Clawed (Black Mountain Bears Book 1) Read online

  It had been so long since Emma had been intimate with anyone, even a simple kiss opened up a door to let go in a way she hadn’t since a disastrous affair with another TA when she’d begun grad school. And tonight, she really did need to let go. But it still wasn’t quite right. The desire Emma sensed in Erika was enough to make her hot, but not enough to go any further. She pressed her palms against Erika’s shoulders and pushed.

  “Wow, ah . . . that was unnecessary?”

  Erika wiped her mouth, looking as dazed as Emma felt. “I’m sorry. I . . . you’re the closest to an equal I’ve ever met, Emma. I wanted to know what it felt like to . . . to be closer to you. But we both have work to do, I think. Good luck with yours.”

  Emma blinked at Erika’s back as the other woman walked away, looking even more shaken than Emma felt. She touched her lips, confused, and a little elated at the exchange. She had Erika’s research and Erika had given her the kiss of a lifetime, which she felt like she should have enjoyed a lot more than she had.

  Fuck. If that kiss was any indication, she could have probably spent the night with Erika and dug even more secrets out of the woman. She didn’t consider herself even remotely gay, but she’d have done it.

  “What the fuck just happened?” If she didn’t know better, she’d swear she’d just had the upper hand on Erika fucking Rosencrans and had blown her chance. It was kind of a sweet feeling. Emma went back to her room in the best mood she’d had for the entire conference and fell asleep while making plans to do precisely what Erika suggested—mount an expedition to prove her research was fact. Except she wouldn’t start with Africa.

  She’d start in her own back yard.

  Chapter Two

  “You can’t be fucking serious,” Emma’s cousins spoke in unison, as had been their habit practically since birth. Jasper glowered at her from beneath heavy, dark brows. His twin sister, Jade, wore a similar expression, but it just looked impish on her.

  “I’m dead serious,” Emma replied.

  “It’s the middle of December!” Jade said. “You’ll freeze to death.”

  “Or get eaten by bears,” Jasper added.

  “You know damn well bears hibernate in the winter. If anything eats me, it’ll be wolves, or a very resourceful catamount.” She shoved her extra thermals into the top of her hiking pack and slung it onto her back, testing the balance. Letting her body grow accustomed to the weight of it, she went over her checklist again, ignoring the objections of the two people who meant the most to her. As much as she loved her cousins, they just couldn’t understand why she needed to do this.

  “Wait until spring, at least!” The chorus of their voices pricked at her emotions. Jasper sounded so much like her father. And her uncle, too, of course. Emma’s and the twins’ fathers had been brothers, and Edward and Eamon Stonetree had always stuck by the unbelievable story that they’d found the three of them in the crook of a tree, left there as infants by faeries, on two separate occasions. They’d only believed it until they learned that Santa wasn’t real and had begun to question all the other crazy stories their dads told them over the years about the origins of their family name.

  The trio were as close as siblings. Closer in some ways, considering there were only a few months separating their birthdays. Emma had been born first, in the winter, and the twins in the spring. As of her birthday, just a few days ago, she was numerically older for only a brief span.

  They’d been inseparable growing up, at least until they’d finished high school and Emma had a falling out with her dad about the secrecy surrounding their family history. Enrolling in a university in another state was her manner of rebellion, while her cousins had stayed behind in their tiny hometown and attended community college, happy to continue working for the family’s landscaping business for the rest of their lives.

  Only a few months earlier, Emma had finally managed to wear her father down enough that he’d agreed to share the truth of their mothers’ identities. He and her uncle had been preparing for their annual hunting trip and promised they would tell Emma and the twins everything when they returned.

  They’d been missing ever since.

  “You know I can’t wait until spring. Winter’s the perfect season for visibility. I might even be able to pick up Dad and Uncle Ted’s trail. The weather’s supposed to stay clear for the next week. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m going with you,” Jasper said, rushing out of the room. “There’s no way I’m letting you go alone, Emma!”

