By all rights, Buck should have been made Alpha of the Kincaid clan. He was the one who had been there all along. He was the one who had taken his father's bullshit for the last seven years. Buck was the only one making a real income for the ranch with his timber management.
Leland suspected his brother wouldn't mind if Leland just disappeared back to Texas and left Timber Bear Ranch to him. Leland considered if that’s what he should have done in the first place, before Sylvia even arrived.
Fate had a way of taking control of things. Even when a shifter or a human wanted to intervene. Meeting Sylvia had given him the kind of faith he'd never had before. He knew that with her by his side, he could accomplish anything. The prospect of losing the ranch was scary, but he had to believe it was all going to turn out all right in the end.
Once he was finished with his chili, he stripped out of his clothes and shifted into his grizzly form to curl up in the nest he’d prepared. He brushed dried leaves over his back for a blanket as he drifted off to sleep under the clear starry night sky.
When he woke in the morning, his first instinct was to hunt. Leland had a deep animal hunger in his gut. He rose from his nest and followed the first sent he found upon standing. It was a young buck, he could smell its masculine musk as it rubbed its horns against the trees, marking its territory. Leland's grizzly followed the trail, tasting the scent of the air with his tongue.
He was downwind from the deer when he found it grazing in a clearing. His human mind objected, knowing there was no way he could bring the meat back home. But that didn't stop the grizzly. Without warning, the animal growled and charged directly at the buck, throwing it off center so hard the deer lost its footing and fell on its side, kicking its legs into the air to try to right itself.
Leland's grizzly charged, stomped on the animal, and bit down on its neck. The deer screamed as the grizzly bit harder, puncturing the prey’s jugular. The deer’s life blood seeped into the grizzly’s mouth as he continued to bite down. Its last breath was a quiver as it went still.
Leland's human mind grumbled, irritated as his bear started to feast. His belly would be full for the rest of the trek up the mountain. When the animal was done gorging himself, Leland was finally able to shift back into his human form, standing naked over the bloodied carcass of his kill.
He huffed a loud sigh and wiped his face with the back of his hand. It came away bloody. Leland walked barefoot back to his camp. He got dressed and pulled his backpack on his back.
He passed his kill on the way out, kneeling beside it to cut out a large chunk of meat. He had to leave the rest for the residents of the forest to devour. Leland put the chunks of meat in a plastic bag and hid it away for later.
The second day of the trek was harder than the first. The incline grew steeper and it was more difficult for Leland to keep his footing. There was no trail anymore.
In the late afternoon on the second day of his journey, Leland came to a sheer cliff that he knew he would have to trek around. He started to walk around the cliff on the narrow ledge. The spring runoff poured swiftly down the mountain from the thaw of the mountain snow. Huge waterfalls cascaded over the cliff in various sections.
As Leland approached one of the waterfalls, he stepped on a loose rock. He lost his footing and grabbed for a branch growing out of the cliff. The branch snapped. Gravity pulled him hard and he flailed in the air.
He fell. In a brutal surge of strength, he reached with his shifted paw and drove his claws into the rock as he slid down the cliff. It slowed his fall, but tore up his nails. He came to the bottom and landed in a pile. His clothes were muddy and torn, and he had lost his backpack somewhere in the fall.
He looked up the cliff, his hands aching. He cursed under his breath, knowing that he would have to make the rest of the trek in bear form. The damp was already seeping into his skin. He'd hoped to arrive at Cyrus's cabin with some dignity, but he would have to abandon that plan.
Leland quickly pulled out of his clothes and shifted into his grizzly. His body ached and his claws were bloodied, but he wasn't going to give up now.
Chapter 14
Leland's grizzly hobbled out of the canyon and made his way around the cliff. He smelled the scent of his brother’s bear on every scratched tree trunk he passed.
Anticipation built in his gut for the confrontation he knew would be coming. Cyrus had always been a grouchy bear. Even as a child.
