Page 11 of Her Beary Spicy Valentine (Welcome to Bear Mountain #2)

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so what you’re saying is that you’ve basically ruined my life

holly

M ates! Mates! Mates! The new voice continued to growl inside of me. But…

No. I had to find my coat. Find my keys! Get out of this town!

One moment, I was in ecstasy, and the next, I was running blindly up the trail to Ayaska Village, searching for the place where I’d veered into the forest. Trying to escape the nightmare I’d left behind in that jail cell.

I’d barely been able to run the night before, but I was weirdly stronger now. My Hokas slapped against the snow-packed ground, each step bounding me farther up the white road. I only wore a shirt and flannel that smelled of maple, but the below-freezing weather didn’t slow me down. The cold didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting away.

Away from the humiliation. You’ve ruined my life!

Away from that animatronic Mountie.

There—there it was! The motorcycle lying in the road, marking the spot where I’d run into the forest earlier. I cut right again, and branches clawed at my arms as I stumbled through the trees. Their sharp scrapes felt like physical manifestations of the words battering my mind.

You’ve ruined my life!

The Mountie’s accusation whirred like an electric drill into my brain, unlocking memories I’d spent over a year trying to bury.

So what you’re saying is that you’ve basically ruined my life.

Corey had spat the words at me like venom.

At first, I hadn’t blamed him for his anger. After using his dual visa to move to Canada and getting married, he’d wanted to start a family when I was twenty-eight, but I’d insisted we wait. Corey called himself a “muralisto”—his term for pursuing a career as a muralist—and I respected his art. But as his newly emigrated wife, it didn’t feel like a strong foundation to build a family on with me as the most likely breadwinner.

It felt reasonable at the time to wait until I’d established a robust client list for my specialized homebirth midwife practice and a strong enough reputation to be brought on for shifts at my partner hospital when business was slow. But I was thirty by the time I felt ready to go off birth control, and he was already bitter.

After nearly a year of trying, we finally got pregnant—only for it to end two weeks later in miscarriage. That’s when I decided to consult a fertility specialist, who suggested I address the fibroids I’d been ignoring for years.

When I told Corey I’d most likely need surgery for the fibroids that were making conception difficult, his reaction was devastating. “So what you’re saying is you’ve got a medical condition that you didn’t tell me about? And that’s why we’ve been having so much trouble getting pregnant?”

I’d tried to explain, “Honestly, I’ve been living with painful, monster periods because of fibroids since my teens. It never occurred to me to talk about it with anyone, especially you. They’re not exactly sexy. And I didn’t know they’d make getting pregnant so hard! I thought I could just deal with it until the doctor suggested surgery.”

“How could you not know?” he retorted. “You’re a midwife! You do this for a living.”

“I deliver babies,” I argued, my voice breaking. “I don’t help women conceive them. That’s a completely different field of medicine.”

Corey just shook his head, his eyes filling with tears. “But you knew about the fibroids, and you withheld them from me.” He threw himself down on the couch with a dramatic sigh. “You’ve basically ruined my life!”

“No, Corey, that’s not it at all,” I assured him, desperate to explain my side of things. But nothing I said mattered.

By the time I had the fibroids removed and we tried IVF, I was thirty-three. And Corey had already emotionally checked out.

He left after my second miscarriage. Quietly, at first. He was eager to move on with his new girlfriend and I was too tired to fight for the marriage he clearly no longer wanted. We promised to let each other go without a fuss.

But his version of a no-fuss divorce had turned into a courtroom spectacle when his lawyer painted me as deceitful, a woman who’d intentionally wasted years of her husband’s life.

“My client was clear about wanting children, but she knowingly hid her condition from him, costing him precious years.”

The judge had believed his slick lawyer, and Corey smirked as the gavel fell. Then he’d walked out of the courtroom with his new girlfriend. Leaving me behind like trash. Trash I’d suspected no one else would ever want.

Until today.

For a few glorious moments in that jail cell, I’d felt treasured. Wanted. Needed in a way I never had before.

But then the Mountie came in and popped my balloon of delusion. You’ve ruined my life. His words gutted me, leaving me raw and hollow.

Now, I was here, running blindly through the forest, my chest heaving, my vision blurred by tears.

Shattered. And raw.

What was wrong with me? Why had I let that random biker take me like that? Why was I so desperate and out of control?

Finally, I reached the meadow. Thank goodness, my red coat was right there, lying in a pile with my scrubs, sports bra, and underwear. Torn clothes. But not exactly.

I frowned, crouching over the pile. I’d thought that weird bear had shredded them off me with his claws or teeth, but the remnants weren’t jagged or bloodied. They were torn apart at the seams—like someone had pulled an angry Bruce Banner and Incredible Hulked out of them.

A sharp snap behind me cut off my thoughts, and my entire body froze. Slowly, I turned my head. Then my heart dropped.

A black bear loomed near the forest’s tree line, its eyes locked on to mine.

The bear from last night. I didn’t know how I knew that, but the bite on my arm tingled strangely with a pulsing sensation I could only describe as knowledge. Letting me know…

It was him.

