Avenge the Bear (9 page)

“Hey,” Samantha said, opening her front door wider. “Come on in. Sorry for the short notice, but I found something you should see in person.”

Reese stepped into the house Samantha had grown up in. Endless slumber party memories flooded her like they always did when she saw the place. It had been abandoned and trashed in the years Samantha had been in Portland making a life for herself, but between her, Reese, Bron and Dillon, they’d got it completely fixed up. Now, the house looked like it belonged on the pages of a Pottery Barn catalogue.

Reese had given herself one day to cry into a pillow like a heartbroken teenager, then called Samantha and Muriel, and told them everything. Then she’d gone to the town library to find anything she could about Ethan’s clan in the local history section, but came up with nothing on him.

“I only have a few minutes before I have to be at work,” she said as she followed Samantha down the narrow hallway, painted in a soothing lavender-gray color with white trim.

“This won’t take long.”

Muriel was lying on her back on Samantha’s bed, round belly pointing up at the ceiling, studying an old book of some kind. Rolling to her side, she said, “Reese, I don’t think Ethan did it.”

“What? How do you know?”

“He’s in my dad’s hunter journal,” Samantha explained, sinking onto the mattress beside Muriel and drawing an ankle under her. “Look.” She pointed to what looked like an unorganized lineage chart. “When we became lower in our numbers, the hunters started keeping track of the bears in the clans and rogues as well. We found Ethan’s name right here.” She pointed.

Ethan Brenner
, the passage read. And right above him were DJ and Marsha Brenner. And in the column beside their names was written a small note in different colored ink.

Died in a house fire. Survived by their son, Ethan.

“Oh my gosh,” Reese whispered.

No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about his parent’s death. And now his freaking out over the soot on her face made sense—and the horror in his eyes when he saw all that ash in the bed. His parents died by fire. Of course he would be wary of it.

“Was he there?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. This was what broke him apart from his bear all those years ago.

“It doesn’t say,” Samantha answered in a sad tone. “That’s not all, Reese. There’s an entire page on the Cress alphas, and Ethan is on there too.”

Shaking her head, Reese frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Muriel turned a few of the thin, crackling journal pages and pointed to a list that split off into several forks. “His grandmother was born to a woman named Lenora Cress. Never married or mated, and whoever made this chart obviously didn’t know who the father was. Ethan is a Cress just as surely as Trent and Bron, just not in name. Only by blood.”

“Ethan’s a Cress alpha?” she murmured. “Do you think he knows?”

Samantha shrugged. “Maybe if his parents told him before they passed. He was young though, and Muriel said he barely even talked when he came to the Seven Devils clan. He never mentioned it as far as she knows. And that’s something pretty huge to leave out if he knew about his lineage.”

“That’s why his eyes look so much like Trent’s did,” Reese breathed. “He’s related to him. And Bron. Jesus, two Cress alphas are running the last two bear shifter clans in the world. Has there ever been two at once before?”

Muriel shook her head. “Not that I know of. It’s always been one legendary Cress each generation. This generation has two by default.”

It was too much. All of this information was overwhelming and Reese laid back on the bed by Muriel. “So, you don’t think he murdered Trent. Why not?”

“He doesn’t feel right for this,” Muriel said softly. “Someone is trying to kill off the Cress line, and the reason Ethan is still standing is because whoever is doing this doesn’t know about his lineage. Yet. I just can’t think of a single reason that makes any sense for him to kill off his own family. Not when he’s lost his parents. I think there is something dark going on with Ethan, but I’m not convinced it had anything to do with Trent’s death.”

The grandfather clock in Samantha’s living room chimed and Reese shot up. “I’m late. Trinity is going to kill me!” She ran for the door. “I’ll talk to you about this more when I get off work,” she called over her shoulder.