Leland's grizzly climbed up a rocky rise, full of scraggly pines and a dusting of melting snow. When he came up to the crest and the view stretched out below for him, he saw the gentle slope down into a clearing where his brother's cabin sat. Smoke billowed into the overcast gray sky and Leland grunted in the cool mountain air. Walking slowly toward his brother's cabin, he tasted the air with his tongue, trying to get a sense of his brother’s mood.
Before he could come within fifteen yards of his brother’s cabin, the front door burst open, kicked by a booted foot. His brother stepped out, holding a shotgun in his grizzled hands. His brother’s beard was long and his eyes were sharp and blue, focused directly on Leland's bear. The shotgun pointed directly at his head. Leland sat in the rocky clearing with a huff and grunted, irritated that his brother didn't recognize him.
Slowly, Cyrus lowered the gun, a look of realization blooming in his eyes.
"Leland? Is that you?" Cyrus asked.
Leland shifted with a roar and slowly stood in his human form. Cyrus lowered the shotgun and set it against a bench on the front porch before disappearing inside, only to reappear a moment later with a long wool blanket that he swept around Leland's shoulders.
"What are you doing up here?”
"There is so much that you need to know," Leland said.
"Come inside."
Leland followed his brother into the cabin and sat in a chair beside a roaring fire in a stone hearth.
Cyrus poured a cup of something dark into a mug from a pot on the stove and handed it to Leland. He sniffed the brew and smelled a mixture of roots and herbs. He took a sip and blanched.
"It's my coffee substitute," Cyrus said, moving around his one room cabin to prepare a midday meal. The mountain man threw a pair of bloody venison steaks into a cast-iron pan. The meat sizzled in the lard and Cyrus poked it with a sharpened steel fork.
"So, what brings you up the mountain, brother?” Cyrus said as he flipped his steaks in the pan.
Leland wrapped the wool blanket around his waist and continued to sip the bitter brew that his brother had given him. It was invigorating, and felt warm in his chest after the cold trek up the mountain in bear form.
"A lot has happened in the last few weeks," Leland started, turning to the table when his brother set his lunch in front of him. "Father died."
Cyrus sat across from Leland with his fork in hand and stared at his brother for a long moment before, looking down at his steak. He sliced off a piece and shoved in his mouth. He shook his head several times and swallowed his food.
"What happened to the bastard?" Cyrus finally asked.
"Heart attack," Leland said.
"Let me guess, you are now Alpha of Timber Bear Ranch."
"That is indeed a fact."
"How does Buck feel about that?"
"As well as he possibly could. Look, I don't understand why Dad left me the farm. He should have left it to Buck. He's been here all along. He's the only one who's been making any money on the ranch for years, while Dad ran the place into the ground.
“We’re being audited for a decade of back taxes. I have no idea why Dad would have stopped paying his debts. Money was sliding through his fingers everywhere, but it doesn't make sense where the original debt came from. We haven't been able to track it down."
"You know Dad liked to gamble, right?" Cyrus said.
“Gamble?" Leland asked. “I’ve never seen him gamble.”
“It started after mom died and got pretty bad during the war. He was in bad shape when we all came home. I think it
made him more defensive than usual. I know how he was with me,” Cyrus said with a growl, shoving more venison into his mouth.
“There is a chance we’ll all be accused of fraud.”
Cyrus spurted out the sip of coffee substitute he’d been drinking and then wiped his face.
“No way I’ll go to trial for Dad’s debts,” Cyrus growled.
“I don’t see how you will be able to avoid it. We all own shares in the company. Dad’s mismanagement will come back to haunt us all.”
“You were the one who was supposed to stand up to him, Leland,” Cyrus said in a dark voice.
“I shouldn’t have backed down when I came back from the war. I could see it back then. He’d been mismanaging the cattle, and I couldn’t take it. He wouldn’t let me help him. I was a coward, and I left it to the rest of you to deal with.”