  Jade looked stricken. “The search parties couldn’t find them in October, Emma. What makes you think you’ll have any better luck? There was no trace.”

  Emma shrugged out of her hiking pack and sat on her bed with a sigh. “Haven’t you ever thought it odd that they kept our mothers a secret our whole lives? And that they always, always, had a different story when we would ask? I just have this feeling they’ve hidden it all for a reason, and their disappearance isn’t a coincidence. The search parties couldn’t find them, but I don’t think they were meant to. I think I am.”

  “I don’t know,” Jade said, frowning. “You’ve put so much stock in your research, I think you’ve lost sight of reality.”

  “Show me your tattoo,” Emma said, standing abruptly and gesturing at her cousin’s midsection.

  “What? I don’t have a tattoo!” Jade’s fair cheeks flushed beneath her straight black hair.

  “The hell you don’t. I caught a glimpse of it last week. Does Jasper know you have one?”

  Jade’s blush deepened and she shook her head. She reluctantly turned and lifted the back of her shirt. Emma reached out and snagged the waist of Jade’s jeans and tugged down far enough to reveal a black, swirling tribal design centered in the small of her cousin’s back.

  “Thought so. Check this out.” She turned and lifted up her own shirt, showing off the nearly identical tattoo she’d gotten shortly after her dad and uncle’s disappearance. The shape had appeared to her in a dream, the image so vivid she’d gotten up and sketched it in her journal, then gone the next week to get it inked into her skin.

  “Holy shit, Emma!” Jasper’s voice made her turn. His face had gone white and he dropped his armload of camping gear to the floor. His hand shook a little bit when he stripped out of his shirt and turned. In the same spot as hers and Jade’s was a similar tattoo of a bear, relatively new from the look of it, raised up and a little red around the edges.

  “Let me guess—a dream?” Emma asked. Her cousins both nodded. “And then you started noticing how much bear memorabilia our fathers collected over the years, didn’t you?”

  Jade shared a look with her brother then looked back at Emma. “The summer walks we always did, the five of us. Do you think those meant something?”

  “I’m positive they did, but I haven’t figured out what yet. That’s where I’m planning to start tomorrow.”

  “You have to take us with you,” Jade said, surprising Emma with her suggestion. Jade had always been the more timid one and hated cold weather. She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic now, either. In fact, she sounded terrified. She opened her mouth to speak again, but hesitated.

  Jasper filled in the silence. “It’s Midwinter tomorrow, Em. We always did the hike at Midsummer before, and it would take us from sunup to sundown. Do you think . . . ?”

  “We have to start at sunset, walk the winter path. It’s the same hike we take around the mountain in summer, but in reverse.” She cursed herself for including them in her statement, but now that they’d shared the secrets of their tattoos, she knew they were in this together. It wasn’t just their fathers they needed to find, but their origins. Earlier that day, Emma had confessed the part about how the ritual was supposed to open up a portal into a kind of secret ursa realm, called “The Sanctuary,” the mythical place she’d learned about during her research that she now believed—hoped—was actually r
eal.

  Jade finally found her voice again. “Is that where they went? Not on a hunt after all, but . . . somewhere else? Where?”

  “Go pack. We’ll find out tomorrow night.”

  * * *

  The head of the trail they followed was a mile through the woods that covered the mountains behind their house. Emma only once looked over her shoulder at the glowing porch light they’d left on, illuminating the cords of firewood stacked beneath the back deck.

  It was a clear night, the gibbous moon working its way up the dark violet of the twilit sky. Full sunset would occur in another half an hour or so, but the sun itself had already disappeared behind the ridges to the west, leaving them in the shadows of the snow-rimed mountains.

  Emma’s booted feet crunched through the recent snow layer that had half-thawed, then frozen again during the day. Jas and Jade kept time at her side, silent, but every bit as determined as she was. The night was frigid. Too cold, really, but they had to do this tonight or lose the chance until the summer. It was dark, too, but the nearly full moon was just enough to light their way without them having to pull out flashlights.

