Bearly Hanging On (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 6) (2 page)

It’s exactly the same, except the zombie bears did, in fact, direct traffic. They were incredibly good at standing in one place and doing the same thing for hour after hour without getting distracted or, apparently, even noticing the passage of time. Oh, and there also aren’t a whole lot of seven foot tall fifth graders put together like Frankenstein’s monster and reanimated. So there’s that.

“So... I can complain now?”

The bear, which is what he must have been, since he didn’t show any signs of being a science experiment, was looking straight at Jamie.

Oh God, am I giving off some kind of pheromones that he smelled? Why is he staring at me and why am I not looking away? And why—why the hell am I really into the fact that all of this is happening?

That flush from earlier came back. She wished suddenly she wasn’t wearing quite so low-collared a top as she was.

Erik sighed, Izzy clicked her teeth together, Atlas drooled and Jenga’s knotted, stuff-filled beard jingled. “The stoplights are happening then?” Duggan asked.

“Yes,” Izzy said with a sigh. “Although, I’m not going to allow you to get the ones with the backlit street names, those are just too stupid for words. We’re getting the standard deal – three lights, one green, one yellow and one red, facing in four directions.” She usually wasn’t this sharp tongued, but in this case, she was just saying what everyone else was thinking.

“But, I—”

“This is called compromise, Duggan,” Izzy said. She was very obviously finished with the compromising.

Duggan grumbled, but didn’t pursue the luxury line stoplights he’d been wanting earlier. Top of the line luxury stoplights; there’s an idea crazier than Jamesburg, but not by much. Jamie looked over at the bear who had walked through that door and straight into her brain.

What? Everyone’s known hearts don’t control the emotions since at least the Middle Ages. And as far as all that fate stuff goes? Even though her stomach was currently in a big knot, and she couldn’t stop blushing every time this jackass in the lumberjack outfit opened his mouth or smiled one of those smiles that produced a dimple in either cheek, she didn’t believe in fate.

Or hell, even
love
, really.

“So can I complain now?” he smiled again.
Damn it, why can’t he stop smiling or anything. And why can’t I stop staring at him?

“Complain away, friend,” Erik said with a wave of his hand. “Although I don’t think I know your name, which is a little weird, considering how close I am to the people of this fine city.”

“Can it, Clark Kent,” Izzy fired a shot with her eyes. “You’d forget
my
name if I didn’t make you—”

“We can’t really talk about how you make me remember your name without getting in trouble again for public lewdness,” he corrected. Erik shot a sneer in her direction, and she was still glaring, but the looks both of them gave were looks that only lovers who never want anything but each other can manage.

And good God did they ever want each other.

They hadn’t stopped the slightly-embarrassing public displays of mutual ass-grabbing since Izzy got knocked up. Jamie looked over at the two sweethearts, and couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy.

From the alpha’s administrative assistant to being full of his furry little cub. Life’s a funny damn thing sometimes
, she thought with a wry grin, as she watched the bear cross, and then uncross his legs.

“Anyway,” Erik said, his gaze lingering on his mate, his eyes dropping and then raising a little. “Tell us everything that’s bothering you.”

“My shoulder hurts, my sex life sucks, and I want to get a new car I can’t afford,” he said.

Oh yeah, of course he’s funny. I bet he cooks, too. And bakes
. She felt herself swoon, and then immediately recoiled.
Or he’s a giant asshole with a cocky streak a mile wide, and a brain the size of a walnut.

“You can get a massage from Jenga’s zombie, the Tavern is right down the road from here and we’re all going to be there in – God willing – two hours, and as far as the car, I thought all you bears rode motorcycles.”

“They’re not zombies!” Jenga protested, but as usual, no one listened.

“Shoulder will heal, I don’t have to get a girl drunk to ask her out, and some of us like to drive cars that do something other than make us look manly.”

Okay, so stupid is out the window. Cocky asshole is still definitely in the cards, but...

