Smokejumpers Werebear 4: Matteo and Lani Read online

  “Amanda,” Beckett warned.

  “What?” she asked innocently. “I’m just curious.”

  “Well I’m not surprised,” Lani said. “Look around this place. You are on the fringe of civilization. There’s nothing but trees, dirt and bugs. There’s no culture, no art. It’s a cultural vacuum. All you werebears are interested in is eating and shitting in the woods. It’s unnatural.”

  “You werebears,” Beckett said. “That’s the second time you’ve said that.” He pointed a finger at her. “You. Are. A. Werebear.”

  “I was a werebear,” she said.

  “Huh?” Ellis asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Matteo spoke up for the first time from the back. “She hasn’t phased in ten years.”

  “What?!?” Beckett yelled. “Lani that’s crazy!”

  She crossed her arms and shook her head. “No. Changing into an animal is crazy. I’m a human now. I’m normal.”

  Beckett grabbed her arms and shook her. “Phase now,” he ordered. “You’re going to drive yourself insane.”

  “That explains things,” Amanda said under her breath. Keene chuckled. Beckett flashed them a warning look.

  “I’m a human now Beckett,” Lani said. “I’m not going to phase. I don’t even remember how.”

  “Then come here,” Ellis said. “I’ll turn you back. I turned Alexi. I can turn you.”

  Lani spun around and glared at him. “You turned her? How could you?”

  Alexi rubbed her stomach. “I asked him to.”

  “You what?” she snapped. “Why would you want to be a werebear? A freak?”

  Matteo cringed. So that’s what she thought of him.

  A freak.

  He had heard enough. He turned and ran across camp, phasing in mid stride. He burst into a grizzly bear just before the tree line. His bear skidded in the dirt and turned, trying to get back to his mate.

  But Matteo wasn’t having any of it. As hard as his bear pulled, he pulled even harder. His bear slunk his head down and headed into the woods.

  Lani laid down on Matteo’s bed and stretched her legs out. Her welcome home wasn’t as warm as she had hoped, especially with that new bitch Amanda, but Matteo was still clearly in love with her and that’s what she was banking on.

  She thought back in disgust at the open way that Matteo had just changed into his bear in front of everyone. No regard for the way it made him look. Like a savage. Like a freak of nature.

  There was something wrong with these people. The way they just phased in and out, embracing their unnatural, genetic anomaly. It was sad.

  Her bear grumbled faintly within. Oh you shut up! She screamed at it. She didn’t like the way that her bear had come back to life. Ever since she hugged Connor at that dreaded kayaking place. Her bear awakened and was getting louder inside her everyday. In New York City she would only hear it on the rarest of occasions. A faint echo of an echo. But now the voice was getting stronger. Louder. It was still controllable but at this rate she would be phasing like a circus freak any day now and all the work of suppressing it over the years would be lost.

  She had to get out of here fast. It wouldn’t take long. Matteo was still in love with her and that’s all that she needed.

  She would get what she came her for and then leave forever.

  And be normal.

  two

  Matteo dove into the river, letting the disturbed water swallow him. He focused on quieting his mind, his thoughts. He focused on the trillions of drops of cool water tickling his flustered skin.

  Lani looked…

  No. He tried to suppress the thought. But it was no use.

  He swam up to the surface for air and thoughts of her came flooding back into his mind.

  Why is she here? What does she really want?

  Matteo knew the reason that she gave of being here for research for a movie was bullshit. She wouldn’t come back for that. So what was it?

  He turned on his back and let the slow current take him downstream. He closed his eyes and let the sun shine down on his face.

  He was torn. He didn’t want her here. He wanted to go back to feeling okay with her absence. To living without her. It was hard but he was capable.

  But he wasn’t convinced that he was capable of this. Of her being here. His emotions were all over the place. He was a mess.

  His bear was happy. That was for sure. Even now, ripples of water floated away happily from his vibrating chest.

  Why her?

  He understood why he bonded to Lani as a teenager. She was amazing back then. Funny, smart, pretty and so fun to be around. He still vividly remembered the moment when his bear bonded to her. It was nothing special. He was hanging out with Beckett, smoking cigarettes behind the General Store when she rode up on her orange bike. She was two years younger than him and Beckett but smarter than both of them put together.

  She had asked to try a haul and Beckett told her to get lost. Before she pedaled away she smiled at Matteo and winked. That did it. His young bear bonded to her. Bonded hard. It was like the universe was being sucked into a black hole and she was at the center. All he could see was her. The rest of the world was black.

  He came to only after she turned the corner, with Beckett shaking his body. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked.

  Matteo tried to play it off. He went to take a drag of his cigarette but his fingers touched his lips and it wasn’t there. It had slipped out of his fingers and blew away in the wind. Since that day not an hour went by where she didn’t cross his mind; where he didn’t see her face.

  He waited and waited for her to bond back with him so that they could finally be together but it never happened. Their love was completely one sided. He was forced to live in a constant state of agitated, unrequited love.

  Then over the years she began to change. She became hostile, mean. She criticized Matteo and her brothers, even her mom, when they would phase into their bears. She acted like she was better than everybody. Like she wasn’t one of them. Like she wasn’t a werebear.

