12. Cody

 

 

He woke in the gray light of early dawn. It was habit, mostly, that woke him at that hour; he'd been getting up with the sun ever since he could remember. A rancher's day started early.

But as he lay comfortable and drowsy, with Crystal's warm sleeping weight curled against him in her four-poster bed, his mind circled around and around the problems facing them—and an idea came to him.

He knew a way Crystal could keep the farm.

He sat up, careful not to disturb her, and looked down at her face in the growing dawn light. She was so beautiful, her dusky skin flawless. He stroked the backs of his fingers very lightly across her cheek, and even in her sleep, she turned her head in that direction, seeking her mate.

Even though she'd told him she wasn't leaving forever and he believed her, the knowledge that his mate was going away, and the awareness that this was their last day together in the cozy little farmhouse, had hung over their entire evening together. They'd made love again last night in the master bedroom, gentle and slow, and then just wrapped around each other, as if they could soak up enough of each other's skin to get through the long days ahead.

He didn't want to wake her with false hope. Instead, he kissed her gently, the softest brush of his lips, and then got out of bed and collected yesterday's clothes draped on the chair beside the bed.

Her suitcase was open on the floor, half packed. In one of its pockets he found a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen with a motel logo, and he scribbled in large letters: GOT TO RUN AN ERRAND! DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE! -C

He left this propped on the bedside table, and let himself quietly out of the room.

The sun was not yet up, the windshield of his truck beaded with dew. He wiped it with his shirt sleeve and started the engine. It wasn't quite cool enough at night yet to run the heater ... but it would be getting there before too long. The seasons turned fast in the high mountain country.

Cody drove out of the yard onto the short stretch of old road between their two properties. When he had first driven it to come over and offer to lend a hand to the new neighbor, there had been grass as high as the doors of the truck, and several fallen trees he'd had to use a bear's strength to heave out of the road. Now, between his twice-daily trips and the almost daily visits of the ranch women, it was looking well used.

He drove through the back pasture and let himself into the gate leading to the ranch yard. The sun was just peeking over the edge of the trees in the valley below, gilding the dew on each blade of grass. When he stepped out of the truck and slammed the door, a rooster crowed hopefully, and some of the cattle lowed in the field behind the barn.

It was early enough that it didn't look like the ranch was stirring yet, aside from the animals. Tara and Axl's curtains were drawn; no one moved at Remy and Saffron's place. However, one person was up. Alec was sitting on the front porch of the big ranch house with a cup of coffee, the scruffy little dog curled up beside him. He lifted a hand to Cody in acknowledgement.

Well, it wasn't like he could put off this conversation forever, though he'd have preferred to talk to Tara first. Cody lifted an answering hand, hesitated for just an instant as he considered going into his trailer first under the pretext of ... and that was where it fell apart, because it wasn't like Alec was going to care if Cody went over to talk to him in yesterday's clothes.

Yeah, anything that he did at this point would look like he was dodging his alpha—which would be entirely accurate. Crystal deserved better. Alec did too, for that matter.

Cody loped over with his long, ground-eating stride. As he approached, Alec got up and went into the house, but by the time Cody reached the porch, he'd reappeared with a second cup of coffee. He held it out wordlessly and Cody wrapped his hands around the cup. He took a sip. Strong and black and hot—Alec always did know how to wake up a ranch hand with a good cup of coffee.

They sat side by side on the porch and drank their coffee. The rooster crowed again, and in the pasture, two of the horses whickered to each other.

The horses, Cody thought. He'd been neglecting them lately—neglecting a lot of his responsibilities here. Taking care of the horses had always been, for the most part, his job, and he was attached to them. He wondered what Alec would say if he took a couple of his favorites with him to Crystal's farm. The thought of teaching Crystal to ride gave him a delightful mental image of his beautiful mate on the back of a horse, her hair flowing free in the wind ...

Slow down there, boy. First things first.

"So," Alec drawled, glancing at him. "Hear you found yourself a mate."

"Yeah."

"You put your mark on her?"

"Yep, sure did." Cody just barely managed not to tack on a "sir," although some part of him wanted to.

Even without stirring a hair, Alec was pouring on the alpha dominance this morning. But Cody knew he had to strike the right balance. He had to be polite without being too formal; he had to stand firm without offering a challenge.

He and Alec had never stood on ceremony with each other, even back in the days when a much harder, less relaxed Alec had ruled the ranch with a firm hand.

Of all the bears in the clan, the two of them had worked together most closely. Axl had been busy with his sheriff's responsibilities, Remy away at various jobs in town. Gannon had been a dark and damaged newcomer who spent most of his time in the woods at his cabin. So it was Alec and Cody who had kept the ranch running.

For a long time, they'd been so in sync that few words between them were needed. Alec gave the orders and Cody followed them, but that was understood as the proper way of the world. In general, they both knew their work so well that no orders were needed. Alec did the detail work of running the ranch—kept the books, ordered the feed, and so forth—while Cody supplied willing muscles and a deep love of the livestock. They'd both gone out in all kinds of weather to bring in the cattle, stayed up helping troubled cows deliver their calves, chipped ice out of the stock troughs in -30 windchill ...

