5. Noelle

noelle

. . .

He was inside my head!

I jolted and tried to pull back from the stranger's embrace, but the lumberjack held on to me.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,”he said, his voice gentle but firm.“But sometimes with Fresh Bites, it’s easier to show than to tell. Because telling sounds… you know… just plain crazy.”

Fresh Bites? What?

For a moment, confusion threatened to overwhelm me. But I was a surgical nurse—trained to keep calm, even when blood suddenly began spurting out of nowhere and the attending surgeon was barking commands while the patient began coding on the table.

“Okay, how about we start with telling,”I said, forcing my voice to stay steady.“Telling me out loud , not in some creepy deep voice inside my head. Who you are, what this is, and why I’m feeling a nearly uncontrollable urge to jump all of your bones? Even the mean, glary guy with the serious case of resting thundercloud face.”

“Okay, yeah. Let’s do that,”Lumberjack said, his somber expression softening slightly. Even though he wasn’t smiling, I could tell he was amused. No, wait—I could feel he was amused.

In my shoulder.

What the hell???

As hot as these guys were, I was growing increasingly concerned about my mental state—also lustful, but mostly concerned.

“I’m Cody,” the lumberjack with the cinnamon smell told me. “That mean glary guy is Makari—but everyone calls him Mak. And last but not least, there’s Ashak—or Ash—he’s the guy you just, um, marked for mating.”

“Marked for mating?”My alarm skyrocketed.“What does that mean? Why would I do something like that?”

“Because the bear that bit you is an idiot,”Mak muttered through clenched teeth, his icy-blue eyes glaring daggers at Cody.

“Ash, are you done licking her off your face?”Cody asked, twisting his head toward the guy I'd apparently—checks insanely embarrassing notes—marked for mating.“This explaining stuff isn’t exactly my strong suit unless it’s on a menu.”

I turned to look at Ash, who immediately dropped his hands to his sides, his face reddening. Had he really been licking them?

“I know this is confusing, Noelle.”He cleared his throat and began speaking in a calm, level voice before I could dwell too long on the question.“If it’s any solace, it almost always is for Fresh Bites. That’s what we Bear Mountain locals call newly turned bears.”

“Why do you keep mentioning bears?”I asked, narrowing my eyes.“Is this some kind of gang thing? Are you guys criminals? Like that Dark Wolf MC biker gang?”

As a surgical nurse, I’d seen plenty of their victims on the operating table, but strangely, never an actual member of the infamous outlaw motorcycle club.

“The Dark Wolf MC is a multi-state biker gang of wolf shifters,” Mak muttered. “Before my brother became the detachment commander for Bear Mountain, he spent years with the RCMP trying to keep them from running their shit across the border.”

He gritted his jaw."But we’re bear shifters. You were bitten by a short-sighted bear shifter, and now you’re in estrus.”

“Estrus is the female bear version of a mating heat,”Ash quickly explained before I could ask.

I blinked, trying to keep up.“So, you guys are claiming to be… bear shifters? Like in romance novels?”

“Hey, they’re putting us in romance novels now?”Cody perked up, grinning.“Which ones? Give me some titles.”

“You think this is funny?”Mak growled down at him, his scowl somehow setting in even deeper.“Like we’re just book clubbing while she’s in fucking estrus?”

Cody sobered immediately.“Mak’s right. I’m the one who bond bit you. And if you let me—let us —we’ll make it right.”

“Make it right?”I repeated, my voice rising along with my skepticism.“How exactly does your supposed kind make biting a girl and throwing her into bear shifter heat right ?”

Cody and Ash exchanged a look, one that didn’t fill me with confidence.

“Well,”Cody started, his voice careful,“we’re a maul—that’s three males who’ve agreed to share and mate one female. Ideally, you would let all of us mate you, complete your estrus, and then, if you’ll have us, we’ll keep you here with us and, you know... love and protect you as we raise our cubs together.”

Love and protect you. Cubs.

The strange new presence inside me stirred.

Mates, it whispered, sounding entirely too excited about the idea of raising cubs with three men I’d just met.

“So male bears don’t just bounce, like in nature documentaries?”I asked, half-joking but mostly desperate for clarity.

Cody’s face lit up, his expression hopeful.“So you believe us about being bear shifters? About estrus and all of it?”

I froze. I hadn’t realized I did until he asked that question. But something deep inside me—something that felt oddly tied to the strange tingling in my shoulder—told me it was true. If I wanted to, I could become the mate of these three insanely hot bears.

Again, the new thing inside of me reared.

But wait—no. That was insane.

