Chapter 34 Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!
fuck! fuck! fuck!
BOONE
Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!
I didn't push those words down the bond as I stood outside Ravik's house with my asshole tattletale maul nephew, Takoda, waiting for Bell to finish getting ready and for her daughters to arrive any minute now. But Zion and Ravik heard me.
“Calm yourself, Boone,” Zion advised, while Ravik’s steely reserve washed over me.
Normally, I liked getting the mental side benefits of having them in my head.
Emotional regulation, I guess you’d call it.
It was like having an automatic control valve for my temper.
Or taking those pills that the guy who ran my last boss-mandated anger management course tried to write me a prescription for because he didn’t know I was a bear, and that shit doesn’t work on us.
But in this case, I didn’t see how my first and second mauls could just stand there with their asshole, fucking-Goodie-Two-shoes son when the best month of all our lives was about to fall apart.
Zion and Ravik heard that, too.
“We don’t know that it will fall apart,” Zion insisted, even though I could feel his doubts like they were my own.
Ravik’s face remained stoic, but I sensed him broiling underneath—that this was coming right after the Bell freakout we’d been waiting for ever since she let him claim her on top of his kitchen table.
“Zion’s right,” he insisted anyway. “We’ll have to see how this unfolds and respond accordingly. Meanwhile, it won’t do us any good for you to take out your frustration on Tako—”
“You know what, who does a quarterly perimeter check of a ghost town, anyway?” I asked Takoda out loud, turning on that asshole before Ravik could finish. “And you just had to go calling your mate like a good little Boy Scout, didn’t you.”
Takoda’s jaw flexed, just like his birth father’s, and his answer came out just as clipped. “You knew Holly was worried sick, and you still didn’t tell us her mother was only a few kilometers away.”
“Boone, stand down.” Zion stepped between us to try that diplomacy shit he loved so much.
“We’re aware of the optics here,” he said to Takoda. “But understand, Bell wasn’t ready to see them.”
Takoda glared at him. “Like Mom wasn’t ready to see Mara until it was too late?” he asked. “Were you trying to make my mate’s relationship with her birth parent as fraught as yours?”
Zion jerked back like his maul son had hit him.
“Takoda…” Ravik began, his voice going dangerously low.
Again, I didn’t let him finish. “You know what, I don’t care that you’re my maul kin,” I said, balling up my hands. “I’m American, and I’m pretty sure you Canadians don’t know how to sue. Say one more word to my second maul, and I will put my big-ass fist through your smug-ass face.”
Takoda scanned me with that same cold reserve as his birth father, then turned to Ravik and Zion. “This is the third you’ve chosen to restart your maul? No wonder you haven’t convinced her to let you three bond bite her.”
“Why you little…” This shithead was determined to buy his ticket for the Fuck Around and Find Out train, and I pulled my arm back, happy to punch it.
“Boone, stop, please.” Bell’s voice froze the Mortal Kombat “FIGHT!” screen.
I dropped my arm, and we all turned to find her coming down the cabin stairs, dressed in leggings and a t-shirt. She’d showered and no longer carried our scent.
Fuck, I hated that she could just wash it away. Her not being bonded to us hit extra hard this morning.
She’d gained some needed weight over the last month on Ravik’s care mandate, but she still looked so small. And terrified.
Forgetting Takoda, all three of us rushed forward to check on her. I placed my hand on her hip to steady her, and Zion took her hand in his to rub it against his chest.
“Bell…” Ravik stopped and started, trying to find the words to reassure her.
“I can’t do this,” she said before he could. She was visibly trembling. “I have no excuse for not going to see them. They’re not going to understand. They’re going to hate me. And I know I deserve them hating me for being so weak….”
We had her encased in a three-way hug before she could finish that bullshit thought—lending her our strength, wishing we could be inside her head to calm her down.
She let out a shuddering breath. “I’m so ashamed. And this is going to break me.”
“It won’t,” Ravik vowed.
“If you want, I’ll talk to them as soon as they get here,” Zion offered. “Explain your emotional turmoil to them so you won’t have to.”
Bell just shook her head. “I’m such a coward. Such a mess.”
I couldn’t stand seeing her in so much pain.
“Fuck this noise.” I stepped back from the group hug to clutch her small hand in mine. “I will take you out of here. My truck’s right up the road. We can hop in it and be gone before your daughters arrive.”
“Just try it, Uncle Walker,” Takoda threatened behind me. “I will end you where you stand if you attempt to take this opportunity from Holly.”
I turned to roar, “It’s not an opportunity if she’s goddamn traumatized, you selfish prick!”
“Boone, don’t yell at him like that, please.” Bell brought her other hand up to lay it on the back of mine. “I don’t want this to ruin your family. This is all my fault.”
“First Father, if you’re serious about this restarting-a-maul-in-your-sixties business, you need to control your third,” Takoda said to Ravik, his tone hard.
And Ravik took a strong step forward toward me…
In order to stand by my side.
“Boone’s right,” he said, facing down his know-it-all birth son with me.
Zion flanked my other side. “We’ll be doing what’s best for our mate—not for yours.”
“What?” Takoda shook his head at his fathers like he was calculating the price of retirement homes for early-onset dementia. “She’s not your mate. You haven’t even bitten her.”
Did I say Ravik and Zion were good at keeping my temper on its leash? Their rage flared, making mine burn even brighter.
A horn beep cut off whatever answer they would have given him for denying Bell her status as ours.
And all three of our heads snapped up when we saw a truck and what looked like a brand-new Nakumara Journey minivan careening down the little road to screech to a halt by the unphased horse Takoda had ridden in on for his goddamn perimeter check.
We all moved into position in front of Bell to form a protective wall.
