The Bear's Arranged Mate: A Bear Shifter Romance Novel (6 page)

“I killed her.”

“I know,” Connor said, and raised her chin so she could meet his eyes, “I know. But whatever happens now, I won’t abandon you. I know that’s small comfort.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said, and put her head against his chest, “don’t leave me.”

*

After Caroline’s death, Sarah knew she could never return to the chalet. But neither did she feel compelled to leave for the Greyback Estates. It was like every notion of home she had come to earn for herself had been suddenly stripped away – there was nowhere to return to, that wasn’t already haunted with ghosts, whether it was her parents, Samson, or now, Caroline.

When Connor escorted her down to the hallway, Patrick had returned to his human form. The bullet had hit him wide, striking him in the thigh. He tried to smile and mentioned the Clawgrove’s exceptional healing powers – but his face turned grave when he saw Sarah’s face and that she’d been crying, and somehow, the old man knew that Caroline had met her end.

“We were wrong, in those days,” he finally admitted, “to keep that information from her. It was dark times, then. We all tried to act with the best intentions in mind. But sometimes… sometimes good intentions aren’t enough. Sometimes good intentions do not make it
right
. We’ve paid the price for that, and we’ll keep paying the price.”

“But Caroline paid the ultimate price,” Connor said, and looked at Sarah.

The words seemed to echo the legend of the white grandfather cedar. That peace could only be achieved through losing something else. Now, she had lost something – her closest family member. The fact she had gained a new family in her place did not make the loss any less present, or any less painful.

“No more secrets,” Connor said at last, “now that we’re married, and the ceremony is completed, that means control of the Tribe returns to me. And, for her part, Sarah is the matron of the Greybacks now. I won’t say this ended well – and whether or not you’re penitent now, father, I still hold you responsible. But from this day forward, there will be no more secrets. No more secret executions. Peace will survive, but it will survive through us.” He reached over and took Sarah’s hands in his own.

Even after the envoys returned and she was looking at the chalet through the back window of the Citroen, she could still hear that last gunshot ringing in her ears.

In the end, Connor suggested she come away with him, to one of the coastal islands his family owned, and she agreed, although there was a lack of action in her voice. She had strained her emotions to the point of snapping, and now they felt all wrong, like they didn’t fit her.

When they arrived on the island, she was alarmed to find it was without electricity, and the only structure was a small cabin, rustic and blackened with age. But there was something charming about it. It felt good to be away from other people, and it was a comfort to have Connor. That night it was warm and Connor suggested they sleep outside – he took out a long blanket and spread it on the soft cushy grass, and pulled a sheet over both of them. The stars above glittered in their immensity.

“Can we stay here forever?” she asked, and felt Connor find her fingers under the sheets and squeeze them.

“As long as you want,” he replied and bent over and kissed her.“Will we ever be free from our families?” it was more of a rhetorical question.

“We can’t choose our family. But we can choose our lives,” he said wistfully, and kissed her again.

She stroked his hair and pushed her tongue between his lips, found his waiting for her. They battled together, mouths balanced on one another, and she could taste the sweetness of his saliva, the hotness of his breath penetrating her own mouth. He withdrew slowly, and licked her chin and then her neck and she gasped as his hands moved under her shirt.

She had given up wearing bras while on the island and his firm hands cupping the sensuous curves of her breasts made her gasp aloud and she opened her legs. His thigh pushed against the zipper of her shorts, causing a thrill to erupt inside her.

“Fuck me, Connor,” she pleaded, pulling off her shirt, and then his.

He was halfway pulling his own pants down when he went down on her, licking her in a long trail of wet saliva that trailed all the way to the lip of her jeans, and then he pulled off her as well. He pulled her panties to one side and his tongue brushed against her clitoris, and she felt it swell with blood and moaned, arching hips into his mouth.

“You taste amazing,” he murmured, pulling away at the panties again so his tongue could access her swollen pubis. His tongue pushed away the folds of her labia and prodded against her vagina, and she cooed, feeling herself stiffen with the action of his tongue against her sex.

“In me, I want you in me. Please, fuck me, Connor,” she moaned loudly, her stomach rippling with pleasure, “fuck me so hard I come.”

He needed no more incentive, and pushed her panties down to her ankles. His own sex was swollen in the night air and throbbed and she plunged it into her mouth once, tasted the faintest sweetness of his pre-cum in her cheeks, and guided his wet dick toward her crotch.

It wasn’t as painful this time, but she still bucked wildly as he moved against her, his foreskin peeling back and the head of his penis drilling against the inside of her vagina. She tried to focus on the muscles in her groin and squeezed herself around his cock, a movement that caused Connor to groan as well as he wrapped both of his strong arms around her neck in a vice-like embrace.

