Page 23 of Omega's Bears

Chapter Fourteen

The weather providesme with decent cover most of the time. I can get away with wearing scarves and turtlenecks with popped collars to cover the place on my neck where the bruise from Luka’s bite still shows. I hate this. I feel like I’m lying to my clan. And lying to them about this just makes me think about the first, most fundamental, lie I told, the one that got me through the front door. The wolves. Lying to the Hell’s Bears was one thing when I didn’t know them, and I was fleeing for my life, but now, they’re my friends. They’re my family. They’re my mates, for God’s sake. Lying to them now feels like a betrayal.

Half the time, I’m furious at them for putting me in the position they have. Shouldn’t this be someone else’s responsibility? Jack is the alpha; shouldn’t he be keeping his house in order? But the days go by and no one says anything about it, and bit by bit, I start to wonder if I’m just crazy. Is it normal for things like this to happen? Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe none of the others would care. Maybe they were expecting this to happen.

The tension breaks two days after my encounter with Luka, when he corners me again. Today, I was planning to move more snow into the cave while everyone was away, so we could repack the meat stores. It’s a chore that needs to be done from time to time because we keep the cave pretty warm and the snow melts after a couple of days. But when I emerge, once again, Luka is waiting for me.

“Hey,” he says, his voice husky, and then his lips are covering mine and my back is against the rock. I don’t even have time to marshal any willpower. I wrap my legs around his waist and fist my hands in his hair, kissing him back for all I’m worth.

After a moment, he pulls away from me, a satisfied grin etched across his face. “You’re feisty this morning.”

“You’re the one who got the drop on me,” I protest. “I was just getting snow.”

“Industrious of you.”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I ask. “Aren’t you supposed to be out hunting with the others?”

“We usually split up,” he says. “Jack’s looking down by the water and Ryan ran off into the deep woods.”

“And they sent you back here?”

“They didn’t send me,” Luka admits. “I came on my own. I wanted to see you.”

“You can’t be coming back here in the middle of the day to see me,” I tell him, tugging awkwardly at the scarf I’ve tied around my neck today. The bruise is taking a long time to fade, and it’s making me nervous. Luka being here when he shouldn’t be is only going to make things harder. The others are bound to notice something eventually. They’re smart.

“Sure, I can,” Luka says easily. “You’re a part of my clan. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be seeing you.” He raises his eyebrows, as if challenging me to come up with a reason. As if he’s daring me to articulate the reason we both know I’m thinking of.

I can’t do it. As long as this remains unspoken, we can go on pretending. The moment I say it aloud, it becomes a real problem that will spread from here and infect the clan as a whole. I don’t want to discuss this with him. I want to ignore it and pretend it isn’t happening, except during those wild and untamed moments when it is.

So, I change the subject, seizing on the only thing that comes to mind, the only other thing I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. “Luka, why did we rob that convenience store?”

He stares, apparently taken aback at the shift. A not insignificant part of me is pleased at having been able to throw him off and reclaim a little of the power in the conversation. “What?”

“You know what. The convenience store we robbed when we were between homes. What was that about?”

“That was ages ago,” Luka says. “Have you been thinking about it all this time?”

“I’ve never done anything like that before,” I point out. “And Jack said he had a gun—”

“He didn’t have a gun. Jack doesn’t own a gun. None of us do.”

“I know that.”

“We’re bears. We don’t fight with guns.”

“I know that. But why did he say it? The poor clerk at that store thought his life was in danger. He’ll probably never get over that. Do you know how terrifying that must have been? Do you even understand how scary the three of you look?”

“We look scary?” Some amusement has returned to Luka’s face.

“I was terrified to even approach you,” I tell him. “When I was on my way up here, after my old clan died, I seriously considered not even trying to find you. You scared me.”

“But you hadn’t even seen us then,” Luka counters.

“Okay, no, I hadn’t. But you’re big guys, all three of you, and you’re muscular and tattooed, and you look...” I wave a hand helplessly at his face, “unkempt. And then you walk into a store and demand all the money in the register, and you tell the kid running the place that you have a gun—”

“We told him that so he wouldn’t be fired,” Luka says heavily. “I don’t like it either. But a lot of managers will fire an employee who gives in to an unarmed robbery. If the clerk can point to a credible fear that his life was in danger, his job should be safe.”

“Well, that’s noble,” I say. “Wouldn’t his job be even safer if you just didn’t steal from him?”

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