CHAPTER NINE
A short while later, Beth went with Trevor to his hotel, and they made love long into the night. She was left in no doubt that Trevor was her mate, but he remained stubbornly silent on the topic, and she refused to say anything to ruin the stolen night in his arms. If this was all she’d ever have of bliss, she wasn’t going to make it end with foolish words.
Trevor was a rolling stone. A mercenary who traveled a lot, risking his life repeatedly. He wasn’t exactly a stable sort of man, and she doubted he wanted to be tied to a mate, regardless of how good they were together.
One thing Beth was grateful for was that she finally understood why her friends had given up the hunting party and their ocean-going ways to mate with their bear shifters. She truly hadn’t understood the pull a mate could have on a woman.
Beth thought she just might give up everything if Trevor would only ask her to be his forever. Oh, she wasn’t holding her breath, waiting for that. She hardly expected it. He didn’t seem the settling-down kind of man. Not at all. But if he did… She would give him everything in a heartbeat and never look back.
As her friends had done for their bear shifter mates.
She fell asleep in his arms and dreamed of a cabin by the shore where they could live together forever. It was a nice dream, but only that…a dream.
Beth woke before Trevor and realized, in the darkness of predawn, that there was no hope for them as a couple. He was a mercenary who lived on a mountaintop. There was no way she could thrive in an environment like that. He also traveled a lot, and she had major limitations in that she had to be near the water. Coastlines were her domain. Not mountains or anyplace inland, for that matter. Most of the world was inland. A guy like Trevor wouldn’t easily be able to live with such prohibitions.
Oh, it had been a beautiful dream in the middle of a passion-filled night, but in the cruel glow of predawn, things were much clearer. When her head wasn’t filled with the mind-numbing pleasure of Trevor’s caresses, harsh reality reared its ugly head. It could never work between them. She’d been fooling herself entertaining any idea that it could.
Heart breaking, she slid out of bed and to the door, not even bothering with her clothing as she ran down the beach and straight into the sea. The hotel was on the beach side of the main road, and Trevor’s room faced the water, so there was little chance anybody would see her this early, in the dark, going into the water and not coming out again.
She swam as if her life depended on it, running from her sorrow, as she’d run from all the problems in her life. She couldn’t face Trevor in the morning light. Not after the night they’d just spent. She needed some time alone, in the water, to clear her head and rebuild her courage to face him again.
After bearing her soul to him in the depths of their stolen night, she would have to gird herself with steely determination to keep from begging him to love her and mate with her the next time she saw him. Beth wouldn’t do it. She had more pride than that. But her heart would break, and so, she needed the solace of the water in order to prepare herself for the ultimate heartache…rejection from her true mate.
She knew it was coming. She just didn’t want to see it in his eyes this morning.
Goddess help her, she wanted to believe in the dream for a little while longer.
Trevor woke when she left the bed, but she was a quick little thing. He’d never expected her to make a run for it. He followed, but she was already down the beach and into the water before he could catch up with her.
He wanted to bellow. He wanted to rage. But he knew it was no use getting angry. He was a soldier. He’d come up with a plan of action, and then, he’d execute his plan…and win his mate.
There was no doubt in his mind after last night that Beth was his true mate. He just had to figure a way to convince her of that simple fact. He had to make her love him and be willing to give up a lot to be with him. Which was a problem.
He knew there were some rather large stumbling blocks to any relationship with Beth. For one, he was still employed by Jesse Moore, who’d been hired by the Kinkaid Alpha. He had a mission to fulfill, and his duty to his longtime CO was clear. He had to finish what he’d started here in Grizzly Cove.
The thing of it was…as soon as he finished gathering what intel could be found here, Moore might very well reassign him someplace else. For the first time in his life, Trevor didn’t want to go. He had found something—someone—worth staying for.
He wanted to stay with Beth. Regardless of whether or not she could fully accept him as her mate, he wanted to be near her. He wanted to protect her and watch over her. He wanted to watch her bloom into the strong woman hiding just underneath her surface fears.
