Page 10 of Her Beary Spicy Valentine (Welcome to Bear Mountain #2)

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this is all your fault!

takoda

H olly .

I remembered now. I remembered everything. Her name was Holly. My bear had bitten her, then left her inside a cell with the two shifters I’d arrested for fighting over her.

And now Hawk had her pinned to the bars, her sweet, chubby thighs wrapped around his waist.

A green-tinted rage, unlike anything I’d ever felt before, rose in my chest, strangling my words as I choked out, “Stop this. Stop this now.”

They didn’t stop. Didn’t even appear to hear me.

Bjorn had his entire face pressed into the side of her head, murmuring low.

But I had bear ears. I heard every word he said, urging her to come all over an ex-con’s dick.

And that spoken encouragement made my own cock swell, even as I repeated, “Stop. No, stop.”

She was already in estrus. The entire station reeked of chocolate, maple, and cognac—sweet, rich, and overwhelming. They couldn’t hear me over their combined thrall.

But I could hear them. Through the maul bites, their minds were wide open.

Too loud. Too clear. Their thrill. Their anticipation. Every single moment, until…

Hawk snapped his hips hard, hitting something deep inside her.

Holly came apart with a scream, and her ecstasy rushed through me, flooding my mind. It bore no resemblance to the scream she’d let out when my bear bit her. This was pure euphoria.

Her climax was followed by Hawk’s elated pride and Bjorn’s abject delight, even though he hadn’t bitten her. Her pleasure was already his pleasure.

I wasn’t nearly so honorable.

Jealousy tightened my stomach, hot and angry as I roared, “What did you do? What the hell did you do?”

This time, they heard me.

They froze at the sound of my voice. At least Holly and Bjorn did.

Hawk just looked me straight in the eye. Grinned.

And kept going.

“Welcome back, Koda,” he said—right before he released with a rough shout.

Hawk had been with plenty of women—shifter and human. I knew that even before my bear bit him. But now his maul bite told me those other females might as well have never existed.

To Hawk, this felt like coming for the first time ever. No more baiting me. No more games. He nearly blacked out, his mind blurring as he shot rope after rope of his seed into her.

The surging pulses of his extended release were too much for Holly. Just moments ago, she’d felt guilty and ashamed when she saw me standing on the other side of the bars. Now, her mind collapsed, and her eyes went glassy as another orgasm ripped through her.

“Another orgasm. Another…” Hawk’s thoughts echoed in my head like they were my own. Holly wasn’t supposed to have another climax. Its unexpected arrival pushed Hawk to the edge. “Another ? —”

“No! No!” I shouted, surging forward.

But it was already too late.

Hawk mawed out, his bear teeth descending to administer a bond bite before I could even get to the keypad.

Holly cried out, her body quaking as Hawk’s teeth sank into her right shoulder.

And that was when I learned the terrible truth behind the Ayaska law against bond biting in public.

“Why is it against the law?” I’d asked my father, the former Bear Mountain RCMP detachment before he retired. I’d been curious back then, assuming Ash and I would soon maul with a worthy third.

“Because bond biting can be catching,” he’d answered simply.

I hadn’t understood his reasoning at that time.

But now…

Bjorn’s bear instincts overrode his human reason in an instant. Like a male possessed, he followed Hawk’s lead, his maw sinking into her left shoulder.

The traditional place for a third maul to bond.

Before I could finish punching in the code, they were both biting her. Binding her to them, just as my bear had done behind my back.

“No,” I snarled. My fists clenched so hard my nails bit into my palms, but I didn’t move. Separating them mid-bite was dangerous, and stopping them now could trigger the two other males into shifting.

Holly’s cries echoed through the small space, but they weren’t cries of pain. They were cries of something else entirely. Something raw and consuming.

Mates! Mates! Mates! her bear chanted inside her.

And then, suddenly, I was falling over the cliff, too.

I shouted, and my legs nearly buckled as my untouched cock unexpectedly erupted.

The jet of cum rocketed down my shaft, white-hot and remorseless. It left nothing behind but shame, the destruction of my worldview, and a huge dark spot on the fleece blanket wrapped around me.

This was… This was utter chaos. All protocols had been shattered. Every ritual for this process, completely forsaken.

But my bear didn’t care. It reveled in the chaos, took pride in the bond forming before my eyes as Holly’s orgasm crested again and again, its length extended by her second and third mauls’ magical bond bites.

Ours! Ours! Ours! her second and third mauls cried as they savagely bonded her.

