Brenin leaned over the prone human female and took another deep inhale. Mate. The word rang out in his great bear head, loud and discordant. He didn’t want a mate—and certainly not a human one. But holy hell, her scent. It called to him like nothing else on earth. He’d caught it from inside the clan’s land and had taken the massive risk of heading out of their territory in bear form.
He nudged her gently with one large paw, but she didn’t stir. Out cold. He chuffed out a breath and pondered what to do. She’d banged her head when she went down in a dead faint, and she still hadn’t come around. He didn’t mean to scare her and only wanted another lungful of her delicious smell. Concussion presented a real risk now. And anyway, there was no way he’d leave her out here, alone, in the cold. They were near the hill the fae folk frequented. The Gwyllion. They normally inhabited the mountains, but they came into the lower lands during bad weather, which this certainly counted as. The biting wind may have driven them here, and they enjoyed nothing more than luring travelers from the path.
Some of the fae were good, kind. Others were mischief-makers and would enjoy tormenting the human female. The Gwyllion, in particular, were known to enjoy misleading travelers and scaring them half to death. Some of the dark fae even took humans as their enchanted prisoners. One man from a local village had spent thirty years of his life living in a lake with a water fairy. When he finally broke free, he thought he’d fallen asleep for a few hours. But on his return to his family, his wife had died and his kids were all grown-up.
Yeah, Brenin couldn’t leave her here.
He nudged at her with his nose, but she didn’t move. Why was she here in the first place? The Hiraethog wilderness area didn’t attract swarms of tourists the way nearby Snowdonia National Park did. Certainly not their remote corner of it. Even during the summer months, the woods and moors often lay silent, with only the odd walker to disturb the peace. However, midwinter, the land reverted to its inherent wild loneliness. Few people bothered to walk about the hostile moors and thick forest out of season.
His bear clan’s burgeoning tourism business closed down for the winter, and during this time, he and his fellow bears often changed form and spent time exploring their acreage. There had been a lot more space for them to roam in Canada, at least until the frackers turned up and everything went to shit. But they had more freedom here since he owned the land outright. No one could come and frack here without his permission. And no way would he be giving it. The summer tourism business provided them with enough income for their basic needs. Once again, he thanked his human mother for leaving him the land here. He’d wanted his father to come and live with them, but his dad had ended up living with another clan back home in Canada.
This place had turned out to be perfect for them. The isolation of the area meant they could easily hide their true nature and find time to change into bear form when no humans were around.
Today, he’d been heading back home after a good explore in his grizzly suit when her scent hit him. An olfactory slap to the face, sweet, but also fresh. Sensual, feminine, and warm, it dragged him off course and into the path of the female lying at his feet.
Now, he had a problem. Unless he picked her up in his teeth, he’d hardly be able to carry her, which meant shifting and having to take her back in his arms, buck naked. Still, once beyond the fence and back on clan land, no one should see.
Decision made, Bren lowered his head and shifted into his human form, the change almost instant. He kept his bear front and center though as he picked up the human female, pushed the entrance in the fence open, making sure to lock it on the other side, and sprinted back over his land at superhuman speed. His hearing and sense of smell stayed heightened in order to avoid any accidents.
As he moved over familiar ground on his way back through the clan’s territory, something cold hit his nose. He looked up and his heart sank. Snow. The female in his arms already shivered, her stupidly light coat doing nothing to protect her from the cold. He powered forward, lungs screaming as his feet ate up the ground. He didn’t need to look down as he let his preternatural senses guide him safely back. Only once near home did he begin to slow. The sight of the large, old farmhouse soothed him and he began to calm down. Now he could get the woman warmed up.
Once the adrenaline of the run began to wear off, he became achingly aware of the soft, curvaceous female in his arms. Her scent once more wrapped itself around him, calling to him, enticing him.
She began to stir already. He knew a little about brain injury and remembered that being out for less than thirty minutes meant her injuries were hopefully mild. Worry for her health nagged at him, and he already found himself wanting to care for her and protect her.
Oh no, he didn’t! No falling for the human female. Yes, she might be excellent mate material; her scent told him as much. In fact, they were almost made for one another. But it rarely worked between bears and humans. He ought to damn well know.
He banged on the door with his bare foot, wincing as pain shot through his toes. Great, now he had a sore head from the glancing blow of the rock and sore feet.
