A Bear's Mercy (Shifter Country Bears Book 3) Read online

  She let her eyelids droop shut, relieved to go back to sleep.

  What a ridiculous time to think that someone is handsome, she thought as she drifted off.

  Charlie dreamed she was a human sacrifice. Two priests, one naked and one clothed, were tearing strips of flesh off of her. She could see the priests but not the god they were feeding her to, and every time she tried to open her mouth to ask what they were doing, one of them would stroke her hair and make soothing noises.

  Everything hurt, almost to the point of numbness. When they finally got all the flesh off of her back, she suddenly felt warm. Her head buzzed.

  The naked priest knelt in front of her so that his face was at her eye level.

  He was very, very attractive.

  Probably why he’s a priest, thought dream-Charlie. The dream-priest said something, gently moving her hair out of her face, but the blood rushing through her ears was too much for her to understand him.

  The clothed one was in the background, pacing back and forth.

  Maybe I’m a terrible sacrifice, dream-Charlie thought.

  She woke up again when the door to the cabin opened and a third person walked in.

  It’s the wolves was her first thought, but she felt like her body was out of adrenaline. All she could do was look up and just barely flex one hand.

  “She’s awake,” a naked man said. He looked a lot like the priest from her dream.

  “Thanks for coming,” said the clothed one. He looked like the other priest.

  The new man seemed upset, and he strode over to where she was lying, looking down at her.

  “You said it was a bobcat,” he said, his voice stiff with anger.

  The other two men shrugged.

  “Meow?” muttered Charlie. All she’d heard was cat.

  “Fuck,” the new guy muttered under his breath.

  “You can still stitch her up, right?” asked the naked man.

  The new guy dropped a case on the floor, bent, and started going through it. It was obvious from the precise-yet-jerky way he moved that he was half worried and half furious.

  “Yes,” he said, tersely. “And when I’m finished, I expect a full fucking explanation for why I’m stitching up a half-dead human on your kitchen table, Kade.”

  Charlie had two thoughts at once: I hope that half-dead person is okay and Which one’s Kade?

  “Bring me another table,” the man said. Charlie could see his jaw flex as he flicked a syringe full of something, tiny droplets coming off the top.

  He’s also cute, Charlie thought through her haze.

  The other two men brought a smaller table into the room, and the new one began laying things out on it. The clothed man knelt in front of her face, his beautiful dark brown eyes worried.

  “Hunter’s going to give you some stitches,” he said. “You’re hurt pretty bad, but we’re afraid if I take you out of here, the wolves will finish the job.”

  Charlie didn’t answer for a long time. Her brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and she could only think at half-speed.

  “Kade?” she finally asked.

  “That’s Kade,” he said, pointing at the naked man who was glowering by the fireplace. “I’m Daniel, his mate.”

  He pointed at the angry man wearing latex gloves and arranging tools on a table. “That’s Hunter, Kade’s cousin, and he’s going to fix you up.”

  You’re under arrest, she thought. She tried to make her mouth say it, but it was too complicated. For the murders of two wolf-shifters.

  “I’m going to sedate her,” Hunter said.

  “She’s pretty sedated,” Kade said, his voice gruff and angry.

  “Do you want me to help or not?” Hunter snapped, and Kade’s jaw flexed. He rolled his eyes.

  Hunter propped her arm up on a chair, then felt around for a vein, frowning. It took a long time before he found one, but he finally slid a big needle into the inside of Charlie’s elbow, then attached a tube to it, the syringe on the other end.

  “Okay,” he said to her. Something in his manner seemed slightly uncertain, like he wasn’t used to talking to his patients. “Count back from a hundred.”

  “A hundred,” Charlie began. Immediately the numbers started swirling, and she couldn’t remember what was next. “Ninety... nine? Ninety...”

  Darkness closed in again.

  This time she didn’t dream about anything.

  The next time she woke up, everything was clearer. Her back still hurt, dully, and she felt lightheaded, but she no longer felt like she was thinking in half-speed, or like her brain was stuffed with cotton.

  The three men sat across the room, in wooden chairs, gathered around a huge stone fireplace, drinking something and talking quietly. She couldn’t hear them, and could only see their profiles against the firelight.

  Charlie seemed to remember that the one on the left was Kade, the fire making his hair nearly glow red-gold. Across the fire from him was the man who’d said he was his mate Daniel, all dark eyes and dark hair, the sort of chiseled, square jaw that movie stars and superheroes had.

  We didn’t know that Kade had a mate, she thought. Charlie didn’t move. Now that everything didn’t hurt so much, and now that she could think clearly, she wanted a moment to observe them.

  I hope they don’t have a female mate, she thought, unbidden.

  Then she blinked in in surprise.

  I do?

  It was probably the drugs talking. She could tell she was on something.

  Charlie had grown up in rural Cumberland, the eastern shifter state. Of course, it hadn’t been a shifter state when she’d been born, it had just been rural Tennessee.

  She’d always known about shifters, though. They made up most of the people in her county and almost all the kids at her school. She’d been twelve or thirteen before she realized it was weird for a kid to have two dads and one mom, or for someone to turn into an animal.

