Bearing the Late Thaw (Ice Bear Shifters Book 5) (4 page)

“I… I think so,” Christine said. Her voice shook violently as she spoke, and his heart broke at the sound. But he didn’t have time to be upset by that right now.

“Hold on tight, girl,” he said, already urging his snowmobile in the direction of town. “I know you’re in a lot of pain, and it’s not going to be easy. But if you can just hang on until we get to town, you’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Christine called back, her voice almost lost in the wind whipping by them as Neal picked up speed and headed along the forest line in the opposite direction of where the dozens of Blizzards stood. Eric followed closely behind him, and as they zoomed away, several loud roars rang out, followed by several pops of energy. The Blizzards were shifting.

But they wouldn’t be able to catch Neal and Eric. Polar bears could run fast, but nowhere near the speed of a snowmobile.

Christine must have turned around and seen the dozens of bears behind them, because she let out a bloodcurdling scream. “Neal, there’s a giant pack of bears chasing us!” she cried out.

“I know. Don’t worry. They can’t catch us,” he called back. He had no idea if she had seen the Blizzards actually shifting, or realized that the bears were actually the same as the men who had just been standing there. He didn’t have time to check in or explain right now, though. They had to get out of here.

Neal urged his vehicle onward, turning onto a wide trail opening in the forest a mile down the tree line. In about fifteen minutes, they would be back on the outskirts of Glacier Point. He could feel Christine’s grip on him loosening, and he slowed his pace just a bit to hopefully ease the pain of the bumps and turns of the trail.

“Come on, girl, stay with me,” he called out in encouragement. “Almost there.”

Christine managed to hang on until they had just passed the tree line into the open clearing where the Northern Lights Clan lived in a cluster of cabins. As Neal slowed his snowmobile, he felt Christine’s arms go limp, followed by a loud thud. He brought his vehicle to a complete halt and jumped off to run to where Christine was slumped over on the snowy ground.

“I’m taking her to my cabin,” Neal yelled out to Eric. “Go get Kenzie.”

Eric nodded, and kept his snowmobile moving toward the cabin at the opposite end of the clearing. Ryker’s life mate, Kenzie, was a veterinarian by training. But she had become something of a makeshift human doctor to the people of Glacier Point, and especially to the Northern Lights Clan. With only one doctor in town, even a veterinarian’s medical training was put to use in a pinch.

Neal carried Christine into his cabin, which was the closest one to him, and laid her gingerly down on the couch. The color had drained out of her face, and blood stains covered her snowsuit, but as far as he could tell she didn’t have any broken bones.

He grabbed her wrist to check her pulse, and his eyes welled up as he saw the North Star he had tattooed on her. Seeing Christine again had stirred up all sorts of protective, passionate feelings inside of him. His heart raced with adrenaline, and his bear clawed at him from the inside. He couldn’t deny that he wanted Christine. He could try to push away the feelings, but they always bubbled back up. Apparently, even the Blizzards had somehow noticed the way he looked at her as though she was his mate.

Christine’s pulse and breathing seemed okay, so Neal covered her with a blanket to keep her warm. Hopefully she had just passed out from the trauma of it all. He put his hands on his head and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down until Kenzie arrived.

Those damn Blizzards. Where were they hiding? How had they known about Christine? This had to stop. Everyone Neal cared about was in constant danger. He kicked the wall in frustration, just as Kenzie stepped through the front door, her eyes widening at Neal’s display of anger. Neal took a deep breath, and tried to appear calm and in control. But all he could do was shake his head in frustration and point at the couch where Christine lay.

Kenzie squeezed Neal’s arm in understanding as she walked by him.

“Don’t worry, Neal. I’ll take care of your girl,” she said.

Neal didn’t bother trying to correct her by saying Christine wasn’t his girl. He just nodded and crossed his fingers that Kenzie would be able to help.

Christine blinked and looked up at the dark wood ceiling above her. Confused, she looked around the room. She was lying on a large couch in what appeared to be the living room of a log cabin. She heard soft voices speaking from somewhere behind the couch. One of them she recognized as Neal’s, and the other voice belonged to a woman Christine didn’t think she had ever heard before.

“You have to tell her,” the woman said. “If she’s your mate, she needs to know. And the sooner the better. Trust me, the longer you hide it, the worse it will be.”

“Even if she is my mate, we can never be together. It’s better if she doesn’t know anything and just goes back to Texas. I don’t want her to get tangled up in this any more than she already has.”

Christine lay very still, straining to hear what they were saying. Neal must be talking about her, if he was mentioning going back to Texas. But what did he mean by mate?

“Maybe you should let her decide what she wants to be tangled up in,” the woman said.

Neal snorted. “Really, Kenzie? I’ll admit I’m pretty taken with her, as much as I’ve tried to deny it. But in the process of trying to fight my feelings, I’ve been a big jerk to her. I doubt she has any interest in me. And I’m sure she would run in the other direction if she knew I was a bear shifter.”

The woman sighed. “You saved her life, Neal. That’s got to count for something.”