It peeled back to reveal the face of his cousin, Kyle. Dark blue eyes widened in surprise as Kyle took in a naked and surely disheveled Brenin and the female in his arms.
“What the fuck?” Kyle moved back as Bren entered the hallway.
“What the fuck, indeed. Came across her in the woods. She fainted, my fault as she saw me as my bear, and she hit her head on the way down. She may have a concussion, so we need to watch out for her.”
“She witnessed you as a bear, and you’re bringing her back here?” Kyle’s expression darkened.
“What else should I do? I can’t leave her out there in the woods. She’d get hypothermia. Plus, I sensed the fae out there. I’d never leave anyone to them.”
“Why the heck is a human female wandering around the forest alone?” Eric entered the room with his mate, Aiyana, by his side.
Eric and Aiyana made up two more members of his small clan. They’d happily agreed to move to Wales, to come live on Bren’s ancestral land, when the alternative was staying to see their home spoiled by fracking and open-cast mining.
“I don’t think she’s alone,” he told them. “There are a lot of humans out there today, doing some sort of orienteering shit or something. Crawling all over the place, they are. I scented her, near the border of our land, and I stopped.”
“Why did you stop?” Eric asked the question Brenin had been dreading.
Bren swallowed and looked at the expectant faces. “She’s a perfect match as my mate.”
“Your mate?” Eric echoed his words, eyes wide.
No wonder Eric seemed so surprised. Bears were notoriously fussy when it came to finding their mates, and the idea of Bren finding his on a cold day in the middle of nowhere seemed…crazy.
“But…she’s human,” Kyle supplied. “And we all know how you feel about human and bear matches.”
“I’m not going to take her as my mate, obviously.” He climbed the stairs to the bedrooms, wanting to get the female laid down. His clan came after him, hot on his heels.
At the top of the stairs, Justin appeared, arms crossed over his broad chest. Oh great, another of the clan around to witness everything.
He moved out of the way when Brenin reached him, but his scowl said it all. Brenin ignored them all and headed down the long corridor to the guest room.
The place was huge. It housed nine bedrooms, and they only used four of them to sleep in. One of the spares, they’d turned into an office, and another became a games room for the guys. Two were untouched and still wore a cloak of heavy, musty wallpaper. The whole place had been covered in the stuff when they’d arrived. Thankfully, Aiyana used her decorating skills on the end room to turn it into a light, welcoming spare room. It might be nice to have another female around to break up the monotony of a house full of guys. Oh, no. There he went again.
He kicked open the door and strode to the bed, where he lay the female down with as much care as possible.
Justin hovered by, the scowl still painted across his features.
“Make yourself useful and go fetch me some sweat pants,” Bren snapped then added on, “And some fucking underwear.”
Justin narrowed his eyes but did as asked. He returned with the soft cotton sweat pants a moment later and a tee to go with it, along with some boxer briefs that he held out as if contaminated. Bren rolled his eyes and pulled the clothes on.
“I heard you tell these guys you think this woman is your mate.” Justin didn’t beat around the bush. “She’s not. She’s human, and British, and so the idea is bullcrap.”
“What does her being British have to do with anything?” Aiyana tossed her long, dark hair over her shoulders with a flick of her hand.
“Bears don’t exist here. Haven’t for centuries. So why would a British woman have the gene mutation to make her a match for a bear shifter? Makes no sense.”
Aiyana sighed. “First, the gene mutation theory isn’t proven when it comes to human and bear mates. Second, bears did live here. A long time ago maybe, but they did. So it’s possible a British female, or male, might carry such a gene.”
“I still call bull.” Justin almost pouted, and if Bren weren’t so worried about the female, he’d kick his cousin’s surly ass.
The woman moaned and her eyelids flickered.
“Eric, can you fetch some water and a cool cloth?” Aiyana asked as she frowned down at their guest. “The rest of you guys clear the room. I’ll get her wet clothes off. They’ll give the poor thing hypothermia.”
The males all shuffled out of the room, and once the door closed behind them, Brenin fixed each of the guys with a hard stare. “Not one more word about this female, okay? I won’t be keeping her here. I know bear and human matches aren’t always easy, and I have no desire whatsoever to repeat the clusterfuck that was my parents’ mating.”