A quick drive down East First Street and she spun out trying to turn into Buckeye’s back parking lot. Parked and strapped in her apron, Reese rushed to check in for her shift and grabbed a couple of menus for two men waiting to be seated. With her plastered upon smile, she led them to her section.

Buckeyes was all dark browns and sticky wooden floors. A bar took up the back wall and the kitchen lay beyond that in the way back. That’s were she took the verbal lashing of her life from Trinity the moment she made her way to grab her customers’ drinks.

“I swear I’m going to fire you, Evans. Give me one more excuse and your ass is gone.” Trinity’s overly hair sprayed bob shook stiffly with every angry shake of her head as she spoke. Her blue-gray eyes weren’t silver yet, but damn she smelled like bear.

“I’m really sorry.”

“You always say you’re sorry, but you don’t work any harder to be on time!”

Now, that wasn’t really fair, because she’d been late three times this week. And that was only because everything had gone to hell. But before that, she’d never been late to a shift. Reese opened her mouth to say as much, but Nells, the cook, dinged the bell on the counter, signifying a couple of hot plates of food were ready to take out to a table.

It was probably best if she didn’t argue with Trinity anyway. The woman was a grizzly and ever since her mate had been killed by Bron, she was a little unstable in the anger department. In Bron’s defense though, Dodger had been a murderous asshole and deserved his end.

Clenching her teeth, Reese murmured another apology and ran the hot food as an excuse to escape the myriad of curse words Trinity was peppering at the kitchen staff.

The shift at Buckeyes had dragged on and on as she served the hungry patrons of Joseph. Eight hours of burger running, cleaning spills, refilling drinks, and rushing to close checks for impatient customers and her feet were tired, her back ached, and her mind was utterly frazzled at the clutter taking up her headspace. She’d forgotten three different tables’ drinks, she was so flustered.

Closing time meant an empty parking lot under the lone street light. Gravel crunched under her shoes as Reese made her way to the truck with a take-out box of chicken wings in hand. She was about halfway there when a ranger’s green SUV blasted around the corner and skidded to a stop in front of her.

Rieland sat in the front seat with tears tracking down her cheeks. “Get in.” Her voice cracked on the last word, like she hadn’t talked in a while.

“Why? What’s happened?”

“Dammit, Reese. Get in! Ethan’s hurt and the idiot needs you.”

Panic filled her throat. Hurt? She hadn’t figured out everything with him, but she wasn’t ready to lose him before she did.

A sob wrenched from Rieland and her shoulders sagged. “I’ll tell you what happened on the way, but for chrissakes, get in. He’s up in the mountains and you’re wasting time he doesn’t have.”

“Oh my God,” Reese cried, hopping into the passenger seat. “Why is he in the mountains?”

“There was a poacher,” Rieland bawled. “I don’t know what happened, but a couple of days ago he came back to camp from the tower and he was different—scary. He couldn’t stop shifting. Man, bear, man, bear. He attacked two of us who were trying to calm him down. Then he disappeared into the mountains late last night and we’ve been tracking him all day. But when we found him, he’d been shot clean through and we can’t move him. He won’t change back.”

“And you think I can get him to change back?” Reese asked, holding onto the grab bar while Rieland hit a pot hold deeper than hell on the way out of town.

“I don’t know, but if you can’t, he’s stuck out there, bleeding out.”

Reese’s mouth went dry as cotton as Rieland blasted up the dirt road that weaved through the mountain passes toward the Seven Devils.

This was all her fault. She’d set Ethan off without any hard proof that he’d hurt Trent, and now he was in trouble. Fuck! Why couldn’t she have just stood her ground and heard him out?

A soft scraping sound brushed her sensitive eardrums with every turn, and Reese squinted at the dark floorboard of her truck. A trio of matchbooks were sliding left and right, then left again with every divot in the road. She pressed her shoe onto them to stop their annoying noise and frowned out the window as something niggled at the edge of her frayed mind.

She’d seen them somewhere before.

