ROMANCE: Billionaire Bear Mate (Paranormal Alpha WereBear Shifter Mail Order Bride Romance) (Paranormal Romance, Bear Shifter Romance, Werebear Shapeshifter) (3 page)

Madison looked at herself in the mirror while she pulled the pins out of her hair, letting her dark brown hair fall out of the French roll she wore to the office.

Behind her Blake was undressing systematically the way he did everything; undo the tie, hang it up, undo the buttons from the top down, shirt in the hamper. She watched him in the mirror. His body was still taut and upright like it had been thirty years ago. He still had that wild rugged look she loved about him. Fierce. Animalistic.

When last had she seen him change? His wolf had been a thing of mystery when she’d first found out, shortly after they’d started dating. It had been a magnificent creature, large and ferocious, a force to be reckoned with. Not a reason for her to leave him, instead a reason for her to stay. He’d been her version of coloring outside the lines in a world where she’d had to be perfect.

As the years had gone by he’d taken care of himself so he didn’t shift around the kids. He had business trips around full moon. He started eating his meat rare, not raw. He’d even allowed the kids to have a dog, even though he growled at the poor animal every time the kids were at school.

There was a time when the sight of his bare chest would make her go crazy, and she would interrupt his routine to climb all over him. They would tumble in bed and he wouldn’t get his shirt in the hamper until morning.

Now when she undressed he barely looked at her, and when she looked at him he looked down to see if there was a stain on his shirt. She sighed.

“I have to work late tomorrow,” she said, still looking at him in the mirror. He took off his watch and put it on the nightstand, face towards the bed.

“That’s fine,” he answered. He was on auto-pilot.

“Do you want me to get something ready for you so you don’t have to worry about cooking? I don’t think I’ll be too late if you want to wait for me…

“I’ll have a big lunch at work and have a sandwich. I might get out a bit, if you’re going to be late. I need to stretch my legs.” It was close to full moon. Blake changed now and then when it wasn’t the pull of the moon that lured out his wolf, just to get it out of his system. He was very particular about not changing around the family.

She pursed her lips into a thin line and turned her eyes back to her own face. He used to wait for her. There’d been days in the beginning that they’d only eaten at eleven at night because they’d waited for each other.

Then kids came and routine had been important, but they were both in Massachusetts now, Emma studying at Harvard and Lash working at Witmark & Lewis while he finished his MBA part time. The empty spaces were filled with the realization that Blake and Madison had just grown apart.

They’d both taken so much out of their day to take care of the kids, they’d forgotten to make time for each other. And now that there was so much time available again it was jam-packed with awkward silences.

But it wasn’t just that, was it? It was the fact that he had stayed strong. His wolf pulled him through. And Madison hadn’t been able to do that. She’d been the one that had gotten sick so often. And when he’d had to take care of the kids because she couldn’t, she was sure he’d resented it.

They climbed into bed. Blake read a copy of Men’s Health while she flipped through whatever women’s magazine she found interesting. And exactly thirty minutes later they switched off their bedside lamps.

Blake was an animal of routine, and the consistency had always worked for her.

“Good night, honey,” she said in the dark.

“Night dear.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” He turned his back to her, and he was asleep within seconds. She lay away, staring at the ceiling in the dark, wondering when those words had lost their meaning and become a force of habit.

On Tuesday she stepped out of the office at four o’clock, an hour before she usually knocked off, and walked to her car. She drove the few blocks to the Medical Park, and stopped in the parking space reserved for the patients of Dr. Kinsey. The secretary greeted her and looked up her medical card.

Madison sat down in the queue. There were five people ahead of her. It was good she’d told Blake she would be late. Doctor appointments were always so unpredictable.

She pulled out her cell phone and found his number on her contacts list. Her finger hovered over the ‘talk’ button, but instead of dialing she closed her contacts list and opened up a text message instead.

Remember I’ll be home late. Fresh bread in the bread box and sliced ham in the fridge. Love you.

An hour and a half dragged by. Madison spent the time reading outdated magazines and watching the toddler in the corner construct a tower. She’d loved them at that age. It seemed so quickly the time had just disappeared, and now she was a middle-aged woman instead of a young mother, waiting for a doctor to tell her what the rest of her life would look like.

Finally it was her turn, and she stepped into the office. Dr. Kinsey smiled at her. The woman was young, with blond hair in a professional ponytail and a smile that reassured patients.

“Madison, it’s great to see you again,” she said. “I know I’m not supposed to say that, because usually when I see people again it means something is wrong, but you’re one of my favorites.” She smiled and flipped open the file.

Madison smiled and sat down. Dr. Kinsey was friendly. Better than the old man they’d been visiting for so long.

