A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) Read online

  Jackson’s father, an escaped slave, had settled in Bearfield during the Civil War. He’d helped found the town and by all accounts had been a charming, generous person. He’d shocked everyone when he’d announced at the age of eighty-something that his pretty young wife was pregnant.

  The more Michael thought about the estate—the old Victorian house built right at the base of the mountain, the possibility of Civil War-era antiques languishing inside—the hungrier he got. There was nothing Michael or his bear liked more than a good treasure hunt. They were foragers at heart, built to search through miles of wilderness to find the sweetest streams, the tastiest salmon, and the sweetest berries.

  Or in this case, more wonderful antiques for Michael to sell either online or to the tourist trade that came through his shop.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about breaking in, because tonight was the night he was going to do it.

  He just needed to get through the day first, and that meant smiling while Marcie Jackson—no relation to the old man—talked at him about his brother and his brother’s new mate.

  He couldn’t blame Marcie—the whole town was in a tizzy over Matt and Mina.

  For the record, Michael was happy his brother was in love and that he’d found someone like Mina to share his life with. They were perfect for each other. He just wished everyone would shut up about it and stop shooting glances at him in that when-is-it-your-turn way.

  It’d been so long since a fated mate had been found in Bearfield that the people—at least the ones in the know—couldn’t contain their excitement. There hadn’t been any proper bear cubs born since Michael, and the prospect of new little ones to dote on and raise was just too much for the good people of Bearfield. When they gushed to Michael about their joy they tried not to look askance at Marcus’s son, but the boy wasn’t a shifter. No matter how kind or smart or hardworking a kid he was, he’d never be the same as a bear in the town’s eyes. Michael felt for the kid. He knew what it was like to be the odd man out.

  Marcie Jackson came round Michael’s salvage yard, fundraising for a renovation of the old schoolhouse. “It’d be so nice to have a fresh coat of paint on the place,” she said, picking up some drawer pulls hand-carved from antlers and turning them over in her hands like as if today was the day she’d actually buy something. “New children in town are special. Especially these children.”

  “They aren’t even mated yet,” Michael said, sitting on his porch. The day was too nice for Marcie Jackson to spoil it with her busybodying. “It could be a false alarm. False mating happens, like with Marcus.” Michael sipped tea out of a mason jar and let the sun warm his face. Marcie might pretend she was going to buy something, but he knew the truth. She was there to gab about Matt’s maybe one day future kids who may or may not end up being shifters. There were too many maybes for him to get worked up over.

  Marcie pursed her lips. She was a cousin of his, once removed or second cousin or something. He could never keep it straight. Half of Bearfield was his blood relation and a tenth of them knew his secret. “They’ll be mated. I can feel it in my blood,” Marcie Jackson said as if that was proof enough. She was plump and dressed in a pink Sunday pantsuit with white polka dots. She looked like an underripe strawberry tottering about on white heels. She’d been Michael’s grade school teacher and he’d never quite forgiven her for it. “Shawna Killdeer had a vision.” The woman’s eyes went wide as she said it, as if Shawna having another vague dream was unimpeachable evidence.

  Wherever Michael went in Bearfield, the story was the same. Not everyone in town knew about the Morrissey boys and their predilection for occasionally turning into bears, but enough did to create a thick cloud of nattering gossip around Michael’s head.

  “Hush,” the women of Bearfield told him as he bumped into them at the library, as he changed their oil, as they picked through the treasures he painstakingly arranged outside his shack. “This time it’s real. Matt and Mina have a real mate connection. We can feel it. Just look at them, you can see how in love they are. They’re practically floating!”

  Michael saw how in love they were and he wanted nothing to do with it.

  During the brothers’ monthly hunt, with the full moon overhead singing its song in their ears, Matt spent almost the entire hunt in man form, blathering on and on about Mina. Her skin was perfect and sweet to smell. Her ideas were bold and amazing. The way she laughed made birds sick with jealousy, blah blah blah. As Michael and Marcus stalked their game, Matt would not shut up.

