Page 7

the rest of my life saddled up to the bar

. . .

callum

“ S o, what time do you get off?” the blonde tourist who’d been flirting with me for an hour asked. “I’m staying with my sorority sisters at the lodge. But I can sneak away.”

While I appreciated not even having to work to secure a hook-up, I hadn’t ID’d her when she ordered her drink and dinner. And her blue-and-gold UBC Vancouver sweatshirt told me she might fall under my age cutoff of twenty-five.

I was just about to lie to her about being too tired to hook up after we closed the place down at midnight… when the Rest of My Life saddled up to the bar.

Holy Fucking Bear.

It was like she fell out of one of those “naughty teacher” videos I occasionally watched to get me through the winter months. And by occasionally, I mean every single night before bed.

And sometimes in the morning if Gideon was still asleep when I got up.

But those videos didn’t remotely compare to the real thing—even completely clothed, she was the sexiest female I’d ever laid eyes on.

The country song on the jukebox immediately morphed into Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher”—at least in my head. And why did it feel like some sort of ’80s video wind was blowing as I took her in?

She was curvy, with long, kinky curls spilling over her shoulders.

Also, honey-brown and unfairly cute in a pair of candy-apple-red cat eye glasses.

She wore a light-yellow cardigan over a… wait, seriously?

Was she truly rocking a black-and-white Tegan and Sara portrait shirt? They were one of Gideon’s favorite acts back before the Joint Task Bear Force fucked up his head.

Her scent wafted into my nose. And holy, holy, holy fuck. She smelled like honey.

Honey went with everything —Gideon’s cloves, my cardamom, and even Rys’s hard-to-match Labrador tea scent.

“Hi,” she said, taking the seat on the right of the UBC girl I was about to turn down. “May I have a glass of water with no ice?”

“Actually, we were speaking,” the UBC girl answered before I could, slitting her eyes. “Wait your turn.”

The Rest of My Life shrank back, her cute face falling like she’d been slapped.

Which made my bear want to rip out the younger woman’s throat.

“We’re done talking,” I informed the blonde without looking away from the Rest of My Life.

“But we didn’t?—”

“Not going to happen.” I cut her off before she could so much as hint to my future mate that I’d even considered sleeping with someone other than her tonight. “Time for you to go.”

“I haven’t even paid the?—”

Still not tearing my eyes away from the Rest of My Life, I snatched the receipt I’d just laid down before she came on to me and ripped it up. “All taken care of. Now, please fuck off.”

Somewhere in the periphery, the blonde gasped and whined something about me being rude.

But I was too busy filling up a glass with the water my mate had requested. I set it in front of her, along with a menu. “What can I get you, honeybee?”

She blinked.

“Oh, I wasn’t planning on eating,” she said, even though my bear picked up on her stomach growling from behind the bar. “But if that’s a requirement to wait here, maybe whatever’s cheapest on the menu. Like, an appetizer?”

“So, one steak dinner with premium sides coming right up,” I said, writing out the ticket for Cody. “Medium okay for your cook?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t sound cheap.” The cutest little consternated look came over her face.

My maul was going to turn her into a bear, but I swear, right now, it was like talking to a bunny.

“No worries. It’s on me, eh?”

I would’ve offered to pour her a drink, too—if I didn’t want her completely lucid and full of consent for all the things I planned to do to her when I got off.

I rushed over to the kitchen window tucked into the bar’s hidden corner to clip the ticket and ring the call bell.

I didn’t bother to wait for Cody to acknowledge me and chat a little, like I usually did.

The Rest of My Life was waiting, and Cody was grumpy about his mate going to the outer limits without him anyway, even though both her other husbands had dropped everything to escort Noelle and Holly there, along with both our town’s Mounties and that lucky bastard Hawk.

For once, the thought of Hawk didn’t fill me with the bitterest of jealousy. And though I was tempted to pull out my phone and text both my brother and the mayor—wherever he was—about finding the perfect match for our maul, rushing back to our future mate won out.

