Page 49 of His to Defend

The black bear shared the same electric-blue eyes as Chloe.

There was no way.

Nina’s head started to spin with the connections she was beginning to put together.

Chloe and Harper…the bears…

“This doesn’t make any sense.” She shook her head but Ella’s hand on her shoulder squeezed and grounded her. “Harper and Chloe are…bears?”

The grizzly nodded once. Its eyes looked concerned.

Could a bear look concerned?

Before Nina could question it out loud, the two bears turned together and ran into the trees.

“Let’s go inside,” Kira suggested. “Chloe and Harper will be here in a minute.”

Stunned, Nina let herself be led inside. Kira sat her on the couch while Ella went to prepare a cup of tea. A moment later, the door opened and Chloe and Harper joined them in the cabin. Harper was doing up the top button of her blouse. As if she’d just—

“Harper? What’s going on?” Despite her confusion, Nina wasn’t panicking the way she probably should have been. As crazy as everything seemed to be, it also somehow seemed perfectly normal, which was the craziest thing of all.

“This is what I needed to tell you.” Her best friend sat next to her on the couch and took her hand. “And I don’t want you to freak out, okay. Because I know it seems completely insane, but it’s really not. It’s just the way it is up here.”

“You and Chloe?” Nina asked. “You’re bears?” It sounded even more insane to say the words aloud, and a laugh escaped her lips as she asked. But when Harper nodded, confirming her suspicions, the laughter died.

“And Kira and Ella, too,” Chloe said from across the room.

Nina’s eyes shot to Ella, who nodded as she handed Nina the tea. “It’s true, but because we’re both pregnant we try not to shift very often. It’s not good for the—”

“Shift?” she interrupted. “Is that what you call it? You shift?”

All the women nodded.

“And you can all do it?”

They nodded again, but Harper added, “I didn’t know until after I came to the ridge that I was part shifter. It wasn’t until after I mated with Axel that I—”

“Mated?” That word again. Always that word. Is that because— “And the men? Are they—”

“All grizzlies,” Kira said. “The Jacksons are grizzlies. Chloe is a black bear and Ella is a bespectacled bear. But we’re all shifters.”

“Shifters.” Nina tried the word on her lips. After a moment, she nodded. “Okay, so Ryker? He’s a shifter, too?”

Harper nodded and glanced to Chloe. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about. He’s part of the Jackson grizzly clan and we think we know why he left.”

All at once, all of her senses were on full alert. Anything that could tell her why Ryker might have left her when they had such a deep connection was something worth hearing. Anything that could give her a hint as to where he might have gone. “Why?” She put the tea on the table in front of her, unable to drink anything. She needed answers first.

“Remember the other night when you tried on your dress and we all kind of freaked out?”

Nina’s hand wrapped around to the back of her neck and the spot that was still bruised and vaguely ached. “I remember. But what does that have to…” Could it mean what she thought it might? “Ryker did this,” she said slowly. “He…I didn’t even notice…is it—”

Harper nodded to her unasked question. “He took you as a mate.”

“A mate?”

“His mate.” Kira spoke up. She crossed her arms over her ballooning belly and shook her head. “He shouldn’t have done it.”

“Which is why we think he left,” Ella said.