Chapter 3
DAWN
Iwas used to waking up with the searing pain in my stomach, so when I opened my eyes and catapulted back to consciousness, I gasped, but not in pain, in relief. For the first time in a week, I felt nothing.
It was glorious.
I looked around the room I was lying in. The walls were all a sterile white, and it was definitely some kind of hospital room. There was a glass sliding door in front of me, and a beeping monitor on a tall stand beside me. To my left was a large black recliner, and in the recliner was a bear.
Well, a man, but a man I knew was a bear.
I’d made it. The last twenty-four hours had been more of a fever dream than anything else as blood poisoning made me delirious. I’d made it over the border between Idaho and Montana, but it was just fog after that.
I watched the resting face of Vance, Alpha of the Cold River Sleuth, as he slept, and he was just as handsome as I remembered.
Actually, maybe even more so. He’d aged, not just in years, but in the fine lines across his face.
His body had filled out even more, though I always remembered him being huge when I met him as a kid, probably because I was even tinier than I am now.
I just took him in. His light blond hair fell across his forehead like he was a Hallmark card. I felt like I knew him, almost. In reality, I’d met him for five minutes in the company of my former Alpha.
On cue, his eyes snapped open, and I was snared in the warm chocolate depths. “You’re awake.”
I tried to smile, but it didn’t come naturally anymore. “So are you.”
He uncurled himself from the recliner, and he just kept going up and up. I was wrong. He wasn’t large, he was ginormous. A part of me shrunk back in the pillows, and I gritted my teeth.
I didn’t want to show weakness, but a lifetime habit was hard to break.
My response wasn’t lost on the Alpha bear. He didn’t sit back down, but he didn’t come any closer either.
“Who did this to you, Dawn?”
Hearing my name spilling from his lips was my every teenage fantasy come to life. “It doesn’t matter now. That’s not why I’m here.”
“I think it fucking matters. Talbot and Franklin think it matters. You were basically gutted, Dawn. How you even made it here…”
I shrugged. “Once upon a time, you sent me a plane ticket. You said it didn’t matter when I used it, so I decided to take you up on your offer.”
I could see him straining to move closer, and his expression was hard to read. I was an Omega. We elicited wild responses from Alphas. It was our job in life, according to… my past.
I could see his bear in the depths of his eyes, and I wanted to shrink away. To my Omega, Alphas meant pain.
The woman knew that wasn’t true for everyone. She also knew that if there was ever an Alpha we could trust, it was this one.
“Do what you need to do, Alpha,” I whispered softly.
Vance shook his head. “I’m in control, not the bear, and we both respect your boundaries.
” He lowered his head and eyes in supplication.
“Omega.” His words were gruffer than normal, more bear than man for a moment.
Someone might see the expansion of the Alpha bear’s presence through the room as a direct contradiction to Vance’s earlier statement that he was in control of the bear, but I knew that wasn’t true.
It was a flex. He was in control of the bear, and he could let him out and put him away as needed.
No, that made it seem like one side had to have dominance. What he was really proving was that the man and the bear were one person who operated symbiotically. That was extremely impressive, especially in an Alpha who was relatively young in years.
“It would ease us both,” I murmured.
He stepped toward me, his body soft and nonthreatening. He put his hand on my arm first, and I forced myself to stay relaxed. He huffed out a deep breath, and I felt my Omega rise to meet his needs. I calmed his beast, and in turn, I felt safe for the first time ever.
That wasn’t normally what happened when Alphas laid their hands on me, but usually, it wasn’t quite as gentle either.
Something crackled, and I realized Vance had a walkie-talkie on his belt. “Vance, Josie and the Pussy Cats are here, and they want to talk to you. Over.”
“Social visit? Over.”
There was a muffled sound, then the sound of a scuffle.
“Don’t touch my walkie—” Static.
“Tell Winnie the Pooh that if we were here socially, we would have knocked on the front door,” came a low growl.
“You didn’t say over.” More static.
Vance pinched his nose. “I better go deal with this before the lion Alpha turns Franklin into a nice cloak.”
My eyes went huge. “Lions?” Fear pounded in my veins. I’d never met a lion shifter. They were an antisocial bunch with some screwed up politics, and were infamous for their bloody, take-no-prisoner coups. No one was safe, not even children.
Vance leaned down, placing his arms on either side of my body and pressing his chest into mine like a giant, hot weighted blanket.
Oh, this was a bear hug. That was why it felt so nice. I’d never hugged anyone but the pups, and it was different hugging someone who could encompass your entire body. I lifted an arm and curled my hand around his back, pressing my fingertips into the hard muscles over his ribs.
Had I ever felt this safe?
“Nothing will hurt you ever again, Dawn. I will tear anything that tries limb from limb with my claws and teeth,” he murmured softly beside my ear, then he uncurled his body and stood to his full height.
“I have to go. I’ll send Talbot down to sit with you.
” He brushed my hair out of my face. “You should rest more. You need to heal.”
His words had my eyelids slowly drooping. I was out again before the gentle whoosh of the infirmary door closing even finished.
“It’s true, Bohdie. My mom said Franklin found her with her guts hanging in the snow.”
“There’s no way your mom said that, Shoo-Shoo.”
There was a distinctly annoyed huff. “Fine. She said it looked like someone had given her a field ‘rectomy.”
“Cubs!”
The sound of that deep growl snapped my eyes open, my whole body tensing.
I looked up at the faces of a group of kids, who couldn’t be older than six.
A pair of deep gold eyes shone in the sea of chocolate brown and green gazes.
That one was definitely a lion cub, and if my Omega was right, an Alpha one at that.
He looked between me and the door. “Whoops. Sorry. We thought you were, like, asleep-asleep.”
“Like in the movies,” a little girl said.
They looked abashed and wary as someone else moved into the room, and I resisted the urge to gather them to me and protect them from the dominant shifter whose presence filled the small space.
I darted my gaze toward the door, then I relaxed, because I knew this bear, even if he’d quadrupled in size since the last time I’d seen him.
“Talbot.”
I did what I hadn’t let myself do in front of Vance. I cried.