“So, you in town for the Christmas in July festival?” I asked her. “Staying at the lodge?”

“Well, I’m trying to…”

Her shoulders sagged as she told me the whole story—about being Holly’s best friend, forgetting to email her back, and having to wait to see if she could get a room at the lodge.

Listen, I know both of my other maul members can be a little unethical at times.

Gideon did some seriously black-ops stuff for the Joint Task Bear Force—so dark that he still won’t talk about it, years after returning to Bear Mountain a shell of the intense-but-not-completed-dead-eyed guy he used to be.

Even worse, Rys was former CSE—Canada’s version of the NSA—so he was probably one of the guys calling those black ops shots before transitioning into his current role as our mayor and MLA.

Up until that point, I’d always thought of myself as the only completely upstanding guy in our trio.

In fact, several reasonable ideas immediately sprang to mind for how I could help our future mate.

I could ask Gideon to get that out-of-service room fixed up, so she’d have somewhere to stay tonight.

I had Hawk’s number, so I could text him and let him know Holly’s friend had arrived.

Hell, I could ask any Ayaska in this bar to escort her straight to their door.

Since there was no crime in the Ayaska Village, none of the houses had locks. She could let herself in.

But I found out I wasn’t nearly as nice a guy as I thought. Instead of offering up any of those easy solutions, I said, “I’ve got an empty bedroom at my place. You can stay with me tonight.” And every one thereafter , I mentally added.

Humans didn’t have the olfactory sense to know on a fully conscious level when they’d met their scent match, so telling her this obvious-to-me thing at this stage might scare her off.

“Really?” Hope lit her eyes—but only for a second. Then she shook her head. “Actually, no. I shouldn’t do that. I don’t know you, and that means I shouldn’t trust you right away.”

I crooked my head. “Sounds like you’re kinda quoting something.”

She winced. “I am. I’m on the spectrum. So sometimes it’s hard for me to properly assess other people’s intentions. Especially strangers, which could be potentially dangerous for me.”

She was on the spectrum? So was Gideon—either that or he had severe, untreated PTSD that made him have to mirror me to come off as remotely human. My half-hour of reels-based research hadn’t turned up a clear answer.

Either way, she was perfect for us. Honest, like me. Direct, like Gideon—at least when it was just the two of us. That meant whatever the mayor saw in us when he asked to form a maul… she had it, too.

“I’m sorry if I’ve insulted you. I didn’t mean to.”

I didn’t realize I was just gazing at her with heart eyes and Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” still wailing in my head until she mistook my silence for insult.

“I’m only trying to protect myself,” she said. “Though, I’ll admit…”

She peeped up at me with a shy look, then glanced away. “You’re not only handsome, you seem really nice.”

My heart stopped and restarted, like it got hit with a defibrillator.

Did she have any idea at all how cute she was? How perfect for us?

The way… the way I was going to fuck this woman. In my bed. In Gideon’s. Against the wall, in the shower—everywhere and anywhere, all night long, if she let me.

But somehow, I managed to keep all that out of my voice as I replied, “Well, my moms always say the best way to turn a stranger into a friend is to get to know them.”

And that’s exactly what we did for the next two hours, talking about where we’d grown up, her university experience versus my Coast Guard one.

We also discovered that both of us were twins, though she and her sister were more like womb twins, but they only had one dad she rarely saw after her parents divorced.

I listened intently and let her do most of the talking. Thirty-five years … I’d gone thirty-five years without knowing her. And now I was greedy for every crumb of her backstory.

Though I occasionally interrupted her to call out, “Hey there, grab a table and put in your order,” to anyone else who tried to sit at the bar.

That way Keli—my older sister’s oldest girl, who waitressed for us after school—could handle their orders.

“How old is your waitress?” my mate asked after I sent Keli away with a whole tray of Hibernation Stations—my specialty drink. This year it had featured at #3 on British Columbia: Let’s Go! magazine’s Best Drinks list, so I was getting a lot of orders for it.

