Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
Siren was driving the van, dressed in her Sarah Phillips costume. It had been an hour and both of them had been silent since leaving.
“Back in the forest when Garrett came out with his rifle, your bear almost came out,” she said matter-of-factly.
Reed stared at the road ahead. He’d hoped she hadn’t noticed.
“I know. I barely held it in.”
She kept her eyes forward, hand steady on the wheel. “That can’t happen again. It could get us both killed.”
“I know,” he said.
“We’re going to train your nervous system to handle stress better.”
“When?”
“I’m going to find us a place to camp where we can work on it this afternoon before heading to Nebraska.”
“What kind of training?”
“Controlled stress exposure. We’ll teach your body that a threat doesn’t mean you have to shift.”
He was quiet for a moment, thinking about the night before. The things she’d done to him had triggered something deep inside him. He trusted her. Wanted to please her. If anyone could help him learn to control himself, it was Siren.
Siren found them a camping spot deep in the national forest and parked the van near a clearing. There hadn’t been any sign of other people for miles. The clearing was fifty feet across and ringed by pines and carpeted by dry grass. Reed stood at the center of the clearing with Siren facing him.
“This isn’t about fighting,” she said. “You’re a grizzly. Your bear knows how to fight instinctively. This is about control. About choosing when to shift instead of letting your bear choose for you.”
“How do we start?” he asked.
She stepped closer and the scent of her enveloped him. “You stay human. No matter what I do.”
He nodded.
She slapped him across the face. Hard.
The crack echoed through the clearing. His head snapped sideways, heat blooming across his cheek. His bear surged up instantly, snarling, clawing inside his chest.
Reed clenched his jaw and breathed through his nose. The bear pushed harder, but he held it down.
“Good,” Siren said, nodding. She circled behind him. “You had the instinct to shift, but you didn’t.”
“Yeah.” His voice came out rough.
“That’s your nervous system trying to protect you. It thinks you’re in danger. It wants to give you claws and teeth and eight hundred pounds of muscle.” She came back around to face him again. “Your job is to convince it that you don’t need those things.”
She hit him again. Harder this time. With a closed fist to his shoulder that spun him sideways.
His bear roared. Reed felt his hand start to change, bones aching, claws pushing at his fingertips. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced it back.
“You’re holding.” Her voice was clinical. “Just barely. I saw your hand start to shift.”
He opened his eyes and looked down. His fingers were human, but the knuckles were swollen, red like the claws had been right there under the skin.
“What now?”
“Now I make it harder.”
She shoved him and he stumbled back before catching himself. She shoved him again, following, not letting him get his balance.
“You’re soft,” she said. “You know that? You’re a liability. Every second I spend protecting you is a second I can’t spend on this mission.”
She swept his legs, and he hit the ground hard, the impact jarring through his spine.
“If you’d shifted during the ambush with any control, you could have helped. Instead, you panicked like a child. You lost control, and I had to handle six men while you ran around in circles.”
She stood over him. Her face cold and empty.
“You’re not a warrior, Reed. You’re not even useful. You’re just a witness I need to babysit.”
He knew what she was doing. Trying to provoke him. But knowing that didn’t stop the shame from flooding through him. It didn’t stop the anger.
His bear was howling now. Demanding release. His skin prickled with the shift trying to break through.
“Stay human,” Siren commanded.
“I’m trying.”
“Do not shift.” She bit out the words. She kicked him in the ribs. Not full force, but hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. He curled around the pain, gasping.
“Get up.”
He got up, his hands shaking. His vision was starting to blur at the edges, the world taking on a strange double quality that meant his bear sight was bleeding through.
“Good,” Siren said, stepping back. “Are you hurt?” she asked, inspecting him. She gently cupped his face and looked into his eyes.
“I’m okay. I know what you’re doing.”
Reed wiped sweat from his face, his whole body tingling. It felt like his skin was a size too small.