He pumped harder and harder and she let out a scream. The wet sounds of their sexes mingling was almost too much for her, and she felt like coming, but by sheer force of will grit her teeth and tried to wait for him. She could feel her vagina dripping with the effort, sliding down the perineum into the crack of her anus, and pulled Connor’s head into her breasts, which were already heaving with sweat.

Connor reached under her and pulled up both her legs so that both of them could watch as his penis plunged noisily into her, and she reached down and rubbed her clitoris, hurrying toward another communal climax.

“Come with me,” she murmured, her voice raising in decibels.

He grunted once, and she saw his shaft bury deep into her, until his pubic hair was nesting against hers and his testicles were draped lasciviously against her anus. It was a different orgasm this time. This one rocketed through her body, and she felt like she was going to scramble out of her skin the way it overtook her – Connor came just as hard, losing control of himself, his muscular thighs trembling. As he came inside her, she felt his cum jet against her insides, wet and almost unbearably hot, and opened her mouth in a silent scream.

Slowly, the orgasm subsided again, and Connor withdrew, a wet slick of his semen drawing like a snail’s path up over her pubic hair, and she felt some of it seep out between her legs. She reached down, dipped her finger into the engorged red folds of skin, and withdrew it wet with his seed. Slowly she drew it to her lips and tasted him, and let out a long sigh.

“You taste good, too,” she murmured and pulled him down beside her.

In the morning, they both awoke early, and while Connor tidied  up, sweeping and cleaning the inside, she took a stroll down to the cliffs that overlooked  a chain of other islands, and smiled. It was the kind of wilderness she liked – there was a solitude here, a peacefulness she imagined had once belonged to her kind, and now, from time to time, belonged to her.

The steady beat of the waves peeling over each other in the bay was relaxing, and seemed to mimic her own heartbeat. Winter was coming, but somehow the majesty of grey clouds coming in off the coast did not seem so terrible or awful – there was a power to them, the way the weather could only be powerful. She breathed deep, tasting the salt in the air.

Behind her, Connor appeared again and sat down beside her, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling her ear. She smiled and touched the tan muscles of his arms. All of the pain of the past weeks subsided in an instant as they held each other – she knew that she could never escape the fate of her family, or burden of what she had had to do to protect them all. But she knew that with Connor by her side, she would never have to be alone again.

For once, that thought alone was enough to sustain her through the troubles.

CHAPTER FIVE

Sarah stirred briefly as the sun entered in through the clearing, piercing through a deep frond of cedar boughs and hitting her legs like a warm shelf of light. She raised her arms above her head and smiled. She took in the deep smell of the forest around her and all of its particular scents – moss underneath her, a family of deer somewhere near that were foraging, old traces of human that had slowly been eaten by the forest; like an echo of the past. That’s all scent really was.

She looked down at her toes, which were covered in dust and dirt, and smiled. It felt good to run when in Form, and the Bear in her had wandered long and hard last night, filling itself with the joy of the forests as it scrambled underneath a pale moon. As it happened, she always returned to human form when she slept.

She closed her eyes again and let her mind wander – the last few years had been like a dream to her, something she had dared to believe in but had never really expected as real. There had been pain, yes. She grimaced for a moment, remembering the face of her cousin, Caroline. During Sarah’s initiation, a wretched ceremony that had involved being cast into the wilderness and ordered to find the heir of her family’s hated enemy, the Clawgroves, she had been swept up in the whirlwind of familial politics and old conspiracies.

Caroline’s last words before she died, brought down by Sarah’s own hand, echoed in the young woman’s mind.
There is only this
.

She caught a whiff of something familiar and crouched low. he opened her eyes again. No, that wasn’t true. There was more, and she had seen it, she had helped to provoke it. With Connor by her side, the two of them had rewritten the past, laid old hatreds to rest, and brought both their families,  Clawgrove and Greyback, back together in a unity that hadn’t existed for as long as anyone could remember; longer, certainly, than any of the elders of either family were willing to admit to.

There had been opposition, of course, those who spoke out against their union, but Connor had proved himself as focused and careful in his attention to politics as he had in his pursuit of reconciling his history’s troubled past. Still, Sarah couldn’t shake the image of her cousin – or the fact she had been the one to end her life.

“Enough,” she said out loud to herself and it was enough to shake her reverie.

