Bear Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #2)(18)

Jenner kicked his horse and cast Lena a quick glance to make sure she was following. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, and it ripped him up. He’d done that—made her feel less than.

He’d bonded before. Age twenty, cocky as hell and ready to conquer the world, he’d met Brea right out of hibernation. And for that warm season, he’d been blindingly happy. Six months felt like forever, but it wasn’t until later he realized it was his bear forging a bond that had nothing to do with compatibility and everything to do with instinct. To his knowledge, Ian and Tobias hadn’t had those urges until Ian went and got himself married last month. He’d gone to that wedding because Elyse had begged him to go, but that wasn’t the only reason he’d made the trip to his brother’s and new mate’s homestead. Jenner had wanted to see for himself if what Ian and Elyse had was real because, dammit, after Brea, Jenner had been convinced the instinct to procreate and pair up trumped love matches. But Elyse had been as smitten with Ian as his brother had been with her, and the look in their eyes as they said their vows had dumped Jenner’s world upside down. They weren’t paired up because Ian’s bear wanted cubs. On the contrary, Ian didn’t want cubs at all. Didn’t want his sons to face hibernation like the rest of their lineage. No, Ian had paired up with Elyse because he, as well as his bear, were completely and ridiculously devoted to the woman.

Jenner wanted that.

Now that there was hope for a loving match for a monster like him, it was impossible not to think about Lena as his mate. It was hard to hate the bond that he could feel forming between them. But she had a life and an important job that required her to travel all over the world. He couldn’t strap her to Alaska and to six months of cold and loneliness every year when he went to sleep each winter. It wasn’t fair to her.

Sex with her would make it impossible to let her go. Sex would seal their bond and sever any chance he had of moving on. The only reason he’d been able to break the bond with Brea was that his bear was a true animal and couldn’t stand the thought of raising another man’s child. If he was just a man, perhaps he could’ve looked past the fact that she’d started their relationship newly pregnant. Perhaps he could’ve even gotten over the lies and trusted her eventually. But he was only half man, and his animal side had revolted the moment that doctor told them she was having a girl—another male’s offspring. Bear shifters, as well as wolf shifters, didn’t produce female children.

And after Brea, he’d been jaded, convinced that love was reserved for good, normal people—not an animal like him.

But Lena…

Lena felt like everything. She felt like hope.

Jenner had been sleepwalking for so long, stuck in the dark, going through the motions. Sleep in the winter, eat and work during the summer, rinse and repeat forever. But she’d just come in and taken an ice pick to the permafrost he’d built up to protect his heart, and she was slamming that blade against him with shattering blows. When she looked at him like he was important, crack. When she’d bandaged him so fearlessly, crack. Every time she touched him, crack. When she’d wanted him out there by that pond, trusting him completely with her virginity, trusting him with something so important and fragile…crack, crack, boom.

But what the f*ck could he offer her? She was successful, headstrong, independent, and leather-tough. He was outmatched. He was a hunting guide with a tendency to drop off the face of the planet from October to April every year, and she was a woman with her life figured out and an incredible future in front of her.

She was oil, and he was water, and they could never really work.

The kindest thing he could do for Lena was find her the brown bears, get her the pictures that would skyrocket her career, take her back to the lodge, and wave her off when Tobias flew her out of here and back to her life. The thought of her leaving socked him in the middle and made it hard to breathe, but she deserved better. Better than him and better than the life and heartache he would strap her with. Bear shifters were meant to be alone. Dad was proof, and Ian was the exception.

What happened at the pond with Lena couldn’t ever happen again.

After losing her first mate the way she did, even if she and Adam had just been friends, she deserved for the next man she chose to stick.

Bear shifters were genetically prone to disappoint, and Lena was special.

No matter how much he’d come to care for her, Jenner wouldn’t hold her back for his own selfish gains.





Chapter Seven


Jenner had barely strung a sentence together since their little make-out then freak-out session earlier. Lena was usually perfectly content to be quiet on trips like this. She’d had several guides, usually of the old, tough, burly mountain man variety that were respectful and professional with little to say. But she didn’t want that with Jenner. She wanted more. Problem was, he definitely did not, and now she had been stuck behind him all day, unable to stop looking at him, unable to stop thinking about him, unable to stop wanting him to turn in his saddle and tell her everything would be okay and they would go back to the way they were before they laid everything bare in the woods earlier.

His distance made her physically ache.

The sun sat low in the sky, streaking the horizon with pinks and oranges, and suddenly, Jenner pulled his horse off toward a line of trees. There was an old, ash-filled fire pit dug into the ground and logs laid around it to sit on. Off to the side of the small clearing was an old corral made of gray, splintered wood and barbed wire.