Chapter Five

Kian

“Are you serious?” Boomer, the local grizzly shifter and our main bush pilot, looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head. For most of the year, there were no traversable roads and the trains didn’t come this far north. That’s why we’d chosen the spot we had—complete privacy from humans who didn’t need to see us shift into our animal forms. But that privacy brought with it complications, like no phones, no strong Internet service, and no easy way to get supplies like books and videos when you needed them. And I needed them.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, flipping pages and making notes in the outdated American Sign Language dictionary Audrey had lent me. “You guys go fishing without me. I’ve got too much shit to do today.”

“If you say so.” Boomer walked out, grumbling something under his breath about the flowery scent of my place, but I had no time for him and his rambling. I had roughly fourteen hours to learn a new language, one spoken with my hands instead of my mouth. I had to concentrate. I wanted to see her smile again tonight like she had last night when I showed her what I’d learned.

God, the glow of her smile when she read the sign with my name on it was probably one of the best moments of my life. She was so glorious and bright. So damned pretty, I lost my breath. I wanted to put that smile on her face every night, but that meant study time for me. I needed to learn sign language.

Unfortunately, I quickly discovered American Sign Language was an intricate and complicated system of communicating. One with a different word placement and sentence structure than the spoken English I’d been using my entire life. I worked on the alphabet first, figuring that was a tedious but effective way to get our words across. My plan wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely a start. Unfortunately, a couple of the symbols for letters contained arrows. I assumed those arrows meant movements, but the explanation was unclear, and I wasn’t sure if I was getting them right.

After an hour of trying again and again to memorize the entire alphabet, I slammed the book closed, tossed my glasses on the arm of the chair, and released a throaty growl. My bear wanted to be let loose, making his need to be free known with his mental noises. He wanted to run, to search the woods for the scent of our new friend and track her pretty ass down. Sadly, that wasn’t going to happen.

Needing a good run and a little time with someone who may be able to help me figure this crap out, I stripped down and packed a bag with my dictionary and the clothes I’d been wearing. Naked and ready, I stepped outside. The temperature was dropping fast in the region, but it was still quite comfortable for a man like me. Any humans in a climate like this would be bundled up in down coats and layers, protecting themselves from the elements. Luckily, my polar bear side kept me toasty warm through even the harshest of winters. Speaking of, my bear thundered through my head, practically ready to burst through my skin. It was time to run.

I tossed my bag off the porch and shifted on the fly, landing on four paws in the snow. I shook out my long, white fur, grabbed the bag with my teeth, and headed for town. Hopefully, I’d find a few answers there.

Audrey didn’t seem surprised to see me when I came racing into the library. In fact, she looked pretty darn smug.

“Am I missing something?” I asked, tossing my bag to the floor. I’d shifted behind the building and thrown my clothes back on before coming inside. I couldn’t go walking around naked in front of my brother’s mate. One, I thought of her as my sister, so that’d be weird. Two, my brother was a possessive son of a bitch. He’d rip my dick off.

That smile of hers turned wickedly sarcastic. “Not really. Just won a bet, that’s all.”

“What kind of bet?”

“The kind where your brother said it’d take you two days to come back for my help and I said less than twenty-four hours. I win.” She stood up and headed for the coffee machine. “What is it today?”

“I need to learn sign language.”

“Yeah, that’s why you have the book.”

“I know, but…” I huffed, scratching at my beard. Pictures of Nyla ran through my head, upsetting my bear, making him whine and chuff inside of me in a way he never had before. He was almost desperate and crazed over our little visitor. Fuck, what was it with this girl? I’d never felt so obsessed about someone, so positively out of control.

“Tell me,” she said softly as she handed me a cup of coffee. “All joking aside, you know I’ll help if I can.”

“Can you get that Internet hooked up?”

She blinked. I hated computers, hated the Internet even more. I’d made my opinions on both known many times, usually loudly. But desperate times called for desperate measures. “Yeah, sure. What are we looking for?”

“Videos. I need to see someone else make these letters and things.” I shifted my weight and shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m getting them right.”

She steeled me with her gaze, investigating, searching for something. “You really feel a connection to this woman.”

I shrugged again, but it felt wrong. Dismissive in a way. So instead I stood tall, looked her dead in the eye and said, “Her name is Nyla, and she’s all I can think about. I need to be able to talk to her.”

Her smile turned soft and sweet, as if she was proud of me for some reason. “Then let’s find some videos.”

Hours later, my attention span died a hard-fought battle against the machine Audrey had sat me in front of. Ready to make the run home again, I double-checked a few phrases I’d picked up, making sure I had all the motions as accurate as I could make them. Audrey had been babbling behind me while she straightened the shelves for at least an hour. I’m sure she was talking to me, but I hadn’t been paying her a lick of attention.

