“You have an enormous head,” Gwen taunted, enjoying the way his entire body tensed. “It’s like a giant kumquat.” Then she giggled hysterically, liking the word “kumquat” way more than she should.
“You want it that way,” he said low, “you’ve got it.” He stepped back and pulled off the hospital scrubs he’d been wearing. She only had a moment to wonder why he was getting naked—and enjoying that astounding view for all it was worth—before he shifted to bear. His height increased considerably once he did, going from his nearly not-quite seven feet to a full ten, but she was still too high for him to reach.
Leaning over, she taunted, “Nice try but no—”
Gwen squealed, gripping the branch she was on. He didn’t try and climb up to her, he simply took firm hold of the old tree and began to shake it. Christ, how much did she guess he weighed as bear? Fifteen hundred pounds? Maybe more? And all of it pure muscle. With his claws gripping the trunk, he simply shoved the tree back and forth. It was an old tree—sturdy, strong, and disease free—but it still wasn’t strong enough to stand up to the grizzly, the roots beginning to tear from the ground as he relentlessly kept up his actions.
“Stop it!” Gwen yelped, but he ignored her.
The tree, loose from its anchor in the ground, swung forward, Gwen’s lower half flying free of the branch and dangling in midair. She yelped again, and the tree came swinging back. Her body already weak, her hands lost their grip on the tree and she went headfirst toward the ground.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see that last second of her life. Yet the bear again showed how fast he was for his size, plucking her out of the air and pulling her in tight against his body. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her hands resting on the giant lump of muscle between his shoulder blades.
Gasping for breath, she clung to him, burying her face against his neck. She felt his fur recede, his body straightening as it shrunk down to its only slightly less freakishly tall height, while the dramatic hump between his shoulder blades grew smaller and smaller until she could only feel it as several extra layers of muscle. He began walking, briefly stopping to pick up the scrubs.
“I can’t go back,” she whispered against his neck, horrified she couldn’t stop the shaking of her body.
He stopped, the tree he’d taken her from crashing to the ground behind them, and gently asked, “What are you afraid of?”
“Dying.”
He stroked her side with his fingertips and she was surprised at how gentle his hands were. How gentle he was, considering he’d torn an eighty-year-old tree out of the ground and she’d told him he had a kumquat head.
“You’ll be fine.”
“You can’t promise that. They’re going to get me on that table and they’re going to start cutting me open and they’re going to—”
“Hey, hey.” He leaned back a bit, trying to catch a glimpse of her face. “Wait a minute. Where’s my tough Philly girl?”
“Dead, if you take me back there.”
“Do you really think I’d let anything happen to you? That I’d let anyone hurt you? After everything I’ve done today to keep you breathing?”
“I’ll be alone with those sadists and you’ll be in the waiting room.”
“I’ll stay with you.”
“They won’t let you.”
His smile was so warm and soft, she found herself wanting to trust him when she barely trusted anyone.
“Do you really think anybody can force me to do anything?”
“Another bear?”
“You’d have to find one who cares,” he whispered. “Most of us don’t. But we do keep our word. It’s the MacRyrie bear way.”
“You promise you won’t leave me?”
“I promise.”
With her free hand, she clutched his shoulder with what was left of her strength. “Tell me something about yourself. So I know I can trust you.”
“Um…I was a Marine.”
“No. Not that. Something else. Something…just about you.”
“I do a little woodworking.”
“Like birdhouses? Whittling?”
“Okay.”
“And what else? Tell me something private. Something no one else knows.”
He thought a moment before he lifted her closer and Gwen couldn’t believe how good his skin felt dragging against hers. Whispering against her ear, he confessed, “When I’m really stressed out…I play with my toes.”
Gwen leaned back a bit and stared at him. “Seriously?”
“It’s really relaxing and very bearlike.”
And very weird. And yet…“I’m oddly comforted by this information.”
“When this is all over, I’ll show you how to do it.”
She gave a little laugh, her eyelids trying to close. “There’s a specific way to do it?”
“If you want maximum benefit.”
“Oh. Well, then…”
“I’m going to take you back now, okay?”
She tensed up but she could no longer fight her desire to sleep. “But you won’t leave me?”
“I promise.”
“And you won’t let them kill me or remove any of my vital, healthy organs to sell on the black market? Or exchange my vital, healthy organs with crappy, full-human ones?”
“Not a chance.”
“Okay.” She snuggled in closer, her nose against his neck, breathing in his scent. “I have your word?”
“You have my word.”
“’Cause where I come from, your word means something.”
“And you’ve got it. I won’t leave you, Gwen. I promise.”
“And you’ll stop calling me Mr. Mittens.”
“Let’s not ask for the world, okay?”
And even as she felt him taking her back to that death trap, she still managed to smile.
CHAPTER 4
The doctor wasn’t remotely happy that Lock wouldn’t leave, but once he started tossing his sister’s name around, she backed off. As the top neurosurgeon at McMillian Presbyterian in Manhattan, Dr. Iona MacRyrie’s name held definite clout, and Lock wasn’t above using it when necessary.
The surgery went well, but the damage to Gwen’s leg went beyond typical Pack harassment. There’d been real intent behind that wound and, although the unknown She-wolf may have made Blayne her first target, it had been Gwen who had really set her off. Maybe it was the cat-dog thing, Lock didn’t know or care. He simply knew that no matter how much that idiot lion glared at him from behind the glass of the operating room doors, he wasn’t leaving.
Maybe Gwen was being irrational—okay, she was being irrational—it didn’t matter. He’d made a promise, given his word, and he hadn’t been joking. MacRyries kept their word. That had been drummed into him by his uncles since he was a kid. They’d felt the need to help raise Lock because, to quote them, “Your father’s kind of a pansy, know-it-all. You’ll need us to give you the basics about life.” At five, he didn’t know what they’d meant, but by his early teens he understood that “pansy, know-it-all” translated into “college-educated.” And his father’s position as a highly respected university professor of literature and philosophy? Simply a fancy way of saying, “no real job.”
Strange thing was, they didn’t feel the same way about Lock’s mother. “Your father’s saving grace” was what they called Alla Baranova-MacRyrie, Ph.D. Although a third-generation Russian-American, Alla was a direct descendent of the Kamchatka grizzlies of the Russian Far East. Tougher shifters one would never meet. There was only a small group of them in the States, but their bloodline was well-known and they were more feared than the Kodiaks.