Charlotte didn’t know how she’d ended up here in this strange place with these women. She’d been with the bear shifters, she remembered as much, and tried to cling on to the memory. Every now and then, a moment of clarity would hit her, sun shining through the cloud of her confusion. It never lasted. Most of the time she found herself confused and scared. Her head hurt all the time, and a deep, aching fatigue wouldn’t let her go. She’d been called outside the door of Bren’s home, into the snow and cold that much she recalled, but by whom? And why did she go? As she tried to focus on the moment, it skittered away out of her grasp.
The memories of her mum, her colleagues, and the bear shifters she’d met began to flicker, tentative flames about to go out. This kept happening to her. She’d grab on to a memory of her life, something real and tangible, and it would skitter away out of her grasp before she could properly examine it.
She stared out of the window across the snow-covered lawn and blinked. What had she been thinking about? She tried to remember, but it had gone, dancing away out of reach, like insects buzzing on a summer breeze. She sighed and looked around the sumptuous room. Somehow, she knew the house like the back of her hand. She ought to, the women she lived with told her. They said she’d lived here for years, but she knew it wasn’t true. She couldn’t have been here years. Time seemed to make no sense here though, so maybe they were right. Perhaps she’d been here a long time. The thought filled her with a sense of all-encompassing loss, but for what, she didn’t know.
What had she been thinking about, damn it? Whenever she tried to focus on all the things nagging at the corner of her mind, they slipped away. They taunted her thoughts, important things lurking at the edge of her consciousness, only to dance out of reach as soon as she reached for them.
Her home was so beautiful. She and the others who lived here were lucky indeed. The three young women she shared the immense dwelling with walked into the massive dining room, interrupting her thoughts.
One brunette, one blonde, and one redhead. They all looked like goddesses. Such curves and thick waves of hair. All of them possessed smiles to break any man’s heart. Where were the men? Again, she tried to focus on this particular conundrum, but it eluded her. A faint memory of a big, handsome man teased her, but she couldn’t quite picture him. Every time she tried, his face went out of focus. Something about him made her long for some other life, some other time. Bren! Of course, she’d been with Bren, and then she’d gone out of the house, into the snow. She needed to focus on the memory, not let it escape her yet again.
“Stop worrying,” the redhead said. She blew some sort of scented dust from the palm of her hand at Charlotte and smiled. The memory she’d been clinging to vanished, and she found she didn’t care.
Charlotte sighed and focused her attention on the table groaning with mouthwatering food. Sweets of all kinds decorated its gleaming surface. Turkish delight sat frosted in delicate silver bowls. Marshmallow trees stood sentry at either end of the table. Chocolates of so many varieties jostled for space on long, silver platters.
The drinks matched the food in their decadence. Fresh lemonade, iced teas, champagne, and rich red wines tempted her. Perhaps a drink? She needed something to calm her restless mind. Somehow, she didn’t belong here. Despite these women telling her she did. Despite having no solid memories of anywhere else, Charlie didn’t belong here. The thought poked at her, niggling away like a bad tooth. The more she focused on it, the more unreal everything seemed.
The table rippled as she stared at it. One moment, the feast to end all feasts displayed itself before her. The next, rotten apples, hard, crusty bread, and some sort of foul-smelling ale replaced the sumptuous delights.
“Oh, darling. Stop your musings.” Cassandra, the blonde, clapped her lovely hands together, shaking the moment from Charlie and bringing the room back into focus. “Let us eat, my dear. And drink. Have some more champagne. It is your favorite, after all.”
She accepted the glass thrust her way and took a delicate sip.
“More, my dear. Drink it all down. It’s a wonderful aperitif.”
Some faint but insistent instinct told Charlie not to drink the champagne. She’d been chugging the stuff back for what seemed a lifetime, and it served to make her fogginess worse. Along with the dust these women kept blowing over her. Instead, she pretended to swallow more. And why pretend to these dear females? Her…sisters? No, not sisters, they weren’t related. Close friends? Oh, here she went again with her flighty memories. Who were they again?
The ground shook beneath her, snapping her out of her head, and Cassandra let out a dismayed cry of surprise. A huge roar filled the room. Oh, the sound. So melancholy and angry and filled with regret. It made tears sting her eyes. It made her shake. It made her want to run toward it. Why would she want to move toward such a terrifyingly loud cry from what must surely be a fearsome creature? She did, though. She wanted to run out of this room and toward that sound with all her might.
