Reign: A Royal Military Romance (70 page)

A
riana wasn’t getting
much work done. She was supposed to be finding information on a recreational fisher who’d claimed a Bigfoot sighting, tracking down some decades-old alleged Bigfoot prints,
and
keeping an eye on the developing chupacabra situation, but all she could do was replay Violet’s threat to her, over and over again in her head.

You’ll never be enough for him
, she’d said.

Sitting in the library, story time for kindergarteners taking place fifty feet away, she tapped her pencil on the table and stared off into space.

The problem was that Violet knew what she was talking about. She’d been a shifter her whole life, and she’d lived with shifters her whole life; she knew how they acted and what they wanted, what their customs were. Ariana didn’t even know what these people meant when they said
mate
. Did they just mean sex? That ship had already sailed, but she guessed that it was something deeper, something more intense.

What if shifters really liked shifting and having sex in animal form? She couldn’t shift, and the thought of having sex with a bear — even if the bear was Jake — made her physically nauseous.

Were bear shifters crazier in bed, somehow? Did they scratch their men with their claws, but in some sexy way that the men liked? Did they growl, or bite, or... do other bear things?

Ariana felt tears come to her eyes, and battled them back, furiously. Shifters probably never cried in public over whether they were good enough for their boyfriends, she thought.

Thankfully, her phone buzzed, and she looked at the time: five fifteen. It was a text from Jake.

I need a drink
, he’d said.
Meet me at the Lodge Bar?

Ariana felt a little better. Meeting for drinks after a rough day at work: a normal, totally human thing to do. She could definitely meet Jake for drinks. She
excelled
at meeting for drinks.

Absolutely
, she texted back.
Fifteen, twenty minutes?

Sounds good,
he said.
Be careful walking
.

Just then, Ariana’s computer dinged with a new email. Her “chupacabra” email alert had returned something — a few more reports from people in the desert outside Juarez. She swore quietly and flipped through them for a few minutes, glancing at the clock every now and then.

S
he was
barely
late
, but of course Jake was there before her, because Jake was
always
early. Ariana adjusted her shoulder bag and walked into the Bigfoot-themed hotel bar, smiling, excited to see Jake again even though it had only been eight hours.

Then, halfway across the bar, she realized he was talking to someone.
Deep
in conversation. She couldn’t see the other person, but then she saw fingers on Jake’s forearm, curling around it, and Jake didn’t do anything to shake them off.

Her heart beat even faster, and she had no idea what to think. Some Evergreen slut, trying to horn in on her man? Was Jake flirting with her?

Was she a shifter?

When Ariana finally came around the long bar and saw the woman sitting next to Jake, her heart sank. The woman was completely gorgeous: long, red, curly hair, green eyes. Even sitting down she was tall and thin, and her combination of low-cut shirt with pushup bra didn’t leave too much to the imagination. Instantly, Ariana felt dumpy and ugly, incredibly aware of how her jeans didn’t quite fit either her thighs or her waist so they constantly fell down just a little, of her love handles, of the way her messenger bag was pulling her shirt funny. She swallowed.

“There you are,” said Jake. He stood from his bar stool and kissed her on the lips, long and slow, one hand gripping her shoulder. Right away, Ariana was a little bit less mad.

“Hi!” she said brightly. Probably
too
brightly.

“Ariana,” said Jake. Was that relief in his voice, or disappointment? “This is Regina.”

“It’s a pleasure,” purred Regina, holding out her hand for Ariana to shake.

“Like the town?” asked Ariana, trying to calm herself down. Even if this woman had clearly been hitting on Jake, he couldn’t be interested.

“That’s pronounced differently,” Regina said, her eyes sliding to meet Jake’s, as if they were laughing at Ariana together.

Jake just looked at Ariana. “What can I get you?” he said.

“I just want a beer,” she said. “Do they still have that Deschutes Porter on tap?”

While Jake ordered her a beer, Ariana sat at a bar table, glaring at the back of Regina’s head. The other woman was still talking to Jake, still putting her hand on his forearm, still laughing at whatever he said, even though he was clearly buying his girlfriend a drink. Finally he had the beers and he turned away from her and walked across the room to Ariana. She could see Regina’s eyes following him.

“Another shifter?” she said, darkly.

Jake just nodded. “The guys warned me about it last night,” he said. “Brock figures he won’t have to fight me if I’ll just mate with her.”

Ariana looked at him.

“I’d much rather fight Brock,” Jake said.