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Kinsey said and stood up to walk to her cabinet. “The tests have come back.” She walked to the desk with a piece of paper and sat down.

“The good news is it’s not cancer or anything like that. Your reproductive system is fine and your irregularities aren’t something we can’t fix.”

Madison felt relief wash over her. Her monthly cycles had gotten worse, and with cervical cancer in her bloodline she’d feared the worst. She was frustrated that Dr. Kinsey had started with the good news, though. That meant that it could still be pretty bad.

“What’s the bad news?”

“You have von Willebrand’s disease.”

“What’s that?” Madison asked. It sounded serious and like it was a joke all at the same time. Diseases usually had horrible names that spelled out how terribly they were.

“Your blood has what they call the von Willebrand factor that allows it to clot so your body doesn’t bleed out when you have an injury or during surgery. If you lack the von Willebrand factor, you risk mild to moderate bleeding, in your case. You have type two.”

“How did I get it?” she asked.

Dr. Kinsey flipped through Madison’s file again. “Usually it’s passed down through genetics, but your family doesn’t seem to have any in the family history. It’s possible to acquire it through some diseases or medication.”

“So I got this from taking medicine when I was sick with something else?”

“It’s possible, yes.”

Madison nodded slowly, trying to take in the information, but it didn’t make sense to her. It didn’t sound like it was terrible dangerous. How many times did she bleed, after all?

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“Well, as long as you stay away from blood thinners and medicines like Ibuprofen you should be fine. I’m going to prescribe you a birth control pill that will keep you regular. Other than that you should be fine. I’ll give you a list of what to avoid.”

The consultation finished and Madison got in her car. Pierre, South Dakota wasn’t a large city. It was small by most standards, and the roads were all but busy this time of the day. Still, Madison took her time going home. She supposed she had to tell Blake. It was something he should know, after all, even if it seemed a little pointless because it didn’t really change anything.

She pulled into the drive way and walked in through the front door. The lounge lights were off, the dusk outside making it virtually dark inside.

When Madison flipped on the light, Blake sat on the arm chair.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re sitting all alone in the dark.”

“I know,” he said. She put her handbag down and sat down opposite him.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said. Now was as good a time as any.

“I wanted to talk to you, too, actually,” he said, putting his elbows on his knees and cupping his hands around his mouth.

“I went to the—“ Madison started but Blake cut her off.

“Are you happy?”

Madison blinked. “What?”

“I asked if you’re happy. Do you get what you need out of life?”

“Well, that’s a strange question—“

“It feels to me like we’re just going through the motions. Nothing we’re doing is for us, it was all for the kids, and now there’s nothing left of the lives we started in the first place.”

“What are you talking about? What happened?”

Blake shook his head and leaned back in the armchair. Sitting like that, all sunken in on himself, she realized how old he’d really become.

“When last did you do something for you? Something that
you
wanted to do, just because?’

Madison tried, but she couldn’t find anything that she’d done, not in the last ten years, at least.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. Where was this going?

“Sometimes I feel like neither sides of the double life I’m leading is worth it anymore. Our marriage, the kids… all of that has become so stale.”

Madison looked at him sharply but it didn’t look like he was worried about offending her.

“And the other side of me, the wolf…” Blake never discussed his wolf. “I’m not part of a pack, and this lone wolf nonsense is starting to get to me.” He took a deep breath. “I think we should get a divorce.”

Time froze. It was like something had sucked all the air out of the room, and the sudden silence was so heavy Madison could almost hear it.

“What?” she asked, her voice sounding impossibly small.

Blake looked at her with an expression impossible to read.

“You’re not happy, Madison. I can see you’re not. And my life is unfulfilled. I have nothing that I can proudly state: I did that.”

“But Emma and Lash—“

“Besides them.”

Madison shook her head, because he was right. Blake stood up and walked out of the room. Madison stayed behind alone on the couch. She’d heard of relationships that ended once the kids were out of the house. She’d always pitied those women. And now she was one of them.

Why then, didn’t she feel heartbroken? Sad? Rejected? She waited for the shock to come, for the emotions to hit her full on. A relationship ending, after all, had to hurt.

But she was acutely aware of the empty void inside her where emotions should have been. The lack of unhappiness about it. The fact that maybe Blake was right, because if she felt this way about an announcement like that, it might have been time to end it.

In bed that night she turned to him.

“We should tell the kids,” she said. He closed his magazine and laid it down on his lap.

“I’ll phone in the morning.”

Madison shook her head. “I don’t think we can do this one over the phone, honey.” Could she still call him that? “We need to go see them.”

