Page 17 of More Than I Can Bear

“My first time with your mother was via a dream,” he declared.

“More like a nightmare,” Kenny muttered, then winked at me. “So the connection is still there. That’s promising. So, you want to talk to your nan and the aunties then?”

The older women of the bear shifter community were a bottomless reservoir of knowledge. They helped bring new mates into the fold, assisting them to adjust through the whole process and they’d do that if Freya decided to accept the bond. When she accepted it, I corrected myself. See the end goal and then make it happen, that’s what my coaches always said.

“Yeah, if they can spare the time,” I said.

“For a young bear shifter on a mating hunt?” Kenny said, slapping my shoulder. “Try and keep the old biddies away.”

I’d asked for this meeting, so why was I tugging at the hem of my shirt, twisting my ankle as I felt some tiny pebble in my shoe? Probably because I knew how it was going to go.

“Adam!” My nanna rushed over and wrapped her arms around me. She was a tiny, round little thing, but she had my grandfathers wrapped right around her finger. “I hear you’ve found your mate. So, where is she?” She looked around with exaggerated interest. “How come you haven’t swept her off her feet yet?”

“About that. Can we talk?”

“Sounds serious.” Her smile faded and she turned to Mum as she walked up to us both. “Hello, love. What’s our boy got himself into now?”

I didn’t get to answer until I was inside the social club that the bear shifter men had built at the heart of the suburb where the majority of our community lived. Older ladies who’d known me all my life looked up across the room, from those knitting and sewing or having cups of tea, to the others that were on the board of trustees at the new school that had been created, or involved in other boards like the one that ran my dads’ company.

“Young Adam.” Ingrid was the mother of Lars, a polar bear shifter who worked for the restoration company Alaric Burns ran. She was also famously blunt. “You come here, to the she-bears’ den and with a face like that; you’ve done something wrong.”

“More than announcing he was looking for his mate on national television?” Mary was another one of the mums and she looked me over with a faintly reproving look. “You may as well have taken fur in front of the cameras and revealed us to all and sundry.”

“My Adam would never—” Mum started to say.

“Now, now, before everyone gets in a flap, let’s hear the boy speak,” Nanna said, going and taking her spot on the comfy couch and picking up her crossword book. “Tell us what happened and what you need help with.”

“I think I dream walked last night,” I said and there was a lot of twittering in response to that.

“My son…” Mum said, beaming up at me with pride.

“But that’s not all of it,” Ingrid said, her gaze feeling like it skewered into me. “Start at the beginning, boy.”

I didn’t want to. My eyes darted around the room. The longer I was quiet, the more attention the women paid. They seemed to sense that there was blood in the water, as if each one of them was a sweetly perfumed shark, ready to go in for the kill. But I knew they weren’t really: there was concern in all of their eyes. But by the end of what I had to say, I wasn’t sure if it’d be for me or Freya. I let a long breath out and then started.

“I met my mate at the medal count,” I said.

“And you won. Well done, Adam,” Ingrid said.

I flushed at that. I liked it, being told I’d done good. I knew that I had, obviously, but there was something about external validation. It was like the icing on an already delicious cake, the sharing of that pleasure in success somehow doubling it.

“Thanks. I didn’t miss the award ceremony because I was sick.”

“That much was clear,” my nanna said with a small smile.

“I missed it because… She was just standing there, trying to hide in the curtains and I never expected to see her at an event like this. The girls who usually go to these sorts of things, they’re not really looking for something long term. Nothing wrong with that but…”

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat and failed utterly.

“I saw her and walked over, then introduced myself.” The women all nodded along, caught up in the story. “I asked her to be my date for the night. It all came out in a big rush and I think she thought I meant like a fake date, to keep the other girls away, but it wasn’t.” My fingers flexed, wanting to find something to do, something to get us out of this situation, but they couldn’t. “It was real.”

“Of course, it was.” My mum’s voice was gentle and she gave my shoulder a rub. But would she keep doing that once she knew? Only one way to find out.

“So real I couldn’t sit through the award ceremony, not when she was there. She ducked away to go to the loos and I… I was there.” I felt like every woman in the room sucked in a breath then. “I asked her if she wanted to go back to my room and she said yes.”

“That’s perfectly understandable,” Ingrid announced. “Get straight to the point. I approve.”

“Usually we like our boys to spend a little more time getting to know a girl first, Ingrid,” Nanna said, but then turned back to me. “Though I don’t think that’s the end of the story.”

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