  The only reason they caught any deer at all that night was because the dumb animals were lulled to sleep by Matt’s boring stories.

  If that was love, count Michael out. He’d seen how love had destroyed Marcus and he couldn’t bear watching it de-claw his other brother.

  Love was the enemy.

  He’d take his buffet of sexy tourists at the Lodge over love any day, thank you very much.

  Michael waited until nightfall to make his move on the old man’s farm. He wasn’t going to steal anything. He was no thief. He just wanted to scope out the contents so he knew which lots to bid on. With a house as big as this, and no next of kin presenting themselves to the courts, the contents would be auctioned in vague heaps by weight—twenty-pound lots or fifty-pound lots unless the contents were obvious. The court didn’t care about value, they just wanted to empty the place out so they could sell it off. But if Michael could figure out which boxes held the real stuff, or even maybe arrange it so the best things were hidden in the worst boxes, he could make off with a fortune in antiques for a song. His bear nearly roared in excitement.

  Michael had a backpack rigged up with bungie cords for shoulder straps. He stuffed the important things inside: shoes, a flashlight, his phone and wallet, and a notebook with attached pen for inventorying the house. He stripped down to his skin, looped the cords over his shoulders and let the shift take him. One second he was a man and the next he was a thin bear with golden fur and lively eyes, wearing a backpack.

  Driving anywhere in Bearfield was a pain, especially at night during the tourist season. The roads meandered and looped, taking their time winding down the mountain. It was so much faster to just bear out and crash through the woods like a giant hairy cannonball. How could his brothers spend so much time as men when being a bear felt so right? As a bear, Michael could see so much more clearly. Every droplet of dew on the leaves sparkled like stars in the night. He could hear the scuttle of squirrels and voles and the thousand crawling critters that lived in Bearfield fleeing before him. The scents of the night air painted a portrait he couldn’t even describe as a man. How could they give this up to waddle around on two feet?

  The path from his junk shop to the Jackson farm took him past the pile of boulders and scree that marked the entrance to the elders’ cave. His sensitive ears picked up the rumbling snore of the bears within. His nose caught their scent and the scent of Ernie Gonzalez, tonight’s watchman. Ernie was just inside the cave, pretending to watch some nature documentary while he actually slept. Everyone on the Bearfield Elders Committee took turns watching the cave. It wouldn’t do to have any hiking tourists stumble in and find the giant cavern full of sleeping bears. Also, if one of those bears should awaken after decades of slumber, they needed a friendly face to greet them, to remind them they were human.

  Michael’s own father was in that cave, and had been for almost twenty years. There’d been an accident. Hunters in the woods had stumbled on Michael’s parents. His mother didn’t make it, and his father had slipped away into the long sleep. Michael had been only a child when he helped Matt and Marcus carry their father into the cave. It’d taken all three of them sweating and straining to haul the giant bear in, though in retrospect Michael realized his own strength probably hadn’t helped much. His father wasn’t the biggest bear in the cave, but he wasn’t far off. At the center of the den was a giant white bear—not a polar bear, just a white bear. He’d been there so long no one even knew his name. Some of
the more superstitious types claimed he was the great bear spirit himself, slumbering in peace, protected by the people of Bearfield, and in return he gave them prosperity and safety and power. Michael didn’t know anything about that. He knew what he did—the shapeshifting—was magic, but he never thought much past it. He’d been able to shift since he was a boy and didn’t ever question it.

  As a child, Michael would venture into the cave some nights, sneaking past whoever was on watch, padding in on his quiet feet. He’d walk the winding path down through the darkness until he found his father. Michael would curl up next to him and then he’d tell him about his day. He’d kept at it until Marcus found him one night, asleep on top of their father. It’d been Marcus’s night for watchman. He’d picked Michael up and carried him home on his wide bear back. Michael had woken up in a bed in his brother’s home. They’d never spoken about it—Marcus wasn’t the type to share feelings—but from that day on Michael had lived under Marcus’s roof, growing up with Marcus’ son, Sebastian, as a brother.

