Betray the Bear (Bear Valley Shifters #4)(9)

She’d heard stories.

Shadows stretched across the road as the sun sank lower in the sky. She was going to have to walk through the night and she was already tired and sweaty, and her legs felt like lead. She wasn’t conditioned for physical activity anymore, and something about that didn’t sit well with her. She was a bear shifter, one of the strongest creatures on earth, and her legs were complaining about walking?

All of the pampering that had occurred since she’d become mate of the alpha suddenly seemed less valuable than she’d originally thought. Pampering had left her weak. Maybe when she got back, she would ask Nathan if she could do some training with the other bears he was preparing for battle. He would say no, that it wasn’t her place, but she could try. Maybe if she asked long enough, and pestered him, he would let her. She was obviously less coveted than the other mates anyhow, so maybe he would let her do it just to get her out of his hair. If she didn’t ask, she’d never know for sure.

Bolstered by a plan to become stronger, she lifted her chin higher and picked up her pace. The breeze was turning cooler and the forest was starting to come to life with night sounds. Crickets, frogs and locusts filled the evening air and she smiled to herself. This place would be beautiful if it didn’t hold such an awful clan of bears. She should appreciate this eternal hike, because at the end of it, she would probably be skewered and roasted over a fire and eaten by cannibal bears. The thought gave her chills and she stopped and pulled an oversized cotton hoodie from her luggage.

Nathan hated when she wore comfortable clothes, but he wasn’t here right now, so she had packed all of her favorites. He liked her in dresses with no panties. She’d explained to him once that dresses weren’t the best for working in the gardens, but he’d become angry and didn’t talk to her for three days because she’d defied him. Funny how her sticking up for herself always read as defiance to him. At least on this lonely stretch of road, she could stomp as much as she wanted and not worry about all the eggshells she’d been walking on for the last two years.

A siren blared behind her and she nearly jumped out of her skin. What kind of terrible shifter didn’t hear a car coming up behind her? True, her bear was hiding deep inside of her, scared of her own shadow as usual, but still. Frightened, she shielded her eyes from the flashing red and blue lights and squinted against the headlights that were threatening to singe her retinas.

“Miss, can I help you?” a man in a police uniform asked as he stepped from the driver’s seat of the cruiser.

“Uh, no? I’m fine. Just visiting some friends up the road.” Shit, was he going to arrest her? She wasn’t jaywalking or anything, but he wasn’t getting back in his car either.

“It’s not safe on this stretch of road at night. Or during the daytime either, for that matter.” His voice sounded like a careful warning.

Oh, she knew that. The monsters up in these mountains were going to rip her to shreds, but she was helpless to do anything about it. Nathan ruled her life, and he’d decided she would put herself at risk, so she was. “I’ll be all right. Thanks for your concern.”

He approached slowly. “My name is Blaine. I’m the sheriff of Sheridan. I’m on my way home but it just doesn’t sit right with me leaving you out here hiking along the roadside. Can I offer you a ride?”

“Uhh.” She frowned at the dark road before her. How could she shake him? He smelled human, and she couldn’t ask him to take her to Bear Valley without pissing off some seriously scary bears. He didn’t seem like he was budging though. Maybe if he just took her to the mouth of Bear Valley’s main road in, he’d leave her alone. Shyly, she dropped her gaze to his immaculately polished leather shoes and asked, “Do you know where Bear Valley is?”

Narrowing his eyes, he canted his head. “You’re trying to get to Bear Valley?” His voice sounded lower, but maybe she was just imagining his tone of suspicion.

“Yes.” Her voice came out a squeak. He was human and a gun gleamed from a holster at his hip and he was really, terribly scary when he was glaring at her like that.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Anya Bure.”

“Of what clan?”

The question made her gasp. He shouldn’t know about clans. He was other—one they hid from. If she answered him, would he take her admission and burn her with it? Did the humans of Sheridan know about the Bear Valley shifters?

“My wife lives in Bear Valley,” he explained.

“Your wife?”

He rubbed his hand over the two day scruff on his jaw and lowered his voice again. “My mate.”

“But you’re human,” she said, baffled.

It seemed to be enough, because as soon as she hinted that she was more than she probably seemed, Blaine turned back for his car and called a terse, “Get in. I’ll give you a ride.”

A human and a bear shifter, married and mated, and now she’d just about seen it all. What was the point if they couldn’t have offspring? Their pairing would be a genetic dead-end. The Long Claws would’ve killed him and his mate for such frivolousness. She looked up the road once more and wondered what kind of clan she was putting herself in front of.

The wheels on her luggage jounced along, and Blaine lifted the burden from her hands and set it gently into the back seat, then opened the passenger side door for her. She smiled her thanks and tried to settle her breathing. She was going to pass out if she didn’t stop panting like an overheated dog.