Anya
“Oh my God. Why didn’t we do that sooner?” Cullen laughed softly and kissed the top of my head. I was sore in muscles I never even knew I had. At the same time, a peace settled over me unlike any I’d ever known. As I leaned against Cullen’s chest and traced loops through the soft hair on his chest, I felt content with a sense of belonging I hadn’t known could exist. This is what home must feel like for other people.
The thrumming echoes of pleasure rippled through me. I’d lost count of how many times Cullen had taken me throughout the long night we shared. It was morning now. A slab of sunlight cut across his living room floor, making his hair shine gold. I brought myself up on my elbows and pressed my lips to his.
“I mean it,” I said. “All you did was warn me about how dangerous this could be. Why did I listen to you?”
Cullen let out a breath and stared at a point on the wall. Worry furrowed his brow. When I gave him a playful slap on the shoulder, his lips curved into a smile and he kissed me again.
“It’s complicated,” he said. “And to tell you the truth, I had no idea how good this was going to feel either.”
“Mmm.” My skin tingled where he trailed his fingers over my shoulder. Already, I felt the fresh pulse of desire settling between my legs. Every time we came together, I felt spent, wrecked, and sated. And yet scarcely more than an hour would go by and I wanted to start all over again.
“This is why it’s dangerous,” I said, lacing my fingers through his and bringing them to my lips. “Because you’ve put me into a fuck stupor. I could see us staying in here like this for days and not realizing it. I’d starve to death.”
He gave me a playful swat on my ass that sent fresh waves of pleasure through me. I couldn’t stand not having him inside of me for another second. I circled my fingers around his growing erection and found the strength to throw my leg over his hips and straddle him. I settled down over him, taking him all the way in. Cullen’s slow smile gutted me. He hooked his hands behind his head. I rocked slowly, still so sore from the last time. But this felt right. We fit.
“Are you going to tell me about this anytime soon?” I slid my thumb gently over his left eye. Last night, he’d sported a deep gash and blood dripped down the side of his face. This morning, the skin was slightly mottled, but the cut had healed.
Cullen’s eyes snapped open and he put a hand on my hip to still me. I stayed in position, keeping him rooted deep.
“It was a sucker punch is all.”
“Hmm. By whom? I never saw Arkady or any of the others leave the bar last night. And what was so urgent about your texts?”
He gave me another light slap on my ass. “That’s right. I haven’t gotten around to properly punishing you for not answering me.”
I laughed and my hair fell down like a curtain between us. I had a feeling Cullen’s brand of punishment might be worth another transgression.
“Let’s just say I’ve got a bit of a stalker,” he finally answered. “A few weeks ago I met him just outside the park. His name’s Tobias and he won’t tell me anything else about him.”
My heart fluttered. “A stalker? Did Arkady send him?”
Cullen shook his head. “No. He has no love lost for the Russians.”
“So the enemy of your enemy is your friend?”
“Something like that. Yeah. He won’t admit it, but I’m pretty sure he’s from one of the Yukon clans. In which case, my mother’s people probably sent him.”
“To do what?”
Cullen shrugged. He shifted his weight, managing to seat himself even deeper. My breath caught and it took everything in me to keep still. I wanted to ride him deep and hard. In another minute, I knew I’d get the chance. But this was important too.
“So far, he’s just been hanging around giving me cryptic warnings about things I already know. He wants me to stay away from you. He’s been urging me to get the hell out of Blackfoot and head up to the Yukon.”
“Your mother’s people, you said. Will they take you in?” My heart flared with alarm. I didn’t know what that meant for me, but just the thought of Cullen leaving sent a desperate fear through me. I was still trying to understand what he was to me. He told me Anam Cara meant fated mates. That was the best way I could describe this new shift in my feelings, but I had many more questions than answers.
Cullen’s eyes flicked toward the door then back to me. “I really don’t know.”
“Was she banished like your father was?”
He shook his head. “My mother is a full-blooded she-bear. She’s one of only about six in the world. Something happened a few generations back for all shifters. Her kind are all but extinct. We can mate with Anam Cara, and you can give birth to a bear shifter, but they are almost all male. No one knows why it happened. But, my mother didn’t raise me. I mean she did until I was about three. I barely remember her if you want to know the truth.”
“That’s awful. She abandoned you?” It was just one more thing Cullen and I shared.
