Page 20 of Her Beary Spicy Valentine (Welcome to Bear Mountain #2)

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waking up

holly

I bit Hawk.

No, I bonded Hawk. And to my shock, I immediately did not regret it.

The taste of his skin, his blood, filled my mouth, and the world tilted with a download of emotions and information.

Fear.

Relief.

Triumph. So visceral, it felt like a tidal wave crashing through me.

Gratitude.

And love. So much love.

But everything was tangled. I couldn’t tell which emotions were Hawk’s and which were?—

“Ours.”

Hawk’s bear voice erupted in my head with the answer—even rougher and deeper than his human one. “Everything you’re feeling belongs to us now, baby.”

He’d always been able to do this, I sensed then. Push into my mind. All of them could from the moment they bit me. But they’d each held back from doing so for various reasons, only one of which I knew for sure.

Hawk hadn’t wanted to invade my mind. He’d ached for me to let him in.

“Us. Ours.”

The words echoed in my head as I pulled back, my lips slick with his blood, my chest heaving. The bite mark glowed faintly, pulsing with energy that wasn’t entirely human.

Bear magic. I stared at the bite while Hawk stared at me, his expression a mix of shock and reverence.

“You…” Hawk swallowed in a way that reminded me of Leif—who I now knew he’d already come to adore like a little brother.

“You claimed me,” Hawk announced, his voice coarse. “You finally fucking claimed me.”

The words were somehow filled with both accusation and praise.

But his bear let me know I’d just made his day.

“My entire life,” Hawk corrected over the bond I’d just created between the two of us.

Before pulling me back to him for the kind of kiss that really did belong in one of those cheesy romance movies.

Deliberate.

Deep.

So full of love.

Mate…

For the first time, my bear purred the word as opposed to scream-growling it like someone on fire.

“Give her final claim.” I heard Koda’s voice nudge into Hawk’s mind, tinny and distant, via the bite I’d given my second. “It’s time to finish this.”

Hawk lowered me back into the nest of pillows and blankets and positioned himself between my legs.

“This is it!” another tinny voice exclaimed into his mind. Leif. His sweet heart was just about to beat out of his chest. He was so excited.

We all were. Because we all knew this would be my final claim in estrus. I hadn’t bitten Leif, and Koda didn’t have any bites whatsoever on his body. But my bear was ready and transmitting the message loud enough for everyone to know.

Funny, I’d thought of the animal inside of me as some kind of feral intruder with an agenda that didn’t match mine. But in the end, she was just like me.

She’d withheld her egg and demanded the bite because she’d wanted to feel safe. Cherished. And now she did, and that was why she was finally ready to fertilize an egg.

I gasped when Hawk pushed into me. Not because it hurt. I was obscenely slick with two loads and my estrus in its last rage.

I gasped because the intensity of his emotions took me by surprise. I could feel him enter me, not only as myself but also as him, along with Leif’s residual titillation layered on top.

Hawk pumped between my legs. Slowly, so I could feel every thrust, every withdrawal, and every stroke back in. He was making love to me, I realized as his hard hips rolled between my soft thighs. Taking his slow, beautiful time.

Until I cried out with my feelings and his feelings and a few of Leif’s on top. Hawk and I tumbled over the edge. Together in more ways than one. As slow as Hawk had taken it, it was a shockingly intense climax, rushing through us both with a powerful force that felt like a river.

The river of life.

My bear didn’t fill me in on any of the biological details, but yes…yes…Hawk and Koda had been right. I could feel her sparking in my ovaries. Making the bear magic that would ultimately lead to a cub.

Hawk’s forehead pressed against mine as we both trembled, riding the crest of the most powerful thing either of us had ever experienced.

“You feel that?” he asked, his voice raw with wonder.

It was a rhetorical question. I could feel him feeling me feel our cub being made.

“Yes,” I answered nonetheless, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes as something new, something ours, took root within me.

We stayed like that for a long moment, entwined and breathless, before Hawk pulled out and settled me on the side I preferred to sleep on, then spooned me back into his chest.

For once, he was fully spent against my backside, without that insanely fast refractory period I’d come to expect.

“Not for long if you keep thinking thoughts like that,” he warned dryly inside my head.

But then he moved my braids aside to kiss the back of my neck. “Help me help you get some rest.” His voice was softer now, full of a tenderness that made my chest ache.

“Yeah, get some sleep.” Leif lay down on his side in front of me and took my hand, pressing a kiss into my palm. “And when you wake up, I’ll prove it’s not just the estrus. That I’m just as crazy about you as Hawk. I love you, sweetie.”

A serious longing replaced his eager expression. “And I want your bite, too.”

My bear smiled inside of me, already loving him so much back.

“Okay,” I whispered from inside Hawk’s arms. “We’ll talk about it when I wake up.”

“Awesome,” Leif answered, already grinning.

Probably because my black bear was clearly relaying to his blond grizzly that my answer would most definitely be yes.

I sighed contentedly, expecting Koda to slip out as I slept, like he always did.

Instead, the scent of hazelnuts got closer.

When I glanced down our bodies, I found Koda arranging pillows so he could settle at our feet. His shields were still up, but I was learning with Koda that his actions often spoke louder than his words. And sometimes in place of them. He’d spent all week baby-proofing this death trap of a den while I slept. And now that my bear had conceived, his actions told me he also wanted to be here when I woke up.

He lay down in a vampire-in-a-coffin pose that didn’t surprise me one bit. Of course, he slept on his back. Stiffly. However, I jolted a few moments later when his voice broke through our shared silence.

“I don’t like coffee. Never drink it. Not even with cream and sugar.”

I blinked, confused, until Hawk clued both Leif and me in through our bond bites. “My brother Ash smells like coffee.”

“I was going to ignore it,” Koda continued, staring at the ceiling. “But… this is better. We…”

His clipped voice softened, almost taking on the cadence of Hawk’s as he said, “We smell right together.”

I felt, rather than heard, Hawk’s and Leif’s silent agreement. Their shared certainty washed over me, and I wondered if I’d ever get used to feeling other people’s emotions as if they were my own.

But Koda’s shields remained up. We’d had so many misunderstandings, so much stubborn avoidance. I needed to hear him say it—to make his intentions clear.

“I, too, would like to discuss the possibility of receiving your bite,” he said before I could finish the thought. “When you wake up, I believe our next order of business should be the future of our maul.”

Our maul.

For the first time in years, I let myself believe.

“Okay,” I said again, my heart full as I drifted into the most peaceful sleep I could ever remember.…

…then I woke up in a cold, empty nest.

No hazelnuts. But also no maple fudge. Or cognac.

They were gone! All three of my mates were gone.

The realization hit me like a slap as I sat up in the empty den.

“Hawk?” My voice echoed faintly off the stone walls.“Leif? Koda?”

No answer.

Female bears weren’t supposed to leave their nest, but I could feel with biological certainty that my estrus was over.

Pushing the blankets aside, my bare feet slapped against the cold stone floor as I finally left my sacred space to search the den.

But they weren’t here.

I knew that for certain, even before I poked my head around the alcoved wall and went up the winding interior stairs to open the doors of bedrooms that had zero furniture in them.

My bear couldn’t feel them. Anywhere.

All three of the guys who’d promised to be here when I woke up had gone out of range of my bond with Hawk.

They were gone. Gone.

Which meant they’d abandoned me as soon as my estrus was done. Exactly like I said they would.