She stood up slowly and stretched. Her long black hair had grown in the past few years, and now swam almost to the top of her buttocks. She admired her naked beauty in the sunlight. Her full breasts hung like lamps against her chest, swaying slightly as she moved. A cold gust pummeled through the forest and she gasped, felt her nipples tighten in response, goose-bumps standing out against her light areolas. Her stomach was smooth too, and tanned slightly by the summer weather, and as she raised her hands over her head, she could feel the skin rubbing up her ribs, and hugging her belly.

Her hands stayed there as she tried to remember what it had felt like to hold someone inside her.
Cora
, she whispered to herself. Her daughter had been born soon after the union of the two great tribes – she was a beacon of hope for all Bears everywhere, a capricious child with dark hair like her mother’s. Her eyes were her father’s though, jaded and hard, piercing through any kind of deception. Those who met her learned early on that she probably understood more of what they were saying than she let on, even though she had but a few words at her disposal.

Sarah arched her back and tested the air with her nose – it was harder to find people or things in her limited human form. Since they’d moved back to her old Estate in Washington, she’d spent more and more time in the forest by herself, exploring what it meant to be a Bear. Connor understood the need to be alone, and had not intervened – he was the only one who could see through her actions to the heart of what they entailed. She was still grieving.

Even Connor was powerless to help her. It was a struggle she would have to overcome herself, and this meditation of living and wandering in the bush was like a way of purging those old emotions. She had to admit she missed Connor and Cora when she came out here alone. She headed back toward the clearing where the manor was located, her naked feet striding gracefully over the lawn.

One of the men on duty, who had in fact been her martial arts master during her training here, nodded at her and seemed unperturbed by her nakedness. She was the matron now, she could come and go as she pleased, and whether or not she had clothes on was of no concern.

Inside the manor, she caught a whiff of something liar and crouched low.

There was barely a growl from behind her as she turned, half a second too late. Strong arms wrapped around her back and she felt a hot face press up against her. Connor grinned at her, and she clutched at his T-shirt and smiled back.

“I guess I am getting slow,” she admitted with a grin.

“Remember the first time we met?” he asked.

She nodded. “I tried to sneak up on you, and you kicked my ass. Scraped my belly really well if I recall. I still have the scars,” she said, indicating three very faint discolorations on her stomach above her navel.

“You deserved it,” Connor said wrinkling his nose, “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” she said, and kissed him.

His mouth spilled into hers and she pressed her body tighter against him, her breasts squishing against his chest and wrapped a leg around him. His tongue tasted her lips and pushed against them until she finally opened her mouth and let him lick her, his saliva flowing into her mouth and she felt another sexual thrill.

“Not here,” she said, “Someone will see us.”

Connor grinned. He had grown in the few years since they’d met. He was more a man now, strong and tall, and his face was set in a kind of stern puzzlement – the lines around his eyes made him look older, wizened. She touched the side of his cheek and felt the coarse grizzle of a new beard coming in. His eyes locked on hers and there was something fiery in them, persuasive.

“Who cares?” he said, cupping her breast, which made her close her eyes and let out a small sigh of pleasure. His hand trailed down her waist, his fingers tickling at her thigh, and slide into the space between her legs.

“I…” she tried to say. She had missed him, his gentleness, his warmth.

“I missed you,” he repeated, his fingers rubbing against her cleft, and she let out a gasp.

“Later,” she said, fighting back her own desires, and pulled his hand away, brought it to her lips, and tasted herself on him. “Right now, you have work. And I have to get dressed… people will think we’re in a hippie commune or something.”

Connor laughed and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll tell them to prepare something delicious for dinner. You’re right though, there’s an envoy from the Clawgrove’s coming, one of my father’s stewards.”

Sarah wrinkled her brow. She remembered Connor’s father well – Patrick Clawgrove, the Senator, had been there at the beginning. It was because of him, in many ways, that Caroline had died, and Connor had more or less banished him. He still played a functional role as an elder, but for all intents and purposes, he was but a shadow of his former self. She knew that he probably blamed her for that.

“What does he want?” she said, emphasizing ‘he’.

“I don’t know,” Connor said, his face suddenly grave, “but it was urgent enough for them to send him straight here. I’m supposed to meet with him later today, I’ll fill you in.”

“I’d like to be there,” Sarah said.

“Of course. In the meantime, why don’t you go say hi to Cora?”

Sarah grinned and bounded off in the direction of the living quarters. She peeked in through the open door of the nursery where the maid, Cecily, was crouched over Cora. Cora was playing with a doll and didn’t notice as Sarah crept in – she made a hush gesture to Cecily, who merely grinned and nodded.

“Peekaboo!” Sarah exclaimed, wrapping her arms around Cora.

The little girl squealed with delight and shook, the baby fat of her arms jiggling. She looked up at her mother and laughed.