Takoda must have sent out a mental maul bond flare that we were in a standoff because five more guys came tumbling out first.
Noelle’s maul—a full Ayaska doctor named Ash, a Kodiak named Cody (okay), and Takoda’s brother, Mak—fell in on the asshole Mountie’s left side. And the rest of Holly’s maul—Ash’s older brother Hawk and the Viking-looking blond who’d turned out to be a Barrington—fell in on his right.
“Alright, six against three,” I sent down the bond. “Let’s crack open this can of bear-grade whoop ass.”
I balled up both fists as Ravik told Zion not to be afraid to bear out if he wasn't comfortable throwing down.
“Where is she?” Mak demanded, scanning for Bell.
“Hiding right behind them,” Takoda answered between clenched teeth.
“Stand aside, old bears,” that former-gang-leader-fuck Hawk growled.
“Like fuck we will,” I shot back.
“If you hadn’t been so quick to rush down here, we would have told you that Bell needs a little more time,” Zion said calmly.
Ravik just glared them all down.
“There're six of us and three of you,” Leif pointed out. “Move aside so our mates can see their mother.”
“Or we’ll make you,” Hawk growled.
“I’d like to see you try, Temu Wolverine,” I snarled back. “You think we’re scared of you?”
Before he could answer, the wail of a baby’s cry rose up from behind their wall.
“Mom? Mom?” two feminine voices called out. “Are you here?”
To our surprise, Bell’s voice popped up behind our wall. “Holly? Noelle? Is that you?”
Suddenly, Bell was slapping at our backs. “Move! Move, please!”
And her daughters must have done the same to their Wall of Maul.
Because when we moved to let Bell through, they were parting like the Red Sea to reveal two dark-skinned Black women, both taller and curvier than Bell. One was heavily pregnant, and the other had two light-brown babies wrapped to her chest in a double sling.
“Oh my god, Mom! Mom!” Noelle, the one with two babies, cried out, extending her arms.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” Holly, the pregnant one, said.
“Noelle! Holly! My babies!” Bell cried, running to them.
And the next thing the nine of us knew, our three females were hugging all over each other with tears streaming down their faces.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Bell babbled.
“Mom, no, we’re so sorry,” Noelle said, shaking her head.
“You must be so pissed at us for just leaving you down there with him,” Holly added. “I’ll never forgive myself for abandoning you when you needed me the most.”
Noelle choked on a sob. “I should never have believed you’d go back to him.”
“It’s not your fault!” Bell insisted, her voice going fierce. “It’s all Dennis’s. It’s all his. And only his.”
Bell seemed to be realizing that herself as she told Holly and Noelle.
“And thanks to your first mauls sending Boone to check on me, I was saved. Thank you, my gorgeous, brilliant, wonderful daughters. Thank you!”
Truth be told, with Bell bursting into tears when I’d tried to take her to see them in Bear Mountain, I’d been wondering about her dynamic with her daughters.
But when she pressed motherly kisses onto both their cheeks, putting aside her own stuff to comfort and absolve them, I knew that this wasn’t all mental—not just avoidance.
She’d truly needed the time to heal so she could be the mom she wanted to be to them.
Then, like any good mom, they got maybe five minutes of talking in before Bell turned all her attention to her grandbabies.
“They’re so beautiful!” Bell gushed, stroking the little girl’s brownish-red curls. “Can I…?”
In less time than it took them to break through their maul walls, that baby was in Bell’s arms. “Oh! So precious! Look at you!”
Several minutes of baby talk came after that, then Bell told her daughters, “I’m making the both of you wedding gift wood sculptures of your cubs, but I’ve been going back and forth with myself on the expressions. Do you have pictures of them awake? I could really use them for reference.”
“You’re doing art again?” Holly’s eyes widened in a way that reminded me of Bell when we brought her food at the end of a workday. “Can we see?”
“Yes! Yes! Come! Come! My workspace is unbelievably cute!” she said, backing toward the widow’s cottage with the baby in her arms. “I’ve got tea and these odd little coffee bag things.”
“Oh, Mak drinks those.” Noelle pulled a face as she and Holly rushed forward to walk with Bell to the cottage. “It’s so anti-American.”
Holly laughed. “I’ve never seen them. Takoda doesn’t like coffee….”
They went up the steps, laughing and talking, and then the door closed behind them.
Leaving all nine of the males outside…
…and feeling mighty awkward now that we wouldn’t be fighting and there was no way we could fit into Bell’s tiny-ass widow’s cottage.
“Anybody else wanna beer?” I asked the group. “I could use a beer.”
Everyone except Ash, who was on 24/7 call as the town’s only doctor, took me up on that offer.
And it wasn’t half bad hanging out with them, I guess.
Takoda was still an asshole, but I appreciated him making sure Bell’s daughters had all the information they needed not to come in hot on their mother.
Zion, Hawk, and Ash chatted about the StreamFlix adaptation of some book series they’d all read called Seasons of the Fae.
But Ravik took his beer outside and started chopping wood. Brooding about what came next now that Bell was reunited with her daughters.
“Why’s he chopping wood in the hottest part of summer?” Leif asked, coming to stand beside me at the back window. He looked like a modern-day Viking in a henley, but had the energy of a golden retriever.
The big, blond Barrington froze before I could answer, his eyes rapidly going back and forth, like he was glitching out, before he yelled, “It’s time! It’s time!”
I would have asked, “Time for what?” but it became an easy guess when all three of Holly’s maul bounded for the front door with Takoda yelling over his shoulder, “Ash, with us!”
“I’m right behind you!” Ash answered, leaping up from his seat. “Just have to get my doctor’s bag out of the car!”
Yep… guess this day just wasn’t dramatic enough for Mother Ursa.
Holly had gone into labor.