuff. I'll just be out at the store picking up some stuff for dinner when boom, I'm totally on edge and my entire body feels like it's fucking vibrating."

"That's awful," Ian furrowed his brow at her. "I'm sorry."

"Sympathy from a shifter?" Iris snorted. "I think I'm the last person who deserves comforting from you."

"At least I get a pack and a recognised legal status," he countered. "You just have to…I don't know, you just have to live with it."

"I guess we both think the other person has it worse," Iris shrugged ruefully. "Isn't that always the way?"

"Yeah," Ian shook his head, brushing a strand of hair from his eyes. "It's just interesting to see another perspective on it, you know, A perspective that isn't "oh shit, that human-bear hybrid thing is probably going to eat my children."

"Bear?"
 

"Yeah," he grinned sheepishly. "We're all bears, all five of us."

"That's a new one on me," Iris mumbled, but she was lying, her father, according to her mother, had also been a bear, an enormous, magnificent brown bear. She wondered if that's why the scent of these groomsmen had been so potent to her, she recognised some of herself in them.
 

"Yeah, it's pretty rare," he shrugged. "I think we're dealing with wolves, though, out there, I mean."

He gestured across the hills, and suddenly squinted off into the horizon.

"Wait a second, is that…?"

Iris jumped to her feet, and peered out the window, he was right. There was something approaching them at a high speed, something thundering towards them across the hills. Iris leapt to her feet and hurried to open the door, even though she couldn't make out what it was yet, she could be certain that it was friendly. The prickles weren't starting at the back of her neck, but that sense of recognition was.
 

Thundering towards them across the hills was a bear-a
 
bear carrying someone on its back. Iris stared in disbelief, even after everything she'd heard today, she still didn't feel ready for a sight like that. It just felt so…new, and disorientating. Even though she knew that logic dictated that this was all completely natural, she felt her chest tense. This was what her father had been. She'd never seen him in his shifted form, but it can't have been far removed from this, strong, enormous, slightly terrifying. Iris couldn't take her eyes from it, so much so that she didn't notice the wolves in hot pursuit.
 

She felt a pair of arms around her waist, pulling her back, and slamming the door in front of her. She fell back against Ian's chest, immediately struggling to get free.

"But-"

"The wolves, the wolves'll get here first," Ian replied urgently, hastily unbuttoning his jacket. "I'll go out there, just promise me you won't-"

Before he had a chance to finish his sentence, the bear and it's cargo arrived outside the door, completely wolf-free. Ian hurried to open it for them, and pulled the woman who had been astride the bear in through the door. She had barely opened her mouth before a crash came from the room next door, glancing at Ian and the woman, Iris hurried through to see what help she could offer.

A man was standing in the hall, bleeding heavily from a wound on his neck, everyone was crowding around him, each of them trying to get a better look, until Ian came striding out behind Iris.

"Win!" He exclaimed, and hurried over to him. They conferred for a few minutes, and Iris found herself boggling at the fact he was still standing, those wounds looked as if they could have taken down, well, a bear. But right in front of her eyes, she watched as he began to heal, the wounds knitting together, fixing themselves up.
Wait, could shifters do that?
She had always supposed that she had a pretty good insider knowledge of what shifters could and couldn't do, but now she had been confronted by them, she found that her knowledge was shot full of holes. Ian finished his conversation with the injured man, and strode back over to Iris.

"You okay to help me keep watch?" He asked. "It seems like we came off a bit worse for wear in the first encounter with them, but if we stay in the hotel we should be safe."

"Of course," I nodded, looking round fearfully. "Is everyone okay? Are they all back?"

"Yeah," Ian nodded. "Thank God. Though if I had my way…"

He trailed off, and a look of strained panic passed over his face.

"You would never have let them go?" She finished for him.

"Precisely. Sometimes I feel responsible for them, you know? Like they're my kids or something." He immediately shook his head, contradicting himself. "Sorry, I didn't mean-"

"I get it," she cut him off. "Where are we keeping watch? And when do you think the wolves'll be back?"

"I suggest up in one of the rooms, they've got decent views over the island. And, no idea when or even if they'll be back. We might have scared them badly enough that they'll stay away, but I get the feeling that isn't the case," he shook his head. "My vote would be to hide out here until we can get off the island, but that's if those fuckers let us all get out of here unscathed."

"Yeah, I get the feeling that they're not going to be done that easy," she agreed grimly. "Your room or mine?"

He stared at her for a moment, as if convinced she was asking a very different kind of question, before it clicked in his head what she was actually referring to. She stared him out, enjoying the look of mild confusion on his face, and hey, it was nice to know that had she been suggesting the other thing he would exactly have shot her down in flames.
 

"Um, mine," he shook his head, as if dismissing all those kinds of thoughts from his head. "It can see right down over the hills, and someone said they were hiding out in the caves so we can see them if they pop out from the same place."

"And if they don't?" Iris asked, gesturing for him to lead on. Ian paused, and looked over his shoulder at her for a moment before continuing.

"We have to pray to God that someone else sees them before they get here."

And that’s how Iris came to be sitting in that hotel room, staring across at the man sitting opposite her.
 
This wasn't exactly an ideal situation, well, she didn't have to be reminded of that.
 
