Two Souls (Brought to Bear #2)

Prologue

Otto

“Ohmygod! He’s right there!”

I stifled a grin when the squeal was followed by a flood of drunken whispers shushing Dex, but the birthday boy would have none of it.

“I will not shush!” he huffed out in a whispered shout which carried further than he realized. Hell, even the humans over at the pool table across the bar were chuckling at the feisty Omega. “Otto is right there!”

“We know!” Taylor, another Omega, snapped back. “And he’s gonna hear you if you don’t upsky-shay!”

Behind me, my boss Darren was trying not to laugh as the group argued about whether what Taylor claimed was pig Latin qualified as such. “Do you know those boys?”

“Yep,” I confirmed. “Depending on which one you point to, they were either two or three years behind me in school. Dexter, the redhead, is the youngest of the group and today is his twenty-first.”

“Ahh. That explains the drunken frolicking.” Darren chuckled again, peering at the group of revelers huddled around the end of the bar. “You seem to have an admirer.”

My inner bear perked up as I snorted at the suggestion.

“Nah, I don’t think so.” My bear gave a disgruntled huff at my rebuttal and settled back.

“I think it’s the booze. Our families have known each other for years and there’s never been any hint he thinks of me that way.

” A quick twinge in my chest made me rub over my heart.

“He’s an only child so I think I’m more of a surrogate brother, you know? ”

Darren didn’t look convinced but nodded. “Okay. They have a way home?”

“I collected all their keys when they arrived,” I assured him. “They have an Uber already scheduled for last call.”

“Good man.” Darren chucked me on the shoulder as he headed for his office.

I was drawing a draft of local pale ale when Dex’s voice rose above the crowd again.

“You shouldn’t go home with a stranger,” he insisted earnestly. “I could be a serial killer.”

Normally, the thought of a serial killer in the small mountain town of Unity City, Colorado would have me laughing, but if Dex thought Cal was a stranger, he was drunker than I thought. I glanced over and scowled when I saw Cal’s hand on Dex’s hip.

Plunking Trey’s beer on the bar in front of him, I made my way down to where I could hear well enough to suss out if Cal was making the younger guys uncomfortable.

“Otto!” Dex saw me lingering and called me over. “C’mere! Tell him I’m a serial killer!”

I coughed into my hand to hide my laugh and leaned over to lightly tap Dex’s cheek. “You’re named after a serial killer,” I corrected with a grin. “Your mom watched too much tv while she was on bedrest with you.”

Dex’s face fell and he jutted his chin out defiantly. “You don’t know everything I do! I could be a serial killer.”

I shrugged. “I guess, but between work, school, and volunteering at the animal shelter, when do you find victims?”

“I..” Dex’s face tightened and his shoulders twitched. Looking down, I saw Cal’s hand had migrated to rest on the curve of Dex’s ass.

“Cal.” I waited until the Alpha looked over at me. “Gonna be damn hard for you to work on cars with only one hand, ya know?”

Cal’s eyes went wide for a split second before he scowled at me. “That a threat?”

“Yeah, ‘fraid so,” I confirmed. “I’m their security detail tonight and they’re having a private party.”

“That true, sugar?” Cal leaned close to Dex and the Omega stiffened more, pulling to his other side. “You want me to go?”

When Alpha pheromones began to stink up the air, I sighed and tossed my rag onto the counter below the bar.

“That’s enough.” Cal was a few years older than me, but my particular ursine shifter genes meant I was larger and stronger, so when I clapped my hand down on his shoulder, Cal was wise enough to back down. “He’s not interested. You need to move on.”

Cal grumbled and complained under his breath but headed for the door without pressing me.

“You all okay?” I ran my eyes over the group of Omegas who were all wide-eyed and uncharacteristically silent.

They nodded as one, and as if a secret signal had been given, began to yammer all at once.

I listened long enough to be sure it was all normal drunken nonsense and headed back behind the bar, grinning as I refilled their drinks.

None of the Omegas were actually mine, but my bear still got satisfaction out of providing protection, from being needed.

I was still floating on a bit of a high when I kissed Dex’s cheek and tucked the last of them into their Uber.

Darren was already gone for the night, so I locked the bar behind me and headed around to the employee parking lot.

The single light in the small parking lot had been shot out by vandals a few days earlier, so the only light came from the cloud-dimmed moon, but that was more than enough to make out the three state police cruisers parked beside my car.

As I approached, two officers -werewolves, from their scents- stepped forward, one to each side of me.

“Otto Nielsen, you have the right to remain silent.”

~*~

Seven years later

Dex

“This is a really bad idea,” Corbin was a fairly recent transplant to Unity City but already a close friend. He grabbed the back of my shirt as I rattled the metal gate blocking the driveway, testing to be sure it would hold my weight.

“It’s not,” I disagreed. “The intercom is probably broken or Otto would have buzzed us in, I’m sure of it.”

“He has the gate locked,” Mitch pointed out. “That means stay out.”

I huffed. “If the intercom is broken, he probably doesn’t know we’re here,” I insisted. “You don’t know Otto or you’d know that he wants to see me! It’s not like there’s a sign saying go away.” I finished the sentence in a threatening growl for comedic effect.

“Ter-bear,” Taylor was speaking slowly, like I was a member of his kindergarten class. “That’s actually exactly what the no trespassing and do not enter signs mean.”