“But all wit and cuteness aside,” he grew very serious, very quickly. “Winter is coming on fast, and a bunch of us are without any real way to get ready for it. I’m fine, but I can’t chop enough wood for an entire valley of old, broken, sick shifters. We got a family of cougars without a roof on their house, a half dozen bears who can’t burn a furnace for a lack of wood and won’t ask because of an overabundance of pride.”

And a kind heart? What just walked into my life—?

“Or the whiny ones. Although those you just have to let freeze a little, and they start making their own way. But seriously? You’re sitting up here complaining about three grand worth of stoplights, while some of your oldest citizens freeze?”

Erik turned his head and mouthed something to Izzy, which no one could hear.

“And yeah, they pay taxes and also vote in the alpha choosing,” the giant bear said, his gruffness showing again. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

“That’s some high gravity for a complainer’s court session. How about you come back next week and I’ll have an answer?” Erik said with an uneasy laugh.

Both Izzy and Jamie were staring at him. They’d
both
been hounding him – so to speak – for months, about this exact problem. Old shifters, sick ones, homeless ones that took to the forest, a clutch of runaway fox kits and adolescent raccoons that functioned as a sort of furry Robin Hood and his Merry Men, they all lived out there in the great wilderness around Jamesburg, and almost none of them had any way to keep warm, or to keep fed. Erik, of course, preferred to think it was all made up. Mostly because with everything
else
going on in town, and with Izzy, he couldn’t handle anything else.

“How about you come up with one now?” Izzy asked. “He—what’s your name?”

The bear narrowed his eyes. His beard, when he did that, almost looked like it swallowed his face.

I really, really want to see this face shaved. Or at least just stubbly.
Jamie bit her own tongue, irritated with herself for not being able to focus.

“Ryan Drake,” he said with a growl. All that gruffness and all those smiles vanished into pure, focused anger. “Fix it.”

With that, he gave Jamie one last look that just about melted her to the core, stood up, and left without another word.

Oh shit,
Jamie’s stomach hit her feet.
He’s hot, he’s got a hell of a sneer, and even though he’s got a gnarly beard, and I don’t even like bears very much... Maybe I just had to see the right one. I’m in big, big trouble
.

She took a deep breath, and swallowed hard. For the first time ever, not even complainer’s court could get Jamie irritated.

––––––––

A
s it turned out, it took something like
three
hours before the courtroom emptied out and The Tavern, Jamesburg’s premier drinking establishment, filled.

It’s hard to say the two were really related, but... complainer’s court days were always a highlight of the bar’s week as far as income went. It was also the day when the most fights happened. In a place where the normal patrons were werewolves, werebears, and at least one salamander, fights just happened. But, after hours of people sitting in one room, complaining about anything they wanted, and then going and drinking?

“I’m so sick of Danniken being so pretty,” Leon, the town drunk-cum-salamander said out of the working side of his mouth. He was sitting right next to Erik himself, and was actually engaged in a conversation with him, which made the whole thing even more wonderful.

“Pretty?” Erik asked, far less sloshed than Leon, mostly because he’d only started drinking around six, instead of noon. “I think I’m more rugged and handsome. More Clint Eastwood than, I don’t know, David Duchovny.”

That was about all Jamie could take. It was a little irritating to listen to her precious Agent Mulder slandered in such a way, but night was falling, and for her, that meant it was time to get to work.

It isn't that I'm antisocial or anything. It's just that after enough time sitting in a bar I start to wish I could, you know, actually drink.

Jamie took three steps backward, and exchanged a quick glance with the big wolf manning the bar. They'd known each other since high school, and her endless string of spicy tomato juice cocktails never cost anything. Every so often she started feeling guilty about the lack of actual purchasing she did, but that was heavily outweighed by how much trouble, and how much damage, she
didn't
cause.

And she still couldn't get that damn bear out of her head. The way he looked at Erik, completely unafraid, completely undaunted by the office of the guy he was staring down? That was a thing to behold. No one did that to Erik. At least, not that lived afterwards. But that guy? Ryan Drake? He stared down the alpha, made a demand, and then had the nerve to grin about it.

The Tavern's parking lot had been freshly graveled. The stones, pointy and small and new, jabbed at her feet through the stilettos she always wore to highlight her calves, which happened to be her favorite feature.