If Major Moore gave him new orders, Trevor didn’t know what he’d do. Quit his job? Quite possibly. But he had no idea what he’d do to earn a living if he didn’t work for Moore. Moreover, his current home was in Wyoming, on the mountaintop Major Moore had claimed and set aside for his men. If Trevor ceased to work for the major, would he also have to cease being a member of his Pack? Would he have to move?
And how could he not, with Beth living here and needing the water so desperately? There were lakes in Wyoming, but mermaids needed the ocean, didn’t they?
It was pretty clear there would have to be some major upheavals in Trevor’s existence to make this mating happen. He hadn’t thought it all the way through yet, but given time, he was sure he could figure out a way to make it all work.
The first thing he had to do was talk to Big John. The Alpha bear of Grizzly Cove had a way of making things click. Perhaps, if Trevor laid his situation out for one of the world’s top strategists, John could come up with some ideas on how to solve some of the outstanding issues. Certainly, Grizzly Cove was going to be part of the solution if Beth wanted to remain with her pod, so talking to the man in charge of the town and the Clan that lived here was a good first step.
For now, he had to beat a strategic retreat and allow Beth some space. Something had freaked her out and sent her running—literally—into the cove. He hoped it was the same thing that had him in a mental tizzy, but he couldn’t be sure. Women were hard to read, and mermaids the toughest of all, he was learning.
But she was safe with her people in the cove for now. He had some plans to make before he could talk to her again and hopefully convince her to stay with him for the rest of their lives.
Hours later, after breakfast and a long discussion with Big John, Trevor’s next calls were to Major Moore and the man who was footing the bill for this particular mission, Samson Kinkaid. It had been John’s idea to involve Kinkaid, and although Trevor wasn’t certain at first, the Alpha bear’s strategy paid off in spades.
Armed with new information and a solid plan, Trevor couldn’t wait to talk to Beth about the things he’d just set in motion, but he had a few other action items he had to accomplish first. For one, he had to check out some intel Big John had passed along about strangers being spotted in the woods. John had asked Trevor to keep his eyes open, as he had all the former operatives who were now residents of Grizzly Cove.
Some civilians had run across signs of deep-cover surveillance, though they hadn’t really recognized it as such. Still, one or two of the non-military residents had called the sheriff, and one had even called John directly. He’d confirmed the vague sightings. There were strangers in the woods, casing the town. Whether or not hostile action was imminent remained to be seen, but everyone had been put on alert, and those with military training—Trevor included—were the first line of defense.
Trevor had readily agreed to help defend the town, should it come to that. Barring direct hostilities, Trevor had vowed to stay alert for anything anomalous, with an eye toward sharing any intel he gathered on those who might be watching the town.
He was only too happy to help. Aside from wanting to keep Beth safe, Trevor genuinely liked the town and its people. He didn’t want to see anyone in Grizzly Cove come to harm.
To that end, Trevor decided to spend the next few hours prowling around in the woods at the perimeter of the town. Beth was on duty, patrolling the ward, and would be—according to Marla—for the next eight hours at least. Apparently, Beth had traded shifts with another patroller to give herself a double shift.
Marla had winked at him when she’d said it, along with wishing him well in his pursuit of her friend. She’d suggested he not let Beth become the one that got away, as if she was the main character in some kind of fish story. He supposed that was mermaid humor, but he understood what she’d meant. Marla was giving him tacit approval in his pursuit of her friend. He only hoped the rest of the pod would feel the same.
He thought about that as he prowled through the woods surrounding the town. He was careful to stay clear of other bears’ property lines, but he saw a few of the guys and exchanged the silent nod of acknowledgment that meant it was okay that he was so close to their personal territories. John had gotten the word out, and those who could be home, patrolling their own areas, were doing so, Trevor was glad to see.