I blew out a raspberry at him. “You just don’t get it,” I huffed. “I haven’t seen Otto in forever! He’s finally back and I want, no, I need to see him!”

“But Dex, if Otto doesn’t want to see anybody, that should be up to him, shouldn’t it?” Stupid Mitch and his stupid logic. “You’ve tried calling, left a note, and mailed him a card, right?”

I’d also sent an Edible Arrangement, but Mitch didn’t need to know that, so I just nodded.

“Then, if he wants to see you, he knows where to find you, right?”

I sighed, staring through the bars on the fence at the roofline barely visible behind the overgrown trees.

I knew Mitch thought that the booze was why I was so anxious to see Otto, but that wasn’t it.

My stomach had been balled up in a knot since word got out that Otto's sentence had been commuted and he was coming home. I wasn’t sure why, but somehow I knew that it wouldn’t go away until I had a chance to see my old friend, to touch him, to reassure myself that he made it through his unfair incarceration unscathed.

To convince him that we belonged together.

To resume traveling together down the path I’d been stalled on for the seven years that he had been gone.

“Fine.” I let Taylor pry my fingers off the cold metal of the bars and lead me back to Corbin’s car, sliding in obediently when Mitch opened the door. “I guess all I can do is wait.”

~*~

There was more that I could do than just wait and hope that Otto got in touch.

I just couldn’t do it with my killjoy friends dead set on talking me out of it.

I knew they meant well, but they didn’t understand that I needed to be sure Otto was okay.

So, when I returned to the old iron gate after the moon rose, I went alone and on four legs.

The fence was a daunting sight to my human side, but my bear just took one look at it and hustled up and over without a moment’s hesitation.

He stopped for a minute on the other side of the gate, digging our claws into the soft soil and breathing in the deep aroma of the rich, fertile soil before ambling down the gravel drive that led to the house.

~*~

Otto

My parents were gone when I was released from prison, killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver two years into my sentence. A local management company had preserved the house while I was away, but the smaller, more personal tasks waited patiently for my return.

During one of those tasks, beginning to try and reclaim my mom’s rose garden from the overgrowth of weeds, the sound of voices from the driveway security gate caught my attention.

I wasn't quite sure what Dex and his friends were arguing about, but he was wrong about one thing, my intercom wasn’t broken.

Everything else in my fucking life was, but the intercom was fine.

Dex’s confident assurances that of course Otto wants to see me may have fallen on deaf ears with the people standing outside the gate, but they burrowed into my chest and made my heart stutter.

I did want to see Dex.

Badly.

You could even say desperately.

But commuted sentence or not, I’d still come home a convicted felon and that meant there was no place for me in decent company. Not socially, anyway. If Dex wouldn’t protect his own reputation by steering clear of me, I’d have to do it for him.

All of my resolve and good intentions could only go so far in protecting the reputation of an Omega who didn’t seem interested in protecting it himself.

Why would I say that? Point of evidence one was the smallish brown bear sauntering down my driveway in the moonlight later, completely oblivious of my presence.

Oblivious, at least, until the wind shifted and I saw Dex’s shiny black nose start wiggling overtime when he caught my scent.

The bear huffed and grunted excitedly, swinging his head back and forth until his brown eyes caught sight of me. He lumbered in my direction like an over-excited puppy, knocking me off my feet and rubbing his smaller body all over me, blending our scents together.

I should have knocked him off, pushed to my feet and taken a step back but I didn’t.

Instead, I allowed Dex to take his fill, only nudging him off me when he straddled my side and began nuzzling my neck.

When the gentle nudge I gave him didn’t dislodge him, I shoved my body weight up, realizing my error at once when my bear chuffed his delight at the intimate pressure of the Omega’s bulk against our quickly engorging member.

I’d be the last to claim I’d remained celibate during my time in prison, but you can be damned sure they separated the Alphas from everyone else inside.

It had been over seven years since I’d been exposed to Omega pheromones and they were creeping up my nostrils, flooding me with urges I wasn’t sure I could fight.

And Dex wasn’t holding back. He was purring and rubbing his plush red-gold fur against me.

The contact stimulated his scent glands to release more of his intoxicating pheromones, triggering the urge to claim that I’d been fighting since he first presented as Omega at sixteen.

Then, when Dex nipped at my neck, I lost my tenuous grip on my bear, unable to do anything but surrender to my nature and pin the Omega to the forest floor.

I slid deep inside his presented channel, barely even registering the slick that eased the way, hunching over and humping into Dex until my climax pounded through my veins.

I roared out in satisfaction when Dex’s slick heat clamped down on my burgeoning knot and began to throb, milking another climax from me as he whimpered, his tight hole pulsing greedily as we collapsed in a heap of sticky fur on the leaf-littered ground.

The cool night air was loud with the sound of our panting when I finally forced myself to roll off Dex, prodding him to be sure I didn't hurt him and rolling my eyes when he inched one eye open and then slammed it shut when he saw me watching him.

Rising to my feet, I chuffed at him, calling him to follow me back to the house. If I couldn’t avoid Dex, my next solution would be to try and make him see why he shouldn’t be seen with me. To explain that he needed to forget this had happened so we could go our separate ways.