“No. She and my father … they weren’t fated mates. Theirs was basically an arranged mating. It helped form an alliance between the Yukon clans and the Wild Ridge clans.”
“Uh. That sounds horrible. Her clan pimped her out you’re telling me?”
He laughed. “It wasn’t like that. It was my mother’s choice. She came to Wild Ridge and lived with my father for a few years. Had me. When I was old enough not to need her anymore, she went back to the Yukon.”
“Not need her! You think after the age of three you didn’t need her?” I leaned down and pressed my lips to his forehead. I found myself wishing I could travel through time to comfort a three-year-old Cullen. He could play strong all he liked, but losing her must have affected him deeply. How could it not?
“I had a clan, Anya. I was safe and protected. And it’s the way things are for us sometimes.”
“Right. Bear law. I still think you got the shitty end of that stick.”
He ran his hand down and cupped my ass. “My mother has protected me in her own way ever since.”
“Right.” I reached down and traced the outline of the healed cut on his eye. “You think she sent Tobias? Was this his way of protecting you?”
He laughed. “It was his way of trying to knock some sense in me. So, yeah, actually. I just happen not to agree with him. I know what I have here. I know what’s worth fighting for.”
He moved in me. Slow and tender at first, then his thrusts became more urgent. My legs shook and Cullen gently turned me, laying me on my back he rose above me. Our coupling was quick this time. It only two or three thrusts before he brought me to my dozenth orgasm of the night. He threw his head back and let out a soft growl as he spent himself inside me. Then he pulled me to him and nestled me in the crook of his arm. In just a few short hours, it became the place I felt most safe.
“Will you go back there now?” I asked.
Cullen shrugged. “I won’t leave you, if that’s what you’re asking me. But you have to know what’s coming. I took something last night I’m not entitled to.”
I lifted my head. “You keep saying that. Don’t I get a say in it? Because I want you. I choose you. For all the crazy things that have happened to me over the last few weeks, hell, the last few years, this is the only thing that has ever felt completely right.”
He smiled and kissed me deeply. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“No, it’s simple.”
“Anya. You can’t go back to the Bluelight now. I should have told you that before we … before you let me claim you. Any bear within a mile of you is going to know you’ve taken a mate. Arkady and the others are going to know you’ve been with a clanless bear. They’ll take it as a sign of war.
“I don’t need to go back to the Bluelight. I told you. Gloria gave me something else to go on. I need to find that doctor Avery saw. After that, we can decide the next step.”
Cullen sat up. He grabbed his crumpled jeans and stabbed his legs through them. He held his hand out to me as he zipped himself up. My clothes were in hopeless tatters. I’d have to do a quick walk of shame down the sidewalk to get back to my apartment.
“There is no guarantee my mother’s people will offer us safe harbor in the Yukon. In fact, helping myself to … well … to you … probably made that impossible. There are rules in place for a reason. It’s not about denying you your choice. It’s about making sure you have the support you need in case something ever happened to me. I’ve put you in danger. A lot of the clans would see that as careless. I put my own desires before your safety.”
“I’m not a bear! I don’t care about bear law, Cullen. You didn’t force yourself on me. If anything, it was the other way around. I’ll tell anyone who asks.”
“If they don’t take us in, you need to understand what that means. We’ll have to live on our own. There could be danger coming at us from all sides. All the time.”
I threw up my hands. “I’ve lived alone my entire life. Last time I checked, two people living together aren’t alone. Now, I don’t know what the hell all of this means yet. It’s new to me too. For right now, I already have a plan. I have a lead on finding what happened to my sister. And I have you in my corner. Don’t I?”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “On my life I swear it.”
“Good. Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to your life. In the meantime, I’ve got an address for this clinic on the other side of town.”
Cullen nodded. “Fine. I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
Cullen blanched. “No?”
“No. Whatever happened to Avery, I think it’s fairly safe to assume it was connected to Arkady’s bears. She went to that doctor for help. I don’t know what I’m going to find when I get there. But, on the off chance having a full-blooded grizzly standing next to me might be off-putting, it’s better if I go alone.”
Cullen snorted and paced. His face turned red and he turned on me. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again. Not until I can figure out a way to make you leave this town for good and get you someplace safe.”
“You said no place is safe now.”
“Safer.”
“Fine. Prowl if you have to, but you’ve got to give me enough space to go in there without spooking the doctor or whoever’s there.”