“Are you okay to keep going? I kicked you pretty hard.”
He could hear the tenderness in her voice. Hear that she was about to give up on him. And he wasn’t going to let her.
“Let’s go again.”
Siren took a deep breath and let it out, inspecting him carefully.
“Okay. Now we find out what really scares you.”
She started to undress and Reed blinked at her in shock. “What . . .”
She pulled her shirt over her head and kicked off her shoes, then stripped out of her pants. In the time it took him to process what was happening, she was naked.
Her body rippled, bones cracking and reforming. Fur sprouted across her skin, dark as night. Her face elongated and her teeth lengthened into fangs. In seconds, his dark angel was gone. In her place stood a massive wolf.
He’d never seen her wolf before. He’d known she was a wolf intellectually, but knowing wasn’t the same as seeing.
She was bigger than a natural wolf, her eyes as sharp blue as in her human form. Everything about her was pure predator.
She lowered her head, hackles up, and growled.
The sound reached into Reed’s chest and grabbed something primal. Something that remembered being four years old, pinned under a massive dog, its teeth sinking into his arm. Helpless and screaming.
His bear didn’t ask permission.
The shift ripped through him like an explosion. One second he was human, the next he was a grizzly, muscle and fury, roaring at the wolf that threatened him.
The wolf didn’t run. But she should have. Everything in Reed’s bear brain said she should run. He was bigger. Stronger. He would tear her apart.
She growled again and took a step toward him.
His bear charged.
The wolf darted left, impossibly fast. Reed’s massive paw swiped through empty air. He spun, looking for her, and she was behind him somehow, snapping at his flank.
He roared and lunged. She dodged. He swiped again and missed again.
Some distant part of him knew this was wrong. Knew he was trying to kill his mate. But the bear didn’t care. The bear only knew threat. Only knew fear. Only knew the need to destroy before being destroyed.
The wolf stopped moving. She stood in front of him ten feet away and shifted. Then there was Siren. Naked, hands raised. Completely calm.
“Reed, stop. I need you to shift back now.”
His bear snarled. The predator was gone but the rage wasn’t. He took a step toward her, claws digging into the earth.
“Look at me. I need you to shift back right now.”
Her voice cut through the red haze. Not the words. The commanding sound. Something in the frequency of it reached the human part of him that was buried under all the fur and fury. Memories of the night before washed through his mind. The smell of her body. The taste of her sex.
He didn’t want to come back. Coming back meant being small. Vulnerable. Afraid.
“Reed.” She took a step toward him, then another. She was close enough that he could smell her naked body. Close enough to kill.
“Come back to me.”
She put her hand on his muzzle. Her palm was warm. Her scent filled his nose, cutting through the animal smell, bringing him back to himself.
The fear resisted. Fought. Didn’t want to let go. But her hand was on his face, and her voice was in his ears. Slowly he started to shift back. And it hurt when his bones ground against each other. His muscles screamed. The world spun and blurred and reformed around him.
When it was over, he was on his hands and knees in the grass, naked and gasping.
“Siren. I almost killed you,” he managed.
She knelt beside him, cupping his face, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“No, you didn’t. You couldn’t have. I’m much faster than you.”
“I tried. I was trying to…”
“This is exactly what we were trying to do. Your bear thought it was in danger, so it attacked. And now you’re back. Now we start again.”
He looked up into her steady blue eyes, feeling her strength and calm enveloping him with safety.
“Let’s go again.”
The second time was worse. Siren didn’t bother with slapping or insults. She just shifted and circled him in her wolf form. He stood there naked and trembling as her growl was a constant low rumble that vibrated through his flesh.
Reed’s bear was already pushing, already fighting to get out. He could feel his bones aching to change, his skin crawling with the need to shift. She had told him to stay human. As if he could decide.
The wolf snapped at his leg, inches away, and his bear exploded out. This time the shift was faster, like his body was already primed. In one breath he was human, the next a grizzly. The wolf was already moving away, dancing out of range.