"I can't. I won't..."I shook my head, trying to clear whatever had been doing a happy dance inside of me.“I just got out of a bad relationship—a really bad relationship. And I want kids—of course, I want kids—but my bank account is in the double digits right now, which is why I was on my way to Vancouver to start a new job. I couldn't possibly...”

I trailed off, and Cody drew me back into his arms."It's alright,"he crooned, holding me tight in his apparent for-real bear hug."Don't worry. You're safe here with us."

His reassurance washed over me like a balm for all my real life problems, but my shoulder tingled as Ash and Mak exchanged a long, grave look on either side of us.

“See? I told you this wouldn't work!" Mak suddenly growled. "She’s not ready. She’s going to mess you up, Little Bear, and that's going to destroy our maul.”

“Just let me talk to her! Make her understand.”Cody drew back from our hug to throw Mak a pleading look over his other shoulder before turning back to me, his expression softening.“Listen, we’ve got plenty of money between the three of us. Whatever debt you have, we’ll pay it off. If you like to work, we’ll figure out a job for you here. Whatever you want, whatever you need—we’ve got you.”

We've got you.

The presence inside me reared, sending another bolt of heat through my body at his words. It sounded so… alluring. Tempting. My belly stirred, and my pussy began to clench over Cody's bulge again. Wanting... Needing...

But then my brain caught up with my racing emotions.

“Wait,”I said, my voice sharp.“What happens if I don’t want to live with three men I just met a few minutes ago?”

“Three bears ,”the mean one corrected, his tone dripping with disdain. His glare shifted to Cody.“Her not being able to keep that straight is more proof we've got to get her out of here. Your bear fucked us.”

“What is your problem?”I snapped, anger surging inside me, right alongside the strange, rising lust."This is a lot, okay? And I didn't ask for any of this."

“You have options,”Ash said before Mak could answer. His voice was calm, but tension rippled through the set of his shoulders.“If you don’t want to complete your cycle with us, I can drive you to Vancouver, where you could...”

Ash hesitated, his jaw tightening as if he were physically forcing the words out.“...hire a male escort. Bears aren’t wolves. You don’t have to get pregnant or die. Putting hundreds of kilometers between you and Cody and getting..." He cleared his throat. "…attended to by a human for a few days will get you through this cycle without a pregnancy.”

His chin jutted out, his expression pained as he added,“But if you do that, you can never come back to Bear Mountain. Even a whiff of Cody, and you’d probably go right back into estrus again.”

Somehow, I understood the truth of that statement. Cody smelled... beyond amazing. Like something baked fresh just for you. The urge to start rubbing myself against him came back like a stove re-lit.

His cock was right there. Right there. Just waiting for me behind one thin layer of fabric.

“Or,"Ash said, interrupting my carnal thoughts, "we could get you through your estrus the bear-fashioned way. You could agree to complete your cycle with..." Here, his calm and steady voice finally faltered. "All three of us."

All three of them? The new thing inside of me reared, even as my mind clunked, stuttering over the thought of having sex with three people when I'd never even allowed myself to date two guys at the same time because it felt disrespectful.

“How about if I just wanted Cody?”I asked, grasping for some shred of normalcy.“One him. One me. One cub.”

Cody’s face fell, his amber eyes dimming like I’d just stabbed him in the chest.“That’s not how mauls work,”he said softly.

“Mauls?”I repeated, falling back into confusion.

“A maul is the base romantic unit for Bear Mountain,”Ash explained.“Three males to one female. What we call Four-Direction Spirit.”

“Like polyamory?” I asked.

“Sort of,”Ash said, wincing slightly.“Four-Direction Spirit is sacred to us. It’s not just about sharing a mate—it’s about balance, unity, and protection. We’re maul-bonded. That means we’ve pledged to mate a female together through oaths and a bond-biting ceremony.”

He raised both arms, showing me his wrists. A deep, jagged scar stood out on each, the tissue thick and pale, like something healed too quickly to fade entirely, and the sight of them sent a shiver down my spine.

“Our bond can’t be broken without shattering the foundation of our maul,”Ash said, his voice steady, but his gaze flicked to Cody and Mak, like there was more weight to his words than he let on.

“Even if one of us decides to stupidly bite a human woman,”Mak muttered, his glare aimed squarely at Cody.

My shoulder tingled at the reminder that I'd been bitten, too, and for a moment, fear and doubt overwhelmed me. I felt like I’d been dropped into the middle of Lake Gemidgee without a life jacket. Underwater and struggling for air.