Until she started talking about dreamwalkers.

“What was that?” I asked, watching a particular video one last time but trying to listen to her as well.

“I said—” she huffed and smacked her feather duster against a shelf “—there are lots of legends about why people would dreamwalk.”

“They had reasons?”

“Oh, sure. For some, it was a way to manipulate the enemy.”

I hummed, letting her prattle on but barely listening as I watched a man sign a hymn I’d always liked. My bear twitched, though, when the tension in the room skyrocketed, the feeling of being watched making me spin around.

Audrey stood across the room, staring at me with wide eyes. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“That’s why she comes to you. That’s why you can’t stop thinking about her.” She walked toward me slowly, as if I was a dangerous animal…which I was, but not right then, and never to her. So her reluctance was completely unnerving.

“What are you doing?”

She froze. “I don’t want you to freak out like Whit did.”

“Whit? What are you talking about?”

“Weren’t you listening to me?”

“No, not really.”

She glared. “You know, if I had a nickel—”

“Audrey,” I interrupted. “Scold me later. Why do you think Nyla’s dreamwalking to me?”

She dropped the glare and inched closer. When she spoke, her voice came out soft and quiet, as if cooing to a wild animal, which again, sort of true but unnecessary.

“Could she be your mate?”

Every molecule of oxygen in the room disappeared in a single gust, leaving me breathless and dizzy. Mate? The thought had crossed my mind, especially after my chat with Whit, but I’d dismissed the idea quickly each time. How could she be my mate? We’d never met, not really, and the legends stated you had to smell and see your mate to feel that connection.

My bear grumbled, sniffing, reminding me of the light scent of lavender he picked up through my dreams. Subtle, something my human side had dismissed, and yet the scent called to us. It was the first thing I noticed every morning when I woke up horny as fuck and craving her touch. It was with me at night, before I went to bed, when I worked my cock to images of her in my space, doing everyday sort of things, simply existing in my world with me. I hadn’t been paying enough attention to put the pieces together, but the scent of lavender made me hard, made me lust for someone I’d never touched. Because it was my mate’s scent.

“Holy shit.”

“You’d better sit down.” Audrey directed me to a chair, being gentle and quiet. “I don’t want to meet your mate for the first time and have to explain how I let you fall on your face while you were so dazed about—you know—realizing she was your mate.”

Mate, the word thrown about casually and yet so meaningful all of a sudden. Every second I’d spent thinking about Nyla—the way her picture in my mind made me need her, the way my bear and I had been longing for her without my knowing it—came crashing down at once. I’d met my mate and not realized it. I hadn’t thought the woman in my dreams could be more than that, something not quite real, something tormenting me. And she was tormenting me, in the best way possible. As my mate.

Hearing the word from Audrey had suddenly made the dream of a mate something real, though. Mate. My mate. Nyla was my mate. My bear made his agreement known, grumbling in my mind. Yes, mate. Absolutely. And he wanted to find her, to claim her, to rut her into the dirt of his beloved forest and make sure every male knew she was taken. He wanted her immediately. And I couldn’t argue with him.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

Audrey bit her lip. “You okay?”

I swallowed hard, unable to say the words spinning through my head. Nyla…was my mate. Everything suddenly made sense—the dreams, the desire, the distraction from anything but her, the constant arousal, the jacking off like a goddamned teenager every day. I was longing for my mate.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I agree. It’s kind of holy shit-like when it happens.”

My stomach clenched, thoughts of mates and bears and my life in the wild swirling together. “I have to tell her about me.”

Audrey nodded. “Absolutely, about you and this place and your bear. You need to tell her everything.”

I licked my lips, heart pounding, mouth dry. “What if…what if she won’t believe me? What if she won’t accept me because she thinks I’m a regular human?”

The look on Audrey’s face could have been the visual representation of the word duh. “Kian, the woman can stroll into your dreams and interact with you. I’m pretty sure you’ve both got a few skeletons in your closets.”

“Yeah, right. Dreamwalking.” I went to stand but sat back down, unsure. Not knowing where to go or what was next. We knew so little about each other, and yet we had a connection that could be permanent if we let it. The idea of reaching her, telling her about me, learning about her, and convincing her to accept our bond was daunting. With a capital fucking D.

“What should I do?”

Audrey shrugged, grinning, obviously excited. “Find her.”

“Fuck. Right. I need to find her.” I jumped to my feet, my chair slamming to the ground behind me in my haste. “Sorry, I have to—”

“Go,” she yelled, laughing as she tossed me my bag. “Go find your mate.”

I grinned over my shoulder before blasting through the door. Mate…I had a mate! My bear chuffed, demanding I shift, needing to run. He’d found his mate, too, and he was going to do everything in his power to claim her and bring her back to his den. And that started right fucking now.