Anything that threatened the town also threatened the new inhabitants of the cove, and that was unacceptable, as far as Trevor was concerned. No one would pose a danger to his mate—unclaimed as she was—while he drew breath. It might take some time to convince her that she belonged with him, but Trevor was already thinking in terms of a siege. He would wait and watch, never letting up pressure until finally, one day, she’d agree to be his mate.
She had to. The alternative was also unacceptable.
Trevor frowned as he walked silently through the forest, both at his dark thoughts and the faint trail he had just picked up. He sniffed. Human.
Human, and… There was another scent here too. Masked by a really stinky human overlay, but under it, there was a shifter tang. Something mangy. Wolf? Or perhaps coyote? And something feline. Leopard or maybe even mountain lion. It was hard to tell with the human stink overlaying everything.
That wasn’t normal. Humans had a different odor than shifters, of course, but usually, it was related to the heavily scented soaps and perfumes they favored. Under the chemicals, there was a more natural scent—stronger in those that had been sweating, or who hadn’t bathed in a while—but this… This was way more pungent than that. This was the reek of a body that hadn’t washed in months and lay in its own filth.
It was overpowering and bad enough to almost completely mask the underlying shifter scents. But Trevor remembered this tactic. He’d seen it before. Some less scrupulous shifter mercenary groups used it. As did the occasional shifter bounty hunter.
Trevor frowned as the thought crossed his mind. If shifter mercs were involved, Major Moore might be able to get the inside line. There weren’t that many groups like his in operation in the States, and the leadership of each of the units liked to keep in touch so they didn’t end up fighting against one another. Shifter mercs had a very different code of honor that humans wouldn’t really understand, but it worked for them.
If it was bounty hunters, that was another story. They were much harder to keep track of and pin down, and they weren’t organized into units like the soldiers of fortune. Plus, if bounty hunters had been set on Grizzly Cove, they had to have a target. Finding out who might have a price on their heads was going to be an interesting exercise…and a dangerous one. If they didn’t figure out who was being hunted in time, things could go downhill very quickly.
Trevor circled back after his trek through the woods and went straight to the sheriff’s office. Brody was coordinating the reports of strangers, and Trevor knew he’d be the man to alert about his findings. Brody would escalate it from there. The chain of command was there for a reason, and Trevor respected it.
When he reached the office, he found Nansee there before him, sitting at a conference table at which Big John was also seated. Brody waved him over and gestured for Trevor to join the group. Nansee and John nodded at him, but kept on talking, and when Trevor realized what Nansee was saying, he began to get an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades that was both familiar and terrifying.
Someone was hunting him. But that made no sense. They couldn’t be hunting him. There was no reason for it. Then, realization dawned. They weren’t hunting him. They were hunting his mate.
“Son of a bitch!” Trevor exclaimed, jumping up from his chair. He began to pace as worry set in.
“What is it?” John asked immediately, a frown marring his brows.
“Nansee’s talking about sharks in the water, seeming to cooperate with the minions. Well, hell!” he shouted. “I’ve just detected bounty hunters in the woods.”
“You did?” Brody asked sharply, drawing Trevor’s attention.
He was too agitated to calm down, even though he knew he was handling this badly. He hadn’t been so shaken since… Well, since ever. Then again, he’d never found his mate before and realized she was in danger.
“That or mercs, but I’d lay money on bounty hunters, considering there are motherfucking sharks in the water, playing for the wrong team.” Trevor ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “Where’s Beth?” he asked Nansee directly.
Nansee figured out what he was getting at right away. He could see the knowledge in her eyes.
“She’s safe for now. Minding the children in the heart of our new territory. She’ll be there for another few hours.” Nansee rose from her seat, a worried look on her face. “I’ll pull her from the sentry roster, though I doubt those particular sharks could get through the ward. They’re as evil as the other things stalking the boundary. But you never know.”
“Good.” Trevor nodded.
“Just what’s going on here, and what does Beth have to do with it? Is she in danger?” Brody asked, his expression concerned.