“I don’t like it.”
I went up on my tiptoes and grabbed Cullen by the ears. I pulled his head toward mine until our lips met and kissed him. Desire spiked through me again. I pulled away quickly. I had work to do.
“Is it always going to be like this?” he grumbled.
“Like what?”
“You not listening to me?”
I laughed as I headed for the door. “Probably. But, you said I was made for you, so maybe you deserve it.”
***
It was late afternoon before I pulled into the parking lot of the Blackfoot Urgent Care Clinic. I let out a hard breath as my stomach roiled. Cullen was close by. The connection between us was different now. I could sense him, almost like I could feel his breath against my skin. I was afraid to try and look for him. Having no idea what to expect inside of that building, I might lose my nerve.
The clinic itself was an unassuming one-story brick building at the end of a strip mall. You could get stitches in the morning and your nails done two doors down. I saw only three other cars in the lot, and I hoped at least one of them belonged to staff. I might go crazy if I had to wait in line behind coughing toddlers or whoever else needed medical care this afternoon.
I slid my purse strap over my shoulder and clutched Avery’s necklace in my fist. I drew strength from it but hadn’t been able to bring myself to wear it around my neck next to its mate.
“God, this is crazy,” I muttered to myself. Avery hadn’t been seen in over four years. There was a chance Dr. Michelle Putnam didn’t even work here anymore. But, it seemed fate played a role in my life with more than just Cullen. Dr. Putnam’s name was still displayed prominently in red letters under the marquis bolted to the building’s wall.
I pushed through the glass door and walked up to the receptionist. I got lucky. The waiting room was empty. At two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon in November, it appeared there wasn’t much call for stitches or flu shots.
“I’m here to see Dr. Putnam,” I said.
The receptionist was about my age with kinky black hair and overly drawn on eyebrows. She raised one of them and handed me a clipboard. “Do you have your insurance card with you?”
“What? Oh. No. I don’t need treatment. I just want to talk to the doctor.”
The receptionist cocked her head. Her nameplate read, Nurse Connie Martin. “Is she expecting you?”
Score one. The doctor was in.
“She isn’t. But you take walk-ins. That’s what the sign on the door says, right?”
Connie bit the tip of her pen. “I don’t understand. What symptoms are you experiencing?”
“Currently? Sweaty palms and heart palpitations.” She didn’t detect the note of sarcasm in my voice but started typing.
“I’ll still need to see your insurance card.”
Fine, I thought. This was going nowhere fast. “I’ll have to pay cash,” I said.
Connie set her pen down and smiled at me. “It’ll just be a minute.”
Luckily, it was. Nurse Connie closed the partition between us and got up from her desk. I heard muffled conversation. Then Connie came back through a different door with a smile on her face and ushered me back to the examining room. She took my blood pressure, temperature, and asked me a bunch of questions I barely remembered answering. My heart pounded so loud I could barely think. What if this were another dead end? I’d pushed my luck at the Bluelight long enough. Even if I told Cullen I wanted to go back there, I knew he’d throw a fit.
Connie assured me the doctor would be right in. I sat with my feet dangling over the exam table and picked at a tear in the paper draped over it. Then Dr. Putnam walked in.
Tall, African-American, she had beautiful, thick braids tied into an elaborate bun at the nape of her neck. She walked in staring at her tablet and punching something into it. When she looked up, her jaw dropped, and I knew this was no dead end.
She took a staggering step back toward the door. Gripping the handle, I was sure she was about to bolt.
“Wait!” I popped off the examination table. “Don’t go. Please talk to me.”
“Parker,” she said, looking back at her table. “Avery?”
A thousand knives stabbed through my heart. “She was my twin sister. My name is Anya. Now please, help me.”
Dr. Putnam let out a slow breath and closed the door behind her again, locking it. She went over to the window and drew the shades.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She was afraid.
“I was told you were someone I could trust.” This was a partial lie. Gloria had only told me she trusted Dr. Putnam.
“I can’t discuss your sister with you.”
“You have to.”
“I can’t discuss any former patient with you.”
She blinked wildly, realizing she’d already gone a step too far. Even admitting Avery had been her patient was probably against the rules. Except for one thing, I pulled out two small squares of paper from my purse and handed them to her. They were Avery’s and my birth certificates.