“You hate flying,” Blake pointed out. Madison was terrified of flying. Stepping in a plane led to an immediate panic attack. It just couldn’t happen.

“I’ll take leave, and we’ll make a trip of it. We have to do this.”

Blake nodded, and picked up his magazine again. They didn’t even argue anymore. Surely that was a sign that neither of them was willing to make an effort anymore.

Only once the lights were out did Madison remember that she had never gotten around to telling Blake about her new disease. It didn’t matter now.

2

“There’s construction work on most of the I-90,” Blake said. Madison was packing her bag when he walked into the room. He’d been planning their route online. “It’s going to be a twenty-six hour trip.”

“No way around it?” Madison clipped her suitcase shut and hauled it to the door. Blake watched her without offering to help.

“Most of them have construction zones and the rest will take far too long. It’s the quickest, but we’ll have to overnight somewhere.”

“We can do that, I’m okay to stay over.”

Blake nodded and walked out of the room again. Madison searched for something, a spark of a feeling, but she was sufficiently numb. It was amazing how business-like Blake was about it. How they made the arrangements like clockwork.

They loaded their bags into Blake’s car, and he slammed the boot shut. He climbed in behind the wheel. Madison had a cooler bag at her feet with snacks for the road. The neighborhood was quiet, most people taking Saturdays to sleep in and relax. Usually the roads were busy by now.

“We’ll drive to Chicago and stay there. I’ve booked a room. Then we’ll do the final stretch tomorrow, and get there tomorrow night. The kids are expecting us, we can stay with Lash for the night and make the trip back on Monday. That should have us both back in the office by Wednesday.”

Blake started the car and pulled out. He switched on the radio and tuned into a station they both liked. It made it easier, they wouldn’t have to talk.

After two hours of driving Blake pulled over at the side of the road, and they ate sandwiches for breakfast. The road was quiet, and they didn’t talk much. They silence between them was as it always was, not really awkward, but not exactly companionable, either.

A breeze picked up and whipped the wax paper Madison’s sandwich had been wrapped in, into the field adjacent.

“Great,” she said and got up.

“Just leave it,” Blake answered. But Madison wanted to go get it. She told herself it was because she didn’t want to litter. But she just needed to get away from Blake for a while. They hadn’t spent this much time together, awake, in years and she felt like she needed to get away.

She stepped through the long grass, finally seeing the paper she was chasing. Something hard and sharp stuck up the leg of her jeans and ripped at her skin. A sharp pain shot up her leg and she cried out.

She rolled up her pants and inspected her leg. A long scratch ran from h her ankle half-way up her calf, and it was bleeding. It didn’t look very deep, but it would need attention.

She made her way back to Blake. He was very calm about it, almost clinical, with no emotion. He took out the medical kit and helped her bandage it up.

In no time they were back on the road. The rest of the trip was quiet, slightly strained but not so much that it was unbearable. Madison’s leg throbbed, and the bandage had a red blood-stained line down the front, but she ignored it. The scenery changed into a blur, and she dozed off for a while.

The trip was draining. Madison hated long drives, and with her fear of flying that was all she ever did when they traveled.

“I can’t believe these damn roads,” Blake said. He was grumpy with the trip. He hated it more than she did, and without a fear of flying he thought she was ridiculous.

“We’ll get through this,” she said in a steady voice. There was no point talking to him when he was like this. He swore under his breath when they joined a long queue of cars that waited to be let through the one open lane a handful at a time.

By the time they finally reached Chicago it was dark and neither of them had really eaten. Madison felt light-headed. As a rule she ate every two-to-three hours.

“If we don’t get something to eat soon I’m sure I’m going to disappear,” she said. She felt a little transparent already.

“We’re not eating until we got to the bloody hotel. I’m sick of driving. I’m not making it any longer than it needs to be.”

Madison kept quiet. They drove through busy, well-lit streets. Chicago was huge and the bustle was strange compared to Pierre. Madison had grown up in small towns and cities made her feel claustrophobic.

“This is more like it,” Blake said, sounding in a better mood for the first time in hours. “We should have come to stay in a place like this.”

“You wanted to be close to your parents,” Madison pointed out. Blake had been the one that had chosen Pierre. She thought of their pending divorce. It would be strange for them to go their separate ways after so long. “Besides, you can always move here after.”

Blake looked at her, the passing street lamps through intermittent beams of light on his face. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. That seemed to be the norm, these days.

When they got out and walked into the hotel Madison felt like she was going to drop. Her leg ached painfully and darkness throbbed at the edge of her vision in time with her pulse. Maybe she was dehydrated. She hadn’t had too much water, because she hadn’t wanted to keep asking Blake to pull over. Women couldn’t go in the bushes the way men could, and Blake liked to avoid gas stations and other pit stops unless it was necessary.