  They’d traveled this path every single summer once they were old enough to walk, and could probably find it in their sleep. With their eyesight acclimated to the dim light, it was actually a comforting walk in spite of the cold.

  “Your science brain has to be going mad right now,” Jasper said softly. “The analytical Emma Stonetree about to perform an ancient ritual to access a faerie realm.” He chuckled softly, the sound making Emma shiver at the suggestion of a faerie realm. The old tales she’d read about faeries were a far cry from what she’d learned about the races she studied, though she wouldn’t be surprised if there had been some truth to those old, eerie stories of people falling through time and reappearing centuries later with no memory of where they’d been.

  There was a thud behind Emma and Jasper grunted. “Fuck, Jade, it was a joke!”

  Emma smiled. Leave it to Jade to keep her brother in his place.

  “It’s not a faerie realm,” Emma said. “It’s just a protected place. I think our mountain is one of those places that exists on multiple planes.”

  “It isn’t hard enough to get to as it is, way the hell up on this mountain?” Jade asked. “Impossible to get a date to drive to pick me up. They want me to meet in town when they find out exactly where I live.”

  “Who’s asked you on a date lately?” Jasper asked.

  “It happens. At least as often as you spying on Emma in the shower.”

  Emma bit her lower lip and stayed silent, pretending she hadn’t heard. Jasper had had a crush on her for as long as she remembered, but was a gentleman to a fault, and knew better than to make a move on his own cousin. She still didn’t know why he fixated on her. He was a sweetheart, a natural athlete, and cute as hell with strong, sculpted features and soulful brown eyes framed by long lashes. Their classmates in high school had adored him, but he’d never had a girlfriend, as far as she knew.

  “I think we’re here,” she said, spying the first of the huge, stone sentinels that marked the beginning of their path. They were near the peak of one of the mountains on their property—the highest peak in their county. Emma listened for the telltale sound of the waterfall their little Tuxedo Falls township was named for, but heard nothing. Of course, it was winter, not summer. The falls would be frozen solid in this weather, or at least show barely a trickle. If they’d veered off the path a few paces back, they’d have found their way down to their favorite swimming hole at the base of the falls.

  They were higher now, the air even icier than outside their house. Jade’s teeth chattered in a staccato rhythm. Jasper pulled her into his arms and rubbed her briskly. “We need to get moving, Em. Where’s the starting point?”

  Emma couldn’t remember which direction to go, though. The giant boulder seemed nondescript, though it had several faces her dad had pointed out to her over the years. One face of it was covered in dead kudzu vines, the woody lengths still clinging to it. Another was covered in frozen remnants of native lichen. Beneath a third side, she found the bones of a bird, perfectly preserved. She didn’t need to see the fourth side to know where to go.

  “This way,” Emma said, finding the path lined with dormant kudzu. She started walking, her instincts kicking in and leading her down the familiar path. The sounds of her cousins’ footsteps followed as they hiked the narrow, stone-cobbled trail through the poplars, oaks, pines and rhododendrons that made up her mountain.

  The way was somewhat alien, but still familiar. It felt the same, yet new, the way a room seems if you look at it in a mirror, or upside-down. Emma lost herself in thought as she traversed the path, enjoying the new perspective she had on these woods she’d known her entire life. The trees were old friends to her. Some she’d climbed as a child, hidden out in, dreamed of building a treehouse in. She’d once ridden on horseback with her cousins around this path for fun and seen it all through the eyes of a girl exploring, rather than a girl being taught the boundaries of her domain, as it was for her father and uncle. For them it was walking the edges of their property, making sure their children knew what was theirs. What they needed to hold onto and protect.

  She knew better now. Every year at Midsummer, her father and his brother had taken the three of them on this trek because they’d need to make it alone one day. Today was the day they learned the truth of their parentage. She just hoped that her dad and uncle were still alive at the end of it.

