Eight
Aubree
“Cole, you outdid yourself. Dinner was amazing.”
Cole has been quiet all night. I’ve tried talking to him about what’s wrong, but he won’t tell me, and it’s driving me crazy. “Earth to Cole, you in there?” I ask waving my hand in front of his face.
Cole snatches my hand from in front of his face, and he pulls it to his mouth and places a kiss on the palm of my hand. “Sorry love, I’m a little bit distracted tonight.”
“I’ll say. Maybe if you talk about it, you’ll be able to work through whatever you can’t figure out.” I try hoping he lets me in.
He makes a groaning noise but says nothing.
“Cole you said I was yours. You’ve been telling me all week how I’m the only woman for you. If you expect me to believe you, to trust what you’ve been telling me, then I need you to let me in.”
“I can’t.” He stands and grabs our dishes then walks into the kitchen.
I don’t give up that easily. “Why not? Why can’t you tell your girlfriend what is going on with you? Or is it that I’m good enough to fuck, but not good enough to confide in?”
He laughs humorlessly. “You’re more than my girlfriend Aubree, you’re my mate.”
“Then prove it.” I grind out between my teeth and slap my hand down on the counter, so he’ll look at me.
“Fine!” Grabbing my hand, he walks us through the house and grabs my coat on the way. “Put this on.” He orders handing it to me, then walks out of the front door.
When my coat is on, and I get outside, Cole is standing in the yard undressing in the moonlight. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You want me to let you in? Fine, but I swear to all that is holy if you run, I will drag your ass back here.”
I nod, staring at his crazy ass. There isn’t anything that would drive me away from him.
“Promise you’ll stay?” He asks, this time vulnerability lacing his words.
My heart clenches seeing him like this. I’d do anything for this man. “I promise.”
I watch in confusion as he loses the rest of his clothes. He stands there for a few seconds before the air around him becomes a little hazy. His body begins changing right in front of my eyes until he’s no longer a man, but an enormous black bear. Of all the things I thought he might tell me, this was nowhere on my radar. While I’m speechless, and yes, a little bit unsure, I know, he would never hurt me. Cole is in there, inside that bear who is staring directly at me.
The bear ambles in my direction until he’s standing a foot in front of me. He lowers his head so its inches from my fingers, but I stand stock still unsure of what to do. He chuffs, making me laugh. This bear is as impatient as Cole is. I run my hand up over his nose and over his head. I’ve never touched a bear before, never thought I would, but his fur is softer than I’d imagined it’d be. Stepping closer to him, I begin scratching behind his ear when all of a sudden the bear morphs back into Cole.
I look up into his dark eyes, and I can tell he’s worried about my reaction.
“I guess there’s more to this mate thing, huh?”
He grins and snags me around the waist, pulling me against his naked body. “Yeah love, there’s a lot more.”
“Obviously the cold isn't affecting you any,” I say looking down at his very erect cock, “But I’m freezing. So let’s talk inside.” I place a kiss in between his pecs and walk back into the house to wait for him.
A minute later Cole is following me inside, dressed in his jeans and carrying the rest of his clothes. He stokes the fire and adds another log before sitting beside me on the couch.
“I feel as though you gave me the very watered-down version of what I mean to you. Why not give me the whole thing this time around?”
“You’re surprisingly calm for a human.” He says quirking his eyebrow at me.
“Got to admit Cole, that sounds crazy weird, you calling me a human. And what do I call you, manbear? Werebear?”
A smile twitches at his lips, and he grabs my hand in his. “My family are black bear shifters, which means black bears are living inside us. I can shift at will, but I pay attention to what he needs. Being that it’s almost winter, he’s in hibernation mode, and I only need to shift once or twice a month. During the summer I may shift several times a week. Most of the time I am just me, sharing my soul and body with a black bear. The best way I can describe it is like he’s my other half.”
“Do you have any powers? That’s dumb, sorry. It’s just that I’ve read books about shifters, so I’m not really sure what’s accurate here.”
He laughs and squeezes my hand. “Because shifters are a secret from most humans, we don’t go to the doctor. If we did, they’d figure us out. We don’t normally need to go though because we have special healing abilities and we don’t usually get sick. If something does happen to us, it takes only a fraction of the time for us to heal.”
“Were your parents bear shifters?”
He nods solemnly. “We can heal from a lot of things, except a fatal wound. When my Mom had the twins, she lost too much blood for her shifter blood to be able to heal her.”
“I’m sorry you had to lose her Cole at such a young age.”
“It was worse for my Dad. He had to live without his mate, which is so unbearable most mated bears die within days or weeks of each other, like my grandparents. Bear shifters usually mate with other bear shifters. It’s rare to find your mate in a human, but like us, it does happen.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I wonder aloud.
“No, the bond is just as intense for everyone.”
“Are we mated then?”
“Not exactly. We need to give each other our claiming marks.”
“How do we do that?”
“I’ll bite down on your neck, right here. I’ll have to bite hard enough to draw blood.” He says, rubbing a finger over the spot he bit me the first time we made love.
“Then you’ll bite down on mine. Once we’ve exchanged blood, we’ll be completely mated.”
“What will happen after that?”
“We’ll be tied to one another for eternity. Our souls will be linked, and other shifters that encounter us will know we are mated.”
“Oh, you’ll love that.” I laugh, and he rolls his eyes and then tickles me. “Wait, is this why I’ve had this crazy urge to bite you every time we’re fooling around?”
He grins smugly. “That’s the mating bond. Your body knows that you’re mine. She’s just waiting and pushing you to be ready.”
“What if I told you I was ready now?”
“Once I bite you, you’ll become a shifter too. You’ll change into a bear just like the rest of my family.”
“What about Gram?”
“You’ll still be able to see her, you’ll just have a bear living inside you.”
“Will I be able to control it? Will I change, be a different person?” I’m freaking out. “What if I don’t want to be a bear?”
Cole looks hurt that I would even suggest it. “Then you don’t have to be. You’ll still be my mate…”
“But we won’t be mated, as shifters are?”
“No love, we won’t.”
I pull away and begin pacing in front of the fire. This is a big decision, one that will take me forever to make. It’s not like I’m deciding what tattoo to get, I’m changing who I am to the core. What if I chose not to complete our mating? I can only imagine what that would do to us, living together, but never fully mated. I’ve been dying for his bite for days now, there’s no way I’ll be able to deny it now that I know why.
Reaching down, I grab the hem of my t-shirt and pull it over my head then drop it to the floor. I unclasp my bra, and that goes too. When I go to pull my leggings down, Cole is kneeling behind me, holding my hips tightly.