Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) Read online

  The only member of this group who was like him – a shifter – was the one he hated the most. Thinking about Marlin made him ball up a fist and pound it against the bench he was sitting on so hard that the trailer shook.

  “Whassa matter, Crag?” Ralphie whined. “Hung over?”

  “Yeah, Ralphie, that’s it.” Crag’s voice sounded like a rumble from deep inside the earth. “Drank too much. Doesn’t matter. I gotta get dressed, all right?”

  “You do dat,” Ralphie said. “You want some Alka-Seltzer, just ask. I got plenty.”

  “Thanks, Ralphie,” Crag said softly. “I appreciate it. I’m fine. Get outta here.”

  Ralphie made a squeaking noise and closed the door. A second later, Crag heard him yell to the boss that ‘the prize fighter’ was going to be ready, even though he had a hangover.

  The boss, he was the one Crag wanted dead. He didn’t care if it took the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to let that slimy bastard get away. Sometimes, he wondered if Marlin even remembered his brother. Probably not, Crag thought. Marlin didn’t seem to remember anyone except Marlin.

  Crag laughed bitterly and went back to wrapping his fingers. He counted each loop up to thirteen, tore it off, and moved on to the next finger. When he was finished, he turned the tape over in his hand. He lifted it to his mouth, bit down, and ripped it off.

  That fist made the same squeaking, straining sound before the tape started fraying around his huge fingers.

  Crag looked up and down his tattooed forearms, thinking about every single little mark. Each of them had a meaning. Three numbers – six, eight, seventy-three – those were his brother’s birthday. There were stylized images of his parents, and one of the Morgan family crest nestled in among countless others that formed an intricate pattern stretching halfway up his biceps.

  All those memories, they had all gone dark.

  “I need a nice girl,” Crag said under his breath. “A nice woman, not a girl. I need a woman to take care of, one to give me some reason to wake up every day and a reason to smile. One who can make me calm down. That’s what I need.”

  He looked back at the picture of his brother, smiled for a second, and then closed the trunk with a loud bang.

  “Maybe,” he continued rambling to himself, “maybe you’re gonna be out there in the crowd tonight. Maybe I’ll see you. It’ll hit me like a shot of lightning. Wouldn’t that be something? First time back home in ten years and I find the girl of my dreams in the crowd.”

  Balling up both his fists, he listened to the straining tape.

  Then, outside his trailer, the crowd grew louder. They were out there, filing into the make-shift venue. And they were waiting for a fight.

  Lifting one of his shoulders, he turned his head side to side and popped his neck.

  The worst part of all this was that he couldn’t even really fight. Morgans loved a fight, sure, but ripping normal people limb from limb wasn’t a fight. Hell, it wasn’t even legal. Of course, whether or not fights without murder were legal depended on where they were at the time.

  An air horn’s obnoxious honk burst through the slight repose Crag had taken on. He pulled up his torn jeans, zipped them dutifully. Grabbing his trademark flannel shirt, he threw that on too, and buttoned it halfway – as far as it would go up his chest without tearing.

  Then, as an afterthought, he reached back into his trunk and grabbed the necklace he kept in there. It was just a simple pendant that hung from a thick, leather collar, nothing anyone would ever steal. It was just a little Morgan crest with all the paint rubbed off. But, it was the last memento Crag had from his older brother.

  He hooked it around his huge neck and then bent down to the floor, flattening his palms against it, popping every vertebrae in his back.

  He hated fighting like this, sure, but he loved popping his back.

  It’s the simple things in life, right?

  “Morgan! Get out here! Like right fuckin’ now! Need you for a stunt! Hurry up!” Marlin was yelling outside his door.

  For a second, Crag imagined wrapping his hands around that crocodile’s neck and squeezing until his eyes bugged out. He’d never do it to Ralphie, not in a million years. But Marlin? Oh yeah, oh hell yeah he’d do it to Marlin.

  Crag paused with his hand on his trailer door and gave himself just one more second of thought. Doing this is how he kept himself calm, how he kept himself from getting angry in the middle of a fight or the middle of one of Marlin’s stupid stunts, and accidentally transforming.

