Husband Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #1)(41)

Unable to help herself, Elyse scooped Miki up and snuggled the wiggling puppy. “We like to keep daddy on his toes, don’t we?” she crooned. But when she looked up, the smile dipped from her face at the expression on Ian’s. “What?”

The corners of his eyes tightened as he walked beside her. “Nothing.”

“Spill it, bear-man.”

His jaw clenched in the early morning light as he gave her his profile. “I won’t make a good daddy, Elyse. Best you don’t get used to calling me that.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” He looked at her incredulously. “You want your sons to end up like me?”

“How do you know we won’t have daughters?” she teased, but he didn’t laugh.

“No daughters, Elyse. I can only give you sons, and when they turn sixteen, they Change for the first time and start hibernating. And trust me when I say, you don’t want to deal with a pissed off teenager who can call a bear out of himself.”

“Your dad did it?”

“Yeah, and me and my brothers nearly put him in the grave with stress.”

“Maybe we won’t have multiples, and one kid will be easier. And why can’t bear shifters have daughters?”

“I don’t know. Science. Maybe evolution decided females make bad bears or something. At least it’s not like werewolves. They can have daughters, but they die at birth. Only the sons survive.”

Elyse nearly dropped Miki in shock. “Werewolves? There are werewolves?”

The blood drained from Ian’s flushed face, leaving him pale as a corpse. “Shit. Forget I said that.”

“Not likely! Do they live in Alaska?”

“Elyse,” Ian warned.

“Dammit Ian, this isn’t an unreasonable question. I have wolf tags! Am I going to accidentally shoot some shifter?”

“Accidentally? No.” Ian started walking again while she stood there with her head spinning, clutching Miki to her chest.

“What does that even mean?”

“It means if you get close enough to a werewolf, you’ll know it. And that reminds me, after the hay is cut and stored, we’re going to work on your marksmanship. You can’t go into winter missing every damned target. I won’t be awake to protect you.”

“Protect me from what? Werewolves?”

A frustrated growl vibrated the air, but Ian didn’t turn around, and he didn’t slow down either.

“Ian!” He ignored her so she stomped her foot and let a pathetically human growl rip out of her. “I want kids.”

“Cubs, Elyse,” he gritted out, rounding on her. “They’re called cubs. You know why? Because I’m a f*cking animal, and your kids would be f*cking animals, too.”

“Don’t you dare talk like that to me, Ian Silver. Don’t you talk to me like I don’t know the man I’m bedding. You aren’t an animal.”

“I am, Elyse.” He stopped in front of her, eyes blazing and darkening by the second. “This is the gig. You can have me, but I’m not doing kids.”

“Because you don’t want them?” Damn her voice as it shook with anger.

Ian scrubbed his hands down his face and stared at her, shaking his head slightly in denial. “No, not because I don’t want them. I wouldn’t want to curse a kid. I don’t talk to my dad for a reason, and neither do my brothers.”

“You said it was because you were all dominant male grizzlies.”

Ian ran his hands through his hair and linked them behind his head. “That’s true of me and my brothers. But with my dad…shit.” Ian spat. “He was always so proud of what he was and so disappointed when me and my brothers struggled. He’s more bear, and we’re more human, and we were always this huge mistake.”

“Mistake?”

“That’s what he called us. He said we didn’t make sense, and that we were weak and not meant to be given bears. He raised us, but he didn’t like it. We were on our own after our first hibernation. He’d moved to Anchorage by the time we came out of that first winter, skinny as shit and scared because he’d never thought to tell us what to expect. He’d thought we should just know. Instinct or something.”

“Your first hibernation at sixteen?”

Ian nodded.

Utterly dumbfounded, Elyse murmured, “He just left you?”

“He came in and out for a while. I learned to fly and so did Tobias, so we picked up his deliveries in the summers while he lived in Anchorage. I get it. Me and my brothers weren’t easy, but there is still a big part of me that hates him. Not just for pushing us out into the world early the way he did, but because he put the bear in me in the first place. I never want a kid hating me for cursing him.”

“I didn’t know,” Elyse whispered, devastated for what he’d been through.

She imagined Ian as a child, scrawny after a hibernation, hungry as sin, and with no parental guidance—no mentor to tell him how to navigate a really difficult life. She respected him more for where he was now. He was not only alive still, but he’d bought a plane and found a job that made him a good living, and now he was here, a decent man who treated her sweetly. Who balanced a fine line between taking care of her and making her strong enough to stand on her own when he wasn’t around. The way he was with her, Miki, and the other animals around the homestead, she would’ve never guessed he’d had a cold upbringing. He was so confident, and his anger was the quiet kind that he held in until he was ready to talk about things calmly.