“You said my name,” he mused.
“I won’t call you Daniel anymore, and I won’t compare the man you are now with my childhood memories of you.” She sighed happily against his skin. “I love you, Brooks—the man you are today, not the boy who you used to be.”
He eased back and the chill had dimmed from his gaze. In its place was a look of pride and awe.
“Corin,” he said, searching her face.
She froze under the intensity of his gaze. “Yes?”
“I love you, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Corin’s cheeks heated with a creeping shyness as Brooks cast her another glance. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at her. She understood. She had been drinking him in as much as she could too.
With a devastating smile, he leaned forward and kissed her, then pulled her knuckles to his lips. The walls between them had been demolished since he’d said the words she was afraid he would never be able to.
He had slid out of her in the shower, and the warmth of his pleasure had streamed down the inside of her legs. He had guided her gently under the warm jets of water, and cleaned her as he had in the tent. Wrapping her in a towel, he’d carried her to the bed and laid beside her, then talked for hours about the years they had missed together. He was still hesitant to tell her everything, she could tell, but someday he would trust her as completely as she did him. She could be patient and wait for that bond.
He’d made love to her again, slowly and with such reverence, she had wanted to cry afterward. This was it—the reason she hadn’t chosen another man in their ten years apart. She was meant to be here, with him, as they healed each other.
“When do you go back?” The question had been tugging at her heart, but afraid to ruin the magic of the day, she had swallowed it down time and time again. Now they were headed to dinner at Riker’s house, hiking slowly up the trail that would lead them back to civilization. Time alone with him was running out.
“Tomorrow,” he answered, looking straight ahead.
One more day with him didn’t seem nearly enough. “When will I see you again?”
His face looked pained and he shook his head, as if to clear it. “I don’t know. I can’t leave my people, not when the rules have changed so much for them. The Long Claws need guidance if they are going to be redeemed.”
A pang of painful sadness stabbed through her chest, but she understood. He had fought too hard just to leave them to rebuild their treachery. His people needed to be rehabilitated into a civil society they had never known. One with laws and councils, and Brooks was the only shifter strong enough, and with enough influence, to see it through. She couldn’t ask him to leave his duties and people behind.
She still had the cell phone he had gifted her, so there was that. It wouldn’t be the same as looking into his eyes and touching him. She would hear his voice though, and that would have to be enough for now.
The field in front of Riker’s house was filled with Bear Valley shifters, as well as Brooks’ new council members.
Corin frowned. Perhaps this hadn’t been the exclusive party she had assumed when Riker invited her. How was she going to do this? She felt so raw and upset about her and Brooks’ impending separation, and now she was going to have to put on a brave face and mingle. They would be able to sense how upset she was, and she wasn’t prepared to explain her feelings.
She hesitated as they approached. Maybe no one would notice if she didn’t attend. Everyone was talking in groups and laughing and the barbeque grills were fired up in the back. People were eating and enjoying themselves and surely she wouldn’t be missed.
“I can’t do this.” Her voice sounded airy as she pushed it through closing vocal cords.
“What’s wrong?” Brooks asked, squeezing her arm comfortingly.
“I have one day with you, and it’s going to hurt so badly to say goodbye to you tomorrow, and I can’t go talk to everyone and pretend that I’m not falling apart inside.” Her weak admission came out in a rush.
“Corin!” Hannah hailed, waving.
Joanna, and Anya tugged on their mates’ hands and the crowd surged closer. Great. They were probably coming to greet Brooks, and she’d be the weeping psychopath trying to hide behind Riker’s giant truck.
Gently, Brooks thumbed her chin up until her gaze reached his. “This isn’t what you think it is, Corin, and I don’t want to be separated either.”
He cupped her cheeks as the crowd gathered around them. The talk died until only the breeze and Corin’s pounding heart filled her ears. Someone lit a candle. Another and another lit up, casting the night in a warm, flickering glow. She searched the faces of the people she loved as they looked back at her expectantly.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured, placing her hands over Brooks’.
“I asked them to be here,” he said low. “In another lifetime, I stood before the Kodiak council and asked to be promised to you. And now,” he said, easing back and pulling something from his pocket. “I’m asking again.” From his hand dangled a necklace on a gold chain. A medallion with a script letter B spun and shone in the candle light.
Her face crumpled and the tears filling her eyes spilled over.
He clasped the token of their past and future around her neck, and settled it right in the center of her chest, just where the old necklace had sat for all these years. Then, he knelt down on one knee and looked up at her, his gaze open. “I wanted to ask you, in front of your people and mine, if you would be my mate. I’d be honored if you would come back to my clan and become mate of the alpha. I would be honored if you would choose me, as I have already chosen you.” He inhaled deeply. “I would be honored if you would be mine.”
Riker stepped forward and placed the handle of a ceremonial knife against the palm of her hand. She stared at it through tear-blurred vision.
The choice was hers.
Saying yes would mean leaving her people, and living among the Long Claws. She would leave her cottage, her job and her friends and forge a new life with Brooks in an unfamiliar place.
