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Instead, every few weeks, we dragged ourselves home to our den, where our grizzlies most wanted to be, and wallowed sullenly in the fact that nothing in all this living and going and moving made us feel the least bit alive.
We knew what we needed but, at our age, we’d given up on the notion.
Two older, lifelong bachelors weren’t really on the minds of females looking for their fated mates.
“I’m tired of running,” I blurted after finishing off my scotch.
“We’re not running,” my friend answered. “You have been saying that a lot lately. We’ve lived this way all our lives, Ansel. We’ve seen the world.”
I scooted to the edge of the couch and tugged at the neck my shirt. My bear needed to run, and I intended to give him that freedom soon. I hadn’t told my friend yet, but this trip to Greece would be my last. My bear and I had finally come to an agreement. This den was the only place we wanted to be.
“And what if in this seeing the world, we missed out on something more meaningful?” I asked. “What if in all that moving and shaking and going and going and going, we passed up our mate. Perhaps she was on a train or right here, under our noses.”
Edward sat back and threaded his fingers through his salt-and-pepper goatee. “I thought we had given up on all that.”
“I’ve never given up on my mate—our mate.” My bear spoke through me. Not all shifters had the ability to allow their animals to talk through them, but I did. Edward did as well.
“I think you need to go for a run,” he remarked after reeling back as my bear growled out words.
I got up and beelined for the back door, unbuttoning my stupid white shirt along the way. The truth was, there was a lot more going on than being bored or being hesitant about booking another trip to another destination.
Tossing the shirt, a symbol of a lifestyle I no longer desired, onto one of the lounge chairs beside the pool, I waited until my bare feet touched the grass before shifting. My grizzly hated the feel of concrete. His claws scratched against it and, in the summer, it blistered the pads of his already sensitive feet.
Once I had run mostly out of range for Edward to hear me, I let out a roar, hoping it would purge my human mind of some of the frustration that plagued me, running like a reel in my mind.
Our life had begun to feel stale. The trips. The excursions. Even the so-called adrenaline-rush adventures didn’t give me anything but a temporary thrill that somehow left my soul emptier than ever.
Something like a sugar rush—good for a moment but fleeting.
The root of the problem lay not in the vacations or even my best friend.
My grizzly had in the past year or so become starving for a mate. More than attention from a female, he wanted that one person who would make us whole. The one person to be there, no matter what. A female my bear could take care of, protect, and share our den with.
The original intention in building this shell we called a home was to fill it with not only our mate but our cubs. We had room to run and play with them. We even prepared a suite for our throuple.
Those rooms had never been used. We didn’t allow friends and family to sleep on that side of the house.
Its intended use had never been realized.
We ran, my bear and I, until exhaustion took precedence over my grievances. Then I strolled back to the house while the sun set, showing off her vibrant colors in the distance. Edward stood on the back porch, fists on his hips.
“Something wrong?” I asked, shifting back to my human form and slipping on my pants, sans anything underneath.
“You tell me,” he quipped.
“I’m tired, Ed.” I picked up the rest of my clothing and approached my best friend.
“Let’s make a fire and talk. I’ll get the rum.”
Rum. Drowning my sorrows in that brass liquid sounded like a good idea.
“I’ll get some food.”
Chapter Three
Edward
I had an idea.