  He visited less often these days. His hopes of his father waking had diminished as the years passed. But stomping past the cave, on his way to break into the farmhouse, his thoughts couldn’t help but be pulled to his father. He said his at leasts as he passed.

  “At least he didn’t die.”

  “At least he isn’t in pain.”

  “At least he’s dreaming.”

  He’d wake one day—all of the bears did. It could be tomorrow or it could be in a hundred years.

  * * *

  It took Alison forever to fall asleep in the house. Even finding a bedroom took so much longer than she could have expected. Nearly every room was packed with boxes overflowing with notes and trinkets and junk. She found a closet that was literally stuffed full of Happy Meal toys from the eighties, still wrapped in plastic. Who does that?

  Her grandfather’s bedroom wasn’t any better. She missed the bed the first time she peeked into the room—a wall of brown cardboard shipping boxes shielded it from view. But on her second pass through all the rooms, she discovered it. A queen-sized low-to-the-ground oak-framed little bit of comfort. At least her grandfather had good taste in beds. She thought about washing the sheets and comforter and pillow cases, but that would have meant going alone into the basement after dark and she’d seen too many horror films to even consider that. She’d do laundry in the morning, when the sun was up, with a shotgun. She didn’t want to be the brown girl who died in the opening scene, just so the audience would understand the true horror of the evil house when a pretty white family moved in.

  Her family tree was a mix of black and white and Chinese and Native American roots. She had the kind of look that made people ask “Where are you from?” whenever they met her. “San Francisco?” she’d reply, but that was never good enough so she’d launch into a story about her black grandfather and her Chinese grandmother meeting in the city just after WWII. But as soon as people found out she was basically American and not from anyplace exotic, they lost interest in the story. Which was fine with Alison, because she hardly knew it herself. Her mother never spoke about her own parents and Alison’s father had split when she just a baby. She never heard his side of things.

  Alison stripped the sheets off her grandfather’s bed—now her bed—and unrolled her old sleeping bag on top of the mattress. It was like camping indoors, but without the bugs or the raccoons stealing your food, or the fear of bears tromping by. She’d hoped that being on her own would free her, give her focus, but so far it’d sent her into a wicked spiral of self-doubt and regret. She’d even considered calling Drew. And that would have been a terrible idea.

  Just as she’d fallen asleep, a sound woke her. It was the unmistakable sound of someone opening a creaky door in an old farmhouse. Her first ridiculous thought was that it was her grandfather’s ghost, come back to search through his boxes for some lost precious object. But that was silly. There was no such thing as ghosts. It was likely a squatter or a burglar or maybe a serial killer who preyed on single women in decrepit farmhouses.

  It took Alison mere seconds to terrify herself with possibilities while the sounds of something walking around her new home drifted up to her. Whatever it was, it was heavy. The floors squeaked under Alison’s weight, but they shrieked under the intruder’s. A big man, Alison thought. Or maybe a bear. A bear could have smelled the food, pushed the back door open, and wandered in. Then she heard the intruder climb the stairs and knew it must be a man.

  Alison could have hidden behind the pile of boxes. She was certain her grandfather would have. But that wasn’t how she was raised. If she let some strange man rob her house the first night she slept there, she would never feel safe again. She had to take a stand.

  The old shotgun leaned against the wall near the door. Alison checked to make sure a shell was in the chamber, and went off to scare away whoever had the nerve to steal from her new home.

  * * *

  As Michael approached the farmhouse, he shifted into his man form. The old man had been into some weird stuff. There were rumors among the Bearfielders that the man was a sorcerer, that he was a demon, that he was a hunter and a spy secretly keeping tabs on the shifters in town. All of that sounded like bunk to Michael. But the old man had done something that kept shifters off his land as long as he lived. No one knew what. Behind the farmhouse were two of the largest beehives Michael had ever seen. More than once while tromping through the woods, searching for snacks, he’d smelled the honey in those hives and gone charging after it, only to be brought up short at Jackson’s property line.

