Gray Back Alpha Bear (4 page)

Easton felt her arm gently, then said, “Don’t look. It hurts less if you don’t look.”

“No, asshole, it hurts less if you boys would stop fighting about every damned—ooow!” she screamed as Easton pulled down and jammed her arm back up.

Gia stumbled forward as Jason Changed back beside her. Willa was a bear. Willa was a badass, brawling, get-in-the-middle-of-them-boys-and-wreck-shop grizzly bear. “That’s why you don’t wear your glasses anymore?” Gia asked in a higher octave than she’d meant to. “Because you’re a bear shifter?”

Creed’s chest heaved with every breath, and he looked fit to kill someone, but he jerked his head to Willa. “Gia, meet the last member of the Gray Backs. You know her as Willamena Madden, but we all know her as Willa the Second.”

“Second. Like, second to the alpha in the crew?” Gia pursed her lips as her world turned upside down. Again. Tiny, sarcastic, nerdy Willa was second in a crew of renegade monster bears. She gripped her hair like it would keep her mind from exploding.

“That baby will kill you,” Easton said in an emotionless voice. “I don’t want it to kill you. You seem nice.”

“What do you mean?” Gia asked, panic flaring in her chest. She didn’t want to die.

“Beaston, you’re scaring her for no reason,” Jason griped. “People have babies every day.”

“Don’t call me that,” Easton growled out. “And don’t call her Bombshell. She doesn’t like it.”

“How do you know what she does and doesn’t like?” Creed asked.

“Because I saw her face when Jason called her that!” Easton spat red and spun for the woods. He stopped and muttered over his shoulder at Willa, “I’m sorry.” With another glare for Creed, he made his way to the tree line and disappeared into the woods.

“Am I going to die?” Gia asked. “Is it impossible for humans to have shifter babies? I thought it was okay. Cora Wright’s Web site said it was possible.”

Creed grabbed her shoulders and leveled her a look. “You aren’t going to die. Easton had a bad experience, but he’s wrong. My biological mother was human, and she was fine.”

Gia sighed and gripped his wrists to keep his hands on her. Losing his touch seemed scary right now. Looking around, she muttered, “You realize you’re all naked, right?” Naked and bleeding.

“Hey, Willa said, rubbing her injured arm. “Remember that time I told you no one bleeds more than a Gray Back? Now do you believe me?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were Turned?”

Willa rolled her shoulder, apparently at ease with nudity in front of her crew. “Because my dad doesn’t know yet, and I didn’t want you telling him until Matt and I had a chance to tell him ourselves.”

“Willa, I don’t have your dad on speed dial. When was I going to gossip to him?”

“Well, I didn’t know how long you were sticking around for, and you ran into my dad in the grocery store, remember? I was trying to keep my bear shit on the down low.”

“Willa,” Creed said low as the other men drifted off to pick up the scattered remnants of clothing that decorated the stained gravel. “Easton is going to be trouble until someone explains to him about Gia. He isn’t going to listen to me or the boys on this one.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Willa muttered, stomping off toward a pile of discarded clothes by her truck.

Creed ran his hands down his face and kept them covering his mouth as he looked down at her with tired eyes. “And that’s the Gray Backs,” he said, finishing what had to be the bloodiest and most terrifying introduction in history.

“I can tell by the look on your face that you’re considering leaving,” Creed said quietly from his seat behind the wheel. “And if you are, I understand, but I’m begging you to reconsider.”

Gia sat huddled in on herself, staring out the window as the forest blurred by. “Yesterday you wanted me to leave.”

“Well, things are different now. I’m different.” Creed inhaled a shaky breath and glanced over at her. His eyes were still the color of mercury. “I want you to stay.”

“What if Easton kills me?”

“He won’t. He wasn’t mad at you. He was mad at me. It has nothing to do with you, and it’s not your fault. Easton’s attack stemmed from his own problems. Not ours. I won’t let anything happen to you, Gia.”

He said the last part with such honesty, she couldn’t help but waver in her resolve to leave this place tonight and never come back.