  If that happened, there was no telling what kind of mess he’d leave.

  That’s not what he wanted though. Crag wanted to be himself. He wanted someone to call him by his real name. He wanted a nice girl to love and to hold and to care for... but most of all, in that moment, Crag Morgan wanted revenge.

  -4-

  Violet

  “So, like, what do we do here?” I asked, looking down at the bench to see if there was any danger to sitting.

  I almost sat, but then had the presence of mind to spread a paper towel out. Then, I looked at the oil sheen on the paper towel and got a little queazy. There was so much of a slick that it was almost see-through. Two more of them and I wasn’t much anywhere closer to a clean seat, but Henry grabbed my hands and yanked me down.

  “What are you doing? Enjoy life sometimes, you damn princess,” she said. “So what, you got a popcorn grease stain on your skirt. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Well,” I said, thankful for a lull in the increasingly wild crowd noise, “it could be something other than popcorn grease.”

  Henry crinkled her nose. “Chili?”

  I shuddered. “Why can’t there be chairs?”

  “Oh hell, Viola, come on. Sit in your mess there and lighten up some. It’s about to start!”

  She pulled my hand again, and I sat down with a wince, a frown, and more than a little bit of trepidation about cleaning the back of my skirt.

  “Ugh,” I grunted. “My shoes are stuck to the floor.”

  Henry looked at me, wrinkled her forehead and just frowned as she shook her head.

  Just when I was taking a breath to diva-complain more about the way my cute little ballet slippers were sticking to the make-shift bleachers, all the lights in the Jamesburg Civic Center – which is really a converted barn outside of town – went out.

  And then, like the fire in my loins had started when I started thinking about Lex’s cousin... or any bear at all, really, the whole place turned on.

  I’ve been around the block a few times. I’m not really what you’d call a sheltered, small-town fox, even though I lived about three-quarters of my life in Jamesburg. I’ve been to cities. I went to college for a couple of years in town big enough that I saw Bon Jovi play twice.

  But holy living shit was all I could think. The thing that shot out of the center of the fighting arena, or ring, or pit, or whatever you call it, it wasn’t a fireball. It wasn’t even a jet of flame. It was like a tiny nuke going off.

  At exactly the same time, all hundred or so of us sitting around the place, sat back and shielded their eyes like they were watching sunrise. In a way, they were.

  This little town had never seen much of anything like this.

  No concerts come through here, and the last time a pro-wrestling match went down, it was the middle of the afternoon. This was... something.

  “Did you see that?” Henry said, grabbing my arm. “How did that not light the roof on fire?”

  I just shook my head. My eyes were so wide open that they started to hurt a little in the corners. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to react.”

  Jets of flame much smaller than the supernova cascaded down either side of the ring, and then by the time the last of the dying flames flickered out, a single spotlight had appeared in the center of the ring.

  The whole thing was crazy. It was nuts. I had no idea what the hell was going on, and I don’t even like boxing at all, or football for that
matter. I just couldn’t rip my eyes off the cage in the center. How was this even legal? Was it legal? Right then, as I watched the curtains figuratively pull back from before my eyes, and a sleazy-as-all-hell huckster stepped out in the middle of the ring, I couldn’t care less if it was legal or not.

  “Ladies and... well, let’s be serious,” the emcee said with a sneer. “I only care about the ladies. Welcome to the first night where you’ll be able to say you’ve seen the most exciting fights you can imagine. The strongest competitors, the most brutal bouts... and tonight, there’s something special on the books.” He paused and flashed a yellowed grin at the crowd. His teeth, I noticed, were more than a little pointed.

  “You’re going to enjoy the ride of your life! And I, Marlin Guatorre, will be your guide through the mayhem.”

  At the end of his little speech, his voice slowed to a belly-rumbling growl. The obnoxious, gold, herringbone necklace around his neck lay on a mat of chest hair puffed out from under his open butterfly collar. For once, I really wished I couldn’t see as well as I could – up in our nosebleed seats, I never would’ve been able to see his hair poking out between the links of his necklace if not for my fox eyes.

