Octo BEAR fest (Renaissance Shifters #1)

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

G wen sauntered away, all black leather, blue jeans, and attitude, and Bill admired that she could have that much attitude while holding a glass of ginger ale. As soon as she was out of earshot, Jon said, "So wh—" and Bill turned to grab his brother's upper arm.

"She's my mate !"

Watching Jon's jaw drop was worth having messed up the music booking for the weekend. His eyes rounded and he cranked his head around to watch Gwen disappear into the back hall, then returned to gaping at Bill. " She ? Is your mate? Oh my God! Why didn't you tell the family chat?" His voice rose until he squeaked.

Bill nearly clapped his hand over Jon's mouth. "Shh! She doesn't know yet, obviously! And I've been with her every minute since we met, so I haven't had time to tell anybody! And yes! She is my mate! You don't have to sound so surprised!"

"Well, dude, I mean, like…" Jon apparently didn't have much more of an argument than that, although he rallied after a minute. "She's just kind of edgy for a guy like you, isn't she? You're kind of a stay-at-home business owner type, and she's…" His gaze went after her again, although Gwen was nowhere in sight. "A rock star?"

"Maybe I need a little edgy in my life," Bill muttered. "I know she's my mate, Jon. I felt it."

"So you didn't screw up."

"What?"

Jon shrugged, shaking Bill's hand off his arm. "If she's your mate, then there's no way you screwed up the booking, that's all I'm saying. You might not have booked the person you meant to, but you definitely didn't book the wrong person. Not if fate was involved."

Bill felt his own jaw drop as his bear, placidly, said, See? Nothing's wrong. Aloud, he managed to say, "Uh," and his brother gave him the crooked smile he was well-known for.

"Congratulations, man. I'm happy for you. When are you going to tell her?"

"Oh, God." Bill sat on a bar stool and dragged his hands down his face. "I have no idea. I have no idea how to. And I don't want to add that on top of trying to find a crowd for a rock band instead of a jazz quartet. I haven't looked at the numbers," he added grimly into his palms. "How many tickets have been canceled?"

"About twenty percent so far. The free beer to offset the disappointment was a good promotional idea."

"It was Gwen's," Bill said, still into his hands, and Jon laughed.

"Really? She's sharp as well as hot, then, huh? That's great. Honestly, bro." He socked Bill's shoulder lightly, then did it again until Bill looked up at him. "Tell Mom and Dad. They'll unclench."

"I don't know. There's a lot of other stuff I need to catch them up on."

"Well, then, let me make a sage suggestion: catch them up on all of it, then tell them you found your mate. It'll make them forget anything else short of the pub actually burning down." Jon made a show of looking around. "Which it's not doing. So it'll all be good, bro. Don't worry so much. You always did worry too much."

"Somebody's got to."

"Do they?" Jon punched his shoulder again and got him a beer that Bill gazed into longingly.

"Gwen's doing a drop-in gig at the Harlequin tonight. I'm supposed to go over with her, so I shouldn't drink."

"Let her drive," Jon suggested. "She just got a ginger ale, so she's obviously not drinking herself, and then you'll be stuck with one car all night. Like only one bed, except with wheels."

"Jon…" Bill lifted the beer, which was one of their most popular, the Thunder Blunder Crystal Malt, and stared through the golden bubbles at his brother's glass-distorted figure. "The 'only one bed' thing is a forced proximity for sexy times trope, and I am not hooking up with Gwen in a car. I was too tall for that by the time I was seventeen, and I'm bigger all over than I was then."

Jon held up his hands. "I do not need to hear how big you are, all over or anywhere else."

"Oh my God, Jon! You're thirty years old! You don't have to be this juvenile!" Bill put the beer down to glare at his brother. The beer slopped over his hand, and he muttered, first licking it off because he was a man of great dignity, then, grumpily, drying his hand, the glass, and the counter with a napkin before draining most of the beer in one go. It really was a good beer, he thought irritably, then shook his head, not even sure why he'd gotten grumpy. Because everything was all too much, he guessed.

Everything is too much, his bear agreed. Don't do everything. Just be with our mate.

I wish it was that easy, Bill said.

Why isn't it ?

He sighed. Because it just isn't, when you're human.

The bear sent an image of them bumbling happily through the woods in bear form, raiding honey or eating berries before napping in a den they'd dug in some tree roots. Then, thoughtfully, it added the idea of Gwen napping with them, all cuddled up snuggly warm against the bear's belly.

Bill couldn't help chuckling. I'm going to have to explain the whole shifter thing before we can do that, buddy. For all I know she'll scream and run off into the woods on her own.

Then we'll chase her! the bear suggested happily, then paused. As long as she doesn't run very far.

As long as she doesn't run far, Bill agreed, amused. It was probably better to let the bear imagine a human could out-pace it on a distance run, although the truth was, even true bears could move a lot faster than humans over at least a couple of miles. Shifter bears had considerably more stamina and a far greater ability to judge their pacing, so in the hypothetical situation where they were chasing Gwen through the woods, she was in trouble.

His bear gasped. Our mate is not in trouble from us!

Another chuckle escaped Bill's chest, and he had the impulse to give his bear a hug.

Bear hugs, it said with satisfaction.

Bear hugs, Bill agreed, and Jon, watching him, said, "That's better. Your bear's reassuring you, isn't it?"