And Cody had never wanted it to be any different. He was happy here. He wasn't a dominant personality; unlike some of the others' bears, the bear in him was not a natural alpha.

He had never had the slightest urge to challenge Alec.

But now he was surprised to find that his bear wasn't settling down as it normally did in their alpha's presence. Instead he had the feeling that his bear was backed up against a wall. It wasn't going to pick a fight, but it also wasn't going to back down. That feeling surprised him; he'd never felt it before.

Cody had never liked fighting. But now his bear had found something worth fighting for, and so had he.

"I heard about it from the girls." Alec dumped the cooling dregs of his cup over the edge of the porch, but still held it in his big hands, as if to give him something to do. He turned his cool blue eyes on Cody, and it was all Cody could do not to look down in the face of his alpha's disapproval. But he didn't, and he saw something flash in the depths of Alec's eyes—surprise, maybe. "You should have come to me about it. I shouldn't have had to hear it from them."

"I know," Cody said evenly. "I didn't because I wasn't sure what to tell you. Didn't know what I wanted to ask for. I need your permission to bring my mate to the ranch, but ..." He took a breath. This was the crux of it; this was the truth he'd been skirting around for the last week. "I don't need your permission, or your blessing, to take Crystal as my mate. I'd really like to have it. But I don't need it. That's out of either of our hands."

Alec inclined his head in something that might have been a nod. There was a look in his eyes that Cody had never seen before, at least not directed at him, and he slowly realized that it was respect.

It wasn't that Alec hadn't respected him before. But he had never seen this kind of respect in his alpha's eyes, the acknowledging nod of Alec's bear to his own.

"My mate calmed my bear," Alec said after a moment. "It looks like your mate put some fire in yours. I'd like to meet her."

"You will. In fact, maybe today." Cody finally felt that he could break eye contact without having it look submissive, so he glanced across the yard at Axl and Tara's place. There was now a small curl of smoke coming from the chimney. "I need to look into some things first. Trouble is, she's gonna lose that farm."

"I heard that." Alec set down the empty cup on the step beside him and scratched the ears of the drowsing dog. "Hoping for buried treasure, I heard."

"Yeah."

"You find anything?"

"Nothing that'd help," Cody said.

"Never a good idea to pin all your hopes on a miracle."

"No, but we might get one anyway. I've got an idea. If this goes through, though ..." Cody steadied himself and met Alec's eyes again, one bear to another. It wasn't a challenge; it was simply a declaration of his intention to stand firm, not giving an inch. "I won't be bringing her to live on the ranch with us."

He wasn't quite sure how to take the complete lack of surprise on Alec's face ... or any other emotion. "No?" Alec said, noncommittally.

"No. Her roots are as deep in the land as ours are, and her family's farm is where her heart lives. If we can't manage to keep the farm, we'll ... I'm not sure what we'll do, maybe live on the ranch for a while and look for a place of our own. But ..."

"But you need your own place," Alec said quietly.

There was no disapproval, no anger. Just a calm acceptance.

"Yeah," Cody said. "Don't get me wrong. I love it here. I've never had a moment when I regretted this life. And I don't want to leave the clan, either. You know me, man. I'm not an alpha. I wouldn't be happy running my own clan. But—well, it's like you said. I've spent my life helping you with the ranch, and helping my clan brothers with their lives. It's time to start my life at last, and it isn't here."

He waited, breath held, for an explosion, but all that came was Alec's quiet smile, a little regretful, but mostly accepting.

"Based on how much time those women have been spending over there all week, you may think you never left. In fact, you may want to come over to the ranch now and then for a little peace and quiet."

Cody's pent-up breath burst out in a huff of relieved laughter. "Yeah. I might, at that."

Alec reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, a rare affectionate gesture from the self-contained alpha. "Well, if you ever want to go out riding range like in the old days, just you and me and a couple horses and all that quiet, you just say the word."

Cody raised a hand to clasp his alpha's wrist briefly before letting go. "I think I might like that a lot."

There was the sound of a door opening and closing across the yard. Alec looked across, and from the slight softening in his expression, Cody was not at all surprised to see that Tara had come out onto the porch, with Lexie in a sling across her chest, to empty a basin of waste water over the railing.

Alphas weren't really supposed to have favorites, but Cody knew that Alec had a soft spot a mile wide for Tara. When Tara and Axl named their daughter after him, it had only cemented the bond.

"Looks like that household's up, if you were gonna go over and talk to them," Alec said, shelving the soft look behind his stonefaced alpha facade.

"Yeah. I need to get moving. Crystal's planning to leave today, so there's no time to lose." Cody got to his feet and set his mostly-empty cup on the step. "Thanks for the coffee. And for, uh—everything, I guess."

Alec didn't quite smile, but it was there in his eyes. "I'm glad you found your mate. Go to her, and be happy, wherever your life takes you. You'll always have a place here."