She relaxed, just a little, looking down at the table. Then she noticed: Jake, a hairy guy at the most normal of times, was
extra
hairy.

“Did you shift today?” she asked.

He looked down at his arm.

“Yeah,” he said, and told her about meeting Brock on the trail, in the woods.

When he finished, Ariana’s eyes were wide, and she was worried again. Not only was he going to fight for her, but what if she wasn’t even worth it? She could never have sex with a bear, no matter what, she knew.

“Hey,” he said, touching one cheek with his hand. Ariana blushed; they were in public. “I’m fine. Nothing bad happened.”

“I know,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “It’s just — I don’t—“ she broke off, frustrated, and took a drink of her beer. It was really good, but she could barely pay attention to it.

“I’m still worried about this,” she finally said. “He hurt you so much before, and now he’s here and — Jake, he’s not going to stop until he kills you.”

“Or I break up with you,” he said, lightly. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Won’t happen.”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“How was your day?”

“Fine. Boring.” She didn’t tell him she’d seen Violet. “There have been reports about the Chupacabra, you ever heard of that one?”

She told him about those for a while — the legendary goat murdering monster that, in reality, was probably nothing more than a sick coyote — while they drained their drinks.

“Come back to my place for dinner,” she said. “We’ll go by the store, grab some groceries, spend the night in. I can teach you to cook something besides venison on the stovetop.”

Jake tilted his pint glass up toward the ceiling, and Ariana had a thought.

“Why
do
you have so much venison?” she asked. “Do you hunt?”

“Sort of,” he said, smiling at her.

Then, it was obvious. He was hunting deer as a bear. Ariana felt like an idiot for not realizing that at first. “Got it,” she said, into her own pint glass. “So, all that venison is covered in bear spit?”

“I wouldn’t say
covered
,” Jake said. “I do try to remain cognizant of the fact that I’m going to eat it as a human. Usually.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and had the feeling she was about to discover something she kind of didn’t want to know.

“Do you ever shift and eat it raw?” she asked.

Jake’s eyes were laughing, crinkling just a little around the edges. Ariana could feel her nose beginning to wrinkle in disgust. “Not the stuff in the freezer,” he said. “That’s for civilized dinners.”

“But?”

“But, if there’s no food in the house and it’s the weekend, sometimes I just shift and go eat some grubs or berries or — you know, other stuff,” he said, changing course once he realized that Ariana had gone into full disgust mode.

She didn’t say anything, but stared at him, her nose wrinkled.

“The lake has lots of trout,” he said, trying to sound meek and contain his laughter at the same time. “How about I bring some back next time?”

Ariana was just making a face.

“I won’t even slobber all over it,” he offered.

“Let’s just go to the grocery store,” she said. “We’ll buy our food, like people.”

Jake just laughed, then stood, took her shoulders in his hands, and kissed her forehead. “Sounds perfect,” he said. “I gotta take a whiz first. Be right back.”

As he walked toward the back of the bar, Ariana wondered if that was one of the shifter things she’d never understand. It did sound convenient to just shift and eat your dinner raw, on one hand, but on the other?
Gross
. She finished her beer, tilting the glass toward the sky.

When she put it back down, she realized Regina was standing there.

“He’s in the bathroom,” Ariana said, annoyed.

Regina acted like she hadn’t heard the other girl, and put an envelope on the table.

“Give it to him yourself,” Ariana said, the beer making her a little braver than she would have been normally.

Regina put a key on top of it.

“We tried,” she said. “But this is the last time: you leave Jake alone, or we’ll kill him. There’s three of us and one of him, and we’d rather see him dead than mated to a human.”

She stared at Ariana, scornfully. Ariana’s mouth hung open. She could barely process what was happening — ten seconds ago, Jake had been here, with her, laughing and teasing, and now if she didn’t leave him, he’d wind up dead.

“You’re a vile bitch,” Ariana said.

Regina just shrugged.

“You’re a bunch of racist, low-life, goddamn — reprehensible —
animals
.” She was aware that this wasn’t a very good insult, but she was too gobsmacked to think of anything better.

Regina looked at the clock on the bar wall.

“If you’re not gone when he comes back, our offer’s over,” she said. She tapped the key with one finger. “It’s a little black Hyundai. Leave it with Enterprise at the Seattle airport. This is a plane ticket to Boston.”

Ariana’s eyes filled with tears. How could this be happening?

“Clock’s ticking,” Regina said. “You want Jake to live or die?”

Ariana saw the men’s bathroom door begin to open.