He didn’t need to go into details. All the clan knew the way his father fell for his mother and then spent a sad life watching his human wife age and eventually die, long before he would, because she refused to be turned into a shifter.
Unlike some of the other shifter species, bears didn’t have the connection with their mates that stopped them from aging. Instead, they’d found a way to turn their human mates a long time ago. All shifters were magical beings to a varying degree. Whereas the wolves, for example, used magic to bond their mates to them and slow the aging process, bears simply turned their mates and made them part of the clan, slowing their aging that way. Unless said mate refused.
The sadness he witnessed in his parents’ mating cast a long shadow and still affected him now.
“However, whatever my views on taking her as a mate, she’s here now, as our guest, and I expect each one of you to treat her with the respect this status incurs. Once she’s awake and I’m sure she’s not concussed, I’ll take her home. If she starts talking about bears, we’ll simply suggest to her it was all nothing more than a vivid dream while passed out.”
Take her home. The words made his bear sad. The damn fool animal already wanted to keep the human woman near. Maybe Bren ought to have left her out in the woods. It would have been simpler. Safer for him, if not her. But what kind of male left a defenseless female? Only a worthless one.
“Might work. She’ll probably believe in nasty dreams more than she will in bears roaming around North Wales.” Eric spoke from the top of the stairs, where he’d paused, chewing his cheek. “Pity you don’t wanna keep her around, though. Aiyana would love some female company.”
Christ. Brenin ground his teeth. Justin wanted her gone; Eric wanted her to stay. For the love of the gods, why did he accept the role of leader again? Oh, yeah, because Justin was too hot headed. Eric too laid-back. Aiyana would have made an excellent leader, better than him for sure, but their society forbade any turned bear from running a clan. Only born bears were allowed to lead. So it fell to him.
Aiyana opened the door and beckoned him back in. The female lay under the covers now. With her red hair fanned out across the pillow and a pink glow in her cheeks and on her lips, she looked like something from a fairy tale. Which reminded him.
“I think the fae have something to do with this. I heard their whispers and laughter when I found her.” He kept his voice low. When the clan first arrived in Wales, they’d made sure not to step on any toes. A lone pack of wolf shifters lived up in the mountains. A few ancient but powerful Druids made the area their home, and of course, there was the dragon clan, which none of them went anywhere near. You didn’t mess with those bastards. Their nearest neighbors were the fae folk, the light and the dark, good and bad, and so they’d learned all about the fairies. So far, they’d all lived in peace with one another.
“Possibly. They like to lure people off course.” She frowned. “Bit naughty to lead her right to our land, though. They haven’t created any mischief with us before.”
Eric came back into the room, carrying a tray with a jug of water, some ice cubes in a bowl, a tumbler, and a cloth. Aiyana took it from him and placed it on the bedside table. She sat on the bed beside the still sleeping woman and dipped the cloth into the bowl of water, squeezing to wring out excess liquid. Gentle as can be, she ran the cloth across the woman’s brow.
After wiping the woman’s face, she took one of the ice cubes and swiped it across her full lips. After a few passes, the woman moaned and her eyes fluttered.
Bren held his breath as her thick lashes seemed to almost pry themselves apart. Damp tendrils of hair clung to her forehead and the side of her face, and a smattering of freckles dotted her cute, upturned nose.
Her naturally pale skin complemented her red hair and ruddy, full lips. She looked like a flame-haired angel to him. He turned away. He didn’t want her here. Spending his time cataloging her beauty did him no favors at all.
Finally, her eyes wrenched open and she sat up with a gasp, one hand clutched to her chest.
“Easy.” Aiyana put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “You’re safe, honey. Just focus on taking some nice, slow breaths.”
The others filed into the room.
The female’s panicked eyes flicked around the space, and when they landed on Bren, they scorched his skin. Laser beams of soft, sky blue, they reflected all her fear and uncertainty.
The strongest urge to go to her and hold her swamped him, rendering him unable to speak. Only his strength of character stopped him from crossing those few feet of wooden floor and doing something irreversibly stupid. He needed to get her out of there as soon as possible because his pull to her grew stronger by the second. He’d never experienced the mating call before, and he realized now he’d been foolhardy to think it so easily overcome. For the first time, he felt some understanding of why his father stayed with his mother despite her refusing to turn.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Safe,” Aiyana said again.
“How did I get here?”
Bren cleared his throat. Time to explain.