  This was the first time she’d given a thought to being part of a triad, though. Not that it was a real thought. It was a drug-induced haze, of course, because Kade was a feral murderer — or a nearly-feral murderer, apparently — and he needed to stand trial for what he’d done.

  Charlie took a deep breath, and her stomach growled. The three men turned.

  “Are you awake?” Kade said, softly, but his cousin Hunter brushed him out of the way. He put two fingers on her neck, feeling for her pulse.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  She was almost certain that she was awake, anyway.

  “How do you feel?”

  Charlie considered this question for a moment, watching the face of the man she’d been hunting hovering in front of her.

  He doesn’t know what I was doing, she realized. He’d never have saved me otherwise.

  “Shitty,” she said. That, at least, wasn’t a lie.

  The two men in front of her face smiled. Then the third one showed up in front of her, holding a glass with a straw.

  “Drink,” he said. “We’re supposed to keep you hydrated. You lost a lot of blood.”

  The second the water hit her lips, she felt its coolness rush through her body. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was, and she slurped the water down in huge, greedy gulps, before Hunter pulled the glass away.

  “Hey,” she managed to get out.

  “The sedative I used has a tendency to make people nauseous for a little while after they wake up,” he explained. “You gotta take it bit by bit.”

  Charlie just nodded, her cheek rubbing against the wood of the kitchen table. Hunter stood, lightly touching her bandages.

  “Give it another hour or so, and I think she’ll be ready to be moved,” he said.

  His gaze was totally professional, but it wasn’t until Charlie felt his finger securing her bandages a little better that Charlie realized she was completely naked. On a stranger’s kitchen table.

  Better than being dead, she thought, trying to find the bright side.

  She op
ened her mouth, then closed it a couple of times, still trying to get the hang of things.

  “Is there,” she finally asked, “a sheet or something?”

  Hunter, the guy who’d sewn her up, smiled.

  “That’s a good sign,” he said. “She’s at least aware of what’s going on around her.”

  “Yeah, and I’m naked on a table,” Charlie said.

  The other two men in the room looked amused, and the dark haired one left, coming back with a soft, old quilt.

  Hunter stood, and Charlie realized that he was completely packed up again except for a few orange medicine bottles.

  How long was I out? She wondered.

  “Antibiotics,” Hunter said, holding up a bottle. “Twice a day.”

  “Painkiller,” he said, holding up another bottle, “not more than every eight hours. This is the serious shit, and I’m not giving you more, so save yourself the addiction and the withdrawal.”

  Charlie just nodded. She’d seen what painkiller addiction could do first-hand.

  He held up one last bottle. “Sedative. Cut them into quarters and don’t take more than one quarter. They’re designed for livestock,” he said.

  Charlie’s eyebrows went up. “Why do you have livestock pills?” she asked.

  “I’m a veterinarian,” he said, lifting his case. “And my pig-headed, stubborn cousin should be taking you to a hospital. You know, one for people?”

  Kade growled. If Charlie had been able to move, she’d have taken a step back at the sound.

  Hunter just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  “I’ll be back to check on you tomorrow afternoon,” he told Charlie. “Get some rest, and feel free to remind these two that they should feed you real food, not just bring in a whole deer from the forest and expect you to gnaw on it with them.”

  “Thanks,” said Charlie.

  Hunter nodded at Kade and Daniel, then left through the front door. She heard a car start and then leave.

  Then she was alone with the two of them.

  They stared at her, expressions unreadable, and Charlie stared right back.

  Her head swam with everything that she needed to do: she was thirsty, she had to pee, and the table was uncomfortable. She really needed to get her pack so she could call her commander and tell him that the mission had gone pretty wrong and, oh, she desperately needed an airlift because she had gotten herself into the middle of something she wasn’t even sure she fully understood.

  She needed to come up with a story about why she’d been in the forest that wasn’t about Kade.

  Of all the scenarios her team had managed to come up with, attacked by wolves and nursed to health on a table by a nearly-feral bear and his mate, both of whom really seem excessively attractive hadn’t been on the list.

  Charlie was going to have to wing it.

  Chapter Four

  Daniel

  Daniel heard Hunter drive away, and suddenly, he felt completely lost. Human interaction had never been his strong suit, to say the very least, and now there was a naked woman on his kitchen table.

  A naked woman who really, really made him feel weird inside. He felt like an avalanche struck him, utterly without warning, leaving him a tangle of competing impulses and confused signals.

  He wanted to tear off his clothes, shift, and forage for dinner. He wanted to leave behind these very distinctly human problems and go claw some trees, tromp through a river or two.

  Stay human, he told himself. Shifting can’t solve your problems, it can only put them off.

  He made a fist with his right hand and squeezed it in his left, then looked at Kade, who was standing in front of the fireplace, glowering at the woman.

  Hard to believe it was already going so poorly.

  “So,” he said at last, after the silence had grown totally unbearable, “What’s your name?”

  “Right,” she said, half-smiling, even though half her face was still lying on the table. “I’m Charlie.”