Slowly, she lowered her chest and picked up one of the matchbooks pinned under her foot. It was white. No number or words, but it had the forest green ranger logo she’d seen on all the trucks in Ethan’s camp.

“What is this?” she whispered.

Rieland glared at the tiny square in her hand. “It’s one of the matchbooks I give to campers who forget their fire starters. It fell out of the glove box.”

Reese pulled the handle under the dashboard and several more fell out. Wide-eyed, she placed two fingers over the top of the logo and gasped when it matched the burned matchbook Bron had showed her. The one he and Logan had found at the sawmill Trent had been burned alive in.

“You,” she whispered.

Rieland’s sobbing stopped and her eyes narrowed. “Me what?”

“You killed him. You killed Trent.”

A cold, empty smile curved Rieland’s lips, but failed to reach her soulless eyes.

“There’s no poacher, is there?”

“Ding, ding, ding. You’re not quite as stupid as I had you pegged for.”

“Ethan’s okay?”

“Is Ethan okay,” Rieland repeated in a mocking voice. “Give me a fucking break. Ethan is fine and anyway, he’s none of your concern. He’s mine.”

Reese had to get out of here—away from Rieland and whatever dark deed she had planned for her. The road was rough, which slowed the truck enough that she wouldn’t die if she made a jump for it. Not with her shifter healing abilities. Before she could change her mind, Reese kicked the door open and lunged for the tree line.

A screech of rage bellowed out of the truck after her, but she wasn’t about to stick around and find out what Rieland was up to. She tumbled and rolled, then hit the side of a tree hard with her shoulder. A grunt of pain left her lips, but as soon as she was able, she stood and bolted through the dark woods.

The engine of the truck cut off and somewhere behind her, a slamming door echoed through the woods, followed seconds later by a challenging grizzly’s bellow.

“Shhhit,” Reese whispered, pulling her shirt over her head with shaking hands, then fumbling out of her pants. The crazy she-bear had changed and was now hunting her. There was no outrunning a grizzly, and Reese would be damned if she was dying from a bear attack while human.

Her bear was already frantic, in flight mode, and clawing to get out of her, so Reese gave her neck to the moon and let the animal take her body. The pain was blinding for a moment as hair and razor sharp claws burst from her skin. Her face elongated and her teeth drew down as she transitioned into the black bear that lived inside of her.

When she opened her eyes again, Rieland, a massive gray-furred grizzly, stood on her hind legs with a look of pure hatred in her hollow eyes.

This was going to hurt.

Reese lunged upward on her hind legs just as Rieland charged and hit her with the force of an eighteen-wheeler. The wind was knocked out of her, but she scrabbled and clawed like she’d been trained to do in every other bear fight she’d been in. Protecting her neck from the eight-inch long claws Rieland was slashing across her skin, Reese rolled out from under her and ran for the giant trunk of an ancient spruce. If she could just buy herself some time to think, she could outsmart Rieland. The other bear had two hundred pounds on her and vengeance in her heart Reese couldn’t even begin to understand.

Pain raked across her back as she ran, and she crumpled under the force of Rieland’s resounding, clawed slap. The grizzly swiped her hard across the hip and sent her sprawling straight for a tree. Reese grunted with fear as she barreled face first toward the trunk. The crack of her head against the unforgiving bark rattled her ears. She landed on her back as the canopy above began to shatter and fold in on itself. The edges of her vision blurred until the only thing she could see was Rieland, standing over her with such a look of triumph in her eyes.

Reese gasped for air, fighting for the focus she needed to stay awake.

If she closed her eyes, Rieland would kill her.

She was going to die before she told Ethan how sorry she was that she’d treated him just like everyone else in his life had. Before she got to tell him how much their night together had healed her fears of caring for another.

She was going to take her last breath before she got the chance to tell him how much she loved him.

A whimper of pain and regret clawed its way from her throat as the world went black.

Somewhere far above her, a bear roared.