Chapter 1 #3
A ripple of laughter moved through the team, tension bleeding off into the humid night.
Bear didn’t rise to the bait, but his jaw worked, eyes pinned to Bailee as Zorro steadied her.
The banter washed over him, familiar, grounding, but her earlier look still branded into him, burning in a place none of them could see.
“I don’t need your smug-ass comments,” Bear said suddenly, his voice low but edged like a blade, unable to keep the peace this time. His gaze cut to them, hard enough to freeze the air. “Shut the fuck up about Bailee. She’s not a topic of discussion.”
The silence that followed was sharp, the kind only Bear could pull off. Buck’s brows rose. Blitz let out a low whistle. Even D-Day eased back a fraction, smirk fading.
Bear’s jaw flexed, the heat of his own voice still vibrating in his chest. He hated the crack in the calm, hated that he’d lost the silence he carried like armor. But he didn’t regret the words. Not one.
Then, shaking his head, Buck said under his breath, “Well, damn. You a goner, son.”
Bear didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Buck had no idea how gone. His jaw worked once, locking the words where they belonged, inside. He turned his focus back to Bailee, shutting out everything else.
Thirty minutes later, the compound smelled of soap and sweat, steam rolling off the tiled shower bay.
Bear stepped out of the stall and reached for a towel, wrapping it around his waist. He wrung out his hair, the strands falling back, sticking to his jaw and brushing his shoulders.
Each heavy strand was history, power he’d given up when he cut it for his brother.
He would always remember that choice, the mourning it carried, the way it marked Thatcher’s sacrifice.
Now, grown long again, it carried both grief and strength, his brother’s and his own.
He stepped out into the corridor, body humming from the heat, ready to collapse into silence.
Bailee was there. Hovering.
Her eyes flicked over him, then held. “Are you all right?” They were smoke over ice, a blue that could chill, a gray that could haunt.
He lifted his brows. “Me? You’re the one who got shot and concussed. I’m fine. Never better.”
She nodded once, but her eyes were hollow, shadowed, and damn it to the Ancestors, Bailee was killing him by agonizing degrees, shattering him in ways he couldn’t protect himself.
Her presence pulled him off balance, not just the woman she was now—fierce, distant, avoiding his eyes as if Rio had burned too deep—but the memory of her hands pressed to his stomach, blood soaking her fingers, that raw look in her eyes when she thought she was losing him.
He wanted that touch again, not the panic of Rio, but the closeness, the feel of her fingers in his hair, the tremor of her breath in the hospital when her guard slipped.
Hunger gnawed at him, sharp and insistent, even now with this different kind of danger pressing in.
She was weight and warmth and memory all tangled together, fucking with his mind, scattering his calm like leaves in the wind.
He hated how uncomfortable she was with him now. He wasn’t sure if it was his intensity, or the way he kept his shit together in her presence…okay, he’d admit it…he held onto his composure…barely, but she turned as if to bolt.
He didn’t know what came over him. Instinct cut faster than thought. He reached out, caught her wrist, and tugged her back into the doorway. Water still dripped down his chest, his grip firm but gentle.
For a moment, something raw pressed at his chest, words that were too dangerous to say, even in his mind. We need to talk about Rio. He couldn’t do this anymore. The way you look at me, like I’m your last breath. He swallowed them back and let the wall slam down instead.
“You’re beat up, Bailee. Don’t waste energy on me.”
Her pupils flared, her mouth trembling for a second before her defenses locked into place. She twisted her arm free.
“I’m just concerned for a colleague,” she said coldly. “That’s it. Don’t read anything into it. We work together. That’s all. The only thing that will ever be between us.”
The words hit like a round to the chest. For a second, Bear couldn’t breathe. His grip on the towel tightened, damp fabric twisting in his fist, chest aching worse than any wound he’d ever taken in combat.
Then she stalked off down the hall, her stride sharp and certain, even if her shoulders carried the tremor of retreat.
He didn’t move. Didn’t follow. He just let the hollow of her absence fill the space she left behind.