  “That guy makes my skin absolutely crawl, Viola,” Henry said, under her breath. “And... is it just me or does he look like he’s not exactly all human? Those teeth, I mean, they’re so, uh, pointy.”

  “No way,” I said. “A shifter? Running a fight promotion? Surely he’s gotta go all over the place, right? He’d be crazy to be so out in the open. But yeah, those teeth and that voice.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he just has a whole lot of willpower to keep himself from shifting.”

  “What’s that?” Marlin threw back his head and swept off his wide-brimmed straw hat. Underneath he had a small island of hair, swept back over his bald head in a fan-like pattern. There was some kind of pancake makeup on his scalp that deadened the glare. “Did I hear you right? Did I hear you bumpkins at all? Make me believe you want to see a fight, or we’re just packing up and saying goodbye to Jonesburg forever.”

  “Jamesburg, jackass!” someone with a liquor-thickened voice yelled from the second or third row from the cage.

  “Don’t call him a jackass!” followed quickly afterward.

  “Danny Lanton,” Henry said, chuckling slowly. “Always gets mad when people say jackass.”

  “Well,” I said, “he is one, I guess.”

  “Oh ho!” Marlin shot back. “We’ve got a live audience tonight. Live and – wait, did you say Jamesburg?”

  “Damn right!” that same voice, the one Danny Lanton shouted down, came back. That’s when I realized it was Leon, well on his way to being four sheets to the wind. “How can you come here and not even know where you are?”

  Marlin took a couple of steps to the left, then back to the right. With the cane he had in the crook of his arm he reached out and pushed the cage door open. It swung slowly, squeaking all the way.

  The entire audience was dead silent. For a second, I totally forgot that the entire audience was all of a hundred people. It seemed so big, so grandiose, so... carnival-like. I was completely lost in it when I realized that Leon was getting up out of his seat.

  “My friend,” Marlin said in his carny-sneer, “you’ve got a wonderful way about you. Interested in going on the road, perhaps? Come, come, see what it’s like in the squared circle!”

  It was as though Leon was being pulled by some magical, mind-controlling force toward the cage. Like once he was in there, the door was going to slam shut and we’d never see him again.

  “Sit down, Leon!” someone shouted. “Let’s get on with the fights! Sit down!”

  The crowd started booing, and some started hissing. I wondered if the fight barker realized that was because there were a bunch of actual snakes hissing at him.

  “No, no, folks!” Marlin shouted. “This is all part of the show. You see, the first thing we like to do is prove that this is no two-bit wrestling operation, see?” He pushed the door on the cage open the rest of the way. “Leon, is it? Come on inside, that’s it, that’s it, come on in, friend!”

  As he walked around the ring, Leon pushed at one side of the cage. It flexed a little, just like a chain-link fence. He bounced a little, testing the spring of the platform. Each time he jumped up and landed, the ground boomed.

  “Satisfied with what you see so far?” Marlin said. His voice had a very practice tone and accent that reminded me of newscasters or politicians who change their voice depending on where they are. It was all so slick and... con-like. “It’s all real metal, all real steel and wood. And what you’re about to see is the realest thing of all. Are you ready, Leon? Are you ready to test one of my fighters?”

  At that, Leon started shaking like a frog out of water. “I, I, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “I don’t really know how to fight, I—”

  “But you sure were talking big, weren’t you friend?” Marlin opened his jaws wide and almost snapped at the air as he laughed. “Don’t worry, you won’t be fighting Crag, you’re just going to test him to make sure he’s the real deal.”

  Leon – bless his heart – was still shaking.

  Shaking seemed to be contagious. At just the mention of Crag’s name, I felt my heart start to patter, and a little heat creep out of me and flush my cheeks. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, what I was thinking.

  I’d never even seen a picture of the guy, and there I was, imagining us with a little picket fence out front of our house.

