Reign: A Royal Military Romance (72 page)

I
t was after midnight
, and the Skagit Valley Hospital was very, very quiet. Only a few doctors and nurses walked around the halls, so nobody really noticed the woman wearing scrubs.

She walked through the hall, looking down, studying a chart intently. Then she stopped at a room, checked the number against something on her clipboard, and went inside.

Inside was a man with light brown hair and long sideburns, lying unconscious in a bed. The woman closed the door quietly and stood over the man, tears filling her piercing blue eyes. She took a few deep breaths, seeming to steady herself, and then took a pillow from behind the man’s head.

He didn’t move. His cheeks looked hollow, like someone who hadn’t eaten properly.

The woman swallowed, tears falling down her face now, her hands gripping the pillow so tight it looked like she might tear it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Then she pressed the pillow to the man’s face and held it there, tightly, until the machines connected to him began a cacophony of frantic beeping.

By the time the night nurses got there, the man was dead and the woman was gone again.

T
he streetlights were
on but the moon was brighter, shining through the thick trees in jagged lines, spilling onto the quiet Main Street. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and nothing and no one in the little town moved. The two stoplights in town blinked from red to green in unison, bathing the street in different light.

The grizzly bear walked down the center line of the road. She moved slowly and deliberately, not at all afraid that she might be seen, making no attempt whatsoever to hide. The light blinked green to red, not that there were any cars, not that it seemed she would care if there were.

She walked the a few blocks of the little town, past antique stores, coffee shops, a bar, the library, restaurants and stores that sold wooden carvings of grizzlies.

Then, after she’d passed, a door opened and for a moment the sounds of a bar spilled onto the street: music, a couple of people talking too loud. Two people stumbled out of the door and into the street, both laughing at something.

The bear turned her head, and then, slowly, her whole body. The two drunk people were holding each other up, still laughing, trying and failing to make it back to the sidewalk, falling into the wet street.

They didn’t see the bear until she was about five feet away.

“Cut it out,” one of them said, waving a hand at the bear. He had shaggy, chin-length hair and a goatee. “Man, that’s a terrible bear costume.”

The other guy, who also had shaggy hair but was clean-shaven, just stared at the bear.

The bear closed the gap between her and the two young men.

“Seriously, quit it,” said the first guy.

“Greg,” said the other one. They were both sitting on the ground where they’d fallen, and the clean-shaven one groped for his friend. “Greg, dude, that’s a bear.”

Greg kicked one foot at the bear, lazily dismissing it. “There is not a bear on Main Street,” he said, his words slurring together. “It’s probably Justin. You hear that, Justin, you prick? I’m not falling for it.”

As if interested to see how this played out, the bear sat on her haunches, watching the two men.

“Oh shit,” said the second guy. “Oh, shit. Um. Hey bear! Get away! Shoo!”

He leaned in and clapped his hands at the bear, hollering at the top of his lungs.

Greg began laughing hysterically again.

“Shoo!” he echoed between drunken giggles.

The bear just watched them. She tapped one claw on the pavement. One of the young men, the clean-shaven one, began to get to his feet.

“Man, get up,” he said. “There’s something wrong with this bear, we should go.”

“What’s wrong with it is that it’s a BEAR COSTUME,” he shouted, his voice rising on the last two words.

And then, he leaned toward the bear and grabbed her ears in both hands.

Before the other man could blink, the bear had Greg’s throat in her teeth and she’d ripped it out, nearly severing his head from his body, tossing him back and forth like he was a rag doll.

“Shit!” shouted the other man, and he tried harder to scramble to his feet, but the pavement was slick with rain and he couldn’t quite make it.

The bear tossed Greg’s lifeless body aside and advanced on the other man. He scrambled backwards, scooting himself across the pavement, a stream of gibberish coming from his mouth.

“No no no please just leave no oh god no bear no...”

She swatted at one leg, catching him on the calf with her claws, and the man howled. He clutched his leg and rolled onto his side, instinctively curling into a ball, covering his head with his arms. He sobbed in terror, and it almost sounded like he was praying.

The bear gave him one more swipe, raking her claws deep into his back. He howled in agony again, ducking his head, on his side in the middle of the street.

Then the bear walked away. She entered an alley, came out the other side, and quietly made her way through a few residential blocks.

In one yard, a dog started barking as she passed through, but she ignored it and kept on going until she was in the cover of the deep woods.

T
he cable guy
presented Ariana with a clipboard and pushed his hat back on his head.

“Just need you to sign here, ma’am,” he said.

She looked it over before signing, mentally sighing. It had cost an arm and a leg to get cable internet out to Jake’s cabin in the woods, and she still felt terrible that he’d insisted on splitting the costs, but he had. He didn’t even own a computer, a fact that had boggled her mind before she remembered that he’d spent nearly five years straight as a bear.

“Everything’s set up?” she asked, scrawling her messy signature at the bottom.

