Eventually, he pulled back. “You must have questions.”
“A zillion. But mostly it comes down to one.” She touched his cheek and he loved how her eyes grew soft. “Who is the real you? Are you the growly bear? The Machiavellian leader? The vicious killer or the thorough lover?” Then her lips curved into a smile. “Or are you the man who held me all last night like he needed me in his arms?”
“I guess I’m all of them. I put walls between them because it’s better that way. But sometimes…” He shook his head. “There’s a dark place I can go, Alyssa. It’s human violence coupled with a bear’s ferocity. It’s fury and deliberate destruction, and the last time I went there…” He shook his head.
“What?” She stroked his cheek. “Tell me.”
“My best friend was teasing me about how I sucked in basketball.” He shook his head. “Basketball. Can you believe it? I nearly killed him because I couldn’t hit a jump shot.” He snorted. “That’s why I enlisted, you know. I figured if I was going to be a violent killing machine, I might as well do it in the army.”
She pulled back from him, not in fear but in confusion. “I don’t understand. You had a death challenge with your best friend? Over basketball?”
He touched her face, startled that he wanted to tell her this. He’d never told anyone. But he told her because he wanted her to understand. He needed her to know how amazing what she’d done was.
“It’s a place where man and animal merge in the worst of both. We were teens and both shifters. It was spring, too, which always makes us hot.” He closed his eyes, remembering every detail of the day. The smell of flowers and the sound of animals mating. They were outside on a basketball court, but in Gladwin, Michigan, the state park was right there and coming alive. He wasn’t new to shifting, but he was still prey to all those teen hormones. And the girls were nearby watching, including an extra pretty one he’d been trying to impress.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Alyssa whispered as her hand stroked his shoulder.
“I do,” he stressed. If she was to be his alpha female, she needed to know it all, including her part in all of this. “You have to know what happens. What I can do. What you did.”
He felt her hand tighten as she said the words he hadn’t been able to. “In case you go there again?”
He nodded, his gut twisting. “A shift in power is always dangerous. A new alpha will get more challenges?—”
“Tell me what you need me to know.”
His lips curved. She always cut straight to the point. “We started playing basketball, me and Jason. He laughed at my jump shot, which really did suck, and he said I couldn’t sink one with him in my face. He said it really loud, and there were girls watching.”
“You were a teen boy. That’s what boys do.”
“I know. And he was good, and I couldn’t get past him. I couldn’t sink the shot. I felt the grizzly coming out, but we were in public. I couldn’t go bear and what would be the point? It wasn’t like a bear can play basketball.”
She snorted. “People would pay to see that.” Her tone was light, and it frustrated him. She needed to take this seriously, but the fault was in himself. He couldn’t express what he wanted to. But she was listening, so he tried again.
“So I merged the two. I’d never done it before but it was so easy. All the fury of the animal without the fur. All the intelligence of the man but without the restraint of morals or logic. I had a single goal—to sink that shot—and I didn’t care what I did to accomplish it.”
She stilled, but her voice remained gentle. “Teens are stupid. Boys most of all.”
He couldn’t argue, but he also couldn’t hide from what he did. “I beat him up, Alyssa. I punched him and when he didn’t go down, I hit him as fast and as hard as I could. He was down on the ground with broken bones, and the only reason I stopped—the only reason—was so I could stand up and sink my jump shot.”
He looked at her, trying to see if she understood. She didn’t. She just stared at him with a vague kind of confusion. “Okay,” she said slowly. “That’s horrible. And a lesson in why teenage boys can’t be trusted with anything. But?—”
“It was a basketball game, and I nearly killed him. What if it had been something different? What if he’d teased me that I couldn’t get the girl? I wouldn’t have stopped, Alyssa. In that place, I don’t stop for anything even if it’s murder or rape.”
“That’s a big leap, don’t you think? From hitting your best friend?—”
“I put him in the hospital. Also the three guys who tried to pull me off. They didn’t have a chance against me. Not when I’m like that. And the only reason I stopped, Alyssa? The only reason is because I made the jump shot.”
“I got that. You made your goal, so you stopped.”
“And because the girl I wanted sucker punched me until I hit the ground.”
She snorted. “Hooray for girl power.”
“I’ve touched that place other times in my life. Once in Afghanistan when we were pinned down. The only reason I stopped then was because I was shot and unconscious. Once on leave when I was jumped by muggers in Turkey.” He felt his jaw clench, but he forced the words out. “I killed them.”
“They sound like reasonable choices, Simon.”
He touched her cheek. “It’s a scorched earth place in my head, Alyssa. When I go there, everybody dies.”
