Redeem the Bear (Bear Valley Shifters #5)(35)

Gently, Brooks thumbed her chin up until her gaze reached his. “This isn’t what you think it is, Corin, and I don’t want to be separated either.”

He cupped her cheeks as the crowd gathered around them. The talk died until only the breeze and Corin’s pounding heart filled her ears. Someone lit a candle. Another and another lit up, casting the night in a warm, flickering glow. She searched the faces of the people she loved as they looked back at her expectantly.

“I don’t understand,” she murmured, placing her hands over Brooks’.

“I asked them to be here,” he said low. “In another lifetime, I stood before the Kodiak council and asked to be promised to you. And now,” he said, easing back and pulling something from his pocket. “I’m asking again.” From his hand dangled a necklace on a gold chain. A medallion with a script letter B spun and shone in the candle light.

Her face crumpled and the tears filling her eyes spilled over.

He clasped the token of their past and future around her neck, and settled it right in the center of her chest, just where the old necklace had sat for all these years. Then, he knelt down on one knee and looked up at her, his gaze open. “I wanted to ask you, in front of your people and mine, if you would be my mate. I’d be honored if you would come back to my clan and become mate of the alpha. I would be honored if you would choose me, as I have already chosen you.” He inhaled deeply. “I would be honored if you would be mine.”

Riker stepped forward and placed the handle of a ceremonial knife against the palm of her hand. She stared at it through tear-blurred vision.

The choice was hers.

Saying yes would mean leaving her people, and living among the Long Claws. She would leave her cottage, her job and her friends and forge a new life with Brooks in an unfamiliar place.

She tried to imagine life here without him, but it hurt too badly.

Home was with him. It always had been.

Swallowing hard, she looked up and unsheathed the knife.

He pulled his shirt over his head and stepped toward her. Around the bandages she had doctored him with were the silvered scars of countless battles fought at the whim of his clan. They were scars he had taken to protect her and beloved Bear Valley. But the three long marks she would make across his chest tonight would be the most important scars. Now, they would belong to each other always.

His slow smile stretched until the shadow of his dimple ghosted his jaw.

There he was—her perfect match.

The blade shone in the candle light created by the people she loved as she lifted it to his chest. “I choose you, too.”





Epilogue



“Are you ready to see everyone again?” Brooks asked through an easy smile.

One hand rested comfortably on the steering wheel of his SUV, and his other hand was clasped in Corin’s.

She was nearly bouncing with anticipation. “Of course I am. I feel like I want to change and run the rest of the way.”

He barked out a laugh. Even Bethany, Angus, and the rest of the council who sat patiently in the back seats chuckled.

It had been six months since she’d last laid eyes on Bear Valley. And though the Long Claws were her clan now, and her home with Brooks in Wyoming, this place would always hold magic for her.

Behind them trailed a long line of vehicles transporting the entirety of the Long Claw Clan. Only seventy strong now after the battles of the last year, but three summer babies would be born into the new and much improved shifter community. They would know a much easier life than their parents before them—one filled with peace.

It had been an adjustment. The Long Claws were a raucous group and the clan run much differently than she was accustomed to. Brooks talked often with Riker for advice, but the goal wasn’t to turn his clan into Bear Valley shifters. It was to find a compromise between the old clan, and the new laws that encouraged alliances with their shifter brethren. It had been a long, hard battle, and the Long Claws got into more damned fights than Corin knew what to do with, but for better and worse, they were home now, and she served as their alpha’s mate as best she could.

Her union with Brooks had united the clans more than she ever could’ve imagined. As she made friends and dispelled rumors of her old clan, tensions settled and Brooks had finally suggested they all meet with Bear Valley to encourage relationships.

She smiled as they passed the no trespassing signs along the fence line of her old home. If her clan could mind their damned manners for a few days and open up to the possibility of friendship with bear shifters outside their own, Brooks and Riker would make history as the first Long Claw and Bear Valley alphas to ever work together for a common goal.

Pride surged through her as it so often did when she watched how strong her mate was in the face of adversity, and she squeezed his hand.

“I can almost feel your happiness,” he murmured, lifting her hand and kissing her knuckles.

The final grove of towering pines blurred by as they passed, and Corin leaned forward. Riker and his people were gathered in the field in front of his house. Fragrant smoke rose from a barbecue pit, and it reminded her so much of the night Brooks had claimed her. The faded marks he’d made on her chest tingled with the memory. It had been the happiest moment of her life.

He pulled around the field, leading his people to park out of the way, and she slid out of the passenger’s side as fast as she could scramble. Anya and Joanna were running for her and she bolted toward them. Crashing into her friends’ arms, she laughed as she spied Jenny and Hannah waddling toward her, twin moon bellies leading the way. Hannah was already crying.