Page 3 of Bear for the Holidays

“Er.”

At the sound of a human voice, the cat screamed louder and more imperiously, never taking its eyes off of Deanna. Cautiously, she walked towards it, and when she approached, the cat trotted over to twine around her legs, purring madly the whole time. The cat was a dirty gray, small and bony except for a bulbous midsection, and gingerly, Deanna picked it up.

“If you bite me and give me rabies, I am going to be very upset,” she told it, and in response, the cat only licked her hand placidly, its eyes drifting to half-mast.

“You picked the wrong cousin,” Deanna sighed, tucking the cat against her chest. “Pearl would have you cleaned, housed and fed in twenty minutes. You’re going to have to wait until I can get you to her, okay?”

As she walked back to the car, she saw the cat’s belly ripple, and it occurred to her why the otherwise skinny little cat was so chunky.

“Wow, yeah, I am looking forward to making you Pearl’s problem, because, sweetie, you cannot be mine,” she said with a chuckle.

She put the cat in the footwell of the backseat, watching for a moment to see if she was inclined to dash around and maybe get stuck under the brake pedal, but the cat settled in as if she had done it a million times, still purring up a storm.

Deanna got back into the car, and just as she shut the door, something heavy hit the roof, a hard thump followed by the shriek of something sharp getting dragged across metal. She yelped with surprise, her heart hammering, and she peered out the window, trying to see what had just happened. Briefly, she saw a winged shadow flapping towards the trees, but then it disappeared.

An owl, maybe? I guess it’s early enough they’re still hunting.

She put the thought out of her mind, because she had stew to deliver and now a cat to pass on to her cousin. It was shaping up to be a busy day, and she whistled as she started driving again.

Above her, dark clouds mounded up in the sky, and the first fat, wet, flakes started to fall.

CHAPTER TWO

∞∞∞

Nik made it back to the cabin just before dawn, hanging his waders up in the mudroom and kicking his boots and socks off to pad barefoot into the living room to light the wood stove. Once the fire was crackling, he stashed his gear, made some quick notes for later, and walked straight into the bathroom to start the shower.

The water heater was about the size of a teapot, and he stretched its capacity as far as he could, going from mildly tepid to blazing hot to finally a cold blast to the face that was still better than the smell of the pond. He was pleased with the herons. He was less pleased with the cold waters they lived in.

Should just go out in bear form,he thought, toweling off.Could probably rig the counter to hang around my neck, maybe find a way to click it with my teeth.

As handy as it would be to use his grizzly bear form for very early morning counts, however, most wildlife didn’t care for the presence of a nine hundred-pound apex predator in their midst. It didn’t help that no one had seen a grizzly in Colorado since the ‘80s. The last thing he needed was to be sighted by some hiker or someone doing a flyover and get the news riled up.

First time back in a few years, maybe I don’t set off a panic.

He put on a clean pair of pajama pants, not bothering with the top despite the chill. He wasn’t immune to low temperatures in his human form, but he ran hot, and that plus the shower helped him shrug off the cold air. There was a dryness to it, he noticed now, as well as a certain crispness. A storm was on the way, and he was even more grateful to have finished off the east quadrant that morning.

He was just pulling out the ingredients for a fry-up when his sharp ears caught the sound of a car pulling up the long gravel drive.

Huh, no one called ahead.

That wasn’t a good sign this high in the mountains, especially at this time of day. This was why plenty of his co-workers kept a shotgun loaded up with rock salt next to the door, but he’d never had any issues that a calm, reasonable tone and his grizzly form couldn’t fix.

Wildlife management and forestry weren’t the most predictable of gigs, and on the off-chance that it was someone who needed help, Nik plugged in the espresso machine and flipped it on. He was just setting out the milk when there was a rapid knock.

He answered the door just as he became aware of the fact he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and then he looked at his visitor and couldn’t look away.

It wasn’t that she was Asian or that she had pink hair, and a gold stud piercing her lower lip. It wasn’t that she filled out her jeans really, really nicely. It wasn’t that she was carrying something that smelled a lot like his mother’s venison stew or even that there was a heavily pregnant cat sitting on her shoulder.

It was the fact that she looked into his eyes, and in that moment, everything in the world went perfectly still. He was certain that somewhere out there, birds still flew, dogs still barked, and fish still swam. It was just that the world as far as he knew it, as far as he cared about it, was utterly still and silent because he was looking at his true mate.

All shifters knew they had a true mate out there somewhere, and if they were lucky enough to find them, that was it. That was them, forever, and his heart beat faster at the idea that it wasactually happening to himon this chilly winter day.

He’d had heard about it all his life, but now that the moment came, there were no words. It was just him and the woman that he was for, and there was nothing in the world like it.

She gazed at him in return, her dark eyes as deep as the hidden pools in the forest, her lips slightly parted. There was a shine to her lips, cherry gloss, his grizzly noted, and all he could think about was what it might be like to kiss her, to take her in his arms and–

Suddenly the cat on his true mate’s shoulder decided she had had enough of whatever the hell this was, and she leaped from the woman’s shoulder to his own. He liked cats and he was used to working with unpredictable animals, but he flinched, one hand coming up to steady the cat and to make sure she didn’t claw his bare flesh to ribbons.

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