Page 4 of A Bear's Secret

Chapter Two

Austin

Running down the trail,a half-dead kid in his arms, Austin put his feet on autopilot and tried not to think. Minutes ago, he’d been happily tromping through the woods, as carefree as you like, deciding between rabbit and trout for dinner.

Then, he’d heard a voice screaming for help. He’d shifted and run after it.

And then, he’d found the single most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen in his life, just standing in the middle of a trail through the woods. In that second, all the thoughts had blown clear out of his head, and the only thing he could think about had been the way she looked, the way she smelled, like pine and sweat and some pure, unique scent that was her.

The half-dead kid was also a problem, that was for sure. But that was a problem that Austin knew how to handle: take him back to the ranch, call an ambulance. Trained professionals would come and take the kid away, and eventually they’d probably figure out why there was a tranquilizer dart in his neck.

Austin had no idea what to do about the woman. In that moment, he wished that they’d planned better. He’d known this day was coming; after all, for the past two or so years, he’d watched all his cousins find their mates, one after the other: Hunter, then Julius, then Kade, then even Olivia. He had almost felt like a ticking time bomb as they each completed their triads, and Austin watched with a mixture of jealousy and fear.

He knew that when his time came, it wouldn’t work out nearly so well, and so he dreaded the day it happened.

It’s today, his bear whispered, still growling deep inside his skin. It’s today, and fuck the consequences, she’s yours.

Up ahead, the ranch came into view, and Austin hustled a little faster, coming down the final hill full speed and then booking for the gate.

“Hey!” he yelled at the farmhouse. “Open up!”

The house’s side door opened, and a woman with gray hair in a low bun came out, took one look at the situation, and hurried to let Austin in.

“What on earth?” Barb asked, quickly glancing over the boy.

“A hiker found him in the woods,” Austin said.

“Get him inside and call 911,” Barb said. She opened the door and Austin entered the kitchen. It smelled like baked beans and biscuits, but just then, it didn’t even make Austin hungry.

“Put him on the table,” she said, and Austin laid the kid out on the well-worn wooden tabletop. He didn’t even stir, and Barb checked his pulse, phone already in her other hand.

“Hi,” she said, into the phone. “I’m at the Double Moon Ranch, and I’ve got a young man here who seems to be unconscious. Looks like a hiker.”

Silence.

“I don’t know,” the woman said. “But there seems to be some kind of syringe in his neck.”

She raised her eyebrows at Austin, who put his own hands up in the universal gesture of I don’t know.

Barb listened for a few more seconds to the person on the other end of the phone, then nodded once.

“Thank you,” she said, and hung up.

“They’re sending an ambulance,” she said to Austin, then looked him up and down. “Put some pants on and go open the gate off the highway for them.”

Austin nodded and did as he was told.

* * *

Five minutes later,Austin was wearing pants, shoes, and a t-shirt that advertised the 2002 World Rodeo Championships. He didn’t know where he’d gotten the t-shirt — shirts from rodeo events seemed to simply appear in any dresser that lived on a ranch — but it was soft and was one of the few that actually fit his enormous frame, so he wore it a lot.

He barreled down the ranch’s long dirt driveway, a cloud of red dust rising behind him. The double moon was huge, stretching for hundreds of acres. The driveway alone was nearly a mile long, but when Austin reached it, there was no ambulance in sight.

Not really surprising. The closest hospital was a thirty-minute drive, and he didn’t think an ambulance could drive all that much faster. When Wyatt had been gored last year, it had taken the ambulance nearly forty minutes — there was a crash on the highway, and the only available ambulance was in Granite County General, even further than Ponderosa General.

Austin leaned against the bumper of the truck and waited. Someone needed to guide the ambulance to the right building, then the right room. His head felt like the swirling dust cloud behind him, all his thoughts and worries loose and scattered, some slowly ascending to the sky as others settled out into the dirt again, waiting for someone else to come along and rustle them up.

The unconscious kid wasn’t even his biggest concern. He was still breathing, and was probably safer now than he’d been in the woods. If he woke up and was a threat, Barb could handle him no problem. After all, the kid wasn’t a shifter, and she could turn into a wolf in the blink of an eye.

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