“Why are your bears broken?” she whispered. “Matt with his scars and Easton with his anger, and you—”

“I’m not broken.” Creed gripped the wheel until it creaked. “Just different.”

“Did you choose these bears?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t ever have a family, Gia.” The words came out angry, and he muttered a curse. “I didn’t have anyone to show me how to be this, this,
thing
I am. And those bears might not look like much to you, but they’re the family I’ve built, and I’m not giving up on them. I didn’t mind taking the problem bears. Matt and I decided early on we could take the bears that didn’t fit anywhere and try to make a life for them here. I know it doesn’t make any sense. Hell, half the time I come home from work and want to murder all of them. But then we’ll have these moments where we’re not fighting and everyone is getting along, and I get that nostalgic feeling like this is what it would’ve been like if I’d grown up differently. If they would’ve joined other crews, their alphas would’ve probably put them down by now. That’s the way it is with shifters. The ones who are dangerous, who are out of control of their animals, who threaten to expose our violent natures to the humans and put our kind in danger, are put down when their bears become unmanageable. But my crew hasn’t stopped fighting to live. Not one of them has given up and said, ‘This is as good as I get. Take it or leave it.’ To you, we probably look like a bunch of maniacs who don’t belong together, but to me, I see what they can be. Is it hard? Yeah. Does it hurt to keep trying? Fuck yeah, I bleed all the time breaking up their fights. But is it still worth it to me?” He dragged his eyes away from the road to her. “Yeah.”

With a sigh, she pulled Creeds hand to her belly and flattened his palm against the swell. “Why do you want me to stay?” She knew what some of his answer would be, but if she was going to risk her life to make a temporary home here, she needed to hear it from him.

“Because I want to know my kid.” He rubbed her belly gently. “And because I want to know you. I’d be shit at being a mate, I really would, but I want to help you with our kid. I want to provide for him and you. I don’t want you to struggle through this thing alone. I know if I’m scared, you’re scared, too. It seems a little less terrifying going through it together.”

“A united front.”

“Exactly.” He pulled to a stop in a dirt clearing that faced huge machines with claws. Thick metal wires swayed in the wind and stretched from a towering tree pole down the mountain and out of sight.

“And what happens when you bond to another woman?” Her heart ached just thinking about him with someone else, but she knew how this worked. He could bond to a mate someday, and where would that leave her? Raising their child as she watched him fall in love with his true mate. Watched them hold hands and kiss. She’d have to live her life pretending she didn’t care for Creed like that. “What happens then?”

Creed’s hand glided from her belly to her thigh, and he squeezed her leg gently. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

She opened her mouth to ask why not, but Creed shoved the door open and got out. He was fooling himself if he thought he’d never bond. Sure, there was a chance it might not happen, but it very well could. Right now, he felt like he could do this—grow a family with her. But what if someday he was sitting in the bar and laid eyes on
her
? The one his bear chose. It could happen, and then she would be the consolation prize family. The one he cared for less.

She’d known this would be complicated—coming back here and trying to make things work until she knew how to take care of the little shifter child she was growing. Best case scenario was that she moved to Saratoga where Creed could see his child when he wanted and she could have some semblance of a life, not just waiting for Creed to find
the one
Gia couldn’t compete with. She didn’t want to live a half-life, so that’s what she’d have to do. Stay here until she got a grasp on shifter life, then find a job and an apartment in Saratoga. This plan felt safest. This plan would protect her from latching onto a man who couldn’t ever truly be hers.

Gia’s eyes were wide open to all of this.

Even if Creed was beginning to feel like her mate, she wasn’t his.

The first step out of Creed’s truck smeared mud onto her navy slip-on shoes. Clearly, she wasn’t as prepared for the landing as she’d thought she was. She should’ve asked Willa what to wear. Shoes be damned, she grabbed the satchel she’d packed in case she got bored and turned to run smack into Creed’s chest. Sweet sugar, he was fast.

“Tell me you’ll at least think about staying,” he murmured, steadying her by the elbows.