She tried to imagine life here without him, but it hurt too badly.
Home was with him. It always had been.
Swallowing hard, she looked up and unsheathed the knife.
He pulled his shirt over his head and stepped toward her. Around the bandages she had doctored him with were the silvered scars of countless battles fought at the whim of his clan. They were scars he had taken to protect her and beloved Bear Valley. But the three long marks she would make across his chest tonight would be the most important scars. Now, they would belong to each other always.
His slow smile stretched until the shadow of his dimple ghosted his jaw.
There he was—her perfect match.
The blade shone in the candle light created by the people she loved as she lifted it to his chest. “I choose you, too.”
Epilogue
“Are you ready to see everyone again?” Brooks asked through an easy smile.
One hand rested comfortably on the steering wheel of his SUV, and his other hand was clasped in Corin’s.
She was nearly bouncing with anticipation. “Of course I am. I feel like I want to change and run the rest of the way.”
He barked out a laugh. Even Bethany, Angus, and the rest of the council who sat patiently in the back seats chuckled.
It had been six months since she’d last laid eyes on Bear Valley. And though the Long Claws were her clan now, and her home with Brooks in Wyoming, this place would always hold magic for her.
Behind them trailed a long line of vehicles transporting the entirety of the Long Claw Clan. Only seventy strong now after the battles of the last year, but three summer babies would be born into the new and much improved shifter community. They would know a much easier life than their parents before them—one filled with peace.
It had been an adjustment. The Long Claws were a raucous group and the clan run much differently than she was accustomed to. Brooks talked oft
en with Riker for advice, but the goal wasn’t to turn his clan into Bear Valley shifters. It was to find a compromise between the old clan, and the new laws that encouraged alliances with their shifter brethren. It had been a long, hard battle, and the Long Claws got into more damned fights than Corin knew what to do with, but for better and worse, they were home now, and she served as their alpha’s mate as best she could.
Her union with Brooks had united the clans more than she ever could’ve imagined. As she made friends and dispelled rumors of her old clan, tensions settled and Brooks had finally suggested they all meet with Bear Valley to encourage relationships.
She smiled as they passed the no trespassing signs along the fence line of her old home. If her clan could mind their damned manners for a few days and open up to the possibility of friendship with bear shifters outside their own, Brooks and Riker would make history as the first Long Claw and Bear Valley alphas to ever work together for a common goal.
Pride surged through her as it so often did when she watched how strong her mate was in the face of adversity, and she squeezed his hand.
“I can almost feel your happiness,” he murmured, lifting her hand and kissing her knuckles.
The final grove of towering pines blurred by as they passed, and Corin leaned forward. Riker and his people were gathered in the field in front of his house. Fragrant smoke rose from a barbecue pit, and it reminded her so much of the night Brooks had claimed her. The faded marks he’d made on her chest tingled with the memory. It had been the happiest moment of her life.
He pulled around the field, leading his people to park out of the way, and she slid out of the passenger’s side as fast as she could scramble. Anya and Joanna were running for her and she bolted toward them. Crashing into her friends’ arms, she laughed as she spied Jenny and Hannah waddling toward her, twin moon bellies leading the way. Hannah was already crying.
“Come here, you sappy human,” Corin murmured, pulling them all in close.
She talked to them on the phone all the time, but it wasn’t the same as being near them. Corin pressed her cheek against Anya’s and hugged the others to her tighter. Chase nodded a greeting and Brody gave her a two fingered wave, and Juan, Cameron and Riker moved to greet her mate.
It felt so damned good to have everyone back together.
She watched Riker shake Brooks’ hand, and they both bowed their heads respectfully as they spoke low through matching smiles.
Bear Valley and Long Claw—two of the greatest bear shifter clans in the world, and they had ended their centuries of pretend alliances and war because of these two great alphas.
Hannah rested her forehead against Corin’s and said, “They did well, didn’t they?”
In the field of wildflowers, in the shadow of the Bighorn Mountains, both clans were meeting, talking…laughing.
Corin drew her gaze back to Brooks and Riker, the alphas who had changed everything.
Brooks looked at her and smiled slow, like he could sense how proud she was.
Because of them, peace had come to her kind.
Because of them, bear shifters would rise again.
Thank You
Dear Awesome Reader,
This is usually the part of the book where I’m supposed to include an acknowledgement, but every time I sit down with my fingers hovered over the keyboard to write one, I just want to thank you.
If you’re reading this, you’ve read the entire series, and have been affected in some way by these characters who have affected me so completely. You’re the reason I’m able to write stories and share them.
So, before I turn into a sappy bear, thank you for getting lost in this story with me.
You. Rock.
-T.
Questions or comments about this series?
Leave them here.
