Bearing The Long Road Home (Ice Bear Shifters 7) by Sloane Meyers Page B

her, but he knew that his best bet was to get the hell out of that hospital room and away from Chloe.

Chapter Nine
     
    Seth’s attempt to stay away from Chloe had one fatal flaw: they were both living on the same small base camp from the same trucking company. There weren’t a lot of places to go to hide from each other, except their own rooms. Seth shouldn’t have been surprised to run into Chloe in the dining hall that evening, but he was. For some reason, he had thought she would be in the hospital for a bit longer, but the doctors must have been satisfied with Chloe’s progress after close to twenty-four hours of observation, and let her leave.
    Their eyes met from across the room, and Seth quickly looked away. He took his tray of chicken pot pie and chocolate pudding and sat alone at a table in the corner farthest away from the table where Chloe was sitting alone. Chloe wasn’t sitting alone for long, though. Minutes after she sat down, she was surrounded by several other truckers, all eager to hear firsthand her account of running into the moose. Since his bear had been pining for Chloe all day, he shouldn’t have been surprised that an intense jealousy filled him when he saw her surrounded by other men. But he still had trouble believing that he was feeling this way toward a Blizzard.
    He let out a low growl as he watched the other men laughing and slapping Chloe on the back in a familiar fashion. Their voices carried across the room, exclaiming every few moments at a new detail as Chloe explained what had happened. Seth saw them inching closer to her, silently jockeying for a spot to sit next to her. He looked down at his pot pie and tried to focus on bringing bites to his mouth, but inside he was seething.
    Mine , his bear whispered. Seth spooned bites of pot pie into his mouth even faster, but he couldn’t ignore the intense feelings growing stronger within him. He stood to leave. He had to get out of here. He needed to get back to the safe space of his room, where he could decompress alone and deal with all of these strange new feelings in solitude. But as he stood, he caught Chloe’s eyes, and time froze.
    He knew the moment their eyes locked that he had no reason to be jealous of any of the men sitting next to her. She had eyes only for him, and he saw in those eyes the same longing that was filling him. She felt it, too. They were fated to be together. But why? Was this some cruel trick of the universe, to bring together two shifters who should have been sworn enemies? Things would never work out between them. What was he supposed to do? Bring her back home to the Northern Lights Clan, and beg them to accept a shifter from the clan responsible for the deaths of so many of their loved ones?
    She looked away suddenly, probably as scared by the intensity of the moment as he was. But one of the truckers was actually interested in the story of the moose collision and was oblivious to the fact that many of the truckers were trying to make a move on Chloe. That trucker followed Chloe’s gaze, and spotted Seth standing there with a tray of half-eaten chicken pot pie.
    “Hey! Aren’t you the guy that rescued her? Come over here and tell us your part of the story!” the trucker said, excited to have recognized Seth.
    “Naw, man,” Seth said with a shrug, and a desperate glance in Chloe’s direction. He tried to convey to her with his eyes that he just wanted to get out of there. “It was nothing. Not much to tell. I just helped her out of the truck real quick. She’s the one who has the big story to tell, not me.”
    But the trucker was undeterred. “Oh, come on,” he said. “You pulled her out of a burning truck. That’s not nothing. It’s the most exciting thing I’ve heard all week, that’s for sure. Come over and tell your story.”
    Seth looked helplessly at Chloe, who shrugged just as helplessly. With a sigh, he carried his tray over to the table. A few of the truckers who were more