"Something like that." Bill passed a hand over his eyes and glanced at his younger brother. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, you know, keeping busy. I'm actually glad the Faire season is over this year. I don't think I've slept since May."

"I guess it's just about time to hunker down and hibernate, then."

Jon squinted thoughtfully at some distant thing. "Have you ever wanted to try? Just…forget about humaning, go see if you can sleep from December through March?"

"You have no idea," Bill said, heart-felt, and Jon pulled his gaze from the distance to smile at him.

"But who'd get things ready for Faire then, right? We miss you at it, you know that? Steve was never as into it, but you used to be good."

"Somebody's got to run this place, Jon."

"Yeah, I guess there's that. Your girl's back," he added with a lift his his chin toward one of the booths. Bill turned to see Gwen sprawled in it, her guitar across the table and her phone in her hands as she typed lightning fast with her thumbs. "You should go tell her."

"I've only known her for four hours!"

"No time like the present, right? No?" Jon smiled again at Bill's desperate glare. "All right, no. Are you gonna hang out long enough to see Mom and Dad when they get here, or would you rather not introduce her to the parents four hours after she met you?"

"Believe it or not, she suggested she meet them about three hours after I met her."

"It's fate, bro!" Jon clapped a hand to his heart theatrically, then laughed. "Oh. I guess it really is."

"I don't think I've ever met anybody as confident as she is," Bill said a little dazedly. "She blew in here like a rock star—" He broke off with a rough laugh, but turned his hands up, indicating it was true metaphorically as well as literally. "—turned my life upside down, found out what I'd done wrong, and just threw herself into fixing it as best she could all within about five minutes. It's like she never met anything she didn't think she could handle."

"Well, in that case Mom and Dad will be a breeze," Jon said. "First because they're really pretty easy-going, and second because you know Mom's been dying for us all to meet our mates and settle down and have a series of large, bear shifter babies, so she'll be thrilled, and if she's happy, Dad's happy."

"Right. Because what rock stars want is to stop their careers to have babies."

"Didn't slow Mick Jagger down any, did it?"

Bill stared at his brother. "Mick Jagger had the easy part, you idiot."

Jon turtled his chin in, looking startled. "Well, I guess that's true. I hadn't thought of that."

"You're an actual Neanderthal. Except I think that's probably doing an injustice to Neanderthals. Seriously, how did the same parents raise us? You know how hard Mom worked with four kids."

Jon said, "I guess," in a tone that suggested he hadn't thought much about that, either.

For the first time, it dawned on Bill that as the oldest, he probably had a much clearer idea of just how hard their mother had worked with four kids than any of his brothers, but especially Jon and Laurie. Jon had still been a toddler when Laurie was born. He wouldn't remember their mother's frazzled days or the hours of screaming babies and changing diapers the way Bill himself did. He said, "Jesus," under his breath, and then, aloud, added, "You need to go volunteer at a day care or something and get an idea of how much work kids are, man."

"I think you have to be vetted to work at a day care, bro. And probably trained in childcare or something. I don't think they let randos walk in off the street."

"You know what I mean, Jon. Anyway, yeah, if Mom and Dad get here before we have to leave for Gwen's pick-up gig, I'm introducing her. But not as my mate." He gave Jon a gimlet eye. "And you're not either. Not until I've got a chance to explain it all to her."

Jon raised his hands in surrender. "I wouldn't dare."

That, at least, Bill thought was probably true. He nodded, finished the rest of his beer, and with a wave, left Jon at the bar so he could join Gwen at her booth. Although really, he stopped at the edge of her booth, aware she was involved in her texting. "Mind if I join you?"

She glanced up from her phone with a smile, and he was shocked all over again by the pale electric blue of her eyes. "Please do. I'm posting to the Fits groups."

Bill slid into the other side of the booth, laughing. "'The Fits.' Is it weird calling them that?"

Gwen wrinkled her nose, which was an incredibly cute gesture completely at odds with her winged eyeliner and red slash lipstick. "So weird, but they named themselves, so who am I to argue? And it's better than calling them our 'followers.' Then it sounds like I'm a cult leader."

"I think rock stars kind of are."

"No, they're cult figures ," Gwen disagreed like she'd thought about it. "It'd be much worse if they were cult leaders. Generally you don't want somebody with legions of fans telling people what to do. Anyway, the chat rooms are afire and there are a bunch of people planning road trips, and it turns out I've got some hardcore enthusiasts right here in River City."

"…this is…Renaissance?"

Gwen laughed out loud. "Oh, no. Not a musical fan?"

"I'm not… not a musical fan. I just don't know much about them…?"

"Oh, we're going to have to fix that."

Bill's heart lurched. On one hand, Gwen Booker was his mate, and he knew that meant that one way or another, they would be together. On the other, the very idea that she was planning—no matter how frivolously—to make sure he saw some musicals suggested she wanted to spend more time with him, and somehow that seemed more concrete than something as whimsical as fate. He suddenly felt like he needed something to do with his hands, and wished he'd brought the beer glass to the table even if it was empty.

Gwen, blissfully unaware of his emotional turmoil, smiled at him. "It's a line from a song in Music Man. Or part of a line. Point is, I've got some fans coming to the Harlequin tonight and are showing off the receipts for the tickets tomorrow and Saturday. See, it's all going to work out."

For the first time in a long time, Bill thought he might actually believe that.