Chapter 8
Tonya knew she was in trouble. It wasn’t just that she felt beaten to hell and back.
She did, but in terms of grizzly fights, this one had been relatively average in terms of physical damage.
Scrapes and bruises galore, but nothing life threatening.
The presidential suite was trashed, but that’s what happened when bears fought indoors.
No, her problem was mental, and it left her so shaken she had to call in reinforcements.
Not Carl because she didn’t want her alpha anywhere near his brother until she could get Alan in a better mental place.
That left Mark, who was a newly bonded feral and a computer genius.
She needed to talk to him about both of these things, so as soon as the local cops let her grab her phone, she’d begged Mark to come to her aid.
He’d arrived fifteen minutes ago, but they had yet to be alone so they could talk. The local PD was too interested in grilling her about events. And she’d gotten really tired of repeating the same story.
She and her boyfriend had a fight. She’d pay for the damage to the room.
No, she wasn’t attacked by a monster. Had the security guard been drinking to suggest that?
No, she didn’t want to press charges even though her clothes were shredded and there was thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to the suite.
And No, no, no! to the idea that she needed battered woman’s counseling, though part of her wondered if talking to a shrink might not be a bad idea.
But it would have to be a shifter psychologist, and those were in short supply.
Best she just bide her time until she could confide in Mark.
She got the opportunity twenty minutes later when the cops finally allowed her to rest in a separate hotel room.
They were still processing the crime scene for clues.
Apparently there was a lot of unusual fur to collect.
Meanwhile, she could expect them to follow up with her boss.
’Cause she really wanted this disaster all over her sheriff’s department—not.
“So that’s a new look for you,” Mark said by way of greeting.
She was wearing whatever fit from the gift shop since her uniform was shredded. That meant she now sported a parrot tee and ass-hugging yoga pants. At least the spandex wouldn’t hurt as much if she shifted, not that she could do that again for another day.
“You look like shit,” Mark added.
“And you look like...” Her voice trailed away as she studied him. He’d lost the pinched look between his eyes and the animalistic way he moved. He was still a big guy, but there was something decidedly less bear about him.
“Handsome? Virile? A god among men?”
“Happy,” she finally said. “The bond with Julie is holding?”
He grinned. “Stronger by the second.”
Which meant he was no longer in danger of going full grizzly full time. For a man who’d been 90 percent feral a couple weeks ago, that was a miracle of epic proportions. And maybe it was just the answer she needed.
“Great,” she said. “So tell me how it happened. Exactly.”
He tilted his head, studying her in a very bearlike fashion. His nostrils flared, his shoulders hunched, and his ears seemed to curl toward her, even though he looked fully human. But his gaze—always the most human thing about him—seemed to study her face in minute detail.
“You know this story,” he said slowly. “Julie sort of shifted and we locked in on each other. Then...” He gestured vaguely to the bed. “Grizzly tumbling around and done.”
“But Julie’s not a shifter. She was made into one by that serum. Like Alan.”
“Yes.” He dropped down onto the bed, making the mattress sag alarmingly. “So what happened?”
Too exhausting to explain in detail, so she gestured to Alan’s laptop.
She’d managed to keep it hidden from the cops beneath the pile of her shredded clothes.
Then she’d secreted it in here. So she pointed at it now and said the only thing she could.
“That’s Alan’s laptop. I need you to figure out what he’s doing.
I’m going to take a shower.” She had to get the blood off.
Shifter healing had already closed her wounds, but the smears remained.
“No,” Mark said as he grabbed her wrist. “You’re going to explain what’s going on.”
Fine. It’s why she’d called him, right? “Alan’s crazy, and I bonded with him.” Short and sweet. And terrifying.
“Um, no you didn’t. No offense, Tonya, but you don’t look like a bonded woman.”
She snorted. “And what does a bonded woman look like?”
“Happy. Connected. You know, that weird glow women get.”
“I think you’re talking about pregnancy.
” She’d meant her words to be sarcastic banter, but an ache accompanied her words.
Normally, she could ignore it, but damn it, she was feeling especially vulnerable right then, and she wasn’t in a mental place to easily suppress her secret compulsion to become a mom.
“That, too.” His expression remained steady. Trust Mark to completely ignore the niceties of social interaction. Sarcastic banter that said loudly, Don’t go there, flew right by him. “Tonya, why do you think you’ve bonded with Alan?”
She paced to the window to stare outside. Alan was out there somewhere. She ought to be looking for him. But she hadn’t a clue where he was, and, frankly, she hadn’t the strength right then for another battle.
“Tonya?”
“We were in the hot tub. Upstairs.”
She could see his raised eyebrows in his reflection on the window. But, thankfully, he didn’t ask questions.
“We were...um...”
“Playing hide the water dragon? A little Marco poke me?”
