Chapter Fourteen
Brody
My heart tried to leap out of my chest as I stared at the polar bear in front of me.
Then I worried I shouldn’t look at it. It might see that as a sign of dominance and attack.
Instead, I glanced around for somewhere to hide.
There was nothing. No place other than trees.
And bears climbed trees, didn’t they? I wasn’t so sure about polar bears.
Since the shoulders of the one in front of me were at the same height as mine while it remained on four legs, I didn’t think I stood a chance of climbing away from it.
I suddenly remembered reading somewhere that if I made myself look bigger than the bear and yelled at it, I could scare it away. Raising my arms in the air, I shouted, “Go! Get away!” Then I waved my hands around and roared at it.
The bear didn’t attack, only cocked its head to the side as if examining if it should put in the effort to eat me. Instead of charging, it lay in the snow and put its paws over its head.
I dropped my arms and took a few steps back, figuring it was safe to make my escape with the bear not paying attention to me.
Without looking where I headed, I tripped over my snowshoes and fell on my ass.
I expected the bear to lunge at me with the cry I let out.
When I glanced in the direction of the creature, I saw Ulrik putting on his clothes while laughing at me.
What in the world?
I blinked my eyes a couple times to be sure it really was Ulrik. Then I wondered if I had seen the bear at all. Maybe I’d hallucinated the entire thing.
I lay back in the snow, not sure what to believe, simply letting the sun shine down on me while I tried to comprehend what had just transpired. “Ulrik?”
“Yeah?” he answered, suddenly standing over me.
I took his outstretched hand and let him help me back to my feet. “Something weird just happened.”
“Yeah? What was it?” He used his gloves to wipe snow off my back.
“I saw a bear. A polar bear.” It sounded so silly to say, but it had seemed so real.
“And what did you think of that bear?”
I was shocked that he hadn’t asked in a joking manner. He seemed truly interested in my thoughts. “I, um… It was big. And scary. I thought it was going to eat me.”
He chuckled then and I expected him to make fun of me. Instead, he said, “I would never eat you. Not in that way, anyway.”
Confusion ricocheted through my brain as I tried to comprehend what he’d said. “You?”
He nodded with a shy grin. “Yeah, that bear was me. I’m a shifter.”
“No.” I took a step back, careful where I placed my snowshoe this time.
He nodded again, the grin gone as he crossed his arms and chewed on his bottom lip. “There’s actually quite a few of us staying at the lodge this week. I was surprised I scented as many as I did.”
“Scented?” What did he even mean by that? My mind whirled as I tried to figure out whether I was awake or dreaming.
“We can scent each other.” He touched his nose. “Just as we can scent our mate.”
Mate. The word he’d used to describe his past husband. I was either in some intense post-sex-euphoria dream, or reality was way more messed up than I originally believed. “What does this have to do with me? Why not just let me go home tomorrow, never the wiser?”
“Because I marked you.” He pointed to my shoulder then touched his own. “I claimed you as mine.”
“You what?” Cold crept through my veins, even with all my layers of clothing. “What does that even mean?”
Glancing down at the snow between us, Ulrik released a heavy breath. “Last night. When we had sex. I marked you.” He pointed to his shoulder again. “Those marks near your neck. They’re claim marks. That means you’re my mate.”
Bile burned all the way up from my stomach, and I thought I would vomit. “You…you made me your mate? Without even asking? I wanted to have something more with you, but not like this. I never agreed to give everything up and become a fuck toy for a polar bear.”
“It’s not like that,” he whispered. “I never meant for it to happen.”
“Well, it kind of did.” I stomped a snowshoe into the fluffy white ground.
“I mean, I thought it was kind of erotic the way you bit me during sex and how you got so swollen you were stuck inside me. Even the puncture marks seemed like a kind of souvenir from the amazing night. But I never agreed to be yours.”
He ran his gloved hands across his face. “You don’t have to be my mate. Because you are human, you will never feel the pull of our connection. But I am bound to you. It cannot be undone.”
“Well, I guess you should have thought of that before you did it.” I headed back to the path we had taken through the snow, angry for reasons I didn’t fully understand. “Because this human does not want to be in a marriage that I never agreed to, with a polar bear.”
I still hadn’t taken the time to comprehend the whole shifter thing.
That was too much to even begin to think about.
It was the idea of being mated to him that I had a huge problem with.
Sure, I had wanted to be in a committed relationship for most of my adult life.
Waking up claimed by Ulrik after the best sex ever wasn’t how I had imagined it happening.
It felt the same as rolling out of bed in Vegas to learn I’d gotten drunk married.
I hadn’t agreed. Since I doubted I could easily get rid of the puncture marks in my shoulder the way one could annul a marriage, I planned to pack my belongings and leave the cabin.
If I had to, I would sleep in the lodge until I could catch the bus the next day.
I had wanted a simple relationship, one where the only things we had to worry about were the cats and dogs we adopted.
I did not want to worry about being gobbled up by my husband when the polar bear side of him decided he was hungry.