  And then one day she left.

  “Look at the size of this one,” a familiar voice rang out down the river.

  Matteo looked over his stomach at Quint and Sander fishing on the bank. Sander had a huge, flapping fish in his hands.

  Quint took a sip of wine from his thermos. “Dibs.”

  “No way,” Sander said tucking the fish under his arm and turning away. “He’s mine.”

  “Good luck getting that thing past Keene,” Quint said laughing.

  “You better catch one more,” Matteo called out as he drifted closer.

  The two guys looked over at him. “Why?” Quint asked.

  “Lani is back.”

  Sander gasped and brought his hands up to his mouth. The wiggling fish dropped out of his hands and plunged back into the river. “No,” he muttered, watching with his shoulders slumped as his dinner swam away to safety.

  “Ah ha,” Quint laughed, slapping Sander on the back. “Here have a drink. It will make you feel better.”

  Sander took a swig of the thermos and picked up another worm from the container by his feet. “She’s back?” he asked as he placed it on the hook. “I guess this is a good time to take my vacation.”

  “Has she grown up a bit?” Quint asked. “She was…a lot to handle when she left.”

  “She seems to be worse,” Matteo said, treading water.

  “Just when things were starting to get peaceful around here,” Quint said. “How is your bear?”

  “So far so good,” he said, floating past them. “We’ll have to see what happens.”

  Matteo swam to the bank of the river and stood up. Water droplets flowed down his muscular naked body. He looked up at the trees. There are shorts around here somewhere. The Crew had extra shorts stashed all over the forest for anyone who phased back into their human form. They came to this solution after the guys would walk back into camp naked, with their dicks flopping arou
nd. Everyone got sick of that pretty fast.

  Matteo pulled down a pair of beige cargo shorts and slipped his leg into them. They were way to big around the waist. Must be Keene’s.

  He crunched a ball of the shorts in his fist, held them up in the front and headed back into camp. His bear purred as he got closer to his mate. Matteo’s breath sped up. Just avoid her. Spend the days hunting. Beckett will understand.

  Lani spotted him when he entered the camp and walked over.

  “Where did you run off to?” she asked, her eyes trailing over his bare chest.

  “Went for a swim,” he replied, looking past her.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said leaning forward. She ran her fingers down his forearm, making his bear purr. “I’ve missed you.”

  Matteo’s chest tightened.

  “Let’s spend some time together,” she said, batting her eye lashes. “After dinner. Alone.”

  His bear purred. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms. And strangle her? Hug her? He didn’t know what.

  He put his hand on top of hers and pulled it away from his arm. A long, soft purr vibrated from her chest. Matteo smirked. “Looks like your bear is still in there after all.”

  She whipped her hand away and held her breath, her face turning red. She was about to say something but shut her mouth, spun on her heels and stormed back to Matteo’s cabin.

  God damn this place! Lani ripped off her Manolo Blahniks and threw them at the wall. The sole picture on the wall, a photo of Matteo’s mother, shook.

  All of the work over the past decade to suppress her bear, to be normal, gone in a few hours. She had to get out of this place. Fast. But she couldn’t leave before she got what she came here for.

  Lani wasn’t as successful as she made it out to be. The truth is she was broke. Her only job in the past six years had been working part time at Starbucks. Before that her last acting job was for an instructional video about workplace safety. She had nailed it but the director was a hack. A wannabe, film maker, student idiot who didn’t know talent when he saw it. He actually cut her from the video and she hadn’t worked since.

  Two weeks ago she spent her rent money on a purse and her landlord kicked her out. The idiot didn’t understand that to be a famous actress she had to look the part. She tried to explain to to him that it was an investment and one day when she was rich and famous she would pay him back ten fold but the dolt wouldn’t listen. He just evicted her. She had nowhere else to go and was a step away from being homeless. She spent her last sixty dollars on a bus ride to New Hampshire and begged her cousin Connor to bring her here.

  This time she would try LA. New York was full of student artists and other morons who couldn’t recognize her true potential. LA is where she would hit it big. She would be a huge celebrity and finally get the respect and admiration that she deserved. She would show all of those preppy kids from Westwood High that she was normal. Paul would be on his knees apologizing for what he did.

  She just needed some cash.

  And there was one guy she could manipulate into giving it to her. Matteo had always been a sucker for her. He had bonded with her when he was a teenager and she had been able to boss him around ever since. His father had left him a small fortune when he died and Matteo just let it sit there, preferring the woods and pickup trucks to Porsche's and Italian villas.

  She knew what she had to do. Just a little flirting and that cash was as good as hers.

  three

  “So I was eating at their house,” Lani said at the picnic table over dinner, “and Brad said you just have to come with us on our yacht to the French Riviera for Cannes. Angelina was so excited that we spent the whole night planning the trip.”

  Matteo looked around the table at the crew. Sander was watching a bird in the sky, Keene was slumped on his hand with his elbow on the table, and Beckett’s eyes looked vacant. Only Amanda was listening with rapt attention.

  “So you’re pretty close with them?” Amanda asked.