“Buck deserves a lot of credit for keeping it together with only Jessie there to support him.”
“Buck and Jessie have things worked out pretty well between them. Jessie helps Buck take care of his machines and Buck manages the timber. He’s done a good job for the last seven years.”
“Buck always was the dependable one,” Cyrus growled.
Leland knew that Cyrus had spent most of his childhood being compared to his older brothers. Cyrus had been the black sheep, his nose buried in one of his books. His dark, brooding irritability was something no one understood. Except maybe Jessie, the baby of the family.
Jessie had always looked up to Cyrus in a way the rest of the family couldn’t understand. Bears were supposed to be happy and free, dependable and focused on family. Cyrus had never been that, and only Jessie really got why. As reckless as the youngest Kincaid brother could be, Leland knew Jessie got along with each his brothers better than anyone else in the family. It had always been that way.
“Jessie said you came down from the mountain a few months ago?”
“Yeah, he helps me arrange selling my wares in town and on the Internet. It helps me buy my supplies.”
“Jessie sells things for you on the Internet?” Leland asked, surprised.
“Believe it or not, Jessie can use a computer,” Cyrus grumbled.
“When are you going to come down off this mountain and rejoin society?” Leland asked.
“Probably when they carry me out of here in a casket,” Cyrus grumbled. “What else can I tell you about Dad?”
“You said he gambled? How did you know that?”
“I caught him on the phone with an angry bookie after Mom died.”
“But this debt can’t have started back then. Mom died twenty years ago.”
“He made some bad bets around the end of the war. He was acting like a psycho when I came home so I asked him if he’d lost money on the horses. He gave me this look like he could kill me. But I knew I’d touched a nerve. I wouldn’t doubt this all started around that time.
“Maybe he got a loan from some shady loan shark. That’d be my guess. Dad was pretty bad. I thought everyone could see it so I didn’t say anything. I try to avoid other people’s drama, not get in the middle of it.”
“A loan shark? That makes sense. But I’m afraid it doesn’t help me pay off the debt.”
“Can’t help you there.”
“What do you think will happen if we lose the ranch?” Leland asked.
“No one’s coming up here. I’m invisible.”
“No one is invisible.”
Cyrus growled and bared his teeth.
“I’ve told you all I know. I have nothing, save what I need to survive. I don’t know what else I have to offer.”
“You’re right, Cyrus. I just need to know you’ve got my back, and stand by the family.”
“Always,” Cyrus said, standing to clasp his brother’s bare shoulder with his rough hand.
“Good,” Leland said. “I’d best be getting back down the mountain. Thanks for the warm meal.”
Leland stood and met his brother’s eyes. They were of equal height and build. Though Cyrus had bulkier muscles and less body fat from years of strenuous survival.
“It was good to see you, brother,” Leland said in a low voice.
Cyrus clasped Leland around the shoulders and the brothers embraced, slapping each other’s backs a few times before stepping back.
“Don’t be a stranger,” Cyrus said.
Leland took one last sip of his drink and started out the front door of the cabin. Out on the porch, he threw the wool blanket on the bench and walked out into the yard. He shifted quickly and started into the forest.
Chapter 15
Sylvia painted her nails a bright shade of red and blew on the fast-drying liquid as she sat in her office at work. The other auditors had taken over Leland’s case and she’d been in a holding pattern for days.
She hadn’t been able to eat that morning and her stomach still felt queasy. After letting her nails dry, she carefully typed into her keyboard to check her calendar. When she saw the pink P in the corner of the day’s date, she remembered her monthly cycle was due any moment. Maybe that was why she wasn’t feeling well.
She spent most of the rest of the day doing busy work she’d been assigned to fill the time. When it was almost time to go for the day, her boss walked into her office and sat down across from her desk. She raised her eyebrow at him and sat up straight.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Stands?” she asked.
