Chapter 33 Figuring It Out #2
But that night he answered, “Nope, can’t do. It’s a full moon.”
A full moon. Had it really been a month already? The last one was during the week I spent sulking and trying to adult. Zion had left a note, warning that neither he nor Boone would be on sentry duty that night, but it was very important that I stay indoors.
Crazy how much things had changed in only a month.
“Okay,” I said quickly, putting all my supplies back in the house.
Then I walked back to Ravik’s to find Zion already home, despite pageant rehearsals being in full throttle with the Christmas in July festival only a few days away.
After a quick dinner, I found myself in the very weird position of escorting three naked bears to the door.
They all seemed more focused on my security than the fact that they were about to be forced into a transformation all night.
“Stay the fuck inside,” Boone warned before giving me a gruff kiss.
“I’ve stocked the kitchen with everything you might need,” Ravik told me after brushing his lips across mine. “Do not come out for any reason.”
Even Zion, who tended not to concern himself with the day-to-day running of the house, felt compelled to remind me, “It’s of utmost importance that you stay inside.
” But at least he bothered to explain why.
“We would never hurt you, even in bear form. But the outlaw gang from the other side of the lake has been known to wander. I do not think you are aware of the immeasurable amount of heartbreak we would suffer if anything were to ever happen to you.”
Two and a half months. I’d only known them two and a half months, but somehow I sensed he was being serious.
“I won’t go anywhere, don’t worry,” I answered, not sure how else to respond to that.
But the house felt wrong after I closed the door behind them and watched them shift into bears before loping away down the road. Empty.
I tried to appreciate the unprecedented alone time in Ravik’s house. Started a few sketches, tried to watch Rap Star Wives on the flat-screen smart TV Ravik had purchased, which actually had a StreamFlix account.
Zion never wanted to watch it with me.
But nothing worked.
Incomplete.
Boone’s description of his life before being bonded echoed in my head.
I finally understood what he meant.
Because as I went to bed alone for the first time in weeks, I felt incomplete, too.
I fell asleep in a gigantic bed that felt cold without even one body other than mine to warm it up.
But I woke inside a furnace.
What…?
I opened my eyes to find all three of my bears curled around me—human, naked, safe.
Ravik’s arm lay across my waist. Zion’s face was pressed into the back of my locks.
Boone was at my feet. There were twigs in his hair, which had gotten unruly again since I cut it.
He had a hand curled around my ankle for some reason.
They all came awake a few seconds after I did. Like a tripwire alarm.
“I missed you,” I whispered.
“We missed you, too,” Zion mumbled against the back of my head, his resonant baritone husky with sleep.
Ravik pulled me to him tighter, and Boone squeezed my ankle.
I sat up inside the triangle they’d made around me, unable to believe they all came straight back to me as soon as they turned back to their human forms.
Two and a half months, but they’d already become so dear to me.
My chest squeezed so tightly, it was painful, vibrating with a new feeling….
The word rose up like a wave.
Love.
I loved them.
All three of them.
Completely. Terrifyingly. Undeniably.
Not the boozy love I had with Naheem before he died. Not the dutiful love I performed for years to survive with Dennis.
This was something else entirely.
This was waking up between them and knowing I never wanted to be anywhere else.
This was not feeling like this beautifully renovated house was a home unless these three bears were in it.
This was love.
And the realization didn’t feel like relief.
It felt like terror.
Because…
“What’s going to happen when they figure out you’re not worth it?
” Dennis’s voice cut like acid through the beautiful feeling I’d just discovered inside myself.
“You’ve been playing at being happy, but what about when you get scared or depressed?
What if you go off on them again? Start acting crazy.
You think they want the real you—the broken, damaged, ruined version they’ll get when this love high wears off? ”
Suddenly, all the guys lying around me flared their noses. And not in the good way.
“Bell?” Ravik’s voice sharpened with suspicion. “What’s going on?”
He sat up. They all did.
“Why did your scent just…” Boone asked, his blue eyes on high alert.
“Sweetheart, what happened?” Zion asked, stroking my hair like I was some kind of animal he had to soothe with pets.
My chest tightened. They were so nice. So good to me.
“And you’re toxic!” Dennis reminded me inside my head. “You’re poison. All I had to do was follow the smell of the rot.”
My breathing stuttered.
And Ravik shook his head. “Talk to us. You promised you’d do that the next time you got overwhelmed.”
But I couldn’t talk to them.
“They’ll see what you really are. What you’ve always been. Too much. Too needy. Too broken. Unfixable.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t think.
The fear spiked so hard, I could taste metal.
And they could smell it. The fear. The panic.
They knew something was wrong.
And I couldn’t tell them.
Couldn’t say: I love you, and it terrifies me because I’ll ruin this like I ruin everything, and you’ll see I’m not worth keeping, and you’ll be taken away from me somehow, which is why you should never let yourself love people—
I had to go. Had to run. But when I tried to rise from the bed, all three of them curled their hands around some part of my body. Zion at my wrist, Boone at my ankle.
Ravik’s hands cupping my face. “Bell, talk to us!” His eyes blazed with anger. “You promised. No running. No isolating. You talk to us, dammit!”
“Dads? Dads, what the hell?” Before I could answer him, a new voice sounded, ringing with authority—kind of like Ravik’s. “And Uncle Walker, is that you?”
We all froze.
Turned toward the doorway.
A man stood there in a full-on Mountie uniform, staring at the four of us—naked, tangled together in bed, me in the middle, clearly mid-panic attack.
His expression cycled through shock, confusion, and something that might have been horror.
Then he squinted at me and said, “Hold on… are you?”
He gave his head a shake, like maybe I was an illusion he could blink away.
But I was still there.
And so was he.
And he looked like the younger version of someone whose face I’d gotten to know very well over the last few weeks. On the table, in the bed, on the couch with Zion and Boone softly encouraging me, at the kitchen sink when a hand job wasn’t enough….
I had a terrible feeling as to who he might be, even before the Mountie asked, “Are you Holly’s mom?”