  After an hour and a half, a monolith came into view, blocking out the wintery glow of the moon high above them. Emma sped up, scrambling up a steep slope to get to the huge boulder covered in vegetation.

  The second sentinel. There were six of these they needed to find. She swiftly inspected it for clues for the correct direction to go next.

  “I feel weird, Emma,” Jade said, sliding down the sheer edge of the boulder and burying her face in her mitten-covered hands. “I keep hearing sounds . . . growls? I don’t think they’re real.”

  Emma squatted down by her cousin. “Scary sounds? Here, have a drink . . . ” She pulled out her thermos and pressed it to her cousin’s lips. Jade took a swallow and shook her head.

  “Not scary, just . . . odd. They make me want to find them.” Jade jerked her head to the side, staring into the dark of the forest, her eyes wide. “Did you hear that?”

  Emma turned to face the way Jade had faced, but heard nothing more than the rustling of the tree branches in the frigid wind. It was an eerie sound that made her shiver involuntarily.

  “What did you hear?”

  “A . . . a rumble that was almost a voice. It was probably nothing. We need to get moving.” Jade stood up and immediately started down the hill in the direction she’d faced a moment ago.

  “Jade! We’re going this way!” Emma called. Her cousin turned, looking a little dazed and then nodded, coming back up to walk beside Emma.

  Jasper fell in beside them, silent, but wrapped an arm around his sister’s shoulder and kissed her lightly on the temple beneath the hem of her woolen skullcap. “Hold tight, sister. It’s a long road tonight. We’ll make it.”

  Emma watched her cousins as they trudged through the icy darkness, worried that she’d made a mistake letting them accompany her on this wild chase. At first, she’d tried to disguise the expedition as one to find their lost parents, but she was a terrible liar when it came to her cousins. She hoped she wouldn’t regret telling them everything. In spite of her years of curiosity and research about the ancient cultures who used to live where she lived now, when it came down to it this little mini-expedition of hers wasn’t just to find out what happened to their fathers, it was also to discover the identities of their mothers.

  Her cousins wanted it just badly enough to follow her, too. Emma shouldn’t have let them come. She could have made the research speech she�
�d prepped, told them she didn’t need them in her way and that it was just a day’s worth of research she needed. But too much was at stake for lies. Their very heritage—their fathers’ lives—were too important.

  She nearly ran into the third Sentinel before she saw it, but Jasper grabbed her shoulder just in time.

  “Sit,” he commanded. “I’ll check the signs. I know you’re the mighty anthropologist, but this is my territory, too.”

  They’d been hiking for three hours and she was exhausted, but there was no way they could quit. She sat on the nearest boulder, grateful for the layers of thermals she’d worn to protect her from the icy cold of the stone.

  Jade collapsed beside her and Emma wrapped her arm around her cousin.

  “Fuck, this is hard,” Jade said. “Not just because of the circumstances, but I keep thinking about them. The last time we did this we were all together. I miss Papa so much, Em. And Uncle Eamon.”

  Emma hugged her cousin tighter, watching Jasper as he deciphered the signs around the boulder. She knew they had to travel in an arc, but her compass had never worked up here. The stones and the stars were the only reliable way to navigate.

  “This way!” Jasper called.

  Jade hopped up and jogged to her brother. Emma quickly gathered her canteen and the wrappers from their snacks. When she stood up, the moss on the rock caught her eye.

  It hadn’t been green when they’d sat down.

  Lush moss grew where her cousin’s backside had rested. Emma brushed her hand over it. Where it touched her skin, she tingled. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to ponder it further—they had to move forward, at all costs.

  * * *

  The rhythmic crunch of their booted feet down the snow-covered path became a backdrop for Emma’s thoughts. She could imagine her father and uncle beside her, taking turns weaving some tale about the necessity to travel this path every year. The story changed each year, too, growing more fantastical the older and more skeptical Emma herself became, as though it were their mission to make her roll her eyes and poke holes in their logic.