But Lark just looked worried, not impressed. “I don’t think you’re allowed to serve alcohol if you’re under nineteen….”

“No, you are not,” I conceded. “But she’s my niece, so she knows better than to touch the hard stuff.

And the Ayaska have a special exemption from most child labor laws because we’re ridiculous about family first here.

All three of her dads would ground her for life if they found out she was underage drinking on the job. ”

“Oh, does Bear Mountain have a lot of exemptions from provincial laws?” she asked between bites of her steak. “Also, you have three moms, and your niece has three dads. Is, like, everyone that lives here in a polycule?”

That kicked off a long conversation about Ayaska culture, all their rules and exemptions from human—I mean, Canadian—law, along with my family and our status as outsiders.

“So, you and your family—which has three moms instead of three husbands—came here after leaving a religious cult?”

By this time, she’d finished her meal, and my heart thrilled when she tucked into the piece of Cody’s strawberry-rhubarb pie I’d set in front of her without protest.

“Something like that….” The polycule as law stuff was already a lot to take in without adding in the part about all of us being bear shifters, and my parents having basically left a breakaway sect of LDS that were not only bear shifters but believed the opposite of the Ayaska—that every male was supposed to have at least three wives that attended to their every need.

“So is this town also a cult?” she asked off my vague answer.

“No, not at all.” I chuckled, forking off a bite of my own pie. “Though I get how it could seem that way. The Ayaska have a ritual for everything. But that’s based in tribal tradition, not religion.”

I tilted my head. “I guess you could call us a town that’s agreed not to disagree when it comes to forming quads of any variety. And anyone who doesn’t want that life has to either leave or not form permanent partnerships.”

“So, you don’t want to settle down into a quad,” she concluded, “just hook up with tourists during the summer.”

I frowned. “What makes you think that?”

She shrugged. “I extrapolated your position based on your abrupt disengagement with the perhaps-too-young woman who was flirting with you so you could engage with me—a more age-appropriate prospect who you guessed could be easily swayed to agree to casual sex.”

“Easily swayed,” I repeated with a slow grin. “Does that mean you want to?—”

“Wait, I’m not finished with defending my thesis point.”

She set down her fork and held up a finger while taking a moment to dab the pie crumbs off her mouth—her plump , incredibly kissable mouth.

“Also, you’d score superior on a scale of relative physical attractiveness,” she continued, bringing my attention back from my singular focus on her lips.

“The only reason you wouldn’t already be in a quad of your own, at your age, which I’d assess to be mid-thirties, is because you didn’t want to settle down and start a family. ”

I scrunched my forehead. Hold on, should I feel complimented or insulted here?

Either way: “That’s not the only reason,” I let her know. “Especially in Bear Mountain?—”

An alarm went off on her watch before I could explain that my intentions toward her weren’t shortsighted.

“Oh, that’s my reminder to check if a room is available at the lodge. I can’t believe two hours passed so quickly.”

She dropped her napkin on the bar and hopped off the stool.

It was like watching the Rest of My Life try to walk out of my life.

“Wait!” I called after her.

She turned back around. “Oh, I almost forgot. Thank you for offering me a place to stay. Time passed faster with you because I enjoyed your company. Your mom was right. I now consider you a friend I can most likely trust… at least for one night.”

A sweet little smile lifted the lips I couldn’t wait to kiss. “So, if there’s no room available, I’ll come back here and take you up on your offer. Okay, bye!”

She gave me a wave, and that promise made, turned to walk away.

Well, she was wrong. Not just about my feelings on settling down, but in her assessment of me.

I wasn’t her friend. I was her goddamn maul mate.

And she could absolutely not trust me. Not yet, at least.

The moment she walked out the bar’s doors, I dug my phone out of my back pocket. With my heart pounding in my throat, I texted my brother, who was manning the lodge’s front desk until we shut down reception at midnight:

MATE INCOMING: The woman we’re meant to be with is headed to the lodge to ask about a room. No matter what—DO NOT GIVE IT TO HER. She has to stay with us.