  “Charlie?”

  “It’s short for Charlotte.”

  “I’ve never heard that before,” Daniel said.

  See, you’re having a conversation! he thought.

  Charlie shrugged, then winced.

  Seeing her in pain tugged at something deep inside Daniel, something that snarled.

  “I’m Daniel,” he said. “This is Kade.”

  “You said that already.”

  Right. Daniel went silent, wondering what the next step in conversation with a human was supposed to be.

  “Could I get that water again?” she asked. She lifted her head just slightly off the table, looking around for the glass.

  “Yes! Yeah, sure, here you go,” Daniel said, grateful for something to do.

  As Charlie gulped eagerly, he glared at Kade, wishing his mate would do something to clear the awkwardness.

  She drained the glass, and Daniel lifted it away from her face.

  Suddenly, Kade spoke up.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. He hadn’t moved from his spot by the fireplace, his thick arms still crossed over his chest.

  Daniel heard Charlie swallow.

  “Here?” she asked.

  “What were you doing in the forest?” Kade asked.

  Daniel had heard that tone of voice a million times before. It was the no-nonsense one that Kade used when he was trying to talk it out with the wolves, or when he was reporting on shifter activity to his bosses. There was something else this time, though. A soft edge, something that Daniel knew only he could hear.

  Charlie exhaled, hard. She took a moment to answer.

  “A week ago, two wolves turned up dead,” she said, slowly.

  “We know,” Kade said.

  “Since there have been ongoing ...disputes... between the wolves and the bears in this area, they sent me to see if we could figure out what happened,” Charlie said.

  “Who’s they?”

  “A joint task force of the FBI and the Department of Fish and Wildlife.”

  Kade raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s a pretty weird partnership,” she admitted.

  There was something in the girl’s voice that gave Daniel pause. Why would they send just one person out, especially when something could go so wrong like this?

  What isn’t she telling us? He thought.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked.

  Again, Charlie seemed to choose her words slowly.

  “They sent me because the only thing wolves trust less than bears is humans,” she said. “We knew that if we went in, arrested everyone, and tried to get you all to talk, you’d clam up faster than we could say boo.”

  She had a point.

  “But it seems like the wolves don’t want me around for some reason,” she went on.

  She paused, and Daniel could practically see the wheels in her head spinning.

  “We thought a bear killed those wolves,” she finally admitted. “I’m not sure of that anymore.”

  Daniel and Kade exchanged a glance.

  “You think wolves killed their own people?” Kade said, his gruff voice sounding a little surprised.

  “I’m not sure,” Charlie said. “But it’s more complicated than we originally thought.”

  There’s still something, Daniel thought. She’s holding back.

  He took another look at her face, the pain shining through clear as day, and he felt that same snarl he’d felt before.

  The same snarl that said, I’ll protect her at any price.

  He wished he knew what was really going on. The silence between the three of them stretched out, and finally Charlie spoke up again.

  “Thank you for saving me,” she said, quietly.

  Kade just nodded, and Daniel stood there, feeling like he had too many limbs and also like conversation was impossible.

  Then her stomach rumbled.

  “You should eat,” Daniel said, remembering what Hunter had told them.

  He took a qu
ick mental inventory of their kitchen.

  Not a lot of human food.

  “Do you like... plants?” he asked, frantically trying to think what to feed Charlie. Since it was autumn, their garden had mostly withered away, and it wasn’t like they’d exactly been canning and prepping for the snows.

  He and Kade tended to sleep a lot more during the winter.

  “What about that stew my mom brought over a couple weeks ago?” Kade asked. He hadn’t moved a muscle from his stance in front of the fireplace. “Is it still in the freezer?”

  “I think so,” said Daniel, grateful for the task of making dinner for the three of them. “Is there enough?”

  “Has my mom ever cooked a meal that could feed less than a dozen people?” Kade asked.

  He had a point.

  Kade walked to the kitchen, going right past Charlie without even looking down at her. Daniel could see her eyes tracking him, her head moving slightly, a fresh look of pain coming over her.

  As he passed Daniel, Kade gave the other man a hard, grim look, his jaw set. Daniel nodded. Since neither of them was very good at conversation, half their communication went something like that.

  That particular look meant, this isn’t over.

  Kade went into the kitchen, and Daniel heard the freezer open.

  “Daniel?” said Charlie’s voice. She sounded a little weak, but in her circumstances, who wouldn’t?

  He walked to her and crouched down so that he was at her eye level, careful to keep his distance. Being close to her did something to him, and he couldn’t trust that it was entirely good.

  After all, Daniel knew better than anyone that his instincts were mostly wrong.

  Her eyes searched his. They were warm and brown, a single gold fleck in her left eye. Her light brown hair was damp with sweat, and he had to fight the urge to smooth it back, run his hands down her shoulders and arm. The urge to hold her close and tell her that she was going to safe, with them, forever.

  “Can you help me up?” she asked. She sounded almost defeated, and Daniel got the sense that she didn’t ask for help much.

  “Hunter said to wait a little while,” he said, feeling dubious.