“Make it stop,” shrieked Clarissa, the redhead. Or was it Claire? She forgot yet again.
The roar only intensified, and the ground shook once more. Suddenly, the room splintered right down the middle. One half remained a sumptuous banquet hall, but the other half transformed into a tired old room full of decay and mold.
The women next to her lost their beauty, their hair turning dull, pretty faces becoming hard, angry, and bitter. They were all hard lines and sharp angles with beady little eyes full of mischief. Not the good sort of mischief either but the bad kind. Evil, even.
Escape. Get away. An inner voice made itself known above the fog and confusion. She needed to run, but where?
“Charlotte!” a voice called out her name. Deep, gruff, and male. She recognized it.
“Brenin,” she shouted, unaware of how she knew his name. “I’m trapped.”
“You’re not, honey. Not in reality. Their magic traps you.” A woman’s familiar voice reached her.
Aiyana. She knew these people. Really knew them, unlike the three women moving toward her with determination in their steely stares. The bear shifters! She almost cried out with joy.
“This isn’t real.” She stomped her foot and then picked up a glass pitcher and threw it at the women with a yell.
The very air around her shattered, crystal-like shards burst into the air from nowhere, and she covered her ears at the high-pitched explosion. All around her, tiny iridescent drops floated down like sparkling confetti, and the women gave piercing screams as the illusion disappeared completely.
Cold. Freezing cold. She stood in the middle of the woods, snow all around her.
What the hell? Disoriented and dizzy, she tried to stay upright. Like a freight train, her memories rushed at her headlong, filling her mind with all she knew before dark magic took it away. Her head pounded and her heart fluttered high in her throat. Nausea overwhelmed her as she tried to process it all.
“Charlie. Thank God.” Brenin ran to her and enveloped her in his big arms. His big, naked arms.
“Erm, you’re naked.” She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. Great, now she seemed to be turning hysterical.
“I’m going to change into my bear and get you home before you freeze. Are you okay, honey?”
She nodded. Not sure if she really was but wanting the hell out of there.
“Good girl. Get on my back when I change into bear form, and we’ll head back.”
A bear shifter. Yes, she remembered it all now. And those women must have been the fairies the shifters had warned her of.
“You ready?” Bren looked at her.
“I’ll fall off.” She didn’t fancy riding a grizzly bear. Not even Bren’s bear.
“Nah, you won’t. Cling on tight to my ruff and don’t let go. But we have to move, baby. The dark fairies had you in their power, and the longer we linger, the more danger there is.”
Justin spat something out of his mouth. She avoided looking at his nudity as he handed it over. “This will help protect you,” he said.
A ring. She turned the dark iron ring over and tried to slide it onto her middle finger, but it wouldn’t go over the knuckle.
“Ring finger. I made it to fit your ring finger. I based it on the ring you wear on your right hand. You’d left it on the counter in Bren’s bathroom, so I borrowed it.” He gave a sheepish grin. “Sorry about the whole carrying it in my mouth thing, too, but I didn’t have much choice in bear form.”
She wore her grandma’s ring on her right hand, so she put the iron ring on her left-hand ring finger and studiously avoided Bren’s heated gaze.
“Get ready to climb up and hold on.” Bren gave a nod to the others, and they all changed quick as a flash into their bears.
Bren lay down to make it easy for her to climb on his back. When he stood, she made sure her fingers fisted tightly in his thick coat of fur.
They ran through the snowy landscape, and it proved magical in the best way. Oh, good, good, good. The happy, angelic voices reached her. You’re free, free, free. He came for you. You broke the spell. You are both strong. This is your mate. This is meant to be. You and he will be a great mated pair and will bring much happiness to our little area of land. Please stay. We worked great magic to help you two meet. Some things are meant to be. Stay with him. With the clan.
They all joined in then. Yes, please stay. Stay, Stay. Stay.
The request followed her all the way home. Bren let her dismount outside the house, and then the shifters changed into their human form. She followed the three naked folk in through the porch, wondering if she’d get used to it if she hung around for a while.
Whoa! Did she mean to stay? She considered staying for a while, at least. Get to know Bren a bit better. People needed to know where she’d been, though. Her mum would be sick with worry by now. And her employers needed to be made aware of what had happened to her. The police might be looking for her by now. People didn’t simply disappear without anyone caring.
