Bear Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #2)(43)

“Link, you dog!” Elyse crowed through a grin.

“No, boss lady, she isn’t mine. She’s Jenner’s.”

Elyse landed hard on her feet and swatted her mate. “Oaf, you dropped me!”

“You’re Jenner’s mate?” Ian asked, his striking blue eyes shocked.

“Yes. Kind of.” She pulled at the sleeve of her shirt and tried again. “It’s complicated.”

Ian strode over to her and pulled the neck of her shirt, no doubt looking for the bite she’d un-bandaged on the way over here. “Holy shit. Where’s Jenner?”

“Well, you see, he doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m on a plane back to the mainland. He’s back at the lodge still.”

Ian shook his head and closed his eyes, then blew out a breath. “You’ve lost me. Let’s start from the beginning.”

With a grateful smile, she murmured, “Hi, I’m Colleen Rhodes. People call me Lena.”

“Ian,” he muttered, shaking her hand hard enough to rattle her entire body. “This is my wife, Elyse. So my brother bit you? He just…bit you?”

Lena pried her hand from his steely grasp and let off a nervous laugh, then waved shyly to Elyse. “I know what you are and what Link is. I’m just plain and boring human, but I won’t tell anyone. About you guys, I mean.” She sighed a steadying exhalation. “I love your brother very much, but he has it in his head I don’t belong with him.”

“Typical Silver,” Elyse muttered. Ian cast her a frown, but Elyse said, “What? It’s true. Boy scouts, all of you, and so afraid you’ll break us.” Her delicate eyebrows jacked up. “She doesn’t look breakable to me.”

“So, what are you doing here then, Lena? Why are you here instead of on that plane?”

“I guess I wanted to talk to Elyse. I want to hear how it really is for her because I have it in my head that I’m in too deep and can’t just forget about Jenner, but he’s hell-bent on pushing me away. And if it was because he didn’t love me back, I would understand—”

“He loves you fine,” Ian grumbled. “He f*cking bit you. We don’t do that if we aren’t in it.”

“That’s what I thought, too, and even if he hadn’t claimed me, he said it to me. Right before I left him at the lodge, he told me he loves me.”

Link snickered behind her, but when she turned around, he had his arms crossed over his chest and his lips zipped like he wasn’t about to let her in on the joke.

“It took Ian forever to admit it,” Elyse explained. The honey-haired woman turned and waved her hand for her to follow. “Come on, Lena. You and I have some chatting to do. You boys get dinner on.”

“Yes ma’am,” Link said with a little salute, but his dove-gray eyes were still dancing and a smile still lingered on his lips. And it wasn’t lost on Lena that Link had stopped growling completely around Elyse.

Lena wrung her hands and wiped her damp palms on her jeans.

With a strange look, Elyse asked, “Are you okay?”

“Just nervous.”

“To meet me?”

“Well, you’re the only other woman in this pack. Crew? Werebear clan?”

“Ha! None of those. The Silver brothers aren’t close enough for any of those terms.” The smile slipped from her face. “Ian wants it to be different, though. It bothers him they don’t talk very much.”

“Jenner has nothing but good to say about his brothers. I think it’s just the bear part of them.”

“Yeah, me too. How did you and Jenner meet?”

And Lena told her. She explained about Adam and her job. About the pictures she was commissioned to take of the brown bears, about Titus, and even how Jenner was her first. She laid it all out there, partly because Elyse was really easy to talk to, and partly because she needed to tell someone all of this just so she didn’t have to bear the burden of the confusion alone. And Elyse was an understanding woman. Her green-gold eyes were soft as she walked along beside her down a set of ATV tracks, and she smiled, chuckled, and showed sympathy in all the right places. And it felt so damned good to admit to someone how scared she’d been during Titus’s attack, and how hard it had been seeing Jenner at risk to protect her.

Before she could change her mind, Lena said, “Jenner told me about how you got your scar.”

Elyse lifted her startled gaze. She was a beautiful woman, and the long, red mark that ran the length of her cheekbone made her look like a warrior. “I would do it all over again if it meant keeping Ian safe,” she murmured. “It’s hard to look in the mirror sometimes, though.”

“Oh, you should be proud of it, Elyse. You’re an incredibly brave woman.”

She huffed a laugh and bumped Lena’s shoulder with her own. “That’s what Ian says. He likes the scar. I catch him staring at it sometimes with this look in his eyes that just gets my heart pounding. It’s like he doesn’t see it as a marring, but an adornment. A trophy maybe. And I’d never admit to him I don’t like the way it looks because he would worry. It’s not a vanity thing. It’s looking at my reflection and always being reminded of that night, you know? I thought we were both goners.”

“Is that how it always is for them?” Lena asked softly. “Will I be Jenner’s protector?”