Page 27 of Bear's Rejected Love

“You’re showing off.” Helena’s smirk hid a smile.

“My mom was a good teacher.”

“That’s pretty incredible. Young shifters are all over the place.”

“But you both…” He trailed off. “The lab. Is that where you first shifted?”

“Yeah, and we had no one to teach us. I swear those guys knew we were shifters before we did.” Helena made a face at Honor to make him laugh because things were getting too serious. “

It was so weird,” Ora continued for her sister. “We grew up in foster care. We never knew our parents or what they were. But those men who took us obviously did.”

“The lab was marginally better for us than our foster home. At least the doctors didn’t beat us.” Helena said quietly. It was such a weird thing to say when she was still making hilarious faces for Honor’s benefit. “They didn’t do much to us actually. We’ve probably said that before.”

“Anyway…” Ora shared a private look with her sister and then gave Tabitha a far sunnier expression. “You should do it. You deserve it. Your poor bear deserves it.”

“Yeah, go for it,” Corbin encouraged. “We’ve got the baby. We’ll just be here. We’re perfectly safe. And if we see any threats, we’re all three of us capable of defending ourselves.”

The girls nodded in unison even when Roan’s chest threatened to explode for what they’d already been through. “That’s right.”

Ora grinned at him. “You should go for it too, Roan. You never allow yourself to go on runs or participate in any of the clan meetings. Let your bear out, or whatever happens to pop out first.” The girls shared a laugh with each other over that one, further amazing him.

They’d never laughed about it before. It was a point of anguish for him that he sometimes couldn’t control all the shit that had been pumped inside of him. Shit being the short form for all the other entities in his body. They weren’t laughing at him, they were just laughing, which made him want to not take himself so seriously. So fucking what if random animals sometimes popped out and refused to do his bidding? Was that the end of the world? Was it a reason to hate himself?

“Can you really do a mountain lion?” And there was his son, who hadn’t wanted to say two words to him before, suddenly super interested. “I’d like to see that.”

“Corbin…” Tabitha gave the motherly warning, but underneath was genuine interest. She might want to see it too.

“Or the wolf!” Ora cast her vote. “He’s huge and kind of scary, but he’s fun too. Playful. I always wanted a dog.”

Is this seriously happening right now?

“I’d vote for the eagle because it’s so awesome, but Roan always says he feels sick after shifting into that, so I vote for the owl.” Helena raised Honor’s hand. “He does too, so that’s two for the owl. Then again, I’m not sure I want to sit here all night waiting for it to come out of the tree and burping up pellets must be kind of nasty.”

Corbin’s brows shot to his hairline. “Whoa. Pellets? Seriously?”

“Yup. With mice bones and things.”

“Cool. Can I change my vote to the owl too?”

The woods fell silent, everyone waiting, and then he threw back his head and laughed. “What if I’d just like to let out the bear for once? My original bear?”

“Is it kind of like having multiple personality disorder?” Corbin asked, like he didn’t even hear. “Can you hear them communicating inside? Do they fight each other? How is it even possible? You’d think that all that weird energy would just reject or contaminate each other. Those doctors must have known what they were doing. How are you not dead right now?”

Tabitha stepped in front of Corbin, horrified. “That is not an appropriate question. Or questions. None of that was.”

Roan didn’t take offense. For once. He waited for the usual stab of hatred followed by self-derision and that aching urge to run. To run from the past, to run from the good things he currently had in his life, to run from his memories and himself. All of that was usually flavored with a particularly nasty seasoning of self-hatred, but there was just nothing there except a strange warmth.

“Honestly, I’m not sure. They didn’t just thrust it in there all at once. They waited. They had years to get it right. Apparently, they’d tried with other shifters, and it killed them. I wasn’t conscious half the time, so I don’t know how they did it. They could have given me something to make it so the blood didn’t reject, suppressed something, like how they do with organ transplants. They couldn’t kill me, I guess, since I’m still here.”

There were other shifters before him. Maybe there at the lab at the same time, besides Silver and the girls. They hadn’t been so lucky.

He didn’t want to think about that. He still had nightmares about those faceless, nameless people. They were dead. He knew they were dead. And because of them, he was alive. Whatever those doctors had done to them, they’d done something else to him. Something that he could survive.

He focused on Tabitha. On her face and her full lips. They’d always been so kissable and they’d always, always smiled so readily. On her golden skin and her aliveness that was always sparking all over the place.

“What do you say, Tabitha? One for old times’ sake?”

She shook her head, and he felt a stab of irrational disappointment. He’d never expected her to agree. “How about one for new times?”

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