Taking a deep breath, Jamie looked around the half-f parking lot at a pair of green pickup trucks. Between them, two men stood with their backs toward her, arguing about something. "I swear t' God Angus," one of them said in a voice much higher pitched than she anticipated. "You do that one more time 'n I'm gonna shoot you right in the pecker."

No matter how hungry she was, people talking about shooting each other in the peckers was always going to get Jamie's attention. Partially because if it looked like someone's crotch was actually going to get shot, she had Ash Morgan's phone on speed dial. He was one of only a handful of bears on the Jamesburg police force. He
had
been the first when he signed on a couple years back, but since then a few more had joined up.

If anyone's getting shot in the pecker, Ash will want to know
. Although for the moment, all dicks seemed to be safe, since the two men had started to hug. Jamie sighed, at once glad she wasn't going to have to call her buddy and witness for the police, but at the same time, vaguely disappointed that tonight was going to be pretty much like all the other ones.

"Lots and lots of jack shit punctuated by intense moments of crazy." She smiled to herself and looked up at the sky. "Gotta love—"

Before she could finish her recitation of the town slogan, the two guys arguing over their peckers stopped hugging, and one of them wheeled back and bashed the other one right in the mouth. His fist, hitting with the impact of a meteor, made a thick, nasty
crunch
. He pulled back his arm to do it again.

But, the one whose pecker had been in mortal danger fell first to his knees and then over on his back, legs splayed up in the air, like he'd been shot in a Sergio Leone movie.
And he is ugly as all hell, wonder if he's good or bad?
Jamie giggled to herself before strolling over to the aggressor and grabbing his elbow casually.

"The fuck are you doin'?" he spat at her. Froth on the man's lips, along with the sweet smell of fermented barley meant both graced the side of Jamie's face. "Lemme go! Angus's the jackass who done knocked up my sister and then tried t' leave 'er with a couple cubs!"

Jamie quirked an eyebrow.
Drunk and a backwoods dweller
, she thought. A quick glance down the man's face revealed him to be long and lean - probably a wolf, or maybe some kind of big cat. Panthers get loud when they drink. She stared at his eyes for a moment to give hers time to adjust to the changing light of dusk.
Long slit. Yep. Houston, we've got a panther
.

She squeezed his elbow in her fist. Long, lean, fingers constricted a lot tighter than it looked like she could constrict. The drunk winced.

"I told ya! He's the asshole here!"

"He's also on the ground," she whispered. The loud argument about dongs made her laugh, but when someone was helpless and someone else was about to beat him senseless, or worse, the humor drained right out of her. "Right now all I see is one bleeding panther, and one drunk one that hit him. Don't move."

She let go of his arm to test him, and of course he went to kick the guy, so she grabbed his ankle in mid-air and flipped the sweaty panther onto his back. He landed with a loud huff, and for the first time she smelled the sour scent of alcohol-laced sweat. "I told you not to move," she said in a passive, almost casual voice. "Why didn't you listen?"

He raised his head like he was going to say something, but Jamie placed her foot on his neck, spike of her stiletto on one side, and toes on the other. "I don't like doing this, but I also don't like bothering the cops." She used to say 'bothering the hyenas' since most of Jamesburg's cops were, well, hyenas, but since the bear squad had joined up, it didn't work as well as it once had. "And anyway, they'd be rougher on you than I am. Now, can I check out the guy you decked, or do I have to choke you unconscious first?"

The way the words slid off of her pointed tongue, over her ruby red lips made it very clear there wasn't going to be a discussion on the matter. When he didn't respond as quickly as she wanted, she gave her foot a little twist, and pressed down on his Adam's apple for emphasis.

"Yes!" he squawked. "Or no, I mean, whichever means I ain't movin'. I already got two damned ol' public intox tickets. I cain't get another or they'll haul me in."

Jamie sighed audibly. "Maybe that'd be for the best," she said. "Although I guess you're going to whine about your kids and your family or whatever you think is going to win me over, right? And then after that doesn't work, you might cry or something to seem pathetic. You
do
know who I am right?”