Page 23 of Her Beary Spicy Valentine (Welcome to Bear Mountain #2)

holly

Okay, the dream might not be over.

They were here. All three of the bears who’d left me behind… were at my door. Asking me to invite them in.

I stared at them, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it might break free from my chest.

Hawk, with his grizzled smirk. Leif, with his soft, hopeful expression. And Koda, with his stoic, unreadable gaze.

They all wore dark blue jeans and flannels over Henleys as if they’d prompted a chatbot: How can all three of us look like small-town romance novel heroes when we show up at Holly’s door?

Relief flared like a firework… then plunged like a misfired rocket into the cold, dark ocean of hurt. The same frigid place I’d woken up alone.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice sharp and trembling.

Hawk stepped forward first, reaching out to me, his amber eyes warm and tender. “Aw, baby?—”

“No!” I shoved him away.

Well, tried to shove him away. It was like pushing against a brick wall, and I was the one who ended up stumbling backward into my apartment. Still, my pride held as I snapped, “Don’t touch me!”

To Hawk’s credit, he didn’t try to block me out. I could feel his hurt bleeding through the bond, along with a tinny, anxious hum from Leif, who worried my neighbors might think they were assaulting me. Then, to my shock, I felt a deep wave of regret.

Not from Hawk. Not from Leif. I blinked, and my eyes landed on Koda—the Mountie I’d initially pegged as animatronic.

It came from him.

His shields were down, and through the connection, I heard him murmur to Hawk, “This is on me. I’ll handle it.”

“I’m not something to be handled ,” I informed him with my teeth clenched.

I shoved all my fury down Hawk’s bond as I added, “Or discarded after being promised forever. You didn’t even leave me a note!”

My voice was rising again.

And this wasn’t a bear nest. No more waiting for an invitation. I felt the three of them decide to step inside without waiting for my permission. Hawk, then Koda, then Leif, who softly shut the door behind him.

“Holly…” Koda began, his dark eyes filled with pity. He took another step toward me.

“No!”

I threw up my hands and backed away until my legs hit the armchair.

But Koda kept coming. “Hol?—”

“No!” I choked out.

No one was squeezing my neck, but it felt like it. I couldn’t breathe, and my chest was tight with all the emotions I’d been trying to shove down since I got in my rental car and drove away from Bear Mountain.

He took another step forward. And there was nowhere else to go.

Apparently, I hadn’t learned my lesson because I tried to shove another bear.

But this time, Koda caught me. His arms clamped around my body like steel bands, pulling me flush against his chest.

Of course, I kept trying to push him away.

And by push him away, I mean I broke down sobbing like a tired, confused, starving baby as soon as he got his ridiculously strong arms around me.

“Ssh, ssh. I messed up, Vixen,” Koda whispered into my hair, his voice rough with emotion. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I love you so frigging much, and I’m so, so sorry.”

“Then why did you leave me?” I sobbed into his chest, the words cracking like dry leaves underfoot. “I waited for you. I waited for you for hours!”

“I know, but…”

He stopped. Hugged me tighter. Then, without letting me go, he asked aloud, “Hawk, can you…?”

That was all the warning I got before a series of images exploded in my head, downloading like I was seeing everything through Koda’s eyes.

Waking up early the next morning.… Leaving the cave to retrieve the toolbox he’d left at Mak’s workshop.

Wanting to get back to the den as fast as possible so he’d be there when I woke up….

But then… seeing the bloody handprint on the wall of the den he’d just spent a week baby-proofing.

My stomach dropped. His had, too—hard and fast. The memory vibrated with the weight of his panic.

“What?” I jerked back, pulling out of his arms to stare at him. “Are you trying to tell me that instead of waiting to talk to me, you ran off and fought an entire crew of murderous bear bikers?”

Before Koda could answer, Hawk appeared beside us, his tone as casual as if we were discussing the weather. “In your first maul’s defense, there ain’t no such thing as a bear who can think straight when their mate’s in danger.”

Koda gave him a solemn nod. “Thank y?—”

“But yeah, it was real fucking stupid,” Hawk cut in before Koda could finish. “I would’ve told him that if he’d bothered to consult with his maul before heading out.”

“It was my responsibility,” Koda insisted, his jaw tightening. “I was the one who got us into this mess, and I thought I’d be able to get us out of it. Even if it meant almost dying.”

“Wait.” My stomach twisted. “You almost died?”

A grim silence stretched between us.

Instead of answering, another reel of memory unspooled in my mind, courtesy of Hawk’s bond-bite projector.

Koda stepping down from his beautiful chestnut-brown Canadian Horse, Sentinel, onto the gravel parking lot outside a massive black industrial building—the Iron Claw MC’s clubhouse.

A mix of shifters of every shade and race walking out to confront him before he could get to the door, coming to a stop right in front of him. A wall of danger made flesh.

The group includes a huge black bear, who Koda hasn’t seen out of bear form since they were in their teens.

And the other biker who’d attacked me.

Apparently, he hadn’t walked away from his encounter with Koda’s bear unscathed. Four raw, angry scars slashed across his face, and one ear was just… gone. Only a jagged gap remained where it had been ripped clean off.

Hawk paused the memory there, his voice cutting in like the narrator of a gritty documentary. “Bears can heal just about anything, but they can’t grow shit back. And Iron Claws aren’t allowed to use shifter magic to heal wounds—unless they’ve killed whatever left the mark. But, the prez who took over after me? Batshit insane. Doesn’t like losing. Sometimes, he makes them wait to take their revenge until they’re good and rage-filled, with a permanent scar to remind them.”