Tears streaming down her face, she grabbed her bag, the key, and the plane ticket and ran out the door.

A
riana’s beer
glass was still on the table, but she was gone when Jake came out of the bathroom and he frowned, just a little.

Relax,
he thought.
Remember how she’s a grown woman?

She was probably just waiting by his car, after all. He forced himself to act normal, taking the two pint glasses back to the bar, and then walking out to the parking lot.

He found his truck. She wasn’t there either.

Now
it was time to start worrying, and he looked frantically up and down the gravel lot, then walked to the street, looked up and down it.

Maybe she walked to the grocery store...?
He thought, desperately trying not to panic. He felt his skin grow hot and prickly, and felt the urge to shift right there and then — part of his fight or flight response. He forced it back and walked, fast, toward his truck.

They’d taken her. The thought made it hard to for him to breathe. He thought of those headlines about Kaitlyn he’d read, years after the fact: Family Removes Local Girl From Life Support. Attackers Never Identified.

He couldn’t let the same thing happen to Ariana. The first time, he’d been young and weak and stupid, but now Brock and Violet had come to
him.
They were in
his
territory, on
his
turf, and by God, he was going to make them pay.

He’d never wanted to be a leader, or an alpha, but if he was going to have to beat Brock in a fight to get him to understand that Jake wasn’t part of the pack anymore, he’d do it. He would.

As he opened his truck door, he sensed Regina behind him, her thick, perfumed scent nearly choking him.

“She had doubts about you,” she said, her low, smoky voice grating on his ears.

He started to get into his truck, then paused, looking at Regina. Then he grabbed her by the collar and slammed her against his truck, not even caring if the other bar patrons saw.

“Where is she,” he growled.

Regina just laughed.

“Information comes at a price,” she said, and then licked the side of his face.

Jake shook her by the collar again, lifting her a few inches off the ground.

“Tell me,” he said.

“She didn’t tell me,” Regina said, her eyes starting to go wide. “She just took off, out of the bar.”

“You’re lying.”

“I always tell the truth in bed,” she said, lasciviously.

Disgusted, Jake pushed her away and Regina stumbled a little on her heels, backwards on the gravel. If she wouldn’t tell him where they’d taken Ariana, he’d just have to find her himself. He started the truck and roared out of the parking lot.

* * *

A
riana cried so hard all
the way to Seattle that she could barely see the road, but she didn’t care if she hit something or not. The pain of leaving Jake hurt her physically, like someone had put her chest in a vice and was squeezing, hard.

Over and over again she thought about calling him, texting, something, but she was afraid of what they might do to Jake if she did, and after all, this was all for him — what was the point of leaving if he wasn’t going to stay alive.

I hope he finds a nice bear lady
, she thought through her sobs
. I hope they — oh, fuck it, no I don’t.

If anyone at the Seattle-Tacoma airport thought it strange that a woman in her twenties was sobbing like a five year old whose kitten had died, no one said anything. The most she got was an awkward pat on the shoulder from a large black TSA agent, who just said, “I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

“Thanks,” she’d managed to blubber, trying to re-tie her shoes at the same time.

It wouldn’t. She knew it wouldn’t. She was going back to Boston, and there was no Jake in Boston. She felt like her life was over, one long gray blob from here until eternity.

Somehow, she gathered her things — just her laptop bag, all she’d left Evergreen with — and made her way toward her gate.

Halfway there, she remembered that she still had the CRF’s credit card. She probably shouldn’t use it for airport snacks, but by then, Ariana didn’t give a shit what anyone thought. She bought herself two bags of gummy worms, two Snickers bars, M&Ms, and a milkshake. Her mother had always told her not to eat her feelings, but right then, Ariana thought that her mother could go fuck herself, too.

Boarding the plane, she felt like a zombie. Somehow, she’d finally fun out of tears, and as she stood on the jet bridge her eyes felt like dry marbles in their sockets.

No one has ever felt worse than me
, she thought, letting self-pity take over for a little while.

She had an aisle seat. At least the shifters had been the tiniest bit conscientious. They could have stuck her in the middle.

Ariana watched as the lady sitting next to her downed half a handful of pills, then arranged her leopard-print neck pillow just so. She looked over at Ariana, clearly a wreck, and patted the girl’s hand.

“I used to get so nervous before flights, but my doctor prescribed some Xanax,” she said. “It works wonders. You’ll be fine.”

“Thanks,” said Ariana. She leaned her head back against her seat and closed her eyes, praying for the sweet release of sleep.

Only six hours to Boston.