By the time Bjorn and Hawk lifted their mouths from her shoulders, Holly had gone limp in Hawk’s arms. Her head lolled to the side, her body trembling from aftershocks of her bondgasm.

To Bjorn’s and Hawk’s credit, the primal satisfaction radiating from the bites faded as their bears retreated. Awareness returned to their eyes.

“Fuck, what did I…?” Hawk rasped, his voice thick with regret.

Bjorn opened his mouth but said nothing, his jaw working like he was trying to find words that wouldn’t come.

It didn’t matter.

In the end, all fault laid with one person. Her!

I’d stoically nodded when Zion and my birth father broke the news about my mother’s deathbed decision. I’d walked away without a word when Ash confessed his bear wanted to form a maul with Mak instead.

But now…

Now, I staggered forward, rage snapping my last thread of control. I ripped open the cage door.

“You!” I snarled at the female who had upended my entire life in less than twenty-four hours. “This is your fault.”

All three of them blinked at me, like the humans at the “mind-expansion retreats” Ash’s alternative healer mother occasionally hosted.

“Takoda…sir…” Bjorn began, his voice cautious.

“Let me handle this,” Hawk said before he could finish. He set Holly down with deliberate care, then positioned her behind him. Shielding her from me like he had the right.

Meanwhile, Holly pulled on Bjorn’s shirt and flannel in hurried movements, her eyes darting toward me like I was the monster.

Not that ex-con who’d fucked her against the bars of a jail cell.

“I told you to leave,” I snapped at her over Hawk’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you listen?”

“I’m sorry,” Holly stammered, stepping forward. Her chin wobbled, but she squared her shoulders and bravely stood beside Hawk, not behind him. “I was just trying to find my sister!”

“If you’ve got second thoughts about this maul, Koda, take them up with me. Not her,” Hawk growled, his amber eyes sharp. Then, softer, to Holly: “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, baby.”

Lies.

“You’ve got everything to be sorry for! I told you to go home! And you didn’t!” The words tumbled out on an rage-filled wave of regret and frustration. “Now you’ve ruined everything. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want you. You’ve ruined my life!”

The knife twisted as her expression shattered. And suddenly, I saw it.

The fights with her ex-husband. His cruel accusations after her miscarriages. His lawyer painting her as a deceitful harpy for not disclosing a medical condition she couldn’t help.

Her pain. All the pain she’d been carrying since her divorce sliced through me. Sliced through all of us.

But she didn’t know we could see it. Didn’t understand that her bond bite was sharing everything.

She just pressed her lips together, gathering herself the way she did when she made the call to rush one of her birthing mothers to the hospital for an emergency C-section.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t understand what’s happening here. But I know I’m not what you envisioned. And I wasn’t trying to… I just…” Her voice cracked, but she kept going. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I’ll leave now. I promise.”

I’d think about this moment a lot in the weeks to come.

Maybe things would have turned out different if she’d made that declaration and calmly walked out of my detachment station. Maybe she’d have gotten in her rental car and driven out of my life—actually gone home, like I’d ordered her to. Twice.

But she didn’t walk.

She ran.

Her runners slapped against the concrete floor as she fled—not just out of the cell but out of the station entirely.

So many signs. We had so many signs hanging on nearly every building in town, giving instructions about what to do if a tourist encountered a bear.

The number one rule on every tin post: DON’T RUN!

Written all in caps.

But Holly had come into my life—our lives—at night. She hadn’t seen any of those signs.

Instead of walking, she ran.

Which in bear country was the equivalent of striking a match in a room full of gasoline.

“Wait! Don’t ru-rrrawwwrr-n!” Bjorn’s warning wasn’t fast enough. His predatory instinct took over before he could finish, and his blond grizzly surged forward as fur sprouted.

Hawk’s black bear soon followed, curling over onto all fours as his body convulsed with the shift.

Before they could fully turn, though, I scrambled to the cell’s entrance and slammed the door shut, locking them back in.

“Stay here,” I snapped, my voice low and commanding. “Both of you. Don’t make this worse.”

Bjorn’s huge grizzly roared, frustrated, while Hawk’s bear stared at me with baleful amber eyes.

“If she leave Bear Mountain, I kill you,” Hawk growled, his ursine voice heavy with menace. “No cage strong enough to hold me if our mate gone.”

My human rallied to defy him.

But my bear?

It was stronger.

And she’d run.

My human knew better, but the beast inside me had already been triggered.

That was when I realized—I should have locked myself inside that cage, too.

My skin burned, my muscles twisted, and before I could stop it, my black bear forced me into a shift—unstoppable, primal, and intent on the hunt.