Page 120 of Choose the Bears

“Make sure you’ve got enough security,” I said in a low, rumbly voice. “Ensure the boys are on high alert.”

“You volunteering?” The publican looked me over with new interest. “Someone said you made sure Daisy got home in one piece last night.”

“So that’s why you were slow getting your shit together this morning,” Greg said with a sidelong look my way. “Balls deep in?—”

“Don’t say it.”

Why the fuck was my hand out, gripping my boss’ shirt by the collar? Why did his green eyes roll up to meet mine, sheer devilry dancing there as his lips twisted in a smile?

“Aw, someone’s crushing on the barmaid,” Ivan cackled and I wondered how the humans didn’t hear it. The high-pitched chitter of a fox in his voice, the sound completely inhuman.

“That’s the way, isn’t it?” I pushed myself back from the bar. “It’s always gotta come back to someone’s dick. We’re supposed to be the bigger ones, protective ones…” Sometimes it felt like everything my foster fathers had tried to teach me was just a bandage slapped over a weeping wound, the blood stopping it from sticking. Other times, like now, it all fitted together. “But if that’s a power that men possess, we’re really slow to use it. Because using your muscles, your strength, to stand up for a woman usually means stepping up in the face of not another woman, but a man.”

I didn’t want a beer, a meal, anything, right now. If I was home, I’d have my pipe out of my pocket, packing the cone full of weed in seconds. That acrid, herbal stink would calm me back down, keep the adrenaline tamped down, but I didn’t smoke drugs anymore.

So what could I do?

My eyes found Phil’s across the pub, his eyes narrowing at the same time as mine did. My fists flexed, ready to drive them into his stupid fucking face. That’d make me feel really good, but I didn’t do that anymore either. Instead, I jerked out a chair, sitting down with a thump to watch the prick turn back to his friends and continue his bullshit, right before a beer was pushed in front of me.

“Your instincts are good, when you listen to them,” Greg said, sitting down beside me and so did many of the others. “They’re telling you something important.”

“To get the fuck out of this shithole?” I replied, looking the pub over with a weary eye.

“That and something else. You’ll work it out at some point.” The bloke always had this fatalistic little shrug he used whendealing with difficult customers or cars and I was on the receiving end of it. “Or you won’t. The goddess know.” He raised his beer then, the last rays of the sun glinting in the amber depths. “To the goddess.”

“To the goddess,” the other foxes said, performing their savage little ritual.

I didn’t. The bear gods had deserted me a long time ago, I decided, from the moment I was born. That’s when I realised why Phil bugged me so much. It wasn’t his bullshit or the fact he tried to bully his way through life, but that all that was the result of him trying to escape something he never would.

That he was a small, small man in a big world and he’d never be anything more.

I lifted my glass then, unconsciously saluting a man I never thought I’d feel a moment’s connection with. Yet here we were. Here we fucking were, two small men together.

Chapter 62

Jesse

In class, at my brother’s bar, or even when at one of my parent’s parties, I could always tell when shit was going to go down. Perhaps growing up the way I did meant my brain was primed to pick up the tiny details. A body tensed, a squirrelly look, or a raised voice, I’d catch each and every one of them, right before things erupted.

And my spidey senses were going off right now.

The night was drawing to an end, most people having staggered off into the darkness, and now my workmates were planning to do the same.

“Staying to moon after that girl again?” Greg asked. “We’ll leave you to?—”

“No.” I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d contradicted my boss, and his eyes widened slightly in response. “You… You told me to trust my instincts.”

“And what’re they telling you?” He picked up my hand and turned it, revealing the burn there, now ugly and blistered. “Bear boy.”

Something I couldn’t, wouldn’t understand, that’s what I thought as I got to my feet. It was the end of the night. Returning our glasses to the bar was a kindness, helping the staff finish up the night that bit faster.

That wasn’t it.

Phil and I, that moment of connection deepened as he moved too, but his hands strayed to the knife at his belt. His eyes told me everything I needed to know if I could just decipher the madness there. A warning, that was clear, his glare made clear that if I dared to step in between him and his prey, I’d regret it.

But I was just as sure I’d regret it if I didn’t.

Daisy looked up when I approached but her narrowed eyes, the small look of disappointment, was her undoing. She moved away from me, not closer.

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