Mate Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #3)(46)

“She really did it,” he said slowly, shocked that he was kneeling here in two feet of snow talking to a pack of snarky werewolves instead of sleeping inside the cave as a bear. “Why am I numb?”

“Vera said that’s normal. She calls it ‘the thaw.’ It’s a side effect, but it’ll wear off soon.”

“When is it? What month?”

“You’ve been asleep for six weeks,” Link said, pulling his own backpack onto his shoulders. “It’s mid-November.”

“Oh!” Dalton said, digging in his pocket. “I brought a love letter from your mate.”

Chance snorted, but Tobias didn’t get the joke.

Dalton unfolded a piece of thick paper and cleared his throat. “Dear stupid, twit-nugget, pigheaded, pickle-dick, marker-sniffin’, fart-faced—”

“I get it,” Tobias gritted out.

Dalton arched a dark eyebrow and continued in a dramatic reading voice. “You’re in big trouble for leaving me with a f*cking goodbye note, and you are in double big trouble for telling Link I wasn’t allowed to wake you up. Come straight home so I can yell at you like I want. You should be frightened. Sincerely and angrily yours, Thistle.” Dalton folded the piece of paper and offered it to Tobias. “So you can keep it forever.”

“Yeah,” Chance said. “Frame that shit.”

With a grunt of effort, Tobias took the letter and clutched it in his shaking hand.

Link pursed his lips sympathetically. “She’s definitely going to bite you.”

Tobias tried to growl but couldn’t. At least he was getting a warm tingling feeling back in his body now. That was a good sign. He hoped.

“Hurry up and get moving, Silver,” Dalton said, nervously looking around. “Kodiak Island gives me the creeps.”

A werewolf outdoor guide was afraid of Kodiak Island? Tobias looked around, but it felt completely safe to him. Though, now that he thought about it, Kodiak really wasn’t the haven it once was. Not now that he couldn’t call on his bear to protect himself. He pushed upward and stood on locked, splayed legs, unstable as a baby horse.

Link ducked under his shoulder on one side, Dalton did the same on the other, and then they half-dragged him down the steep hill.

And somewhere around mile two, when Tobias could finally walk on his own, it hit him. He skidded to a stop in a deep snowdrift and spun in a slow circle.

“What’s wrong?” Link asked from up ahead.

“I haven’t seen winter since I was fifteen.”

Link trekked back to him, lifting his feet high to get over the snow. He gripped Tobias’s shoulder. “Silver, you got lucky with your mate. She’s worked night and day, and not just for you.”

“What do you mean?”

Link ducked his chin and gave him a loaded look. “Your brothers haven’t seen winter either.”

Tobias let off a shaky breath, then swallowed over and over to control the overwhelming emotion roiling through him. His eyes burned as Link shook his shoulder slowly.

Link’s gray eyes were rimmed with moisture as he dragged Tobias in for a rough hug. He clapped Tobias on the back hard enough to rattle his bones, then shoved him back to arm’s length. Link cleared his throat and wiped his cheek on the shoulder of his jacket. “Come on, Tobias. Let’s go wake up your brothers.”





Chapter Nineteen


It had been four damn days with no radio contact with Link and the Dawsons. There had been no call from a satellite phone to say they were still alive or let her know if they’d found Tobias.

On top of that, Mother Nature had dumped a massive snowfall that didn’t show any signs of letting up. Something was wrong. It had been too long without contact, and they should’ve been back by now.

Fox pushed a growl up her throat. Her animal was right. She was worrying about every worst case scenario. They had probably holed up somewhere safe and warm until this weather passed. She hoped. Still, she couldn’t pull her attention away from the front window of Link’s cabin for long.

Six weeks without her mate had been torture.

Link had allowed her to mourn over Tobias’s goodbye note for three days, and then he’d intervened. He’d dragged her ass into his cabin and got her living again. Got her cooking up the cure again. He slept nights out in the shed, and it wasn’t until about a week in that she realized he’d moved her into the big cabin while he’d moved out to the shed. Sweet, crazy wolf.

Her ears picked up a faint noise, like the buzzing of an insect. Vera bolted for the window but couldn’t see anything past ten feet away in the white-out weather conditions. The noise grew steadily louder until she could identify it. A snow machine!

With a gasp, she shoved her feet into her snow boots and yanked her heaviest jacket off the coat rack. Door thrown open, she bolted across the porch and down the stairs. A sob wrenched its way up her throat as she saw him through the snow, standing up on a snow machine so he could better see the trail.

Her shoulders sagged as she cried. It was him. Her Tobias was pulling the snow machine to a stop. He cut the engine and sprinted for her.

His body was hard as steel as it crashed against hers. When Tobias lifted her off her feet, Vera closed her eyes in overwhelming relief to be in his arms again.

“You did it, baby,” he said, voice thick. “Vera, you did it.”