Staying in Saratoga? “Okay.” She wouldn’t ever try to keep Creed’s child from him.

“Good.” Uncertainty flashed in his eyes as his gaze dipped to her lips.

Her breath caught in her throat. He was so close and smelled so good—all animal and whatever spicy body wash he’d used in the shower this morning. Raw power wafted off him as he stepped closer and brushed his fingertips against her quivering belly.

Creed leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. There was no tongue or biting like there had been before when they’d both been desperate for a drunken quickie bang in the back of his truck. This was soft lips and sipping.

Splaying her hands against his steely chest, she sucked gently on his bottom lip. A soft sound came from his throat, and he pressed her back against the side of the passenger seat. His hand slid up her neck, and he brushed his thumb across her cheek as he angled his head.

She was melting. Something strange was happening to her legs, and now Creed was having to hold her up. His other hand pressed on the small of her back, dragging her hips closer to him, grinding her against his erection.

Gia’s breath came in a pant as she sucked on his bottom lip again, harder this time. She was falling apart, shattering, sparking to oblivion, but right now, with Creed’s hands on her, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

Creed clenched his jaw and growled as she grazed his lip with her teeth. “Careful, woman,” he rumbled in a deep, gravelly timbre she didn’t recognize. He dipped forward and brushed his tongue against the seam of her mouth, just about undoing her completely. “Bite me again, and I’ll take you back in these woods and make you forget your name.”

He ground against her again, pressing against the most sensitive spot between her legs. She closed her eyes and gasped at how good he felt, even separated by clothes. Oh, she was well on her way to forgetting her name all right. And her birthday, hometown, and any problems as well. All she could think right now was the word
Creed
, whispered over and over on an unending loop in her mind.

“I want that. Do that,” she begged as he trailed his kiss down her neck.

Creed chuckled deeply and nipped at her neck, then eased away. “Here is not the place.” He jerked his chin at something behind her shoulder, and when she turned and looked through his truck window, Jason and Clinton were standing by the biggest machine, hands linked behind their heads, and pelvic thrusting. Lovely.

Creed gripped the doorway of his truck above her head and grinned, the epitome of cocky male. “Damn, I forgot how good you were at kissin’.”

Gia ducked her chin so he wouldn’t see her blush. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Hmm,” he said, noncommittally. He leaned forward and kissed her again, just a quick peck and soft nibble, then he pushed back away from the truck. “Come on. You’re about to see something no one else has seen before.”

“And what’s that?”

“How bad a C team crew of lumberjack bear shifters can fuck up a day at work. Don’t judge us based on the amount of blood we shed today. We’re still a work in progress.”

Gia sighed and followed behind the man who had burrowed his way into her heart in a staggeringly short amount of time. She wouldn’t judge the Gray Backs. Not anymore. Not after what Creed had told her about them.

So what if they were broken? She respected them more for not giving up and continuing to try. How many people did that? Not many in her experience. Not Brittney or Kara, or her parents. And not one of the Gray Backs had looked at her like she was disappointing when they’d found out she was pregnant with Creed’s child. All but Easton had accepted it without even a judgy quirk to their eyebrows. Brittney and Kara, who she thought were her best friends, had ditched her the moment she turned up preggers. The Gray Backs, however, had acted like, pregnant or not, that didn’t matter to them. And as scared as she was of Easton—or Beaston—he had told Jason not to call her “Bombshell.” He’d noticed she didn’t like the name by observing her reaction to it. In his own crazy way, he’d defended her.

She was beginning to learn just how big Creed’s heart was to accept all of these troublemakers into his crew. While she’d been living a life concerned with pleasing her parents, looking perfect, and finding the perfect job to live the perfect life, Creed had been in these mountains struggling every day to socialize a crew other alphas would’ve given up on.

On the way to meet the Ashe Crew yesterday, Willa had said, “It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it?”

As Gia slipped her hand into Creed’s offered one and looked over the edge of the landing to the mountains beyond, such a feeling of unexpected belonging filled her. Beautiful didn’t even begin to describe it.