Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 24069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 120(@200wpm)___ 96(@250wpm)___ 80(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 24069 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 120(@200wpm)___ 96(@250wpm)___ 80(@300wpm)
I’m not about to stay and watch so I can take on the winner.
I just keep running, and running, and running.
Eventually, I pop out of the forest on the east side of our ranch as the vicious roars of my fighting brothers still echo through the trees.
I spot Logan with the cattle in the distance and I jog over. Logan is our fourth brother. He’s adopted, but no less of a Bowen in my opinion. My parents took him in when his father died in a tractor accident years ago. He’s been with us ever since.
“Logan!” I call out as I get close. He’s sitting on his huge black stallion named Zeus.
He looks at me from under his black cowboy hat and raises an eyebrow. “If you’re here, who the hell is fighting?”
I cringe as I look at him with a shrug.
“Is that Cameron and Adrian?”
“Yeah,” I say as I rub the back of my neck. “I believe so.”
“What the hell happened?”
I tell him all about it and he listens in disbelief.
“So, basically, both of your brothers want to kill you.”
“Basically, yeah.”
He whistles as he looks at the sprawling cattle around us, about five hundred of them.
“Well, brother. Sounds like you’re fucked.”
“Should I move to Canada?”
“Not far enough. I hear Madagascar is nice.”
I drop my head and sigh. “What am I going to do? Cameron is going to break my neck.”
“Why were you looking at Willow anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I say with another sigh. “I was just…”
“Longing for your mate?”
“Yeah.”
“I know. I am too.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I say and the pain of yearning comes creeping back into me, making everything tight, making everything unbearable.
It’s like living with a demon inside of you that won’t let you think about anything besides what you don’t have, besides what you’re missing.
“She’s out there,” Logan says with a kind smile.
“That’s what kills me the most,” I say as my heart twists like someone’s wringing it out like a wet towel. “She’s out there in this scary world and I’m not there to protect her. What if something happens to her? Don’t you think that about your mate?”
“Of course,” Logan says with a sigh. “Every second of every day.”
“It’s torture. I just need to hold her in my arms. Smell her scent. Kiss her lips.”
Logan takes off his cowboy hat, runs a hand through his hair, and then puts it back on. “It’s hard and it’s unfair, but it’s not up to us to make it happen. It’s up to fate. And fate can be cruel. She’s got one weapon to torture us with, time.”
“Watching Cameron with Willow and now that they have Lauren… It kills me. I want that. I need that. I feel like I won’t be able to breathe until I have my girl and am able to stuff her full of babies.”
“I know,” Logan whispers. He does know. He’s a grizzly bear shifter, just like I am, only older, so he’s been waiting even longer. I’m twenty-seven and he’s thirty-two like Cameron. He’s been dealing with this shit for five years longer than me. I don’t know how I’m going to last another five years of this…
I desperately hope I don’t have to.
The vicious roaring and snarling echoing through the ranch finally stop.
“Looks like our brothers are done,” I say as I glance back at the forest in the distance.
“Let’s hope they broke apart before one of them died,” Logan says with a shake of his head.
“Yeah, one funeral is enough. I won’t last the night. If Cameron doesn’t kill me, Adrian will.”
“It’s best you disappear for a few days,” he says. “Cameron won’t be too thrilled to see you waltzing back onto the ranch all fresh and unhurt when he’s probably covered in gashes and bite marks.”
“Where the fuck am I supposed to go?”
“Head over to the triple M trail,” he says. “Let your bear roam around for a few days. It would be good for him. It might help curb your obsessive need a little.”
I don’t think anything can help with that.
“I’m not sure…”
A nasty violent roar thunders out of the trees and it has me reconsidering real quick.
“Yeah, okay!” I say. “I’ll go.”
The triple M trail is the famous Monstrous Montana Mountain Trail. It’s a gorgeous but very hard 1,500 mile hiking trail through the mountains, which you can access a few miles from our ranch. When we were teenagers, Logan, Cameron, and I would turn into our bears and scare the hikers walking through.
“I’ll try to talk your brother down while you’re gone,” Logan says. “I’ll explain what happened.”
“Good luck. He’s pretty pissed.”
“Well, you did gawk at his mate’s naked breast.”
I drop my head and sigh. “I’m so dead.”
“He’ll calm down in a couple of days.”
“Maybe in a couple of months.”
“Just be home by Christmas,” Logan says with a laugh as I start walking.