“Sure is,” the guy said.

“Let me test it before you leave,” Ariana said, handing the clipboard back. The two of them stood in the living room of Jake’s cabin, the front door open to a nice breeze. “I’d hate to have to call you back.”

The man shrugged. “Sure,” he said.

Ariana walked over to her desk, sat, and opened up the wireless settings on her laptop. It was the moment of truth: how well would the internet out here work?

Could she really live with Jake, or might she run screaming for the hills — the hills in this case being the city?

The cable guy didn’t seem to notice her slight internal turmoil, looking around instead at the interior of the cabin. Jake had built it himself, years before, and it felt like the perfect little cabin in the woods: cozy, warm, everything made of wood.

“You all ever see bears out here?” he asked. “Must see plenty of wildlife.”

Facing away from the man, Ariana smiled at her computer.

All the time
, she wanted to say.

“I’ve seen a couple of black bears,” she told him. “Nothing too exciting.”

She opened her wireless, selected the only available network, and entered the password: werebear1. She didn’t know if Jake would find it funny, but she did, and it was her wireless network anyway.

Chrome loaded flawlessly.

“Looks good,” she said. She nearly stroked the screen: she could watch movies again, get email, google whatever she wanted. God, she’d missed the internet.

The cable guy put his hat back on and picked up his tool case. “Give us a call if you have any problems,” he said. “You have a good night, now.”

As he walked out, Ariana heard Jake’s truck driving up the driveway, the gravel crunching beneath his big tires. Through the window, she watched all six-foot-five of him get out, greeting the cable guy as he drove away, then grab something out of his truck before he walked into the house. She heard his keys hit the kitchen table and his footsteps come to find her in the storage closet that she’d turned into an office.

For some reason, the storage closet that was now her office had a window, even though it barely fit her little desk. Since he’d built the cabin himself in his twenties, it had a lot of little eccentricities. Ariana hadn’t gotten around to asking Jake about most of them yet.

She stood from her desk and stepped out of her office-slash-closet, meeting him coming down the hallway.

“Hello,” she said, smiling up at him. He put one arm all the way around her, drawing Ariana to him and kissing her firmly on the mouth. For just a moment, she lost herself, feeling like she was spinning uncontrollably through the universe, totally unmoored from her feet, still standing on the ground.

She wondered again when she’d stop feeling that way. She hoped never, but she also prided herself on being realistic.

“I missed you,” he murmured.

She poked him in the side, blushing. “You were just at work,” she said. “I’m sure you survived it.”

“It was rough,” he said. “They had to revive me twice.”

Ariana rolled her eyes at him, but she was smiling.

“Well, you’ll be seeing too much of me from now on,” she said.

“Can’t happen.”

“You just wait,” she said, laughing, her arms still around him.

He kept his other hand behind his back. Ariana narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

“What’s behind your back?”

“I got you something,” he said. “Kind of a ‘welcome home’ gift.”

Ariana had moved in with him two days ago, and her boxes were still all over his cabin. On paper, she knew, it would have looked crazy: she’d met some guy in a little town, fallen in love while she was there on business, and then decided to move in with him a month later.

Oh, and he shifted into a bear sometimes. Oh, and
also
, some of his former bear shifter friends hated her and wanted both of them dead.

Jake leaned down to kiss her again, and despite her curiosity about whatever was behind his back, Ariana surrendered herself to those warm, firm lips again. She didn’t think she could ever really get enough.

Finally he pulled back and stood up straight again, making Ariana look all the way up.

“Okay,” she said. “What is it?

He moved his hand around. From it hung a fancy little gift bag, tissue paper sticking out the top.

Ariana took it in her hands and held it up.

“You did this?” she asked, skeptically. She was a little surprised by the nice presentation, to be honest — since when did he know how to put tissue paper into a bag to make a gift look nice?

“I bought it,” he said. “I got some help wrapping.”

Ariana walked to the kitchen table and put the bag down. She took out the tissue paper, then reached inside.

She pulled out a French press and two pounds of coffee.

Ariana gasped and hugged the French press to her chest. “Oh, thank god,” she said. “This morning was rough.”

“Here’s to no more rough mornings,” Jake said. He leaned down and kissed her, again, letting his hands wander down her back, putting his arms around her.

Ariana loved it when he held her — he was big and strong and wide, totally covered in hard muscle. Every time he took his shirt off she marveled at him again, always a little bit embarrassed when he caught her peeping at him.

She leaned against him when the kiss was over, letting herself sink into his frame, feeling warm and safe and
home
there.

Jake’s house phone rang. She’d made fun of him for keeping it, but then he’d pointed out that living in the middle of nowhere, cell reception wasn’t always the greatest.

“I should get that,” he said, his voice muffled in the top of her head.

She pushed herself gently away from him. “Go,” she said, and he picked up the phone.