“Her life was only in danger because of me in the first place. Look, I know you’re a hopeless romantic, Kenzie. And why wouldn’t you be? Your romance with Ryker turned out like a fairy tale, complete with two perfect little cubs. But not everyone can be as lucky as you’ve been. Not everyone gets their happily ever after. Maybe I’m just destined to spend my life alone, and I’m okay with that. I have a clan to worry about. That keeps me plenty busy enough. Speaking of which, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go talk to the guys about coming up with another strategy for fighting off the Blizzards. Cleary, what we’ve been doing isn’t working.”

Christine closed her eyes and pretended to still be asleep as she heard Neal walking past her and leaving through the front door. Behind her, the woman sighed again.

“Stubborn ass,” the woman said. Christine giggled, then realized too late that the woman had heard her. A tall, dark haired beauty with green eyes came around the couch and put her hands on her hips, looking suspiciously at Christine.

“How much of that did you hear?” she asked.

“Um… not too much. Just the last few minutes,” Christine said. “Please don’t tell Neal I was eavesdropping.”

The woman laughed. “You two are both stubborn, I see. You’re perfect for each other. I’m Kenzie,” she said, extending her hand.

Christine reached for Kenzie’s hand and gave it a weak shake.

“So he likes me, after all? I thought he was completely uninterested,” Christine said.

Kenzie tilted her head sideways. “I think he’s definitely interested. He’s just very conflicted right now.”

“About what?”

“A lot of things. I’ll let him tell you about it, if he wants to. In the meantime, you can tell me how you’re feeling?”

“Okay, I guess. Really sore, and it hurts to move. But overall I feel a lot better than I did before I passed out.”

Kenzie nodded. “You took a pretty nasty fall, but nothing’s broken. And you had a lot of gashes on your body, so you lost a lot of blood. Luckily nothing even needed stitches, though. You just need to rest up and before you know it you’ll be as good as new.”

“Are you a doctor?” Christine asked, causing Kenzie to chuckle.

“Sort of. I’m a veterinarian, but I help out humans here and there. I’m happy to call the real doctor, if you wish, but I think he’ll agree with me that you’re fine, just a little banged up.”

“No, no, I’m sure your opinion is correct. I could probably use a day or two of rest anyways. Do you think Neal or someone could take me back to my cabin? I don’t want to impose on anyone’s hospitality.”

“Let me see if I can grab Neal for you. Just fair warning, he’s probably going to try to convince you to stay here to recover, and you should seriously consider it. You have several people here to help take care of you, and from what I understand you have no one back in town. Besides, it’s safer here.”

Christine shrugged noncommittally, and Kenzie turned to leave. But Kenzie’s last words about safety troubled Christine. The events of the day came flooding back into Christine’s mind in a swirl of horror. Christine’s mind flashed back to the moment when that strange man in the woods had laughed at her instead of helping her. She had already been fading out when Neal came, but she thought she remembered the man saying something about purposely causing the snowmobile accident to bait Neal. She shivered at the idea that someone had purposefully hurt her. But she also vividly remembered the man’s hand turning into an animal hand, and clearly that had to have been a hallucination. She also thought she remembered a huge pack of bears chasing her, which seemed odd since she hadn’t seen any bears on any of her snowmobiling trips prior to that. She had no idea what had actually happened, and what had just been a figment of her imagination.

Christine lay there, trying to sort through her memories of the day and make some sense of it all. A half hour later, Kenzie still hadn’t returned, and Christine began to fade out again from exhaustion. She gave up trying to remember anything, and let herself drift off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

Neal watched Christine as she slept, her chest rising and falling rhythmically in the dim light of the cabin. He had been in the middle of a clan meeting when Kenzie came to tell him that Christine was awake, and he hadn’t been able to leave right away. By the time he got back to his cabin, she was asleep again. So he sat and waited, watching her sleep and feeling somewhat creepy. He knew he should find something to do besides sit here and stare at her, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. Even with the scrapes and bruises on her face, he had never seen anyone more beautiful.

His bear roared inside him, demanding again that he acknowledge that Christine was his mate. Neal no longer tried to fight the feeling. He let the waves of passion and emotion wash over him, drowning him in their intensity. He had taken the last few hours to think about Kenzie’s words, and had finally decided that he should listen to them. He would explain things to Christine, as calmly as he could, and hope that at the very least she didn’t try to warn the other humans in Glacier Point about the shifter clans living near them.

He knew Christine was it for him. He didn’t know why his bear had chosen a human for a life mate, but he had. It seemed like the alpha of a clan of polar bear shifters should have a fellow shifter for a life mate. But his bear had other ideas. If Christine turned him down, he would never be able to love again.

Love. The word stuck out vividly in his mind. It had been a long time since he had considered loving a woman. But he knew he loved Christine. His heart ached as he watched her sleeping peacefully. He had almost lost her. He wasn’t sure how he would have managed to continue on if she had died at the Blizzards’ hands, simply for the crime of being associated with him. One thing had become clear to him. He had to either convince her to accept him for who he was, and to stay with the Northern Lights Clan, or he had to convince her to leave Glacier Point. She wasn’t safe here anymore.