  Maybe it was just the promise of seeing someone new that got me so cranked up. Jamesburg is the kind of place where you don’t really know everyone, but you know them. You hear stories, you know reputations. Wildcards weren’t something that came along very often. Just the thought of a new face was enough to get me a little excited... but when that face belonged to a huge, muscled-up, professional fighting werebear?

  Holy shit.

  I had to take a breath to keep myself from overheating.

  “Didja hear that, Viola?” Henry asked. “Are you excited?”

  Something in her voice told me she hadn’t been exactly up-front about all this. “Wait a minute,” I said as the crowd roared and booed and hissed, and Leon kept right on shaking. “Is this some kind of set up? You did something, didn’t you?”

  Innocently, Henry shrugged her shoulders so high they almost touched her ears. That little smirk told me everything.

  Before I could ask her what the hell she was thinking, and how the hell she was going to hook me up with some pit-fighting bear, the lights went out again. The spotlight faded and some heavy metal guitar solo just dripping with machismo fired up.

  Every time the guitars crunched in the music – and they crunched a lot – a strobe light flashed twice. It got faster and faster until the song exploded in a completely absurd solo, and the overhead lights did the same. He entered the arena from the side opposite were we were sitting. With all the strobes and smoke and pyrotechnic effects, I couldn’t really catch a glimpse of him until he climbed into the ring.

  But when he did, holy shit.

  Standing there, right in the middle of the cage, was a guy I just couldn’t believe. Huge, rounded, muscled shoulders sloped toward his head. He was wearing a half-buttoned flannel shirt that looked like it would’ve explode if he tried to button it any higher.

  A tiny hint of his tight, ripped-up abs was visible above where his shirt was buttoned. Even though I couldn’t see his waist, I just knew it would be a carved Adonis’s belt that tapered all the way to his...

  “Holy shit, Henry,” I said. I was only vaguely aware that my mouth was hanging open. I shot her a quick glance. She had the most smug, self-satisfied, I-know-what-I’m-doing look on her face.

  “I think we have a new Captain Beefcake, Viola,” Henry added. Her voice was flat and astonished.

  Crag’s hard calves were half covered by boots, into which his lumberjack-style jeans were tucked. There was a
hole in the knee of one leg, but somehow, I just knew that came from actual work and not scissors. Across his chest spread two crisscrossing scars that looked like he’d been swiped by a lion. Around the scars, and up over one of his shoulders was a huge tattoo that I could tell was intricate, but from the distance, wasn’t sure what it was.

  He touched one of his scars, and then cocked a half-grin. If we were alone – or hell, even if we weren’t – that smile would have made it real tough for my panties to stay up for very long.

  I blushed and I think Henry noticed, because she started laughing at me.

  I’m not much of a blusher. I’m also not much of a guy chaser. But looking at this hunk of bear in front of me, I was a little afraid that if I chased him too hard he’d crush me. Tiny, twitchy fox girl and a three hundred some-odd pound bear? That’s a recipe for a sprained... something.

  “You all right there, Viola?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my eyes fixed on the gorgeous thing in the cage. “Why do you ask?”

  She snickered. “You’re balancing a pen on your finger.”

  I flipped my hand upside down and caught the pen I hadn’t even realized I’d been using to keep myself from twitching. That is how bad I had it for this guy.

  There was arrogance in his dark brown eyes. The kind that only comes from knowing you can back up how much of a badass you think you are. The look on Crag’s face didn’t say ‘look at me, I’m awesome.’ It said, ‘you can’t stop looking at me because you already know how awesome I am.’

  This right here, this was a mate.

  No, I thought, shaking my head. This isn’t just a mate... this feels like fate.

  Crag tossed his shaggy hair back and forth a couple times. He looked around the audience, slowly and searching. “Who wants to see this little pipsqueak hit me?” he roared.

  My heart pounded in my chest. His voice sent these shudders through me. I’m almost embarrassed to admit where I felt them. Let’s just say it was in a place that hadn’t seen a lot of satisfaction lately.

  “Oh my God,” I said under my breath. “I’ve never...”