The most exciting thing that had happened to her in the last two years was seeing her daughter's soccer team win a county-wide trophy, and even then, that had had nothing to with her. This wasn't exactly the kind of excitement she was looking for, but still, she felt useful, outside of her daughter, for the first time in a while. And that was a really good feeling. It had been so long since she'd felt like anything other than just a mother, not just to herself, but to everyone else. She had this nagging feeling that that was part of the reason Dina had invited her along to this wedding, it was a way to guarantee some time away from home, a way to force Iris to get out of her comfort zone and do something for herself. Dina was always perceptive like that, even if her methods weren't always the most subtle.
 

"Ian," she began, breaking the silence between them for the first time since they had arrived up at the room. "Do you think…well, do you think everything's going to turn out okay?"

She knew it was a childish question, but she needed to hear from someone else that this was not as bad a situation as her senses were telling her it was. He turned to her, and plastered a reassuring but obviously fake smile on his face.

"Iris, I know this is really scary, but trust me, I've dealt with worse," he looked back out the window, and she furrowed her brow at him.

"What worse have you dealt with?"

"Before…before I was with this pack. There was another group of bear shifters I was associated with, and they weren't quite as clean-cut as these guys. We got into some shit. It's not worth talking about now."

"Well, if I'm stuck in a room with you for the foreseeable future, I think it's only fair that you tell me what you're capable of," she snapped, her words a little harsher than she had intended. She was just on edge, and knowing he had hidden something from her only exacerbated her emotions.

"It was just a dumb thing. A couple of years back, there was another pack, and they were moving in on our territory. So we dealt with them." He refused to make eye contact with her, pointedly avoiding her gaze.
 

"You fought them?" She prompted him.

"Yeah. No-one was badly hurt but it was…scary, seeing what shifters can do to each other. Seeing Win like that downstairs, it just reminded me…" he shook his head, as if trying to dismiss the thoughts from his brain.

"Is that why you didn't go out there to fight in the first place?" Iris nodded out over the hills. It had been odd-seeing pretty much everyone else run out into the storm as soon as they heard there was something wrong, while Ian stayed behind. It wasn't that she thought he was a coward-just that it was strange he didn't go out to fight with his pack.
 

"Yeah," he mumbled. "It never really, it scared me, seeing that much power, seeing the power I had when I didn't keep it in check."

"But that doesn't happen every time you shift, right?" She cocked her head at him curiously.

"I don't know," he admitted. " I haven't shifted since then."

"What? You said it was…?"

"Three years ago." He nodded, and Iris' mouth fell open.

"Isn't it bad for you? Not to shift for that long, I mean?"

"I don't think so, but sometimes it feels as if it's going to burst out of me when I least expect it," he shook his head. "It's….I just keep remembering how much I lost control, and the thought of that happening again really doesn't sit right with me."

"So what will you do if you have to fight them?" Iris demanded bluntly. If she was stuck with, she wanted to know at least that he could defend himself, let alone her.

"I'll try hand-to-hand, I guess? I don't even know if I can shift any more. It's been such a long time since I last…." His words trailed off, as if he was trying to dredge up distant memories. "I can barely remember what it feels like, you know?"

"Do the rest of them know you don't shift?" Iris pushed further. This was all so odd to her.

"I don't think they've ever noticed," he replied, "I mean, we go out shifting together once in a while, but I usually just let them split up off ahead of me and meet them back where we started. They just think I'm the most punctual bear in the world."

Iris giggled at the ridiculousness of his sentence, and Ian smiled at her, the tension ebbing out of his face as he did so.

"I don't think I'll ever shift again, if I get the choice," he admitted, stretching and shifting himself so he was a few inches closer to Iris. "I know that sounds odd but…it's not a part of me I want to explore anymore. I'm done with that."

Iris looked back at him, and saw a sudden vulnerability in his eyes; he had been so in-control up until that moment, but right there and right then, he looked a little lost, as if he didn't know how to handle the truth in what he had just said. She realized that he was closer than before, only a few inches away. If she reached out her fingertips, she could just about-

Before she had a chance to follow those thoughts through any further, the door flew open. They both jumped to their feet, and Iris felt a flash of embarrassment despite the fact she hadn't so much laid a finger on Ian. Ian hurried towards Adam, one of the other groomsmen, who was standing in the door frame with a look of pure panic on his face. And I immediately knew what was going on, as soon as the door had opened, I had felt that familiar prickle across the back of my neck.
 

"They're here," he murmured urgently, as if he didn't want Iris to hear. But Iris took a few steps closer, tilting her head so she could make out everything he was saying.

"Who's here?" She demanded.
 

"The wolves. They're here. Inside the hotel."

Iris felt another rush of adrenalin, but this one was powerful enough that it almost knocked her off her feet, her vision clouded, and her knees began to buckle underneath her. Ian grabbed her as she stumbled back, and held her close to his chest as he turned back to Adam.

"How many?"

"Five," Adam replied. "Is she okay…?"

"She'll be fine," Ian shot back as I pulled myself upright again, using the bedpost as leverage. "Do we know where they are?"

"Down in the lobby. We managed to get all the staff evacuated, but we're all scattered around the hotel."

"Are they just…waiting for us?" Iris asked incredulously.

"That's the thing. One of them, the alpha, I think, he hasn't shifted, he's human." Adam's eyes were wide and confused, and he was about to continue when another one of the bridesmaids, Maya, appeared behind him.

"Adam, we need to get everyone downstairs," she reminded him urgently, then shot a look inside the room at the two of us. "We'll have this under control in no time, yeah?"