2. Bjorn
Bjorn
Oh god. Oh god, he was here! Bjorn had been sitting in bear form, snacking on stream-sourced fish, one minute, and the next he was standing bare-assed as a human, facing who had to be his fated mate.
That was the only thing besides the alpha of his den that could have compelled an involuntary shift, and he was pretty sure Alpha Escalus was nowhere around here.
So he was…well, “shocked” wasn’t a strong enough word.
He’d started to believe, as he aged through his thirties, that he just wouldn’t meet his mate.
That fate just hadn’t created one for him, for whatever reason.
And then he’d arrived at this vacation rental, decided to do some stream fishing to blow off steam before he went inside, and now his fucking mate was standing there, staring at him.
Well, maybe at his dick? Reflexively, he dropped a hand to cover his junk.
Shifters weren’t a modest people, as a rule, but he wasn’t used to being looked at quite like that.
“Um, hi,” he tried to say, only to realize that he still had a trout in his mouth. Oh god, that was embarrassing. He spat out the offending fish and tried again: “Um, hi.”
The man’s blue eyes were huge in his face as they roamed from Bjorn’s groin to his face, past his shoulder, and then back to his face.
His mate was stocky, of above-average height.
His black hair was cut short, but had grown out just enough that Bjorn could tell it would be curly if left to its own devices.
“Sorry for the shift. I’m -” he started to introduce himself.
Before he could get the name out, though, the man’s gaze sharpened and he snapped out, “Nope.”
Bjorn blinked. “What?”
“Nope. I said ‘nope’,” the man repeated.
“I am not doing this. I’m goddamn sick of normal people hulking out randomly just because they met their fuckin’ mate or some shit.
At least once a week, someone wrecks my bar and then is all like ‘Well I met my mate, and I couldn’t stop the shift’ and I’m like ‘Well maybe you should think about stuff like that ahead of time when you shift into a goddamn motherfucking rhino.’” He paused, catching his breath after that rant. “So no. No, we are not doing this.”
Bjorn could only stare at him. That was a lot of information, and little of it sounded good. “What exactly is ‘this’?” Bjorn finally managed to get out. “What aren’t we doing?” And if it came out sounding a little plaintive, well excuse the fuck out of him.
“This!” He moved his finger back and forth between them. “You shifted because you think we’re mates, right? And I’m not doing the mates thing. That’s chaos, and I don’t do chaos.” He paused. “Don’t look at me like that!”
“Like what?” Like he was trying not to cry because his mate was standing there rejecting him? Because he wasn’t sure he could look any better even if he tried.
The man groaned and wiped a hand down his face. “The fucking…puppy dog eyes. Don’t!”
“I can’t help it!” Bjorn exclaimed, trying to surreptitiously wipe under his lashes before the tears could escape.
“I’m not trying to look at you any which way, it’s just happening!
Do you…” He bit his lip. “Do you really not want me? I mean, you don’t even know me.
How could you know you don’t want me?” There, that was reasonable, right?
“I don’t need someone who can’t control their shifts destroying my shit.
I don’t know the first thing about you. You could be a criminal or a serial killer, and I’m just supposed to be like ‘Oh the invisible sky fairies matched us together, I will love you forevermore, let’s commingle our lives and belongings?
” By the end, the man was waving his hands, gesticulating wildly. “Who does that?”
Well, shifters did. But clearly Bjorn’s mate was not a shifter.
Also clearly, he needed better bouncers at his bar if this was the stuff he was worrying about.
But Bjorn didn’t think saying that would help.
“So what you’re saying is you need time to get to know me?
” he summarized, determinedly hanging onto the good news.
“What? No!” He flapped a hand at Bjorn. “We’re not doing this, we’re not a thing, and I don’t want to get to know you. Now get the fuck off my property.”
That had Bjorn blinking again. His property? “Oh, you own the cabin?” he asked. That was actually convenient. It would give Bjorn a reason to talk to him again!
“No, I’m just renting it for a couple weeks, but for that time, it’s my property, and I want you off it.”
“Uh…” Bjorn pointed behind him. “That cabin? Right there?”
He snorted. “Uh, yeah. The only one within miles.”
Bjorn winced and bent down to pull his phone out of the pants he’d folded neatly before he shifted.
He navigated through a few emails until finding the right one.
“And this is 143 Old Post Road, right?” He was pretty sure it was, as his GPS had advised him when he’d parked that that was the address he’d arrived at.
His eyes narrowed. “How the fuck do you know that? Have you been following me?”