Trevor looked at Nansee. “They need to know the details,” he said quietly. Nansee seemed to think about it for a few minutes, then nodded.
“Tell them while I go put our people on alert to watch over Beth,” she said, already walking toward the door.
When just the three bear shifters were left, Trevor sat back down, laying out what he knew for the other two men. He told them about Beth’s stepfather and that he was a shark shifter who surrounded himself with thugs. He relayed his suspicions about how Beth was treated as a youngster and what was almost certainly some kind of warped, abusive relationship between her mother and stepfather.
He also told them about the human odor trick the bounty hunters were employing to try to hide their scents. John nodded grimly at this report.
“I ran across that tactic once myself in Afghanistan. The shifter in question had rolled some poor homeless human drunkard and stolen his coat. The stench of the filthy thing fouled our trackers’ noses, and though the trail was easy enough to follow, it led to an ambush of shifter proportions rather than the drunk human we were expecting. Nearly lost a few of my men on that op because of that trick, so we won’t soon forget it.”
“I had something similar happen once, but it turned out to be a lone bounty hunter here in the States. He was a grizzly by the name of Ezra Tate. Not a bad sort, as it turned out, but there were some tense moments when I tracked him until we realized we were both after the same guy,” Trevor told them.
“What happened?” Brody asked.
“We tracked the target together. I let Ezra take him after I’d interrogated him for the intel my unit needed. My CO didn’t care what happened to the bastard after we got what we wanted so there was no conflict in letting Ezra take the bounty.” A thought occurred to Trevor. “I’ll give him a call. I don’t think it’s him up there in your woods, but he might know who is and what they’ve been offered…and for whom.”
John stood, his face grim. “Make the call. I don’t like the idea of anyone putting a price on the head of someone in my town. We need to get to the bottom of this ASAP.”
“Yes, sir.” When John spoke in that commanding tone of voice, it was hard to remember that he’d retired from the military.
Beth was grateful that Nansee had taken one look at her and assigned her to guard the children today. She was in no shape to be out there on the boundary, staring down sea monsters. Not after the devastating revelations of the night.
She’d found her mate, but it seemed like everything was stacked against her. Trevor was a traveling man, a soul who didn’t really have ties to any one place…except maybe that mountain in Wyoming he’d mentioned briefly. And how was a mermaid supposed to survive in the mountains? Or worse, traveling all the time from one war to another.
That was assuming he’d even want to acknowledge her as his mate. It might not be the same for him. He might not be feeling what she was feeling—or if he did, he might not want to follow through on it. He probably liked his life just the way it was and didn’t have room in it for a clingy female with baggage of her own.
She might never be totally free of her stepfather. As it was, she was always looking over her shoulder when she was on land. Except when she was on the streets of Grizzly Cove, she realized. This place felt safer than any other place she’d been since running away from her stepfather’s home.
The bears here made her feel as if nothing, and no one, could get past them to get to her. Even if they didn’t know about her problems, they would protect anyone in their territory. She knew that in her heart. And since meeting Trevor, she knew he would be the first one to stand up for her against anyone who might come looking for her.
He knew more about her background than any of the other bear shifters. He knew as much, if not more, than Nansee. Beth had trusted him with her fears and most of the story behind her need to escape to the pod. During those long hours of the night they’d spent together, she’d told him about growing up on Catalina Island and the gilded cage of a mansion Jonathan owned. She had told Trevor about her mother’s weakness for the despicable man she’d married and her seeming willful blindness where his threats to Beth were concerned.
Beth would never understand why her mother hadn’t left Jonathan long ago. She wouldn’t comprehend how she could let him overrun and control every aspect of their lives. How he could threaten them and still somehow have her mother’s loyalty. Beth suspected drugs. Or mind control. Something. There had to be a reason why her formerly sane mother had thrown her lot in with Jonathan—a man as evil as the leviathan, in his way.
