“Cormac stays in your house, Nell,” Eric said. “It’s a good plan. Reid can move in with Peigi and her roommates—he can help protect them against unwanted attention, and I’m guessing I’ll be doing a mating ceremony for him and Peigi soon.” He gestured at the torn-up kitchen. “Besides, looks like Cormac’s handy for putting up the new cabinets.”
“Why do I even have new cabinets?” Nell asked. “Are you trying to bribe me with a spontaneous kitchen makeover?”
“This is courtesy of Iona’s construction company,” Eric said. “Your old kitchen was falling apart. Iona got the new cabinets and the countertops at cost. You can thank her later.”
“I’m sure your mate and I will have a big talk later,” Nell said.
“Yeah, well, you and Cormac talk it out first.” Eric stuck his hands back into his pockets. “Then come see us.”
Eric turned around, an alpha’s signal that the conversation was over. He walked away, back into the growing dawn, and no one said a word or tried to stop him.
The others watched Eric, but Cormac kept his gaze on Nell. Behind the anger in her eyes, he saw confusion and even terror. He’d have to go slowly with her, reveal the other reasons he’d been looking for her when the time was right. The letter in his back pocket burned him, but Nell could only take so much. The letter had been hidden this long. What was another few hours?
Nell had retreated into a hard shell, and Cormac would have to crack it, little by little, to show her how warm it could be outside. But he could be patient. He’d learned patience at an early age, because patience meant survival.
Nell didn’t look at him. “Shut the door, Brody,” she said. “It’s cold.”
She turned on her heel and walked back into her bedroom, once more slamming the door.
Nell was going to skin Eric, and then Cormac. Maybe even her sons, the grinning idiots.
The banging and drilling had resumed in the kitchen, Shane’s and Brody’s voices added to Cormac’s. Since when were her two terrors so anxious for their mother to mate again? They’d pretty much driven off any other male Nell had cast her eyes on since they’d all moved here.
No, to be honest, Nell had driven them off. But she’d had her sons’ approval every time.
Of course, all the males she’d tried to date had been Felines, Lupines, or even humans, when she could meet a human tall enough. No bears, because this Shiftertown had a shortage of unmated bears. Eric hadn’t been wrong about that.
A grant, my ass. Eric did what he wanted and didn’t wait for humans to give him the money to do so.
Nell peered into the mirror as she brushed her unmanageable hair. At least she didn’t have many lines on her face, in spite of having raised her sons on her own, alone for most of that time. She didn’t look a day over a hundred.
Shifters didn’t show age much until close to the end, and many never made it that far—at least, they hadn’t in the wild. Hunters, starvation, and death in childbirth had taken out most Shifters before they ever reached their third century.
Nell was nearing her hundred and fifty year mark, her sons both just at their first century. Cormac was younger than she was. While Shifter bodies didn’t show age, there were other ways to tell. Scent, body language, and the eyes.
Cormac’s eyes said he was older than Shane but not as old as Nell. About halfway in between probably—say a hundred and thirty. And he was mateless. She wondered if he’d had a mate before and had lost her, but she hadn’t had time to look at him long enough to search for traces of a broken mate bond.
Another way Shifters died in the wild was by giving up. Surviving became too much for them, especially for a male who’d decided to forsake his clan. Young Nell had found it romantic at first—she and Magnus hiding from humans, fighting to stay alive, relying on each other as mates.
Bears were pretty solitary anyway, but Magnus had quarreled with his clan, and so was completely alone. Nell had been too far from her own clan to be able to rely on them. No good roads or airplane travel in those days, and trains came nowhere near where Nell and Magnus hid themselves, and so they’d strived to make it on their own.
Fine until the stress and fear had wearied Magnus. And so he’d found a way to end his pain, leaving behind a frightened female grizzly, only ten years past her Transition, to raise two small cubs all on her own, hundreds of miles from anywhere.
Nell’s anger and grief at Magnus’s betrayal was as sharp today as it had been a hundred and thirteen years ago. Nell remembered her wails of despair when she’d stumbled across his body, how the bear in her had come out without her being aware that she’d shifted. She’d howled long into the night, holding her dead mate, thinking nothing would ever stop the pain that flooded her.
Nothing, that is, until she’d heard the terrified cries of her cubs, hunting for her, calling for her. Brody and Shane had given Nell a reason to live, a reason to bury her grief and get on with life.
Nell thunked down the hairbrush and scowled at herself. She was getting maudlin, and she didn’t have time to wallow in the pain of the past.
She left the bedroom, striding down the hall again, pretending to ignore everyone in the kitchen, even when the three stopped and silently watched her go by. She walked out the back door into winter sunshine, the air cold but not icy, and turned her steps down the common land that ran behind the houses, heading for Peigi’s.
She sensed as well as heard Cormac come out the back door and follow her. He didn’t bother to be stealthy about it. Cormac’s even stride told her he was coming after her because he wanted to, and he didn’t care if she knew it.
“Thought you were anxious to get my kitchen fixed up,” she said when he reached her.
“Plenty of time to get it done today, with your sons’ help. I wanted to see more of Shiftertown.”
“Why? This place isn’t much different from any other Shiftertown.”
“Sure it is,” Cormac said. “The one in Austin is full of bungalows about a hundred years old. In Wisconsin, half the Shiftertown is in thick woods. More bears and wolves up there than Felines. All this open desert makes me crazy.”
“You’ll get used to it.” Nell scowled at him. “Why’d you really come here?”
“Told you. Looking for a mate.”
“Humans don’t like Shifters moving from state to state on a whim. Did you get kicked out of your Shiftertown?”
Cormac didn’t answer. Nell glanced at him again, to find him looking around at the houses, which were small rectangular homes built in the ’70s, common in towns in the west. Cormac’s face was a careful blank, but something in his eyes made Nell uneasy.
“Does Eric know the real reason?” Nell asked him. “Or only what you told him?”
Cormac’s blue eyes flicked to her for a brief instant. “You know, jeans look sexy on you.”
Nell didn’t hide her snort. “Do you say that to all the bears whose pants you want to get into?”
“No.” Cormac had such an expressionless face, guileless. He must have practiced a long time to achieve that look. “What do you call those pants I see women wear, the ones that stop just below the knee?”
“Capris.”
“Capris. I bet you’d look sexy in those too.”
“It’s too cold for capris. It’s January.”
“Compared to Wisconsin, this is a balmy summer day.”
“Well, not for me. I left cold winters behind twenty years ago, when I got rounded up and transported here.”
“Eric says you came from Canada. The Rockies.”
“Eric talks too damn much.”
“Only because I asked him,” Cormac said. “I want to know all about you.”
Nell faced him, and they both stopped. Gray dawn was turning to pink, the undersides of the few high clouds stained brilliant fuchsia. “I’m not looking for a mate,” Nell said in a hard voice. “I’m sorry you’re lonely, and I’m sorry you came all this way, but I’m done with all that. I have my boys, I take care of the other bears here, and I don’t need a change.”