“We’ve reached a conclusion on the Timber Bear Ranch case. And I want to include you before we move forward since you’ve been the company’s liaison.”
“Right,” Sylvia muttered, thinking of what bad news would do to Leland and his family.
“Hank Kincaid and the Timber Bear Ranch owe a combined total of one-point-one million dollars in various back debts. We have a good case for criminal charges. But I want to cut a bargain with these bears,” her boss said. “If we get a lump payment of half the total, we’ll let them go on a payment plan for the rest. That’s my final offer.”
“That’s reasonable,” Sylvia squeaked, knowing that the family didn’t have that kind of cash on hand. Even if they sold the herd and all of Buck and Jessie’s equipment, they’d still probably have to start parceling off land. Selling it fast would come at a loss and the family would suffer even further. “What kind of time frame are we talking about?”
“The end of the quarter,” her boss said.
“Who will inform the Kincaids?”
“I expected you to do it, Sylvia, you have such a personal touch in these cases.”
“Right,” she said again, tapping her nails on the desk. “Anything else?”
“Good work.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said as he turned to go.
She didn’t feel like she’d done a good job. She knew that she would be returning to Fate Mountain with the worst possible news. It would break Leland’s heart and tear apart the already fractured family. They could sell off everything and get by after starting over, but she knew no one wanted that. Gathering her things, she started to the door, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. On the way down the hall, she felt a twinge of pain in her belly. She reminded herself she needed to stop at the drugstore on the way home.
Down in the basement parking lot, Sylvia climbed into her car and started down the street toward the drugstore. When she stopped in the lot outside, a thought passed through her mind. Could she be…? Her period hadn’t come yet. She just felt crappy. She thought back through the days since she’d first come to Fate Mountain and realized it had been just about two weeks since she and Leland had that fateful night in her hotel room.
“Oh my God,” Sylvia muttered, realizing her mistake.
She entered the drugstore, greeted by a wall of fragrance and noise, grabbing a blue basket from the stack. She started down the aisle, her nude pumps clicking on the highly-polished linoleum. She passed the makeup aisle and grabbed a new shade of rose blush to match a dress she’d just bought for spring. When she entered t
he feminine product aisle, she threw her usual things into the basket. At the end of the aisle across from the diapers were the pregnancy tests.
She picked one up and read the label before dropping it into the basket. She strode to the counter nervously, not sure if she wanted to go through with buying the test. She wasn’t even a day late.
The woman at the counter rang her up and made pleasant conversation as thoughts ran through Sylvia’s mind. Did she even want a baby? Of course she did. She’d wanted to settle down and start a family since her father died. But the idea of starting things this way made her heart sink. The checkout lady put her things in a plastic bag and handed them to her with the receipt.
Outside, Sylvia felt the chill evening air blow over her skin. She hadn’t heard from Leland in days. He’d had to travel all the way up the mountain to talk to his brother and then travel all the way back down. In the meantime, he couldn’t be contacted. What would she do if this test came out positive?
When she got home, she picked up Charlie and gave the big orange furball a snuggle, then headed into the kitchen to make dinner. After throwing together some pasta and salad, she sat at the dining room table and ate her meal while reading a book. When she was done, she decided to take a bath and spend the rest of the night watching Netflix in bed.
Soon, she’d head back to Fate Mountain to tell Leland the bad news, and it was going to require every ounce of her strength.
After her bath, she dried her hair and put on her fuzzy flannel PJs before snuggling under her fluffy white comforter. She watched a fun romantic comedy and drifted to sleep soon after turning off the TV.
In the morning, she passed the bundle of things from the drugstore the day before. She picked up the pregnancy test and read the instructions.
She took it into the bathroom and did what it said to do. She capped the test and set it on the side of the bathtub. As she stood across the room, she felt ridiculous for even taking it. She’d get her cycle any moment, she knew it. She’d been like clockwork since she was thirteen.