Page 25 of Flare
Emily was standing in front of her cabin door when she realized she’d left her purse hanging on a chair in Elle’s dining room.
She groaned.“Damn it.” Her car fob and cabin keys were in that purse, along with her wallet and phone.
She turned to look back at the Victorian. The lights were on in the kitchen, which meant Maggie and Ward were probably still cleaning up. Good.
She walked back and found the front door still unlocked.
Back when she’d lived here, no one in Bearpaw Ridge worried about security, unlike Andrew, with his obsessive alarm systems and surveillance cameras.
Emily slipped quietly inside the house, not wanting to disturb Elle and Justin if they’d already gone to bed.
As she tiptoed down the hallway to the dining room, she heard voices coming from the kitchen.Maggie and Ward.
When she reached the dining room, something about their tone made her pause. They weren’t angry, but there was an intensity to their conversation that caught her attention. Then she heard Andrew’s name and couldn’t help herself.
She tiptoed to the kitchen door and strained her ears.
“You know mating bonds don’t work the same way with Ordinaries,” Maggie was saying.“We can form a lifelong bond with them, but they don’t bond to us in return. They can walk away. Or take a second mate, like Matt sharing Sophie with Chris.”
Emily froze.Mate?
Andrew had used that word. Now Maggie and Ward, too?
“I can’t. Not if Emily doesn’t know about bear shifters. Or mating bonds.” Ward’s voice, low and deep, sounded like he was growling.
Emily’s heart stuttered in her chest.Bear shifters? No. No, no, no.
She backed away from the kitchen door, heart racing.Bear shifters are real. And theyknow. Maggie and Wardknow!
The memories she’d been trying to suppress for days burst through her mental barriers—Andrew’s body contorting, his bones cracking, his skin disappearing beneath a wave of golden-brown fur. An enormous grizzly bear had stood in his living room, huffing angry breaths, staring at her with fierce golden eyes.
It had beenreal. All of it.
Emily panted. Her mind raced.
How could Maggie have let her come here without warning her? Her oldest friend had welcomed her with open arms, offered her sanctuary, all while knowing exactly what Andrew was. And what he could do.
No wonder Elle was so insistent that her family could protect me from Andrew.
Because they were the same as him. Because they could fight him on equal terms.
Emily darted her gaze around the dining room, suddenly seeing the Swanson home with fresh eyes. Generations of Swansons smiled back at her from the photos on the walls.
How many of them could turn into bears? All of them? Was that why they’d chosen to live out here, miles from town, with wilderness around them?
Tiny details she’d dismissed before suddenly took on sinister significance. The way Cade had sniffed the air when they first met earlier tonight. The strange golden glint she’d noticed in Elle’s eyes when Emily described her fight with Andrew. The way Ward had tensed when he hugged her, almost as if he’d smelled something on her.
Andrew had called her his mate. The word echoed in her head, connecting to what she’d just overheard.Mating bonds. Bear shifters. Ordinaries—was that what they called normal humans like her?
She thought back to when she was in elementary school, and the stories the older kids would whisper around campfires or at slumber parties. Tales about the town’s oldest families—the Swansons, the Jacobsens, the Tringstads. How they were different somehow.Special.
How they could track lost hikers in the wilderness when no one else could. How they never seemed to get lost in the forest. How wild animals never bothered them.
Emily had laughed at those stories then. Now they made her blood run cold.
How many people in town knew about shapeshifters? How deep did this go?
She thought about the comfortable little cabin she’d settled into. A cabin surrounded by wilderness. A cabin far away from anyone in town.