He just hid it better. His evil was covered by thousand dollar suits and imported Italian loafers. His cunning only came out in sharp words—and occasionally in his sharp shark teeth, when he shifted, though he’d been shifting less and less as his land empire grew. What good was ruling a territory in the sea if he could rule on land, as well? Jonathan wanted it all, it seemed, and he was well on his way to achieving his goal in the most despicable way possible.
Name a shady sector of society, and Jonathan had his hand in it. Prostitution, human trafficking, drugs. He was up to his eyeballs in it all. His dirty empire had allowed him to amass a fortune, with which he hired more thugs—shifters among them—to keep expanding his reach.
There weren’t too many young mer in the pod, but during the day, while their parents were busy on land, setting up homes and arranging for funds, clothing and other items they’d need if they were going to stay here any length of time, the children were gathered together into the deepest part of the cove where they were setting up a village, of sorts. It was the safest place they’d been able to manage so far. Patrols watched the perimeter, and the adults were quickly constructing a maze with the native plants and boulders that would allow only limited access to the most vulnerable places.
Beth was babysitting, for lack of a better word, along with a few of the more maternal females. It was soft duty, but one Beth took seriously. Guarding the young was an important task and one she would never take lightly, even if this duty was meant to help her get her head on straight after the emotional upheavals of the night.
Beth was watching three of the youngsters play when Nansee swam up to her, motioning for the others to take over while she led Beth away and then to the surface where they could talk. They could communicate underwater with a series of gestures that all mer knew, but for times when complex issues were to be discussed, nothing beat good ol’ English.
The news wasn’t good. Nansee had received reports on her way in that the sharks were testing the ward. A few were making some headway before being repulsed, and that was enough to raise the alarm among the patrollers. The waters of the cove might not be as safe as Beth had thought.
With Nansee’s permission and encouragement, Beth headed for land. It might not be any safer up top, but that’s where Trevor was, and she knew, deep in her heart, that her mate would do his best to protect her—even if he wasn’t up to acknowledging that they were, indeed, mates.
Instinct was screaming at her to go to him. That the safest place for her was with him. That he would help keep her safe.
Nansee escorted Beth to the boathouse and waited to be sure Beth was all right on land before the pod leader headed back into the water. She had to organize the defense of the cove, should the shark shifters somehow gain entry. Beth understood the priorities that Nansee had to deal with as leader, and she didn’t begrudge Nansee’s need to leave Beth alone once she’d made landfall.
Beth would find Trevor. That was her goal. He’d know what to do. He was some kind of badass mercenary soldier bear. Fighting on land was his bailiwick. If she could just find him, she couldn’t be in safer hands.
And as far as the relationship went, in the light of recent developments, the obstacles in their path didn’t seem all that important. When life and death were on the line, little things like where she lived, or whether or not he realized yet that they were meant to be together forever, didn’t really matter. All that mattered was being with him.
If the worst should happen, she wanted to be by his side.
The emotional turmoil of the last few hours was over. With a much clearer mind and fuller heart, she sought her mate.
She decided, then and there, that she would go to Wyoming to live with him, if that’s what he wanted, because living without him would be impossible. She’d been in physical pain since leaving him this morning, her heart aching. She had come to the realization—danger crystallizing her thoughts as nothing else could—that she needed him in her life, no matter the cost. She would gladly give up the ocean if it meant being with Trevor.
For a mer, there was no greater sacrifice. No greater token of love.
Now she just had to find Trevor and convince him that they belonged together. She had to be brave and declare her love, hoping that he felt the same way. If he didn’t, she would try not to be devastated, she promised herself. No, if he hadn’t come around yet, she would be patient and persevere. She would wait for him as long as it took. And yes, she’d accept whatever crumbs of affection he gave her.
She wasn’t proud. She would take what she could get. In a life starved of affection, Trevor was like the dawn of the new day. He was hope to her. He was love… Whether he realized it yet, or not.
All she had to do now was find him.