So…she’d need to go home for a while. But then? Did she happily return to her dull old life and leave all this behind? Or should she give things a go here? Give her and Bren a chance? Would he even want her to when he got over the shock of her being missing? He’d spent the last few days pushing her away, after all.
The guys were pulling on various items of clothing, and once dressed, Bren held out his hand to her.
“Come with me.” He took her upstairs to his bedroom and closed the door behind them. “I know you haven’t been made welcome by me. And I get asking you to stay now is a huge request. But when I thought you were lost…” He paused and cleared his throat. “It killed me. I swear, Charlie, I’ve never felt anything like it before.”
“As soon as I heard your voice in that strange place, I came back to myself, back to reality.” She might be scared of the connection they had, but she couldn’t deny it. A troubling thought occurred to her, and she twisted the ring on her finger. “I still heard some of the voices on the way back here. The ones belonging to those Aiyana called the good fairies, but I’m wearing the ring. Does it mean they’ll always be able to reach me? The bad ones, too?”
He shook his head. “The ring is a ward against the dark fae. The good ones won’t do anything but talk to you. And I’m sure if you want them to stop, you can ask and they will.”
She swallowed down a nervous lump in her throat. “They want me to stay,” she said. “They think you and I are a match made in heaven.”
“I think they might be right,” Bren said with a small smile.
“But you fear I won’t want to change, right?”
“Yes. I’m scared you won’t want to become a shifter, but I’ve made a decision.” He huffed out a long breath. “I want to see more of you. Want to get to know you. But I won’t mate with you unless you do decide you want to shift. We can be careful. If we do make love again, we’ll use condoms, we won’t let things go too far. Once you decide one way or another, then we can take things further.”
She carried right on twisting the ring on her hand, not able to meet those warm eyes. “I think…I think if I decided to be with you, then I’d want to change. I’d want the whole experience, Bren. All of it. But I have a life away from here.”
“It’s not a life I can be part of,” he said, and his mouth turned down at the corners
“No. I understand. But Aiyana talked to me the other day, when you were avoiding me.” She poked him in the arm, and he gave a sheepish smile, reaching out and holding her neck to pull her in for a soft brush of lips.
It took her a moment to pull herself together after only a brief touch from him. “She says you need a manager. You all suck at paperwork. You and Kyle do the physical stuff. She and Eric the meet and greet with the tourists. And Justin does all the odd jobs. Despite this late snow, the tourist season starts in a little over a month. How about I go home, pack up some things, sort my job out. And basically get my life in order so the whole world doesn’t think I disappeared, and then I come back. It gives us a month to think things through without all these weird, supernatural hormones messing with our minds. If we still want one another, I come back in a month.”
“And be my mate?” His voice held equal amounts fear and desire, and she bit back a smile at the way his emotions so closely mirrored her own.
“No. Not right off the bat. I live here, in the spare room. We date, or whatever you guys do.”
He met her gaze then, his heated with fire. “We tend to mostly fuck, to be honest. Sometimes for days or weeks on end, and then we mate.”
“Okay.” She suppressed a shiver of desire. “I come back here and we…do what you said. We also get to know one another, because those things matter to me as a human. I help you guys out here so I feel useful. And if it works… If I fall for you…” She smiled at his sharp inhalation. “Then we make this official, bear style.”
She laid down the law. No way could she simply say she’d mate with Bren straightaway, no matter how much she wanted him. She needed some time. If, in a month, she still wanted to be with him, then she’d return to this house and spend some time getting to know him properly. Her father’s crappy treatment of her mother after a whirlwind romance and a quickie wedding meant she needed to be certain before committing herself to anything deep. And it would be deep. Everything she’d learned through chatting with Aiyana had explained just how permanent and strong a mating bond was. As far as she was concerned, this kind of commitment demanded respect and needed the parties entering into it to be damn sure.
“Okay.” He picked up her hand and squeezed it in his own big one. “It sounds like a plan.”
“So, tomorrow, you take me home and I stay there for three or four weeks, sorting my shit out. But you guys get a satellite phone so I can call you, yeah?”
He nodded. “I don’t like the idea of you being away from me for so long.” His voice came out low and tight.
“Me neither, funnily enough. But I need to get stuff arranged. We can talk on the phone daily. Hey, have you had phone sex before?”
He shook his head, but his expression brightened.
“Well, there’s something new to look forward to.”
“Then we get to be together, if we both still want it.”
“Yes, if we both still want it.”
He nodded, and then he kissed her properly.