Free Bear Love by Belinda Meyers Page B

engorged, but not as much as it had been. “Not
that, is it?” She almost smiled, but didn’t.
    “No,” he said, not smiling. “It’s
outside.” He paused. “I think it will answer a lot of your questions.”
    She frowned, having to recall what
she’d even had questions about in the first place. “You mean, about why your
crew took over the resort?”
    He nodded. “Now will you come with
me? You’ll need your jacket.”
    Five minutes later they were
walking through the snow-shrouded forest. Glimmering white trees stretched
toward the heavens all around. The snow muted sound and leant everything a
magical, enchanted quality. It was like a different world. Mike was oddly
silent, and Jess cast him frequent looks.
    “When we were meeting with your
alpha, you were keeping some things back,” she said, to get him started. “You
said you’d tell me later. Well, now’s later.” When he hesitated, she said, “I’m
not pushing. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to.”
    “No, it’s not that. I’m just trying
to think of how to say it.”
    “It had something to do with Bryce
choosing me, I think.”
    Mike nodded his square-jawed head.
He wasn’t wearing a cap, and flakes of snow settled in his wavy black hair,
then began to melt. Jess had to fight the urge to reach up and brush them away.
    “I think he chose you because I chose you,” Mike said.
    She frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “My bear. It chose you.”
    She blinked up at him, feeling
snowflakes gather in her lashes. “It ‘chose’ me?”
    He stopped and turned to her, and
she looked up into his face. It was the most serious she’d ever seen him.
    “As soon as I saw you, Jess, my
bear knew you were my mate. It reached out to me and let me know.” He grinned,
just a bit. “It wasn’t real subtle about it.” Then he got kind of sheepish.
“That’s why I positioned myself by the ladies’ restroom at the bar.”
    She couldn’t help it. She laughed.
“You what ?”
    “That’s right. I wanted you to
notice me when you came out. You hadn’t even looked at me before. My bear
demanded that we meet. And, er … well, mate.”
    She stared at him. It was funny,
but it also put a lump in her throat. “Mate … for life?”
    He nodded again. “That’s right.”
    She reached up and ran her fingers
over his stubble-lined cheek. She could still feel the burr of the stubble
against her cheek from earlier. It burned, but she liked it. Slowly, she
started to draw her hand away, but he reached up and gently held it in place.
He seemed to grow hotter, and the snow didn’t just melt on him now. It steamed off of him.
    At last, though, she took her hand
away.
    “What does this have to do with
Bryce?” she said.
    “I think he sensed that my bear
chose you,” Mike said. “He wanted to take you away from me. Take my mate away
from me.”
    That hit her like a blow to the
stomach. Feeling weak, she said, “So he … he wanted you to never have a mate?”
    “I think so. Yes.”
    “But that means he would be stuck
with someone who didn’t love him and was fated to be the mate of another. He
was willing to have an unloving wife, or mate, or whatever, just to take your true mate away.” She placed a hand
over her heart, feeling its rapid beat. “The hate that that would take … I
can’t believe it, Mike.”
    “Believe it. Like I said, lion
shifters and bear shifters are enemies from way back. And some clans are raised
steeped in the old ways. The old hates. Rivalries, feuds, wars. Some young
shifters are brainwashed from birth to hate whoever their parents or clans
hated most. Bryce must come from a clan that hates bear shifters … a lot.”
    “A hell of a lot.”
    “Yeah.”
    “He’s a fanatic .”
    “Likely,” Mike said.
    “But that means he didn’t want to rape me. He actually
wanted me for a mate.”
    “To keep me from having you.
Right.”
    “Was it to keep you from having
kids? Or cubs, I guess? Is he trying to do his