My mind spun. Which one of the menacing bikers was the president of this horrible gang?

“The prez is the bear,” Koda and Hawk informed me in unison, answering my question before I could voice it.

The memory flickered back to life, Hawk running the film again without giving me time to ask the dozen other questions I had about the gang he co-founded.

The Iron Claw offering Koda a choice: survive a physical fight with three of their members—without shifting—or they’d end him.

“And finish what we started with that sweet piece of club meat you stole from us,” the one-eared biker adds, waggling his tongue.

I couldn’t tell if it was my disgust or Koda’s rolling through my stomach, but either way, I felt him lock in.

Failure isn’t an option.

The first two fights are over in minutes.

The first match is with a bulky MC whose muscles can’t make up for his lack of technique. He falls quickly. The second is with the one-eared biker, who’d clearly hoped the first guy would wear Koda out and better his chances.

Too bad for him.

Koda snaps both their necks within five minutes of engagement.

But then Koda finds out why the Iron Claw hadn’t called it “hand-to-hand combat” when the biker gang’s feral bear president lumbers forward for the third match.

My stomach dropped. “You fought a feral bear without shifting?”

“For about two minutes,” Koda admitted with a wince. “Before he got the upper hand.”

“Or claw, in this case,” Leif added from behind Koda’s shoulder with a wry shake of his head. “He was messed up pretty bad by the time we got there.”

“Typical Iron Claw bait and switch,” Hawk muttered. “Nobody’s ever survived one of those ‘challenges.’”

I didn’t want to know. But I had to ask, “What happened next?”

The memory abruptly shifted, and the perspective became clearer, sharper.

I realized I was seeing Hawk’s version of events now.

Because Koda didn’t want to upset me.

Well, I’m here to tell you that plan did not work.

Tears welled in my eyes as Hawk’s memories unfurled.…

Him and Leif screeching up to the clubhouse, the tires of the RCMP Chevy Tahoe spewing gravel.

Jumping out of the passenger seat to find Koda lying on the ground beneath the feral bear. His face and chest shredded, his guts bulging out from an open flap in his stomach.

Hawk’s brother has his claw raised in the air, ready to strike the final blow.

“Wait!” I tore myself out of Koda’s arms and turned on Hawk. “That feral bear is your brother ?”

Hawk shrugged and threw me a sad smile. “Yeah, more than one of us disproved that ‘far from the stem’ theory of Emerson’s. He’s been a bear since his early twenties, thanks to a particularly fucked-up case of PTSD after serving in a black ops unit. So no, he wasn’t exactly following in any of our parents’ footsteps either.”

His voice remained its usual non-pitying shade of gravel and grit, but I could feel the regret and guilt he felt for helping his brother descend even further into madness when he was dishonorably discharged from the Canadian forces rather than getting him the help he needed.

Hawk was doing his best to walk a road of redemption now, but…

“I’ll never forgive myself for that,” he confessed inside my head.

“Anyway,” Koda said, speaking over our mental communication. “If Hawk hadn’t shown up and used his brother card to negotiate for my life and get the Iron Claw to leave us all alone, only two of your maul would be here right now.”

“We got there just in time!” Leif said, injecting more cheer into his voice than a story that grisly and emotionally complicated probably warranted. “But it took Koda’s bear a while to fix him up, and Hawk said it wasn’t safe to move him.”

Hawk regarded me with an apologetic look. “That’s why we weren’t there when you woke up.”

“And why we didn’t make it back to the den for hours and hours,” Koda added. “But we’re here now, Holly.”

Yes, they were. “I’m so glad you’re alive.” Relief coursed through me, warm and heady.

But then I found myself shaking my head with a confusing mix of frustration and regret. “I just wish you’d told me any of this before you all left. What does it mean that we were talking about making a whole life together when we don’t even have basic communication down?”

All three of them flinched, their combined guilt rippling through Hawk’s bites.

“You’re right. I should’ve trusted you. I should’ve trusted all of you,” Koda said finally, his voice low and steady. “That’s how I ended up with another black eye.”

“Hawk!” I swatted his shoulder, glaring. “You punched him after your brother nearly killed him?”

“No, not him. Me.”

Leif pointed to himself with both thumbs, grinning like a kid showing off straight- As . “Then I told him I’d report him for misusing RCMP resources if he didn’t let us bite him.”

“He didn’t have to threaten me,” Koda muttered, sounding both defensive and begrudgingly amused. “I was all in, even before he and Hawk showed up to save my life.”

“Still, look what we’ve all got now!” Leif crowed, grabbing both of Koda’s wrists and lifting them to show off the bond bites. He was practically glowing with pride.

They were bonded now. An obvious, true maul.

Which only left me more confused.

“I don’t really know what to say here,” I admitted, looking between them. “A few minutes ago, I thought you’d completely abandoned me, and now… this.”

I waved my hands around vaguely, trying to encompass all of it.

The dumpster fire inside the laptop still sitting in my armchair.

The three larger-than-life guys crammed into my tiny apartment.

Koda’s insane near-death experience, followed by his, Leif’s, and Hawk’s unexpected arrival at my door as a fully bonded maul.

“You don’t know what to say,” Koda repeated softly, his gaze flicking down to the floor, then back to me. “In that case, this next question is really going to confuddle you.”

He took a deliberate step back to stand between Leif and Hawk, his expression unreadable.

Then my heart stopped beating when all three of them sank to one knee.