His only hope was that he could deal with Karl without an incident occurring that would give away what he was and then get Skye to Cameo. It was a solid plan, one he might have set in motion yesterday when a break in the storm had allowed him to get a decent signal on the two-way radio.
While Skye had been busy dealing with dinner, he had used the radio to contact Saint. He had been worried that Karl and his men weren’t going to come up to the lodge and might end up there instead and had wanted to warn them. Once his alpha had been briefed on the fact there were three men remaining and all were armed and where he had left them, he had asked how things were at Black Ridge.
Knox had learned that Maverick and Rune had indeed returned to the Ridge, which was a comfort, until he thought about the fact that both bears wanted to come up to the lodge. Knox had talked them down, mostly because he worried about them meeting Skye. He hadn’t told his alpha about her, wasn’t really sure how to break it to him. Saint hadn’t exactly taken it well when Lowe had brought Cameo, another human, to Black Ridge.
Bringing Skye there was liable to cause a ruckus with his alpha, but Knox needed her there.
He had the feeling that Maverick and Rune were going to ignore his warning to stay away from the lodge and come here, and he would be forced to deal with introducing her to his pride sooner than he wanted.
So, Knox had asked Saint to put Lowe on the line and clear everyone else out.
Apparently, Lowe had been hovering around Saint, twitchy and eager to get his turn on the radio, irritating their alpha. Saint had been all too happy to hand the mic over to Knox’s twin.
Lowe had assured him the other bears were gone and had then gone on to tell him that Cameo was fine and his injuries were healing, which was a relief. Cameo had taken the fact Lowe was a bear shifter well, and that had given Knox hope that Skye might be the same, even when he knew there was a higher chance that his female would freak out and run. It was rare for a shifter to reveal what they were to a human and not get that reaction. It took a powerful sort of love, a deep and true sort, for a human in a relationship with a shifter to overcome what they were and accept it and the fact there were many different people in this world.
Archangel managed to fill their ranks quite nicely with the ones who discovered their lover was a shifter or a vampire or a fae and didn’t take it well.
So Knox had decided to up his chances of Skye being the sort of female who could accept her male turned into a bear and lived longer than a human.
He had asked Lowe to speak with Cameo and convince her to talk to Skye when he got her to Black Ridge. If Cameo was the one who told her, maybe Skye would be able to take it all in without surrendering to the urge to run, or join a hunter organisation to eradicate his kind from the face of the planet.
It turned out Cameo had been there with Lowe and she had been quick to steal the mic from his brother and agree to help him.
Lowe had wanted to ask him a million questions about Skye and whether she was the reason for his two-year drought, and Knox had been quick to end the transmission.
Knox stared out at the storm, watching the snow falling, dancing in the breeze to flutter slowly to the ground. Skye was right. The storm was abating. The wind had dropped completely and visibility was improving.
“It’s clearing up.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek when he sensed that didn’t please her. It worried her. He held her a little closer. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you, Skye.”
She turned in his arms and looked up at him, her dark eyes soft, warm with affection that soothed his nerves and boosted his confidence that once she knew what he was, she wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t.
“What about you?” she whispered, her brow furrowing, and stroked her free hand down his chest, over his black-and-blue checked fleece shirt. “I have this horrible feeling something bad is going to happen to you.”
He captured her hips and pulled her to him. “Nothing bad is going to happen to me either.”
Words he meant but couldn’t quite bring himself to believe.
She sighed and broke away from him, set her coffee down on the counter of the kitchen island and crossed the wooden floorboards to the window beyond the couch. She stood with her back to him, gazing out towards the glacier. She had been uneasy all morning, ever since they had finally rolled out of bed to see that the wind had dropped.
She wrapped her arms around herself, her fingers tugging at the fine material of her dark green sweater.
Knox tried not to stare at her nape, just as he had tried not to stare at it every second of every hour they had been at the lodge. The sight of it tormented him, had his bear side agitated and restless, filling him with a need to close the distance between them and feel her pressed against him. The feel of her soft body against his was enough to assuage his primal instincts as her male, took the edge off so he could resist his growing need to sink his fangs into that sweet, smooth skin to claim her as his mate and bind them together.
Skye hadn’t helped by deciding to twist her hair into a knot this morning after she had freshened up.
Some part of him felt as if fate was testing him, seeing how far it could push him before he snapped. Fuck fate. He wasn’t a slave to it. He was master of his body, not his instincts. He wouldn’t surrender to the urges running through him, no matter how strong they grew. He would keep on resisting them until she was so in love with him that she couldn’t leave him, even when she discovered he was a bear shifter.
And then he would keep on resisting the urge to bite her until she was ready, no matter how long that took.
He wanted to do things right, to be the sort of male she deserved, one who was worthy of her affection.
Even when part of him knew there would come a point where he wouldn’t be able to resist the need to mate with her. He would snap. At some point, the urge would become too great, too pressing, and he would be too weak to resist it.
He ran his hand down his face. Prayed to the gods that she was ready to be his mate when that happened, because he didn’t want to mess this all up, even when deep in his heart he knew he would. He had already messed up once with her. It would be all too easy to mess things up again and ruin this chance he had with her.
“You’re thinking hard.” She had turned to face him, her rich brown eyes soft with concern, laced with a hint of curiosity. Her rosy lips slowly curved into a teasing, almost wicked smile. “Thinking about me?”
She was fishing, and he was already hooked, was a goner where she was concerned. All she had to do was reel him in and promise to keep him rather than toss him back into the river, and he would stay by her side forever.
Would love her forever.
“Yeah.” He scratched his nape, really tried not to think about how she would press her nails into it when they were making love, how she always gravitated to that spot. Did she notice how drawn to it she was? He pushed away from the door and rounded the island, sighed as he sank back against it. “Much as I love it here… alone with you… I think we should head back down the valley to town.”
Because he wanted her safe, a long way from Karl and his men, far away when he tracked down the bastards and killed them. He didn’t want her to see what he was going to do, even when he knew she was well aware of his plan to kill them and she didn’t seem shocked or appalled by it.
She glanced over her shoulder at the window. The weather was clearing fast now and he could make out the mountain in the distance and parts of the glacier. The snow had stopped.