He’d come back to the meadow to finish the job.

Oh, God.

I bolted.

Darting to the left, I sprinted toward the trees, but the bear was faster. It moved with terrifying precision, cutting me off and forcing me to stumble backward. My heel caught on a root, and I hit the ground hard, the impact jarring my entire body.

I tried to scramble to my feet, but the bear stepped closer, roaring in my face and blocking my forward escape with its massive frame.

“No,” I whispered, my voice trembling as I scooted backward on my hands. “Please, no.”

But the bear didn’t advance.

Instead, it stopped. Its red gaze held mine, steady and almost… human. Familiar, somehow.

Then the bear began to tremble, its entire body quaking as if it were coming apart. A shiver ran down my spine as the air around it shimmered, twisting like heat waves over asphalt.

And then, the bear wasn’t a bear anymore.

It was him .

The animatronic Mountie stood where the beast had been, his dark hair disheveled, his chest heaving as though he’d just run a marathon.

Naked.

Muscles rippled beneath his gleaming skin, his broad shoulders and chiseled chest made him look like some kind of myth come to life—equal parts terrifying and breathtaking.

Mate!

The strange, growling voice sighed inside me, filling up my chest with an unnatural longing.

I didn’t understand.

But I didn’t have to.

Run! You need to run!

My sense of human preservation kicked in, and I scrambled to my feet to take off again.

“Don’t run, Holly,” his voice called out behind me. Strained and tinged with warning. “Don’t trigger my predator instinct and make me chase you again.”

It wasn’t a request, as it turned out.

Before I could get more than a few steps, his arms closed around me from behind like steel bars, unyielding and immovable. He pinned me against his chest, his hard erection pressing into the lower curve of my back as my feet dangled helplessly above the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into my ear, his voice rough. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said back there.”

“Bull hockey, you didn’t mean it!” I snapped, twisting inside his hold. I knew the truth. I’d felt his rage. His utter disgust.

“It wasn’t disgust,” he said as if I’d accused him out loud. “It was the opposite of that. I swear. My bear set all this up behind my back, and I just didn’t know how to react.”

His words rang true.

The bite on my arm tingled again, an otherworldly lie detector confirming his sincerity.

But it didn’t matter.

I needed to get out of there. Before I got hurt again.

I struggled, but it was useless. He was too strong, and I was too drained—from all the running, from all the remembering.

“Please don’t fight me,” the Mountie said, his voice low and strained. “I can feel your fear, but I would never hurt you. Never.”

The words made my chest ache, and I shook my head, voice breaking. “But you already did.”

His grip loosened just enough for me to catch my breath, but he didn’t let go. “I didn’t mean it,” he said, his tone raw and halting. “I promise you, I didn’t mean it. I… I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t… I didn’t expect this.”

More truth. The bite on my arm tingled, confirming his sincerity. But his words felt like a flimsy patch over a gaping wound. I turned my face away, blinking more tears that I’d never let fall before stepping foot on Bear Mountain.

“Then why did you say it?” I whispered. “Why did you…” My voice faltered, the rest of the question dying on my lips.

He exhaled shakily, his breath warm against my temple. “Because I’m a coward,” he admitted. “Because I was terrified of losing control. Terrified of losing you.”

That caught me off guard. “You don’t even know me,” I said softly, disbelief lacing my words.

“I know enough,” he replied. “I know you’re strong. I know you’re kind. I know that after deciding to go it alone for the rest of my life, The Great Bear Forest delivered you to me. For reasons I still don’t understand.

“I know…” His voice wavered, like he was learning the truth of his own words as he spoke them. “I know that no matter what I said back there, my bear chose you. And because of that, I won’t be able to let you go.”

“But why?” The question slipped out before I could stop it. “Why me? What explanation could there possibly be for someone like you wanting someone like me?”

A pause. Then, he gently set me on my feet and turned me to face him.

I blinked up at him. Instead of the hard-edged, unyielding Mountie I’d faced before, I saw someone with soft, dark eyes. Someone who looked just as confused as I felt.

“Because…” he said softly, reaching up to brush a stray tear from my cheek. “Because you’re mine. And I guess I’m yours now. Whether we wanted this or not, it’s done. My bear bonded you.”

“Bonded me?” I shook my head, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“I’m not sure how to explain this,” he admitted, glancing to the side. His expression grew pensive, his brow furrowing like he was wrestling with his thoughts.

It was kind of a crazy look, considering he was 100% naked in the snow. Like a light umber-brown marble version of The Thinker had come to life and decided to have an existential crisis in the middle of a frozen meadow.

“I think I’m going to have to show you,” he said finally.

“Show me what?” I asked, still reeling, still trying to wrap my head around all of this—up to and including how neither of us was getting frostbite while having this argument in the snow.

“Your sister,” he said, his jaw setting with new determination. “I believe I need to take you to her. That might be the only way to explain what’s really going on here in Bear Mountain. So how about it, Holly?”

To my utter shock, the animatronic Mountie, who’d been trying to send me away since the moment I arrived in his strange mountain town… held out his hand to me.

“Will you come with me to see your sister?”