  Lani held her hand up with her fingers crossed. “Like this.”

  “So you must know their children then?”

  “Amanda,” Beckett warned.

  “What?” she asked innocently. “It’s not every day that you meet a Hollywood celebrity.”

  Lani lifted her chin up. “I’m like an aunt to them.”

  “What are their names again?” Amanda asked with a grin.

  Lani’s face dropped. “Well there’s the Chinese one,” she mumbled. “Sander these meatballs are just heavenly!” she said, changing the subject. Amanda watched with a smug grin on her face. “I love the way that they’re burnt on the outside.”

  “They make great golf balls,” Ellis said with a chuckle. Sander flashed him a dirty look.

  “I had the best meatballs at George Clooney’s villa in Lake Como,” Lani said.

  Keene rolled his eyes.

  “That’s in Italy,” she said.

  “It’s in Imagination Land,” Keene muttered.

  Amanda let out a snort and almost spit out her wine.

  Matteo sat back and watched with a tightness in his stomach. He tried to remain invisible.

  “You definitely have a lot of stories,” Beckett said, leaning back and eying her. “Let me tell you a story. When our Dad was in his Smokejumping Crew back in the day he ran with a fellow Smokejumper named Leo.”

  Amanda rolled her head back and puffed. “Not a boring elder story,” she whined.

  “Just listen,” Beckett said, continuing. “Leo was a polar bear, just like Keene. He was a nice guy, funny, smart and the crew loved him. Well, one day, Leo got hired by the government to train other crews of Smokejumpers across the country for one year. He lived with the crew of trainees for three months at a time and when their training was done he would move on to the next crew in another state. He was disappointed to find out that there were no other shifters in any of the crews. He was living in close quarters with the men and never had an opportunity to shift. He began neglecting his bear. There was always somebody around and he couldn’t hunt, he couldn’t phase. He just suppressed him, pushed him down, deep inside and ignored him.”

  Matteo watched Lani. She was barely listening.

  “The bear started acting out,” Beckett continued, “demanding to be heard, demanding to be released, but Leo couldn’t listen. He would have been outed in front of the men and who knows how they would have reacted. After a few weeks his personality began to change. He became easily annoyed, snapping at minor things and losing his temper at the drop of a hat. After a few months his personality had radically altered. He couldn’t filter things properly. His grasp on reality began to slip. And after a year,” Beckett paused, making sure that his sister was listening. “After a year he had lost it. He had gone insane. They were flying the crew of trainees to a practice jump when the pilot took on the wrong heading. Leo flew into a rage, grabbed the controls of the plane and flew it right into a mountain. They all died.”

  “Pleasant story Beckett,” Lani said, mockingly. “Still I think that guy was better off as a human than being a dirty bear eating garbage and killing things with his mouth. At least he died being normal.”

  “He died, trying to be something that he wasn’t,” Beckett said. “Why are you so ashamed of being a werebear?”

  “I’m not a werebear,” she said. “Sander what did you make for dessert?”

  Beckett sighed in frustration. Amanda rubbed his shoulders, trying to stifle her laugh.

  “Tonight we have creme brulee served with chocolate coated strawberries,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

  “Served with a nice Porto,” Quint added. “Made by Chateau St Quinty.”

  “Is it better than the last batch?” Keene asked, picking up the empty plates off the table.

  Quint scrunched his face up in thought. “Not sure. That last one was hard to beat.”

  Ellis made a disgusted face. “You had to chew it down.”

  “That’
s the sign of a vintage Porto,” Quint said.

  “That’s the sign of food poisoning,” Keene said.

  “Fine,” Quint said, “more for me.”

  Amanda held her empty wine glass up. “Don’t forget about me.”

  Quint smiled and clinked her glass with his.

  Matteo normally hated Quint’s Porto but tonight he needed a drink. A strong drink.

  “So Lani,” Amanda said with a devilish grin on her face. “I thought all celebrities got around by private jet.”

  “We do,” she said. “But I decided to drive across the country for research. See how the little people live.”

  “You mean force Connor to drive you across the country,” Ellis added. Lani ignored the comment.

  She looked over at Matteo and his stomach tightened. “Why so quiet over there?” she asked.

  “Probably because you’ve been talking the whole time,” Keene said.

  She waved him away with a laugh. “Oh you’re so funny.”

  Lani stood up, grabbed her wine glass with one hand and reached over to grab Matteo’s glass with the other. “Time for that walk you promised me,” she said. She looked past them into the outdoor kitchen. “Where is that Porto?”

  Lani glanced back at the Crew around the table and frowned. Amanda and Beckett were watching them. She didn’t like Amanda at all.

  Typical of her alpha brother to pick a bitch like her. He always acted like he knew better than her and look who he ended up with. They deserved each other.

  Matteo walked quietly beside her through the forest, sipping his Porto and looking up at the trees. He was more handsome than she remembered. His jawline was cut and powerful, his shoulders large and broad. He had a calming, quiet presence about him that exuded authority.

  She looked away, catching herself. That’s not what you’re here for.

  Lani stepped closer to him, brushing her arm against his. His bear purred and she bit her lip. She had him right where she wanted him.