Other Books by T. S. Joyce
Bear Valley Shifters Series
The Witness and the Bear (Book 1)
Amazon
Devoted to the Bear (Book 2)
Amazon
Return to the Bear (Book 3)
Amazon
Betray the Bear (Book 4)
Amazon
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Brand New Bear Shifter Series
From T. S. Joyce
Kindle All-Star Series- Hells Canyon Shifters
Call of the Bear (Book 1)
Fealty of the Bear (Book 2)
Avenge the Bear (Book 3)
Claim the Bear (Book 4)
Heart of the Bear – Coming January 2015
Brand New Wolf Shifter Series
Wolf Brides
Wolf Bride (Book 1)
Red Snow Bride (Book 2)
Dawson Bride (Book 3)
Sneak Peek
New Bear Shifter Romance Series from T. S. Joyce
CALL OF THE BEAR
(Hells Canyon Shifters, Book 1)
Read on for a sneak peek of the first book in the Hells Canyon Shifters saga.
Prologue
Trent Cress jerked his hand away from a rough two-by-four and glared at the growing red dot on his finger. Dillon, that ass, couldn’t cut smooth wood if his hide depended on it. The pain was only a minor annoyance as Trent watched the splinter heave from his index finger and lay in the staunched red. Bear shifter healing at its finest. With a quick swipe of his hand across his dusty pants, he snatched a pair of work gloves from the sawmill wall, pulled them on, and hefted three times the number of two-by-fours that a normal human man probably could.
That’s what made the lumber yard doable between him, his brother Bronson, and their childhood buddy Dillon. And along with Bron running the construction side of their business, Cress Lumber and Remodeling was becoming downright profitable.
As long as Dillon didn’t keep splintering the wood to shreds.
The east wall was made up of garage doors, the ones that slid up and down and were easy to lock up at night. Right now, all three were open to allow that cool Oregon breeze into the mill, so he could see Bron as he strode up the dirt road and past the clunker truck Trent drove up here.
“Shit,” he muttered, dropping the wood into the right pile and busying himself with straightening them up. Bron looked pissed, and when his brother was angry, he was a danger to everyone in his path.
And right now, he was barreling down on Trent.
“Guess who I just saw at the bar in town having dinner with Pete Anderson,” Bron growled.
Trent kept his eyes wisely at the toe of Bron’s roughed up old shit kicker boots. A wise bear didn’t look a shifter as dominant as Bron in the eye if he wanted to keep his limbs. Brother or no, the dude was scary when his eyes were all inhuman looking.
“Wanda from third grade?”
Bron canted his head and sighed an impatient sound. “Reese. Your Reese. She’s out with Pete. Why don’t you look surprised or pissed or I don’t know, anything, Trent? Any kind of emotion from you would work.”
“She’s not my Reese.”
“Why not? You’ve been with her since high school, man. You should’ve claimed her way before now. She’s not going to wait around for you to man up forever. Obviously.”
Hot anger flashed up Trent’s spine. “You know what? We work fine the way we are. Fuck when we want, go out when we want. If she wants to play around with Pete, fine. She’ll be back. She always comes back.”
“Why don’t you claim her, Trent? Stop messing with her head and make a decision either way. If she’s not it for you, then why have you hung onto her so hard, for so long?”
“You want me to claim her, is that what you’re pissed about?”
“Claim anyone,” Bron barked out. “Anyone will do at this point. We’re the last of the Cress line. Did dad not beat it into your head enough when we were kids about how important it is our lineage doesn’t stop with us?”
“Claim anyone,” Trent gritted out in disgust. “And how did claiming just anyone work out for you, Bron?”
His brother’s eyes were so light they should’ve warned him off of continuing, but screw it. He’d crossed the line. Again. “Muriel was just anyone, and she ate you up and spat you out and now you’ll be broken forever. Do you think about her? Do you think about Samantha when you look back on your regrets? She was special, and you tossed her away for tradition.”
“Stop it. Don’t you say another fuckin’ word. She was human.”
“Nah,” Trent said, spitting into the sawdust at his feet. “Samantha made you feel things. That’s why you did what you did. Don’t come preaching to me about claiming a mate when the ink isn’t even dry on your own divorce papers, Bron. When I claim, it’ll be for good.”
Bron dropped his head and hooked his hands on his hips. “You mean, you won’t fail like I have.”
Trent scrubbed a hand over his face and felt like grit. Bron had been through hell for six years trying to make things work with a rival alpha’s daughter. At eighteen he hadn’t had a choice. Things would have been different if Bron had been allowed to pick a mate now, like Trent was allowed to, but he’d been the eldest, in line for alpha, and part of the reason he’d done it was to spare Trent the same fate. He didn’t have to say it, but Trent knew the truth of why he’d broken a human’s heart all those years ago for a mate he didn’t care about. Everything just got so messed up.
“Jesus, man. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be bringing Muriel or Samantha up. I know that probably tears you up—”
“No, brother,” Bron said, lifting his lightened gaze. “I don’t think about Samantha anymore. Haven’t in years. I’ve let her go. Best you do the same.” With that, he spun and strode from the mill. “Don’t forget to lock up,” he ordered over his shoulder as he disappeared around the truck.