Bear The Burn (Firebear Brides 1) by Anya Nowlan Page B

with weeds, but he could still see that there’d been vegetables grown and some sort of grains. Simply put, it was one of those real, old-school farm compounds that he thought only existed somewhere in the backlands of Kansas. Yet this one was nestled amidst thick green forests ad towering mountains, and there wasn’t an Amish buggy in sight. He couldn’t believe it.
    This was nothing compared to the cramped apartment where he lived in Boston. But size wasn’t what really spoke to him. Royce made his way back to the main building, a gorgeous mammoth of a three-story home, with Victorian outcroppings and wooden paneling that despite its current state of disrepair still spoke of a dignified and magnificent past.
    “So this is where Dad lived,” he mused to himself, walking up the creaking stairs and unlocking the front door with the single key that had come with the note from Herbert.
    He walked in and the scent that greeted him was so familiar it brought tears to his eyes immediately. What smoke and noxious gases couldn’t do, the scent of his long-lost father managed in a split second. It felt like… home. And he couldn’t even recall ever being there.
    Royce walked to what used to be the kitchen, the linoleum peeling up and the wallpaper sagging, but he knew exactly which room it was. It had the great view of the backyard that he remembered from…
    I know this place, he realized with a start.
    Twisting around and inhaling deeply, Royce’s brows furrowed. Yes. He knew every bit of this place. Down to the crawlspaces under the house, the way that a bear cub could spring up to the second level of the hay shed even if there wasn’t any ladder in sight, and how good the water in the tiny hidden lake in the middle of the tuft of forest to the east of the main house felt on a hot summer day.
    His father had died when he and his brothers Ragnar, Redmond, and Rhodes were just young cubs, barely a year between all of them. Royce had been the oldest and he couldn’t have been more than five. He had fuzzy memories of the big bear of a man who kept throwing him on his knee and the big family they had around them in the estate.
    Royce knew from the few things he remembered that back then it hadn’t been just him, his brothers, and his mother, but a whole clan of Hamilton bears to teach them and raise them. It was the werebear way, to bring up the children of the Alpha or any other clan member in a warm, protective environment. And that had to also be why there was more than one building on the grounds that could house a family.
    Wiping a tear from his cheek that had already almost dried, he pulled out the letter and let his eyes glide over it again in disbelief. What he’d thought to be the ramblings of an old man now made all the sense in the world. Uncle Herbert, who Royce had only shared a Christmas card or two with—as the aging bear did not wish to come to the city where his late brother’s wife had taken his children—was not a man to mince words. They read:
    The Hamilton House and the grounds around it have always been in the Halt Mill clan’s ownership. The times changed and we changed with them, turning into Hamiltons, but the history never changed. This is sacred ground, for you, for me, for our kin. I want to be buried here, right next to my brother. And you boys need to continue what we never could.
    If you want these grounds, all four of you must move back to the Hamilton farmstead, and within a year, I want to see all four of you married and at least two of you with cubs. Continue the Hamilton name in the way it was supposed to be—in our forefathers’ lands, living close to our roots. Not in some damn city spirits-know-where. Come home. If you don’t, the estate will be sold and you will be barred from buying it.
    I would rather see it go to someone else entirely than to know that I did nothing and let the Hamilton name die. Your father deserves better. I deserve better.
    Royce folded the note, this