I bit my lip to hear Leif’s name. Everyone knew he’d gone crazy after the death of his fiancée. Still…
“But he is not here,” Janna said sharply. “We need solutions. Not wishes. And we need solutions fast.”
“So,” Jokkum said. “We are back to this. Which one of the married men wants to take one for the team?”
I tiptoed away from the door at that, carefully placing my glass on the counter. I kept my steps light so no one would hear me, and then when I was out of ear-shot of even shifter hearing, I ran back to my apartment above the garage, all thoughts of getting a drink refill gone. Despite being twenty-six years old, I still lived with my father. That was just how things were done with the bear clans. I raced up the stairs and shut my door to give myself the semblance of privacy, and leaned against the wall.
I had to leave, at least until the whole mating thing was figured out. I could disappear for a few months. Leave the territory so the males wouldn’t be able to follow my scent, and hide out until my hormones went back to normal. Then I could return…and continue my spinster lifestyle…
…which I hated.
Out of five families that intermarried, I was the only lonely single of the lot. Ramsey Bjorn - damn the man - had been my betrothed. If it was true and he’d taken another mate, that left me out in the cold.
Forever.
I supposed I could always head to the Paranormal Alliance of shifters, like Ramsey had. Find myself a nice werewolf and settle down…but even as I thought it, I knew I didn’t want to.
If I mated outside of the bear clans, I’d be exiled just like Ramsey was. The bloodlines had to be kept strong. And what if I bore a child that wasn’t a were-bear? Would I have to give it up and hand it over to the father’s shifter clan to be raised? What would I do then?
No, mating with another shifter would be messy. I needed a were-bear.
I thought of Jokkum’s offer and shuddered. I didn’t want to be his second wife, or his mistress, or whatever he suggested. Nor did I want to do that for anyone else. No family would want to absorb a second wife, and I didn’t want to share a husband. I thought of the bear clan men, and wasn’t attracted to any of them. That wasn’t an option, either.
I thought of Gunnar’s words. If my boy Leif was here.
I sat on the edge of my bed, thinking. If Leif was here, it would be simple. Ramsey had left me alone and unmated, but Leif’s intended bride had died at eighteen. We were two broken pairs that would naturally be right to stick together. I vaguely remembered Leif; I’d been ten when Katja had died. He had laughing brown eyes, dark hair, and was rangy and tall. I remembered him ruffling my hair as a child.
If he was still alive, he’d be thirty-four.
Unmarried. Unmated.
He’d be perfect.
I…just had to find the man.
I bounded up from my bed and immediately began to pack a bag.
3 weeks later
“You so owe me.” Mikkel Tolfson shook his head as we stood on the deck of the ship, the Antarctic air crisp and biting. His cheeks were windburned a bright red, but then, so were mine. I liked the air. It felt good against my all-too-frequently-lately flushed skin.
“I don’t owe you shit,” I said easily, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my parka as I leaned into the ocean spray. “You’re my cousin. This is what we do for each other.”
“Yeah, but the clan leaders are going to kill me dead if the find out I’m the one helping you go on this wild goose chase. You know they want you to stay home so someone can come fill you up with baby batter.”
I smacked him on the arm. “Don’t be gross, Mikkel.” But I was laughing. Mikkel was my age, and as mischievous as a naughty boy. He was my favorite cousin, which meant I was able to tolerate his moods despite my increasingly wild ones.
Mikkel was also a traveling photographer, so he had connections and the ability to get away for long periods of time to remote, exotic locations. His connections were what was helping me out at the moment.
We stood on the deck of the small ship, staring out at the remote, icy Antarctic island in the distance.
It was my destination.
Once I’d found out that the clan elders had no plan for my oncoming heat other than “pass her off to someone and get her pregnant,” I decided to take matters into my own hands. I’d left home that evening without telling anyone where I was going…just like Leif had done years ago. Except I didn’t disappear off the map. I knew that wasn’t possible. To get anywhere, you had to have connections or money - or both.
So I used mine. I visited cousins. I told no one about my troubles (though Mikkel had guessed and demanded the truth) and tracked down Leif’s trail. He’d left the Ozarks and wandered for a time. With my savings account, I’d hired private detectives to follow the financial trail he’d left behind so long ago, and had tracked him down to a research expedition down to Antarctica more than ten years ago. He’d been interning for a scientist.
He’d also never returned.
Seeing as how Leif was a bear shifter, I’d had a hunch that he’d gone native - simply transformed into bear shape and never returned. Someplace as remote as Antarctica would allow him to escape notice for a long time, maybe forever.
And so I’d convinced Mikkel that he needed to set his latest photo shoot in the Antarctic, with his lovely cousin Nikolina as his assistant. Nobody would really question the fact that I had no photographic experience, considering I was tall, blonde, and pretty. They’d simply assume Mikkel had hired me for obvious reasons.
So we went to McMurdough Base and while Mikkel set up a shoot, I mingled with all the men. I laughed. I talked. I flirted. I teased. And I asked a lot of questions.
We’d been at McMurdough for less than a week when a drunk Swede had confessed to me that he’d been so high on weed that he’d thought he’d seen a grizzly bear out on one of the islands. I giggled at his story and teased him about seeing leprechauns and unicorns next, and hid my excitement.
A lone grizzly bear? Out here in the Antarctic?
Bingo.
I’d flirted heavily with him to get more information from him. Which island, exactly? Half Moon Island – one with an old base on it that was only inhabited every few years. When had he seen it? A few months ago, he told me…and then proceeded to mansplain about how it was just the drugs. No grizzly would live this far south, he explained to me in a condescending tone, and the only things that lived on that island were chinstrap penguins.
His information had been scattered, but I had enough to go on, and I told Mikkel about my plans the next day. I wanted to go out to Half Moon Island and set up my camp.
Naturally, my cousin didn’t like that idea, but I’d won him over. Mostly.
“It’s the Antarctic,” he told me for the thousandth time again as we stared at the island in the distance. “You need permission to go anywhere, and we don’t have permission to be poking around there.”
“It’s a deserted island,” I told him. “Just drop me off and we’ll pretend you don’t know where I went.”
“This is nuts, Niko. We can still turn this ship around.”
I merely patted him on the shoulder. “We can’t turn the ship around. And I don’t need permission. Just don’t tell anyone I’m there.”
“Nikolina,” he said patiently. “Come on. Be reasonable.”
“I am being reasonable.”
“No, you’re asking me to abandon you onto a remote Antarctic island for the next six weeks because you want to track down a missing shifter in the hopes that he’ll impregnate you.”
“Well, when you put it that way…”
“Come on. You have to have options.”