“If you treated my sister, you can cross reference that I think. I have ID too, but I’m guessing you don’t need it. You recognize me. I’m her next of kin. If she’s dead, you’re not violating any privacy laws talking to me about her, are you?”
Dr. Putnam handed the papers back to me with shaky hands. “Yes, actually, I would be. HIPPA laws stay in effect …”
I lost it. I moved toward the doctor and grabbed her lab coat in my fist. “I’ve come a long way. I’ve been through hell to get here. I have it on good information you are one of the last people in this town to see my sister. If you say one more thing about HIPPA, I’m going to scream. And if I scream, a very large grizzly bear is going to bust down your front door and come looking for me.”
It was a gamble, of course. I could have sounded crazy. But, the doctor’s eyes flashed with understanding and the right amount of fear.
“What do you want from me?” Putnam pulled her coat out of my fist and tried to straighten it.
“I want to know what happened to my sister. I know she was sick and that you treated her. Tell me what was wrong with her and everything you know about what happened.”
“You’re as much of a fool as she was,” Dr. Putnam shook her head. “And I suppose you’re as lousy a listener too.” She turned toward the wall phone and grabbed the receiver. “Connie, do me a favor and pull the hard copy of a file from the archives. Avery Parker.”
She slammed the phone down and leaned against the door. “I’ll give you what I have. Then I want you to go and never come back. I have powerful friends too.”
Connie was quick. She knocked on the door. She didn’t come into the room but just handed a thin brown file to the doctor through a crack when Putnam opened the door.
“Your sister wasn’t sick. She was pregnant.”
The air went out of the room and I reached back to grip the exam table for support.
“I did everything I could for her, but her condition was … unique. She went into labor right in this room. She was too far gone by the time she came to see me. Maybe if I’d had more time, I could have given her more options.”
“What happened?” My voice sounded so far away. It was as if I’d drifted out of my body and was now watching everything from above.
“I couldn’t call an ambulance. Do you understand that? She wasn’t safe in Blackfoot.”
I nodded. “Arkady.”
“He was the least of her problems. But yeah. If she’d gone to the hospital, she wouldn’t have been any safer there. She was hysterical. She kept saying they were going to take her baby. I did what I could for her. I asked her if there was someone I could call. She gave me a name.”
Dr. Putnam opened the file and pulled out a folded note on yellow paper. She handed it to me. I opened it. My eyes blurred with tears and I couldn’t read it. It was a name I didn’t recognize. Simon Marshall.
“Your father, I presume?” Putnam said.
“What?”
“Your sister. She said if anything happened she wanted me to contact your father.”
My head spun. It didn’t make any sense. Our father’s name was Gary Parker. He’d been in prison practically our whole lives and still was now.
“She said that? Call my father?”
Dr. Putnam shrugged. “I’ve told you all I can. You need to go now.”
“What happened to Avery? You haven’t told me anything.”
“They took her, okay? Three of them. They stormed into the examination room with guns drawn. God, there was blood everywhere. She was dying, Anya. I’m sorry.”
“Arkady as his men?”
Putnam’s eyes narrowed. She leaned hard against the wall. She shook her head. “I don’t know who they were. They were women. They told me to forget I’d ever heard of Avery and paid me a decent wad of cash for my trouble. I wouldn’t take it. I did what I could. I swear it.”
“But she was alive when she left here?”
The doctor nodded. “But she wouldn’t have survived long. She was bleeding out, like I told you. She needed a C-section. She needed to be in a hospital. The baby was turned and it was too big. I’m telling you, I’m sorry. I really am. But I can’t help you anymore. I promised your sister I’d try to get a hold of that Simon Marshall person. She said he was her father. I couldn’t ever find him. Maybe you can.”
I crumpled the note in my fist and staggered toward the door. I wanted to hurt Michelle Putnam. Being in this room scared up ghosts I’d wanted to run from. Avery had been here. I could feel it now. When I looked back at the exam table, I could almost see her. If I closed my eyes, I could smell the blood.
I walked out into the hall. The doorway to the lobby was open. A commotion drew my attention. Cullen stood looming over Connie with murder in his eyes. When he saw me, he pushed past her to get to me.
“Get me out of here,” I whispered. His bear eyes flashed. Dr. Putnam had followed me out of the exam room and backed away when she saw him. Then Cullen put a strong arm around me and took me away.