Betray the Bear (Bear Valley Shifters #4)(7)

Consider keeping—he’d lost his damned mind! A pairing didn’t work like that. Did it? He’d told the clan she was his mate, wasn’t that all she needed to keep her place here?

Until you’re of no use to me…She’d heard him say something similar the night he’d tried to announce his mating to Joanna. Was that how it worked with him? Mates were expendable? Interchangeable and unimportant, to be switched out as needed?

“Greta and April haven’t given you cubs either. Why not one of them?” she asked in desperation.

“You have a full year on them, Anya. You haven’t even gone into heat in the last year and a half. Spy on Bear Valley, get me the ammunition I need to drag that traitorous clan through fields of its own blood, and you’ll remain mated to me.”

“I can’t do this,” she whispered as a tear slipped down her cheek.

“You will, or I’ll kill you, Anya.” The way he said it was so nonchalant, like he was telling her what kind of tea he liked.

“You can’t mean this, Nathan.” The sting of his betrayal was too much. Her chest felt like some great weight had sat upon her. She couldn’t draw a breath.

His eyes narrowed to angry slits. “I can, and I do.”





Chapter Two



“Again,” Chase Hale called after two snarling black bears separated from a vicious volley of slaps.

“You don’t think they’ve got this?” Brody asked. He sat at the edge of the wooden table he’d dragged out to the training arena, and kicked at a stone with the toe of his boot.

Chase shook his head. Brody was losing his edge. Joanna was softening him somehow. It was a sad thing to happen to a dominant fighter like Brody, but his friend didn’t seem to see the problem with it.

“Do you? You trust Joanna to be ready if you go easy on her?”

Brody watched his mate fight with stormy eyes. “You’re right.”

Riker, Bear Valley’s alpha, leaned his chin onto his arms over the fence. “If Nathan is going to attack, he sure is taking his sweet-ass time about it.”

“Impatient for battle?” Chase asked, studying the lineup of trainees he had for the rest of the day on his clipboard.

“Yes.” He inhaled deeply. “And no. It feels like I have so much more to lose than the other battles now. We’ve been in peace-time for so long.”

“That and you have Hannah now,” Chase muttered. Women made dominant bear shifters weak. If these two knuckle-heads beside him couldn’t see that, they were blind.

“I think she’s pregnant,” Riker said, though when Chase turned a shocked gaze to his alpha, it looked like he hadn’t meant to say the words out loud.

“Are you serious, man?” Brody asked.

“Shit,” Riker muttered. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s just a hunch.”

“Why do you think she’s pregnant?” Chase asked carefully.

“She smells different.” Riker cleared his throat. “And she tastes different.”

Chase arched his eyebrows, suddenly more intrigued. “Tastes different, how?”

“You know how, you pervy bastard.”

“Does she think she is?” Brody asked.

“She hasn’t acted like she does.”

Brody cocked his head. “Well, why don’t you enlighten her then?”

“Because what if I’m wrong? She’d be devastated. She wants a baby so bad. I can’t just tease her with something like that.”

“Again,” Chase called out as Joanna and Brad separated, panting. “I don’t understand. She’s human. Isn’t it supposed to be next to impossible for us to breed with humans?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I was looking for it to happen so soon, if ever. I know she wants one, but I was prepared to forego fatherhood if it meant I got Hannah. And Jesus, it took Jenny and Blaine years to get pregnant. This just isn’t something I considered.”

“So, you don’t want a baby?” Chase understood that. Pairing with a mate was scary enough, but if he had a child with one, he would be tethered to her fate even tighter.

“Of course I want a baby. I want a little girl who looks like Hannah. But I swear to God, if you repeat any of this I’ll skin you both.”

Riker could do it too. Chase had been to battle with his alpha many times. The man hid a bloodthirsty beast inside of him.

Brody narrowed his eyes speculatively at his mate. “Jo is going to freak out.”

“Oh, no. You’re not even allowed to tell Joanna,” Riker said. “That’s an order.”

“Why not?”

“Because she and Hannah are close, and she’ll tell her. No. It stays between us until I know for sure.” Riker sauntered off and said over his shoulder, “I mean it.”

“Congratulations!” Brody called.

Riker didn’t turn around and Chase couldn’t be sure from behind, but the alpha’s cheeks swelled like he was smiling. Riker used to never smile. Congratulations? Brody had lost his damned mind. Their battle-hardened alpha was already balking against a war with the Long Claws because Hannah made him softer. Having a child would turn him into a marshmallow.

Chase would never, ever allow himself to fall for a woman like that again.