“Don't panic. Talk to us.”Cody gently pulled me into another hug, resting the side of his face on the top of my head as he asked,“How can we help you through this decision, cocoa bean?”

“Choices,”I choked out, thinking of Bradford.“I need choices. If I do this… if I get pregnant, would you make me stay here? Would all of you bite me, too? Hurt me?”

Ash’s face softened, his tone calm but resolute.“We would never hurt you or make you do anything you don’t want to do, Noelle. What Cody did was an accident. And since Cody was the only one to bite you, his would probably be the only sperm that takes. Female bears are very selective about who they let into their uterus. If you got pregnant, we could... Cody could...”

He glanced down at the man who continued to hold me in his lap."He could work out a custody agreement for visitation rights. Mak’s parents are divorced, and that’s what they did.”

An unexpected pang of empathy flickered in my chest.

"Your parents are divorced, too?"I glanced over Cody's shoulder at Mak, who immediately looked away as if my sympathetic gaze had burned him.

“Rejecting Cody after he gets you pregnant might fracture our maul bond,”Mak warned darkly. His voice was quiet, but the weight of his words hung in the air.“Tell her that, Ash. How Cody might end up in Alaska, drinking himself to death because she decided she didn’t want him after all the fun shit was done.”

My eyes widened, the breath catching in my chest.“Is that what happened to your father?”

Mak’s piercing blue eyes met mine, a flash of something raw and unspoken glimmering beneath the surface. But then he turned away, his jaw working like he was grinding his teeth into dust.

“This is a bad idea,”he muttered.“You need to put her on the road to an escort in Vancouver if she doesn’t want to stay. Don't give her that choice.”

“Mak. Look at her. Smell her,”Cody argued.“She has my bite, and she’s in estrus. You know that’s not physically possible for me.”

“Or me,”Ash added, his voice low with a ripple of pain.“She’s obviously a match for all of us, or we wouldn’t be struggling this hard. Our bears want her. All of our bears want her.”

All of them? Wanted me? My heart fluttered, and my stomach twisted, not knowing what to do with that information.

“Doesn’t matter what our bears want if she doesn’t want the same thing,”Mak snapped, cutting Ash off. His jaw clenched, and his shoulders tensed.“Are you really promising to let her go after mating her?”

Ash hesitated before responding, his gaze flicking toward me.“She smells like ours, and Cody is our sworn maul mate. I’ll support him no matter what. But…”

He sighed, his expression tightening on me.“I should let you know that raising a shifter cub alone would be hard. We can help and guide you as much as we can from afar. But Cody especially wouldn’t be able to get within thirty kilometers of you after this first—and hopefully last—cycle without his bear suffering or losing control.”

“If you choose that option, I’m out,”Mak said coldly, his voice sharp.“I’m not going to watch Cody—or Noelle —put a cub through that.”

He said my name like it was something scraped off the bottom of his shoe, sharp and cutting, stripping it of the soft French Christmas warmth it was supposed to have. But for some reason, the thought of it only being two of the bears made my stomach ache.

“This is crazy. All of this is just… crazy, and I didn’t ask for this,”I whispered, my voice cracking as I looked at each of them.“I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. And yet, somehow, I’m supposed to make this huge choice that could change my life forever—or ruin your bond? Do you know how insane this is?”

Cody’s expression softened.

“We know this isn’t fair, Noelle. None of this is fair. If I could take back that bite, I… probably wouldn’t.”He let out a shaky breath, his amber eyes glinting with something between guilt and longing.“I wish I could tell you it was all instinct, that it wasn’t my choice. But the truth is… I wanted you. And now I want you to choose. To want me back. Us back.”

He shook his head, a wry smile tugging at his lips."You make it damn hard to be noble, cocoa bean. I will be, though."

His expression became resolute."If that's what you need from me, I'll do anything you want."

"But there's a ticking clock in play, I'm afraid,"Ash added."You staved off the first wave, but another one will be on you soon, and I'm sorry, but non-penetrative sex won't be enough to satisfy your bear for long."

My bear. Strangely, that sounded like the exact right label for this new presence and voice inside of me.

My stomach churned. The weight of everything—the estrus, the bond, the impossible decision—pressed down on me like I was being buried alive. How had my life come to this? How was this even a choice? That I, alone, had to make?

“What will it be, Noelle?”Mak asked, his deep voice rumbling like distant thunder.“Make a decision and put them out of their misery.”

The heat—estrus—thrummed through me like a bonfire that refused to burn out, flaring brighter and hotter with each passing second.

I couldn’t believe I was literally being asked to choose the bear—choose the bears .

But I opened my mouth to give them my decision.