Christine stirred slightly, and Neal felt his heart racing with nervous anticipation. In some ways, he was dreading the moment she woke up. It would be the moment of truth, when he revealed his true self to her and she had to decide whether she could love a beast like him. He glanced down at the tattoo on her wrist. He hoped that if she hated him that the delicate star design wouldn’t become a constant reminder of the person who had inked her smooth skin.

Christine opened her eyes, blinked a few times and then looked over at him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, you,” he said softly. “How are you feeling.”

“Okay, considering I got catapulted off a snowmobile. That was pretty crazy.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“Thanks for rescuing me. I’m not quite sure what happened, just that I crashed and then some weird creepy guy came over but didn’t really help me. I was pretty out of it, though. I even thought his hand was turning into a polar bear paw. Ridiculous,” Christine said, shaking her head. Neal winced. This was going to be interesting.

“Yeah, about that. I have quite a few things to explain to you,” he said. Christine looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

“That statement sounds quite ominous,” she said.

“Well, I don’t want to scare you. But it’s quite a big deal. Please, just hear me out until the end, and then you can ask any questions you might have.”

“Okay,” Christine said, her voice suddenly sounding guarded.

Neal took a deep breath. Here goes nothing, he thought to himself.

“The snowmobile crash was no accident. The man that you saw right after the accident set you up to crash by stringing a metal cable across the trail where he knew you frequently passed. He wasn’t after you, specifically. He was after me. He wanted to lure me into a trap, where I would be alone in the middle of nowhere with him and dozens of his cronies. Or at least, nearly alone. It was just my buddy Eric and me out there. We were scouting around looking for those men.”

“Why?” Christine asked.

“Those men are evil. They’ve done some awful things to my close friends and family, and they’ve threatened the family I still have left. We’ve been on their trail for months, trying to find their hideout and take them out.”

“Okay. That sounds a little mafia-like or something, but whatever. I’m still not understanding how I got tangled up into all of this.”

Neal ran his fingers through his hair. “They needed a way to lure me to that open spot, where it would be easy to attack. And they needed a way to keep me there. They must have been stalking me for months, and after seeing us together a few times I guess they decided that we were a couple. They thought if they trapped you, I would come running to save you. Which, I guess, I did. But they didn’t count on my getting away with you like I did. Luckily, Eric and I were prepared for a scenario like that and we made a quick escape.”

Christine narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms. “So, I got tangled up with some weird Alaskan gang war just by hanging out with you a few times? Great. Thanks for the warning.”

“I’m really sorry, Christine. I tried to keep my distance from you so something like this wouldn’t happen, but they caught on to my feelings for you anyways.”

“Your feelings for me? What exactly are those? Because before today I thought you had no interest in me whatsoever. Now I find out that you’re
so
interested that I’ve actually become a prize in your gang wars.”

“I do have an interest in you. I actually care about you quite a bit. But I was trying to keep my distance so that you wouldn’t get involved in this mess. Although it’s not exactly a gang war. We’re not a gang, really.”

“Then what are you? Because that’s kind of what this all sounds like to me.”

“We’re bear shifters.”

“
Bear
shifters? What the hell does that even mean?”

“I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m the head of a clan of people known as the Northern Lights Clan. We have a few full humans, but most of our clan is made up of people who are known as polar bear shifters. They have a genetic mutation that allows them to shift back and forth between bear form and human form at will.”

“I’m sorry, but
what
? You honestly expect me to believe that you’re part bear? I didn’t hit my head that hard.”

Neal looked at Christine sadly. He saw his hope for any kind of future with her slipping away, as she looked over at him like he was some kind of crazy freak.

“I know it sounds crazy, Christine, but it’s true. The other man you saw at the crash site is a bear shifter, too. That’s why he was able to change his hand into a polar bear paw. You didn’t imagine that. It actually happened. He’s from a rival clan of polar bear shifters known as the Blizzards. They’ve been trying to wipe out all of the shifters in the Arctic that aren’t from their clan. There’s been a lot of bloodshed, and we’re just trying to put a stop to it. I lost my dad, and almost all of my clan members to their attacks. Only five of us survived. We’re trying to rebuild now, but it’s difficult with them still out there, hiding around every corner.”

Neal fell silent, giving Christine time to process everything he was saying.

“You’re not joking,” she finally said.

“No, I’m not.”

“So, I didn’t imagine the pack of polar bears chasing us, either?”

“No, you didn’t imagine that. The Blizzards hiding in the forest shifted into bear form and started chasing us.”

Christine pondered this for a moment. “If you’re a bear shifter, too, then why didn’t you shift into bear form when they did?” she asked accusingly.

“Because there were too many of them to fight. It made more sense to escape on the snowmobiles, which can go way faster than they can run.”

Christine still looked at him skeptically. “So can you make your hand change into a paw, like that other guy did.”