Blake got the room key, but the secretary asked him to fill out a few forms.

“I’m going to head on up to the room,” Madison said. She took the key from Blake and walked to the elevator. Her legs wouldn’t listen to her. They felt like lead and when she wanted to drag them like a child.

The room was on the third floor with a view of Lake Michigan. Blake had really made an effort to get them something nice. She turned and looked at the double bed. Ironic that he still reserved a couple’s room, even though he didn’t want to be a couple anymore. Old habits died hard.

Madison walked into the bathroom. She sank down on the bath mat. Her head was throbbing dully and she couldn’t focus. She tugged at the bandage with her fingers, struggling to undo it. It was soaked in blood, almost no white visibly anymore, only an ugly red. When she pulled it off the wound was red and inflamed, and blood poured out of it like she’d just cut it. Her head bothered her, and she felt short of breath. Strange? She’d never felt queasy about blood before.

Dark spots started dancing in front of her eyes, and she leaned back, tipping her head so it rested on the edge of the bath. She felt her body slipping, and she didn’t do anything to stop it. The light slipped away, and she couldn’t follow it. She heard the hotel room door click, but it was far away. Blake called for her. She should probably have answered.

When he walked into the bathroom, she heard him swear.

“Madison!” he called out, and then she slipped into the black, letting it sweep her away.

When she opened her eyes again she was surrounded by white ceilings and walls and the chemical pinch of disinfectant hung in the room. She heard the faint beeping and clicking and shuffling of shoes that always went with these smells.

When she turned her head, Blake was sitting next to the bed, head on the mattress. He was asleep. The sun fell into the window. How long had she been out?

“Blake?” she said and her voice was hoarse. She had an aftertaste in her mouth that she couldn’t place. She couldn’t remember eating anything. When she moved her hand something pulled against the skin and it hurt. She looked down and found a drip that was hooked up to an IV line.

“Hey…” Blake’s gentle voice caressed her like it hadn’t done in years. She turned to him. He had dark circles under his eyes and stubble. He looked shabby. His hair stuck up in all directions and his eyes were bloodshot.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” she said. She felt weak, but other than that everything was alright.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Blake took her hand. The touch was foreign, and Madison looked at his hands, rough and big, capable. It was like she hadn’t seen them in ages.

“How did you find out?”

“I had to write up your medical information, and they phoned that doctor of yours. She clued them in on the Willebrand thing so they could stop the bleeding. They patched the wound up with Fibrin glue and gave you Desmopressin or something like that. To stop the bleeding.”

For the first time she felt the heavy bandages around her leg under the covers.

“What happened?”

“You lost so much blood, and that and not eating made you pass out. If you’d told me about this bleeding thing I could have helped you.”

Madison closed her eyes again. “I didn’t think it was important. I didn’t think… you wanted to know.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to know?”

She took a deep breath. “You’re always so strong. Everything works with you. And then you told me how your life wasn’t what you wanted. I didn’t want to look like I was trying to sabotage that, suddenly tell you something like this to make you pity me and stay.”

Blake shook his head. “I can’t believe you’d think that,” he said. “We may have grown apart, but you’re still my wife. I don’t want anything to happen to you. And you need to tell me these things so I know what to do when you end up unconscious in a pool of blood on a hotel floor.”

Madison nodded. She looked toward the window.

“It’s probably late. We should get back on the road. The kids are waiting.”

“They can wait a bit longer. I want you okay before we set foot out of here. Even if we have to stay another night. I called both offices already and put in more leave.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Madison said.

“I know.”

Madison fell asleep again soon after that. She was more drained than she expected. Blake stayed by her. Whenever she woke up he was at her side, checking if she was alright.

By noon a doctor came round and talked to them.

“You need to take better care of yourself,” he said to Madison. “You gave us all quite a scare.”

“Is this going to be a problem?” Madison asked. She felt handicapped somehow. The doctor shook his head.

“Not if you make a plan to get patched up when you do get injured. You should treat this the same as hemophilia. It’s a bigger deal than you think. I know you don’t feel sick, and when everything is going according to plan nothing is wrong. But people hurt themselves a lot more than you think. Even if it is just a small nick. You should just keep an eye out and make the effort to stop the bleeding as soon as possible. Then none of this should happen again.”

Madison nodded, but Blake was the one that asked a couple of questions. He wanted to know about the disease, how it worked, what the options were for treatment and what he could do. He was attentive and caring. Madison stared at the man she’d been married to for thirty years, and apparently didn’t know.

When the doctor left, Blake went to get coffee, and Madison fell asleep again before he returned.