Ariana ignored him to check out the French press. She was relieved that he’d gotten her one — she’d spent her whole day waiting for the cable guy, not even able to do her job without internet, so she hadn’t been able to run out and buy a coffee maker. She hadn’t been lying about that morning, either — Jake only had atrocious instant coffee in the house, and even though she’d had three cups of it, she
still
didn’t feel like she was quite awake.

Jake took the phone to the doorway that separated the kitchen and living room. “How many?” he asked quietly into the handset.

Ariana looked up at him. There was a definite note of alarm in his voice, and he glanced over at her. For a moment, they locked eyes, and then Jake looked away.

Something is wrong
, Ariana thought, an uneasy feeling starting in her gut. Jake disappeared into the living room, a habit he had any time he was on the phone — he tended to pace back and forth or wander. She wondered if it would drive her crazy some day, but for now, she found it charming and adorable, just like the rest of his little quirks.

“...Certainly unusual...” she heard from the next room.

Then, “We don’t have any
confirmed
sightings...”

Ariana stood and leaned on the counter, close to the door to the living room. She didn’t want to snoop, but this sounded bad. She instantly flashed to the grizzly reports that had happened a couple of weeks ago — never substantiated, but the entire population of Evergreen had been a little bit on edge ever since.

She knew that, technically, it hadn’t been a bear — it had been Brock, the alpha of Jake’s former pack. He’d come from Alaska down to Washington state to try to get Jake to obey him again, but instead Jake had fought him and won. Brock had been far less worried about being seen by people than Jake and his tiny pack of castoff shifters were.

* * *

O
ne week before
, when Ariana was still packing her things in Boston, Jake had called her and told her that Brock had died in the hospital. He’d never come out of the coma. Even though there had still been a pillow on his face when the nurses found him and he’d clearly been smothered, Ariana had still tried to console a Jake who was wracked with guilt.

“I killed him,” he’d said, as Ariana listened to his voice on the other end of her phone line, so far away. “I put him in that coma.”

“He would have killed both of us,” she’d said, sitting on the floor in the middle of a pile of boxes. “You know that.”

“I know,” he’d said. “But I can’t help it. He was... he meant a lot to me for a long time, Ariana. It’s hard to explain pack dynamics to an outsider.”

“I know,” had been all she was able to say.

There had been a long pause.

“Who killed him?” she asked, as delicately as she could.

“It had to be Violet,” said Jake, his voice sounding very far away. “She probably thought he’d rather be dead than lose alpha status. She’d a hard woman, Ariana. I hope she leaves us alone.”

Violet had been Brock’s mate. If that was what she did to the man she loved, Ariana had thought, what would she do to them?

* * *

S
tanding in the kitchen
, Ariana’s stomach sank as she remembered the conversation, putting two and two together. It didn’t sound much like Violet was leaving them alone.

Jake’s steps came nearer again. “Thanks for calling,” she heard him say, and then he reached in beside her and hung the phone up on the wall, the cord bouncing as he did.

He didn’t even own a wireless phone for the house. Ariana made a mental note to change that.

“Bad news, babe,” Jake said. He ran one hand through his hair, making some of it stand on end. Where he’d looked happy and relaxed a few minutes ago, now his face was drawn and tense.

“What is it?”

“An animal has been killing people late at night in the towns along Highway Twenty,” Jake said. Twenty was the highway that connected the North Cascades to Interstate 5, the only real road through the area.

“First Burlington, a week ago, then Sedro-Wooley, then Lyman, then a camper in the state park. The police wanted to let the forest rangers know, so he called me.” He crossed his arms and stared at the floor, as if trying to read the answers to his problems there.

Ariana held her breath. The next town in that list was Evergreen, just a few miles east of Lyman.

“What kind of animal?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“A bear,” Jake said. “Witnesses keep reporting a grizzly bear, but the police don’t believe them. There are no grizzlies here, you know.”

Ariana didn’t say anything. Of course there were grizzlies: there was Jake, for one, and his two friends who were part of his makeshift pack. Plus, there was Violet, if she was still in Washington.

It sure sounded like she was.

“Is this one of yours?” she asked, a little hopeful.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging a little. “It could be, but I doubt it. Neither of them are stupid or suicidal. Coleman’s pretty quiet and keeps to himself, and Boone, hell, I don’t know if Boone’s been to a human town in the past ten years. I don’t think Boone has electricity. I don’t know where he lives.”

“Maybe this thing with Brock drove them over the edge.”

Jake just shook his head, then put his hand back in his hair, and this time he just held it there. “People are putting posters up on their own, offering a reward for anyone who brings in a dead grizzly.”

Ariana sucked in a quick breath. “That’s illegal,” she said. “They’re a protected species.”

Her knowledge of grizzly bears had grown impressively in the last month.

“It’s really only illegal if we catch them,” he said. “If someone turns in a bear pelt with a bullet hole in it, there’s a slight chance we could prosecute.”