The hand he’d used to touch her twitched, the palm burning like a brand, and he fisted it against the ache of her skin.
The words came out low, more to himself than anyone else.
“Whatever you think you want? She doesn’t.
” The work was all that existed in her mind.
He wouldn’t burden her with his needs, with his words, with his fucking hunger.
Bailee’s boots struck too sharply against the floor, each step an attempt to drown out the chaos in her head. Stupid. Ancestors help her, she was so stupid. She should have gone straight to her bunk, pulled the thin blanket over her head, and shut him out the way she shut out everyone.
But noooo. She had hovered like some concerned, lovesick fool, waiting for him.
Waiting for what? For Dakota Locklear to demand clarity from her, to give her some kind of anchor in this storm of feelings she couldn’t control.
That’s when the doubt crept in, insidious and sharp.
Maybe she had misread him. Maybe all those glances, all that heat, were nothing more than her own foolish projections.
The shadow that haunted her, the one that kept her from speaking honestly, was the simplest and cruelest truth. A man like Bear would never choose a woman like her. Not when her ancestors hadn’t.
She hadn’t been chosen as her tribe’s medicine woman, the role that had been whispered over her since childhood, the path meant for women who could hear the ancestors, who carried healing in their bones and vision in their breath.
She had waited for the signs, the dreams, the voices on the wind.
Her birthright through generations of Thunderhawk women.
Nothing had come. Only silence. Only the ache of knowing she wasn’t worthy of the calling.
She’d run from everything, turned her back on her grandmother, her tribe, her heritage, her home. She was still running, and she had no idea how to stop or how to claim a man that moved her in ways she had no words for, no thoughts or actions, just shaky, uneven, treacherous ground.
So, what chance did she stand with him? Bear, who moved with the quiet certainty of a man rooted in tradition and honored by it.
Bear, whose faith ran deep and clean through every breath he took.
If he ever saw the truth, saw the fraud she believed herself to be, his rejection would carve her open, and her shame would crush her.
Now that she was falling for him, God, falling so hard she could barely breathe, the heartache would be devastating.
Why take the chance with so much of her heart at stake?
All that pain and doubt didn’t stop her reaction to him.
Heat still scorched her skin, the steam of the shower bay clinging to him when he’d stepped into the hall.
Water slicked down his chest, towel hung too tantalizingly low on his hips.
Her nipples tightened against the damp cotton of her bra, ridiculous, unwanted, and she shoved the sensation down with the rest. Damn, that scent, soap, heat, and the faint wildness that was all Bear, had wrapped around her when he tugged her back.
She could still feel his hand circling her wrist, steady, unyielding.
Her heart had nearly broken through her ribs in that doorway, remembering Rio, the blood pouring out of him, her hands useless and shaking as she tried to keep him tethered to the world. She had almost lost him then. And tonight. Twice in one lifetime was already too much.
Except he wasn’t hers to lose. Never had been. That was the problem. He tied her in knots she had no business unraveling.
Her throat burned. She hated that she noticed how he smelled, how he was put together, how he moved, spoke, and just took up space. She should have known better. She always should have known better.
She quickened her stride, shoulders locked against the ache in her chest. Professional. Cold. That was who she was. That was all she could be.
Then he’d shut her down with that quiet, maddening steadiness.
Don’t waste energy on me.
Damn, what if she didn’t want to save her energy? What if she wanted to spend it all on him, burn every last spark into his skin?
The thought froze her mid-stride. She stopped, hand braced against the cool wall, her breath shaky.
He made her weak, and she hated it. Hated and loved it. Weak in a way that sharpened everything else, her senses, her heart, even the ache low in her body. Weak in a way that made life more vivid.
It would be stupid. Reckless. Maybe even career suicide to entertain the thought of touching that man.
Her mouth went dry. She licked her lips, and her mind betrayed her, his mouth on hers, his heat pressed close, the taste of soap and sweat and something darker she’d never admit she craved.
Kissing him.
The hallway spun with the weight of it. She pushed off the wall and forced herself forward, stride sharp, eyes fixed anywhere but behind her. Better to keep walking. Better to stay in control.