  It wasn’t like a wall or a force field or anything so blunt, but rather whatever Jackson did to keep people like Michael off his land just made it feel like a really bad idea to enter his property. It was as if his mind wanted to set foot on the old man’s lawn, but his legs refused the order.

  When they were younger, he and Matt had tried many times to get into Farmer Jackson’s honey. The smell of it wafting across the valley drove them crazy with need. They’d tried getting a running start, pushing each other over the line, and once Matt had even rolled himself down the valley wall, crashing and thundering like a furry avalanche. He’d rolled clear over the property line, but as soon as his momentum arrested he’d run off it as if his tail was on fire.

  But now that Jackson was dead, Michael could enter, though he still felt a heavy dread as he crossed the line, as if the magic was still there, waiting to rise up and shove Michael away. He sat and fished his shoes and flashlight out of the backpack. He’d have to enter the house and recon it as a man. His bear would crack the floors in two. Still, the bear in him was on point, keenly interested in every new thing around.

  Michael entered through the back door into Jackson’s kitchen. Towers of canned food lined the walls. Michael’s heart sank. He’d known Jackson would have some cool stuff to paw through, but he hadn’t counted on the man being a hoarder. There was too much to go through in one night. He’d never find the good stuff if he had to look through ten thousand boxes.

  Michael wasn’t only searching for treasure to sell. There were rumors that a special pendant—a necklace with an obsidian stone carved from the very heart of their mountain—was in Jackson’s possession. No one had seen it in a generation, but Shawna Killdeer had one of her visions about it and told Michael she’d seen it in an old lockbox, in one of the upper floors of Jackson’s house.

  Now most of Shawna Killdeer’s visions were maddeningly vague. She’d say things like, “When the orange has sounded thrice and the young have supped with the old, then and only then shall the hatching begin!” And no one ever knew what that meant. But sometimes she’d see clearly, like for one moment the vision world came into sharp focus, and she’d speak plain and true.

  The bear in Michael didn’t care about the pendant. It wanted to find food and game, to find someone soft and beautiful to rut with, to find treasures to sell. The idea that something could be valuable because it was useful was
alien to the bear. You ate and drank and fucked and bartered and that was life, as far as his animal was concerned.

  Michael walked through the house naked, but for his shoes and backpack. No signs of life. No one was here but him and it wasn’t like passing cars would see his flashlight. No one drove this road unless they were making deliveries. His bear wanted to open every box, to dump every container on the floor to root through, but Michael fought the urge. He climbed the steps to the upper floor, the old wood groaning and creaking underfoot. The house was crammed full of stuff—even the steps had boxes and bags on them—but it wasn’t dirty. It wasn’t moldy or decaying. It needed work—lots of work—but the house had good bones and had avoided the rot that could set in when the owners failed to keep up.

  Michael found the upstairs office and decided to try there first. The room was dominated by an old oak desk that was over six feet wide and four feet deep. It was the kind of desk you imagined in an executive’s office, a hundred years ago—a desk like a tank. Accountant boxes filled the room, some spilled and disheveled with papers crashing out of them in frozen waves of white. Matt picked his way around the boxes, sat himself at the desk and began going through the drawers. Old photos watched him from gilded frames. Jackson had a family at one point. They’d never lived with him in Bearfield, but they’d visited enough times to make an impression and to add “has estranged family” to the official dossier on Jackson. Michael couldn’t resist wiping the dust off the largest of the framed photos. A happy family stared back at him, with Jackson in the middle looking younger than Michael had ever seen him. A woman who must have been his daughter hugged him, while at her feet seven girls played and wrestled and stuck out their tongues at the camera. What had happened between the old man and these women? Where’d they gone?