He chased her, unable to resist it. The bear wanted blood. But she led him in circles around the clearing. Every time he got close, she darted away. And then she shifted, her commanding, steady voice pulling him back to himself.
The third time he lasted longer. The wolf circled, growling and snapping. The bear raged inside him, slamming against his ribs, demanding release. He breathed through it, focused on Siren’s blue eyes in the wolf’s face. He reminded himself that this was his mate. That she wasn’t going to hurt him.
But then she lunged at him, teeth bared, and the bear tore free.
The shift hurt worse this time. His body was getting tired and the transformations were taking a toll. When he came back, he could barely stand.
She let him rest, drink water, and eat something, covering his shoulders in a blanket while she put on a robe.
After he had rested, they went again. He lasted for ten minutes before his hands shifted into claws after she’d lunged at him.
He caught it before it took him over and forced himself back into his human form.
Siren shifted. The wolf emerged, dark and beautiful and terrifying. She lowered her head and growled, the sound rolling through the clearing like thunder.
Reed’s bear surged.
He breathed. The wolf circled him. Her claws clicked on a patch of exposed rock. Her hackles were raised, her lips pulled back to show her teeth.
The bear screamed inside him. Demanded release. He breathed through it, holding back the shift. The wolf snapped at his hip, and he flinched but didn’t shift.
She circled closer. Her growl deepened. She was right there, close enough to touch, and his bear was going insane, howling for him to shift, to fight, to protect himself.
He thought about Siren. About her hands on his body. The commanding sound of her voice pulling him back, telling him what she wanted. The look on her face when she came.
He thought about being worthy of her. Strong enough to stand beside her instead of behind her.
The wolf lunged.
He didn’t shift. The bear roared and thrashed and fought, but he held it back. He felt it pushing at his skin, felt his bones aching to change, and he held it. Held it. Held it.
The wolf stopped. She sat back on her haunches, her tongue lolling out.
Then she shifted back. Siren stood before him, naked and breathing hard. And she was smiling like he’d never seen before.
“You did well,” she said, sauntering toward him.
Reed looked at his hands. They were human. They were trembling, but human.
“I held it.”
“That’s real progress,” she said, pulling on her clothes. “Your nervous system’s threshold for fear is much higher.”
He sank to his knees in the grass from sheer exhaustion.
“Are we done?”
She walked toward him and knelt beside him, stroking his back.
“You can’t take any more today. I shouldn’t have pushed you this far.”
“If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have made this much progress.”
“Probably not. You’re much stronger than you look, bright eyes,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You still have issues with gunshots. We’ll probably have to work on that eventually.”
She helped him up, and they walked back to the van where his clothes were waiting. He got dressed and sat down on one of the camping chairs in the shade outside. He was so exhausted he could barely move. Siren brought him a bottle of water and ran her hands through his shaggy hair.
“I’m going to make dinner. Rest.”
He chugged down the water. His body felt hollowed out, every muscle ached. His heart was pounding in his head. It felt like he’d run a marathon and then fought a boxing match and then run another marathon.
Siren was moving around inside the van, making dinner. He drained the bottle of water and then a second that she must have brought him without him noticing. Then there was a plate of chicken quesadillas in his lap.
“This is good,” he said, scarfing it down.
Siren was sitting on the other side of the campfire she must have built, eating her own quesadilla in a camp chair.
He looked at her in the fading light. She was wearing the shorts she slept in and a tank top.
Her shoulder holster and weapon under her arm.
She was absolutely gorgeous. This woman had spent all day beating him up, terrorizing him, and pushing him past his limits. And he worshipped her for it.
“Thank you,” he said between bites. “For pushing me. For not giving up on me.”
“You did really well today, Reed. I wish I could say it was the end.” She took another bite of her food. “But you have a lot more control than you did this morning.”