“She hasn’t eaten yet, I’m afraid, I was just about to,” Cecily said in her toned down English accent. She had been there when Sarah was growing up as well, although they were about the same age. Now that she was the matron, Sarah made her Cora’s official caretaker, a task that Cecily undertook with unabashed affection and verve.

“Hello, darling,” she said, picking up the child and holding her against her breast. “Thank you, Cecily. I’ll take care of it. Can you do me a favor and prepare some clothes for me?”

“Of course, m’lady. Did you have a good time in the woods?”

“I suppose so. It’s very warm these days.”

“Shall I set up a bath?” the maid asked, indicating the dirty stains that covered Sarah’s body. She hadn’t even really noticed until now how dirty she got when she was out there. Connor, of course, hadn’t said a word – she suspected he liked her dirty,
au naturelle
as he called it.

“Yes, please,” she said.

She sat down on a stool by the window and rocked Cora. Cora sleepily held out her hands and Sarah whispered something and propped the child against her left breast. Cora gripped it firmly and drew her mouth around her mother’s nipple and began to suck heartily, a small stream of milk bubbling from the corners of her mouth.

“Shush, now,” Sarah said, rocking the child.

She took particular care and pleasure in feeding Cora – she knew it was only a matter of time before she’d have to wean her, but for now, these moments between mother and daughter were important. She could scarcely remember her own parents, who had died years earlier when she was a child. She knew, though, that she had acquired her mother’s best attributes, which included her dark hair. But there was also the painting – against the walls of the nursery were a number of oil paintings that she had confiscated from the chalet where Caroline died.

Her mother’s paintings were detailed and beautiful, and in her free time Sarah had taken up painting as well, though hers were of markedly less quality and distinction. She regretted not having known more about both of her parents – she looked back down at Cora.

“I’ll always be here, little one,” she said.

It was a promise to the child, but it was also a promise to herself. She had always searched for, and came up lacking, in her pursuit of purpose. Those years ago, when her marriage to Connor had been officiated as a political contract to keep the peace between Clawgrove and Greyback, she had figured her life was a set sequence of events. Her purpose: to promote peace.

But that had been wrong, too. Caroline had been wrong. There was more to life than living day by day for the interest of diplomacy. Connor had taught her that, at first. He had loved her in a way she had never been loved and he had demonstrated that there was nothing stronger than the word of a loved one telling you that they would always be there.

Now, Cora was teaching her something else: what it meant to pass on that devotion. She bent down and kissed the child again, who immediately fell asleep, wriggling with a dream. In the other room she could hear the sound of hot water filling a bath, and smiled.

*

The envoy from the Clawgrove tribe was a man Sarah had never seen before. He was thin, but his shoulders were large and broad, and he hunched slightly, like something out of a Machiavellian play. He had a black suit, bulging at the cuffs, and his hair was coiffed as it to accent the disparity of his eyes; one was normal, focusing straight ahead, but the other turned slightly. Sarah wondered if he’d had a stroke.

They all sat at the large rectangular table that was used for matters of great import: business, family matters and war. The envoy seemed a bit uncomfortable and Sarah cast an eye across the table at Connor. He was always casual but he had slipped on a smooth brown leather jacket over his T-shirt and looked quite dashing. Sarah, on the other hand, had put on a pair of shorts and a small blouse hung precariously off her shoulders.

“It’s highly unusual for my father to send someone in his stead,” Connor began, “but it would have been more unusual, I suppose, for him to have come himself.”

“The matter is one of a sensitive nature,” the envoy began.

“You may begin,” Connor insisted. Several of the Greyback’s envoys were seated opposite, and regarded all with a frank composure bordering on sycophantic.

“What do you know of the Bloodweres?” the envoy said. Sarah saw Connor stiffen at the mention of the name. She pursed her lips; even in her avid study in the library and of all the affairs of the tribes, she had never heard about the Bloodweres.

“Myths,” Connor said, “fairy tales used to scare children into behaving.”

“You forget, even
we
were once fairy-tales,” the envoy said, and when he saw Sarah’s confusion, “according to legend, during the schisms that created the two great houses, Greyback and Clawgrave, there was another party that did not choose a side. They had grown used to fighting, and they longed for more war – it had become a part of them.”

“And when they would not part with their violent ways, the leaders chose to exile them, yes, yes, we know the legends. But that’s all they are,” Connor said, flustered.

“Not so legend anymore, I’m afraid,” the envoy said, and drew forth a document, “according to your father, who is an expert on the mythology of the tribes, something has awoken. The chalet, which borders both our territories, was razed to the ground last week.”