She shot him a glare that he completely ignored. Good thing because honestly, his irreverent tone was helping. “Sort of. I said no, but my grizzly...” Her face heated at the memory. So did other parts of her, which was so not appropriate at the moment.
“Your bear went belly up, huh? Begged him to rub your tummy?”
“God, Mark, you do know I carry a gun.”
“That’s not bonding, Tonya. That’s horny.”
She shook her head. “It was more than that. She’s locked in on him. As a mate.”
He studied her again. Nostrils, shoulders, ears. But in the end, he sighed. “She’s locked in,” he said softly. “He’s not.”
Tonya turned. “What?”
“I did the same thing with Julie. I picked her long before she returned the favor. And it’s not bonding—not like you think—until both sides say yes.”
Shit. “He’s not saying yes, Mark. More like, ‘Fuck you. Get the hell out of my life.’”
“Then you haven’t bonded with him.”
She leaned against the window, feeling the cold seep into her overheated skin. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or upset. “He’s important to me,” she stressed. “Way more than before. Like...”
“Like a mate. I know. But it’s still one-sided.” He leaned forward onto his knees. “Just how far gone is Alan?”
She didn’t want to go back there. She didn’t want to relive the violent encounter with the man her grizzly had picked as a mate. But then Mark touched her arm. A slight brush that had her jolting painfully out of her memories.
“How bad, Tonya?”
“He tried to kill me. He was fully shifted into...” She swallowed. “That wrong-smelling thing. And he...” Her gaze went back out the window. “It tried to kill me.”
“Kill you? Or mount you? Trust me, there’s a very fine line. If he’s out of control—”
“Definitely.”
“Then maybe it was lust.”
It hadn’t felt like lust, but then she hadn’t exactly gone in with that mind-set.
She knew firsthand from her adolescence that shifted sex could be violent.
She and her boyfriend had gone at it as grizzlies once and had completely trashed her bedroom.
“He’s different, Mark.” She didn’t want to say it out loud, but the word reverberated in her body. Monster.
She heard Mark swallow. He knew what she was saying. He’d fought those wrong things himself. “Carl said he was getting better. In the hospital, he was better.”
“He was stable. And then he left.”
“And now he’s unstable?”
“I don’t know.” It was a lie. She very much feared she did know and that there was no hope left for the Alan she remembered. “We have to find him.”
“Carl and I have to find him. You’re in no shape to do anything right now.”
“It has to be me,” she said. Her voice was firm, but inside she wavered.
He’d frightened her tonight. She was the biggest, baddest shifter cop she knew.
Capable of taking down anything. Except tonight, she’d crumpled in every way possible.
She’d allowed Alan to seduce her in the hot tub.
She’d fought his monster in the suite and lost. What if no one could take him down? What if there was no saving her mate?
Fear cut at her until her knees went weak. She half stumbled, half fell into the desk chair. And all the while, Mark just watched her, his expression steady and sad. So infinitely sad, probably because he’d found his happiness while hers was doomed.
Eventually he spoke, helping her to focus on the practicalities. “Do you know where he ran to?”
She shook her head. “Out. Away. Security guard was shooting at him.”
“So he’s feral, wounded, and on the run. Not good.”
“He’s not feral,” she corrected. No, he was infinitely worse than feral.
He grimaced. “We have to bring Carl in on this.”
“No.” This time her voice and her insides were fully in accord. “Alan’s his brother. He can’t think clearly about this.”
“And you can? Your grizzly picked him as your mate.”
“I know! But I’m better at, you know, separating my emotions from the situation.” That was something she and Mark had in common. They faced facts, no matter how grim. No matter how much they were dying inside.
Mark studied her face again, his gaze seeming to trace every part of her expression. “You really think Alan is that far gone?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t want to believe that there was no man left beneath the monster. “Wasn’t there a serum or something? To suppress the monster?”
He nodded. “I brought a dose with me.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“We’re making it as fast as we can, but there are no guarantees. And we’ve never tried it on someone like Alan.”
“But Julie’s stable. She’s like him.”
She could feel Mark bristle at the suggestion. It was a measure of how much better he was that he kept his reaction under control. “She only got two shots of whatever that shit was that changed them. We studied the charts. Alan got more than a dozen.”
She flinched. She’d guessed as much, but to hear it spoken aloud as fact hurt. “They’re working on a cure. They just haven’t had enough time. If we can catch him and contain him—”
“Then we can help him.” Mark turned his attention to the laptop. “What’s he trying to do?”
“You tell me. You’re the computer genius.”
He nodded and popped open the lid. “Go take your shower. I should have an answer by the time you’re done.”
She nodded and headed for the bathroom. She trusted Mark to find whatever secrets Alan was keeping in his computer.
But even if he managed to ferret out every single digital imprint the man had ever left, it wasn’t going solve the basic problem.
Mark would figure out what Alan’s plans were.
Tonya had to figure out how she was going to kill the monster and leave the man.