This guy was determined to think the worst, Bjorn would give him that. Bjorn openly rolled his eyes. “If I’d been following you, I wouldn’t have been so gobsmacked when you walked into the clearing. I rented this cabin. I have the rental agreement right here.” He flashed the phone screen at him.
“The fuck you did,” the man snapped. “I booked this place three months ago!” He whipped his phone out of his pocket, presumably to try to find his own rental agreement.
“Well,” Bjorn countered, “I booked it two nights ago, and it was listed as available, and they took my money. So it seems to me that I’ve got as much claim to it as you.
” Debating who got custody of a vacation rental wasn’t quite how he’d ever envisioned introducing himself to his fated mate, but he’d take any excuse to keep him talking.
“Jesus fuck,” growled the man, studying his own phone and apparently confirming that he wasn’t at the wrong cabin, either. “They double-booked the damn place?”
“And,” Bjorn added cautiously, not sure if what he was about to add would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, “I don’t know about you, but I drove six hours to get here, so I can’t really turn around and go right back home, at least not without a good night’s sleep first.”
The man dragged a hand through his shaggy hair despairingly. “Fuck,” he muttered again. And then, more determinedly, “Well, I’m not leaving. I rented it first. Go find a hotel.”
Bjorn blinked at him. “We’re…in the middle of the wilderness. There are no hotels for at least half an hour around,” he added, quite reasonably, he thought. “Can’t we just…share the cabin for the night? I’m sure the owner can sort this out in the meantime if we contact them.”
The man scowled down at his phone. “I’m messaging them now. And no, we can’t share the cabin; there’s only the one bed.”
That perked Bjorn right up. Only one bed? That was one of his favorite book tropes, and he was going to get to live it out? With his very own fated mate? Yessss! “I’m a good bedmate,” he promised. “Or at least, no one’s ever complained before. I don’t think I snore or anything.”
A tired hand rose to scrub at the man’s face, but he said nothing.
Bjorn was getting pretty tired of thinking of him as the man; shouldn’t he know his mate’s name by now? “What’s your name?” he blurted.
The man studied him critically for a second. “If I tell you, are you going to stalk me and demand I mate with you?”
Bjorn was aghast. “I would never force someone, to mate or to mate,” he gasped out.
Maybe the man hadn’t been joking earlier when he asked if Bjorn was a serial killer, if that’s what he was thinking now.
“I just want to know your name so I can stop thinking of you as ‘the man I’m talking to’ and start thinking of you by who you actually are.
” He deliberately softened his eyes a little, trying to look innocent instead of hungry.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I told you to stop looking at me like that,” the man said. “My name is Dennis, and that’s all I’m telling you.”
Bjorn would take it. “I’m Bjorn Karlsson,” he replied eagerly. “I’m thirty-eight, and I’m a Pisces. Um, what else…”
The man - Dennis! - held up a forestalling hand. “That’s plenty of information. I don’t need to know your life story to tell you again we’re not sharing the cabin.”
Bjorn considered that for a second. For one thing, he really didn’t think there were any hotels nearby.
For another, the hell if he was going to walk away from his mate now that he’d finally found him - especially not even knowing his mate’s full name, because without that how would he find him again?
He thought about doing puppy dog eyes and pleading some more, but that didn’t seem to be working to do much other than piss Dennis off, so he decided to try another strategy.
“Look, Dennis, let me lay this out for you: we both rented and paid for this cabin. As far as I’m concerned, I have every bit as much right to stay here as you do right now.
So unless you want to be the one to go find a hotel, your only option, as I see it, is to let me inside.
” He tried for a hard look, but when the man didn’t quail, he figured he hadn’t quite managed it.
Bjorn was six and a half feet tall, to Dennis’s perhaps six feet, and the muscle on his nude body was quite visible.
He sort of naturally appeared menacing even when he didn’t mean to, and he spent an inordinate amount of effort day-to-day trying to set people at ease, so he just wasn’t practiced at deliberately making his facial expressions communicate anything like intimidating.
Dennis scowled at him. Now there was someone who did intimidating with ease, Bjorn mused.
Then Dennis, still scowling, checked his phone again, and his frown somehow became even deeper.
“Fucking owner’s not answering.” He looked at Bjorn.
Yup, still scowling. “I expect the owner will sort this out when they get back to us. Until then…” He sighed.
“I guess come in; you can at least hang out on the couch.”
Victory! Bjorn suppressed the urge to do a fist pump. He was in, and now that he was in, he could press his advantage. Just a little!