Page 49 of Bear's Rejected Love

She felt splintered, cut into pieces, all of them violent. She wanted to hurtle herself through the windshield and attack that van. She wanted to tear it open and tear those people who had dared to take her mate again into pieces. Roan must be so terrified. But then, he probably wasn’t conscious. There was no way they could have taken him willingly. Her only comfort was that if they’d waited all this time and planned something like this, then it meant that they wanted him alive. He was valuable to them. She got a handle on the burst of out-of-control rage so that her bear didn’t break out right there in the backseat of the truck. That would help absolutely no one. Sam would probably be forced to drive off the road and that van would keep on going, carrying Roan further and further away.

“How did they find him?” It was probably the easiest thing to voice out of all the questions plaguing her.

“My guess is they implanted a tracker and had to wait for the right time. A time when he’d be alone and off clan lands,” Kier ground out.

“But wouldn’t that have shown up on medical tests? Did Josephine do any when he arrived?” she asked.

“Any tests were minimal, given what they’d all been through. Mostly bloodwork.”

“But he came to Maine. He came to try and find his old clan. Why didn’t they capture him there?”

His dark eyes were kind. She could tell that he was already cycling through actions and potential outcomes to figure out what to do and that calmed her. “He was never alone. He had Silver and the girls with him.”

“They’re all from the lab. Wouldn’t they want them all back?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was too much or too risky to try and take four people all at once. It’s easier for a predator to take on a singled out animal. That’s how most hunters work. A pack tends to be more difficult. They tend to fight back, the girls might be young, but they are still bears.”

“But how did they find him? We have to call Silver. Oh my god, the school. We have to call the school. The girls might be—”

“I’ll call.” Tavish got out his phone. While he was dialing, Kier squeezed her shoulder.

“If they didn’t come onto clan lands, then they likely won’t. Is there anything about Roan that they might want over the others? Something that they could track?”

“I…” Could she give them Roan’s secret? She trusted these men. They were good people, and they wouldn’t kick Roan out of the clan just because he’d had something done to him and put into him that no one else did. “They did experiments on him. They put other animals into him. He doesn’t just have his bear. He has others. An owl. A wolf. A panther. A large cat, maybe another type of bear too.”

“What?”

“Oh my god, how is that even possible?”

“The fuck?”

All three men spoke at once. The phone fell out of Tavish’s hand, and he had to scramble for it and then spoke quickly into it. He did say Trace’s name. They worked together at the clinic. Tabitha relaxed just a little, knowing the clan would be on high alert. The girls, Silver, and everyone else would be safe.

“If they could put all of that into him,” Kier reasoned after Tavish hung up. “Then they could put some kind of tracking device into him too.”

“No.” She didn’t want to believe that was possible. “He’s a human being. He’s a person. They can’t just- they can’t just put things under his skin like that.”

“He never allowed Josephine to run any tests the way Silver and the girls allowed her to make sure they were okay after we got them out of that lab. It’s entirely possible they could have implanted something under his skin the way you would microchip a cat or dog and he wouldn’t even know about it.”

“But why now? It’s been three years?”

She had to breathe. And breathe, and breathe, and breathe, because if she didn’t, the anger was going to get control and the bear was going to tear out and get its mate back. It was going to defend Roan in ways she couldn’t. Except that at the moment, it would only be extremely detrimental to believe that was even possible.

“Are you okay?” Kier raised both his hands and hovered them by her like he could just tuck an angry bear back into her skin if it ripped out.

“Yeah.” She bent forward again, slamming her head into her hands. “Yeah, I’m good.” She kept breathing to make that happen.

“We probably have one shot at stopping that van,” Sam said. “It’s going to be ugly. It’ll involve impact. I need to know that every single person in this truck is okay with that. It’s got airbags, but we could still get hurt. Minor or major injuries, depending on how this goes. I could wait until the road is clear, no one else coming in that direction so they wouldn’t be collateral damage. There’s no one behind me right now. I could force the van to rear end us and that would stop them, at least briefly.”

“At least until they recognize us and try and get away fast in the other direction.”

“They might have to hit us hard enough that they can’t get away in their van and carrying a deadweight, large and unconscious man isn’t an option.”

“They’re dangerous,” Tabitha hissed. “They have to be. They got Roan somehow.”

“Looks like they set up some kind of trap there in the road. Some kind of diversion. They probably shot him with a sedative or got close enough to give him an injection. They couldn’t have taken him down any other way. I don’t think they’d go to this much trouble that they’d use real weapons.”

“Maybe not on him,” she fired back at Kier even though she wasn’t mad at him. She was just going crazy. Full stop. Her vision was practically red, and she needed to see clearly and think clearly and keep her shit together. “But what about on us? If anyone here gets hurt, Roan would never be okay again. I wouldn’t be okay.”

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